The Haitian Diet Plan

Some time around supper time none of the nurses came to me and pointed out that our patients hadn't been fed.  When you're sick or injured, being hungry is more than a nuisance -- it is life threatening.  Your body needs nutrition -- and lots of it -- to help heal wounds, knit bones, and fight off the raging infections that are rampant around here.  

The family members of our patients have been wonderful about making and organizing meals and delivering them to our 200+ patients.  The beauty of it is that everybody eats.  The food is usually prepared cooperatively and is shared out, regardless of whose families could not contribute -- or whose families are dead.  The food is shared communally here, just as I saw the Hawaiians do it when I lived there.

Sometimes roads are blocked or other misfortune befalls this enterprise, but our patients usually get three good meals a day, even  if a meal is missed once or twice a week.  Dinner has never been missed.   Until tonight.  Letting sick and injured patients miss dinner is just too risky, because it it too long to breakfast.  (And if the food doesn't come in the morning .... I shut that thought out of my head... It is far too alarming and there is nothing I can do about it.

So after a 12 hour shift in the hospital, I became the cook.  I found enough Progresso soup, canned vegetables, and dehydrated rice to at least create a soup.  Not very flavorful, but it did the trick.  It was so sad to see how grateful our patients were for just a cup of vegetable and rice soup.

That all of this happened within shouting distance of the U.N. restaurant, which would not even think of sharing its food with Haitians, did not help.