I worked most of my two years in Haiti in the American Baptist hospital Le Bon Samaritain in Limbe on the north coast. Rt. 1 (sometimes known as Route Only One) passed in front of the hospital, through the middle of town, and on to the north end of the road at Cap Haitian, fifteen miles east of Limbe. Port-au-Prince was the south end. It was the only paved road between the capitol and the north coast so, even though it was full of pot holes and narrow in the mountains, it was heavily traveled.
The hospital compound occupied about three acres with the hospital building running along the highway. About fifty yards back were a house where the doctor’s family lived, a house for the Haitian caretaker and his family, and a guest house where I lived. At the back of the compound was a house for temporary and short term workers. All the one story buildings were constructed of concrete blocks, white washed and had corrugated metal roofs.
Dr. Bill Hodges and his wife Joanna, a trained nurse, staffed the hospital along with 15 – 20 Haitians that the Hodges had trained. I worked in the laboratory with Celamise Cadet who had been trained by Dr. Hodges. Mostly we did exams on blood, urine and stool samples. Pregnant women and malnourished infants comprised the largest number of patients. In addition the doctor saw a number of new and retuning adult patients. Bill tried to limit the number of people he saw each day to seventy-five but at night there sometimes was a delivery the midwife couldn’t handle or another crisis so he was called and if he needed lab tests I was called too. Whenever a mother had problems with her delivery that needed a higher level of care I put her in the jeep and drove her into the hospital in Cap Haitian. As we bumped over the pot holes I worried that the baby might bounce out but that never happened.