heart in my mouth

What a Christmas present for the hospital a container full of goodies arrived from the incredible charities Haiti Health Network and Konbit Sante including 2 X-Ray machines.  Not both for us here, that was just the logistics, another hospital was coming to collect ‘theirs’.  The machines are not new, donated I imagine by hospitals and clinics who are upgrading.  Ours came from Canada.  Later that day I happened upon the pick-up team who had come to collect.  They were going to put it in the back of a pick-up truck, but not for them a forklift, but using a JCB.  Worse still they had the oldest most dog-eared lifting strap I have ever seen – but this is exactly Haiti, nothing with any life is thrown away.  It was absolutely not going to do the job so I jumped out and offered them a couple we keep in the back of the ambulance (you never know when you’ll need a tow, or to give one!).  It was still crazy trying to lift a pallet with more than half a tonne of irregular weight on it, using a JCB and some dodgy straps.  I couldn’t interfere, though I guess lending them straps I was now party to this crazy scheme.  So I did.  Get the truck as close as possible (to minimise the risk of it toppling over) was all the creole and gestures I had.  When they were about to lift it, I realised their strategy to stop I toppling over; they (now including me) would crowd around it and lay hands on, as if we were going to keep half a tonne from going over if it wanted to.  A crazy way to treat such precious cargo – it’s not that the machine was hugely expensive, maybe a few thousand USD, but it’s getting hold of one and then getting it into Haiti without customs keeping hold of it until you could pay them off.  Especially when the hospital has no money of its own to speak of!

We did get it in the truck though, despite two goes at lifting it and virtually destroying the pallet beneath it.  I know my Creole is coming on however, because as he reversed the truck under the load, he shouted ‘pied’ (feet) so we all stepped back slightly and trusted to God the load would not topple, as none of us, standing beneath more than half a tonne of X-Ray machine suspended from the tines of the JCB bucket had any form of PPE…