Wednesday April 1, 2009 (poison du Avril)

I know spiritual warfare is real and here in Haiti in a very overt way, but it’s different when it stares you right in the face. This morning I walked into the room of one our TB patients. People were grouped all around him, he was propped up in bet panting heavily and was looking a little distant. I knew something was up, but was trying to figure out if this was just Haitian drama (which is a lot of the time) or if it was something real. This man has been so sick and responding the slowest I’ve ever seen to Tb treatment. We’ve sent him to Port du Paix for different tests and even were seeking advise from other doctors as to if this was a resistant bug. But my best guess after today is that there is something else going on.

Something evil that is barring his body from healing. Apparently early this morning he was found on the floor after he had had a severe nightmare. Anne-Marie had seen him and everything was the ok in terms of the physical and medical. But when I got there he wasn’t talking, was sort of flopping around, and his eye…just…looked….crazy. I don’t know how else to explain it. I decided to just pray for him there because it seemed to me something evil was going on. He was obviously shocked and scared and seemed to just be changed. Anne-Marie reminded me he has started going to the church here in PC and it’s possible he was reaping persecution for that. This all sounds like crazy talk, but really, there is real stuff going on like that in Haiti.

Some nieces who just showed up today wanted to take him away for a few weeks, it’s possible to a witchdoctor, since we cannot treat him medically if he really has something evil inside. I ran to get medications for him to continue taking, but when I arrived a little later he was starting to come around. He was taking a few bites of food and starting to talk to me. I asked him if he had pain: no. I asked him if he was scared: yes. That is the core of Haiti; the core of voodoo: fear… He said he didn’t want to go, he wanted to stay with us. I don’t know what’s really in his heart, but I was so relieved. He wasn’t quite all the way there, but kept telling me, “wait for me, wait for me”. I told him I’d wait for him. I’m thinking Jesus did a miracle today.