Cholera and Tomas

The past week and a half has been one crazy trip…

On Wednesday, October 27th, I got a call from the safety and security officer. She told me that we would be having a Cholera training, because of the outbreak in Haiti, on Friday so I needed to head in to the capitol ASAP. I packed my bag and headed in Thursday morning. The session on Friday lasted two hours…

Cholera is a bacteria that enters through the mouth. It makes you throw up and have extreme watery diarrhea. Without treatment, young and old people usually die within two to four hours, and a normal, healthy adult usually die between 24 to 48 hours.

They predict that cholera will enter the Dominican Republic soon, maybe even sooner due to the hurricane. Also, they have no idea when the outbreak will stop; it depends on how quickly they can get it under control.

During the training, they announced that there is a strong hurricane out in the Caribbean Sea, and that we needed to call in on Monday to find out more information. On Saturday morning, I headed out to Saona. I was going to have a day camp with my friend, Laura, a health volunteer that lives in La Romana and her jovenes. I sent Laura and one of her kids off in and boat and finally, an hour later, boarded a boat with the remaining three jovenes to head to Mano Juan. Just then, the safety and security officer called me and told me that I should not return to Saona till Monday, when we knew more about the hurricane. “Bueno!” I told her the situation, and she said go ahead but be on the first boat back in the morning.

We had a great time in Saona. Our jovenes got to mingle but also learn together. We gave her group a trash charla and she gave out group a charla about sex ed. Then, we gathered the community together to have a cholera charla.

Then Sunday morning, we chipped in with a couple of community members to get a boat to take us to Bayahibe at 7am! I stayed in La Romana on Sunday night and Monday headed into the capitol. Then we learned about the potential Hurricane Tomas that was currently stalking Haiti in the Caribbean Sea. We were being consolidated in the capitol until further notice.

Then began five days of being consolidated in the Barcelo Lina, a really nice hotel, in the capitol. For two days straight the sky was dark gray, and we had high winds and rain. We were safe, though, up in the hotel. The Peace Corps picks the hotel depending on back-up generators, water, building structure, and location.

The first day, it was really fun because we were all together; however, as time passed and we ran out of things to do…we got more and more bored.Thankfully though, today, Sunday, the consolidation was lifted and we can go back to out sites. I’m really excited to get back because I really haven’t been there in 11 days!