For a long time, it has been a dream of mine to have a health fair. In February, Immanuel, our student missionary, and I started brainstorming. Where could we hold the fair? What information could we present? Over the following months, circumstances discouraged me, and work on our cultural scrapbook took most of my time. A week and a half before the date we had planned to have the health fair, our team decided to go ahead with it. Manny and I did more brainstorming and got the subjects in place. Each of our team members had plenty to do. I wasn’t sure we could get all the booths and the other stuff done in time, but by hard work and God’s help, we actually got it all done with a day to spare. Making posters, sewing beanbags, writing up two more brochures, making photocopies, cutting out paper fetal-development illustrations and gluing them onto cardstock, printing out and coloring pictures on posters, and many more tasks.

Our seven booths dealt with topics that are important here. Amadine was in charge of booth number one—fetal development. Life-size fetus cutouts were on the table with development information written on the back. There was also a poster with actual fetal pictures I had collected. These were a big hit, especially with the older generation. They had seen many babies born, but they had never seen the earlier stages of development.

Booth number two dealt with the dangers of diarrhea and dehydration and the importance of administering oral-rehydration solution (ORS)—three pinches of salt and three tablespoons of sugar in one liter of water. I asked Suzanne to take care of this table. Her baby son suffered diarrhea almost continually from November of last year until February of this year. Treatments did not help for long, so I showed her how to make ORS. She kept him well hydrated, and he recovered. So Suzanne has become an expert in this area, and she did a good job of teaching people.

The topic at booth three was hypertension and anemia. Manny, a registered nurse, examined people, and Uli wrote down his findings for each. Uli also checked people for anemia. This is a big problem here, and many women and small children die from it. Uli showed people how to identify anemia and demonstrated several ways to increase blood iron levels. Surprisingly, only three people tested positive for hypertension. However, lots of people showed signs of dehydration.
At booth four, Toussaint demonstrated the uses of charcoal powder. He has used charcoal poultices to treat many people suffering with nasty infections.

Booth five dealt with stress, fatigue and sleep. Jeanne and Augustin led people in a game where they threw bean bags into box tops labeled with symptoms of chronic lack of sleep. It was a big hit. Other activities taught people about the causes of fatigue and stress. There were four brochures at this table about fatigue, sleep, mental health and stress.

Water was the topic of booths six and seven. Eric showed people the effects of dehydration on the body. He wore a t-shirt with artwork showing a body without its skin.

Simel instructed people about natural remedies that can be done with water. Donné demonstrated as Simel talked about using hot compresses on the face for sinus infections, breathing vapors for a cough and using hot compresses on infected wounds.

Noëlie was in charge of the instruction and greeting table where each person picked up a card, wrote their name on it, and then got it stamped at each booth. They also got plastic bags to carry the brochures they picked up. Several kids rotated through to help with stamping people’s cards. I roved from booth to booth and took pictures, responding when people had questions the helpers couldn’t answer. Basile was the roving translator.

The health fair lasted about two and a half hours, which is about as long as you can go when you’re repeating the same thing over and over. (Since a lot of people here can’t read, we had to give most of our information orally.) The turnout was perfect. It was busy but not overcrowded, and we had visitors from all walks of life. We were happy, and everyone had a good time. We thank God for His blessing and for enabling us to make so many new connections with our community. 

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