Good Evening all: The team is all tucked away in their rooms, reading and relaxing so I am taking this opportunity to send out a quick note.

Cholera is on everyone's minds and the topic of conversation for all. The "blame" for the infection is being pointed at a troop of Nepalese UN troops who supposedly were emptying their latrines into the Artibonite River in the area of Mirebelais. This is totally unsubstantiated at this point, but it is the story go around. Wilner tells me that new cases continue to show up at the hospital but that the rate of their arrival is decreasing a bit. The newcomers equal the amount being discharged. He continues to be out and about delivering health and prevention messages to various communities the hospital serves. So far he is staying well...I keep telling him to make sure he is following the advice he is giving everyone else. As for our area there are a few reported cases, but I don't have very accurate information about the real situation in PAP area. The health meeting on Monday focused on prevention messages to be spread about and setting up observation and treatment centers. The various NGO's in our area are organizing oral rehydration salts, clean water and other treatment modalities, in the case we get a lot of cases like the Artibonite. We continue to hope that it will be contained as much as possible. I was at Food for the Poor today and one of the staff told me that all of their hand sanitizer has been handed out left, right and center as so many folks have requested it.

I posted the health messages at the school and we have distributed a quantity of soap for each of the classrooms. On Friday we will give goodie bags to all of the students and one of the items in the bag is a bar of soap.

The Hamilton team, now nicknamed the "Hometown Flirts" have been hard at it as we moved a lot of boxes from the depot to the school and then from the little apt to the new depot at Hope House. I had to get it cleared out for the team coming to finish renovations in the apt.

We have delivered medicines to a private clinic nearby and to Food for the Poor Clinic today. The team thoroughly enjoyed the time to serve up food to the families arriving at the FFTP kitchen for their daily rations. All of the them were remarking, as many others do, how tiring it was to scoop out the portions of rice. They were all wishing for a bit of Ben-Gay this evening.

From there we went to Little Children of Jesus, arriving in time to help the staff feed lunch to the children. It was quite a meaningful visit for all of the gals (and one guy). Hilda's husband Jim is lapping in the luxury of being on a team with 7 women.

The rain came pouring down just as the desks that had been painted were starting to dry out a bit. Hopefully we got the tarps over them to prevent any ill effect.

I finally remembered to change the batteries in my camera, but now the satellite does not wish to upload my pictures so they will come at another time.

Thats it for this evening......all the best, Debbie