We tackle another long walk though countryside, along the beach and across a backwater by boat to the isolated village of Guiotin. We see rice fields, cattle, pigs, goats and fishing. As we arrive, the villagebyways are being swept clean ahead of us. Again the church is the ideal venue – cool and large - for the pediatric clinic for today. A pregnant lady carefully folds and stores the church’s linens so the tables can be used for the pharmacy. I spend hours standing – controlling the line ups and traffic flow, helping to weigh and measure children, holding some newborns offered to me by amused mothers.

On our last day, the 25th, I use my time catching up on my marketing tasks in the guesthouse and paying a visit to Dr. Brinvert’s school clinic, next door. Sitting outside his office is the only amputee I have seen in this village. He was amputated below the knee because he didn’t heed strong, repeated advice to have a gangrenous toe taken off. Fear and a good surgeoneventually saved his life.

Refreshed on Monday the 21st, one team walks 2 miles along the beach to Monbin, a town of 800 to 1000, supported by farming and fishing, and are met by Pastor Etienne Joel who has set up the church for the clinic. He dreams of building a clinic for the village some day but funds are scarce from local and North American sources. A similar clinic is set up and 171 patients are seen and treated for similar conditions. The other team stayed back and did clinic at the adjacent school again.

Yesterday, the 19th, weather was again perfect. One Haiti Village Health team led by a gynecologist travelled through the breakers across the bay by boat to run a clinic for pregnant women at PlageMichel in the Camp Louis region. 14 women were each given a physical, checked for high blood pressure, screened for anemia and diabetes with blood and urine tests; fetal heart beats was checked and safe birthing kits (clean razor blade, string, pads, erythromycin ointment for new born’s eyes) were distributed along with vitamins.

Arriving in Haiti yesterday after eight months absence was a little surreal, but the glorious sunshine, backdrop of mountains, noisy bustle of the people and traffic of Port-au-Prince, were welcoming and familiar. The city seems less broken, the streets and buildings healing and no doubt the people, too, somewhat – if only to where it all was pre-earthquake.  I saw one large tent encampment as a reminder of the catastrophic ‘tremblement’ on January 10, 2010 and of the widening cholera epidemic fuelled by lack of sanitation in these ‘temporary’ camps.