When other people's conversations made my week brighter

     One of the cornerstones of my work in the MOHI clinic is teaching. We talk about safe medication practices, nutrition needs, and positive parenting techniques, among other things. I am a community health nurse at heart, and I deeply believe in a person's capacity to make positive changes when they are armed with good health information. In practice, that looks like me saying things like "drink more water," "here are the foods that are not good for you when you have high blood pressure," or "here are foods that help make your blood stronger when you are, or think you are anemic" over and over and over. The thing is, lifestyle changes are hard for people with an abundance of material resources, let alone for my patient. I often wonder if the teaching I do is really helping my patients or speaking to their needs (doubting myself is something I am really good at, especially when operating in a foreign culture).
      I share all of this to help illustrate why a small incident Wednesday was so significant to me. Wednesdays are mobile clinic days, where I hold clinic out of the bus up in the mountains. We have patients come and sit in the seats at the front of the bus, while I consult from the back of the bus. Wednesday morning, as I was assessing one patient, fragments of the conversations from the front of the bus started drifting down. Curious, I paused to eavesdrop. What were the people talking about? Foods that are not good for people with high blood pressure, and foods that are good when you are anemic, with patients teaching other patients the points I have been covering constantly for months. I did not instigate any of this, and I cannot overstate how thrilled I was!
      There are those who would tell me Haiti is just too broken, that change is not really possible here. Those who would say that Haitians are not capable of learning or changing. Well, my answer to those people came Wednesday morning. My answer showed up in the form of people, sweating and sharing information with their friends and neighbors. My answer came as hope in the form of blood pressure teaching. Amen.