Courtney in Haiti: It's a Girl!

One of the things I love about working with Project Medishare is that they don't just bring volunteers down to Haiti to provide medical care to the patients there. They are working to empower the Haitian people to be able to run the hospital by themselves. One of their big goals is educating the Haitian staff, and they stress that to the volunteers that come down. They want us to share as much of our knowledge as possible with them. The staff is so receptive to our teaching and I feel like they truly want to learn as much as possible. However, I've seen that there is certainly a lot that I can learn from them as well. Daverna is one of the Haitian nurses that I've worked with during my past three trips. She primarily works in the emergency room and is absolutely AMAZING. I'm pretty sure she could start an IV on a rock. She has incredible skills but is incredibly humble about it at the same time. I didn't even realize until this past trip that Daverna was also a midwife, and that she took care of most of the women that delivered at Medishare. One day she was taking care of a laboring mom and I asked her if she would teach me about what she was doing. She told me, "Yes, you deliver the baby. Put on gloves." It was an incredible experience. Daverna talked me through it and I got to deliver my first baby. Amidst all the sadness, illness, and death that I saw that week I was also blessed with the opportunity to welcome a new life into the world and I'm so grateful to Daverna that she allowed me to share in that. Afterward, Daverna took care of the mom and I took care of the baby. Both of them left Medishare to walk home two hours later.