The Peaceful Kingdom

“Please don’t disrupt my peaceful kingdom by bringing in the pigs,” I tried to calmly explain in my best Haitian creole to the farmers. I understood the fact that bringing all their animals at one time was easier for them, but experience taught me that treating certain animals together could lead to disaster. The other livestock such as the goats, sheep, cows and chickens were patiently waiting for their exams, vaccinations and deworming medication. This was our team’s first medical mission trip to Paynol, which was a small farming village at 5,000 feet in elevation that was located in what was considered the bread basket of Haiti.

I was currently working on a bull on the side of a mountain that was double tied to a Charlie Brown looking pine tree. I peeked over the edge and thought that it would be a long way down to the stream below. You see, Haitian farmers don’t dehorn their cattle so there an added challenge when working with them. I was praying that the harness, lead rope, and person performing the nose pinch all adequately held while I vaccinated this rather large and nicely endowed black bull with sharp tipped horns. I could see Nurse Fabienne calling my husband Pat and explaining to him that I died while serving the Lord as I was gored and flung off a cliff after a screaming pig interrupted our vaccination party. Someone got it right when they suggested that my motto for this medical mission trip to Haiti should be, “On a Wing and a Prayer”.

The story as to how I got to this place in my life is as long and winding as the mountain road is to Paynol. I had wanted to be a missionary since I was ten years old. Unfortunately, circumstances did not allow me to leave my family of fourteen siblings at that time, and before I knew it, I was headed to college with the goal of becoming a veterinarian. Once I became a mixed animal veterinarian, I found doing everything from c-sections on cows to treating ferrets with tumors was my true calling. It wasn’t until I was married and my daughter was fourteen that I saw an attainable opportunity to go on a medical mission trip to Haiti on an announcement slide before church began one Saturday afternoon. My first trip to a tight-knit community in Northwestern Haiti infected me the “missions bug” or the addiction to serve on missions, and here I was 6 mission trips and four years later, looking down at the small stream below saying a prayer that the Holy Spirit would lift me up on wings if I slipped or got knocked off the mountain side.

Sure enough as the needle entered the bull’s tough hide and I began to inject the vaccine, two male dogs began to fight behind us upsetting the bull. The bull began to kick from behind and I started shouting “Kouri”, which is Creole for run at the top of my lungs. My team knew that when I shouted run it meant letting go and getting out of the way ASAP, no questions asked. I grabbed the harness end and the quick release tie let the bull’s head go, but it was at that moment the bull turned to me with the whites of his eyes showing, and decided that I was the matador. He snorted and shook his head which let me visualize the large needle and syringe still stuck in the divet behind his left horn. It was at that time, I decided high tail it to the safest place I knew, which was inside the church. At least we could barricade ourselves in there if he decided to charge the metal doors. I was able to crawl over to our mission team leader Paul and Nurse Fabienne as I heard the bull snorting and pawing the ground before a charge.

“Some fighting dogs started all of this and spooked the bull,” I exclaimed. “Luckily everyone scattered quickly, but we have one mad bull out there."

“Well, it probably ended our clinic for the day,” Nurse Fabienne stated. “I can still hear Dr. Henri’s dental drill now. I bet that patients that really needed their teeth pulled ran into his room instead of heading for the hills,” she continued.

“How are you going to take care of the bull situation,” Paul asked.

“I do have some dog sedative packed in my vet clinic in a bag. Fortunately, cattle need just 1/10th of the dose to calm them down, but that means we don’t have much room for dosing error. If someone could distract the bull from the front, I might be able to inject it into his rump muscles,” I suggested.

“Just make sure you sedate him and not knock him completely out. We don’t have a pen for him or a means to cart him back home with the owner,” Paul countered.

I knew how valuable this bull was to the community. My local translator, Millot (pronounced Mee-low) was telling me how many calves in the area that he had sired. Livestock also meant a source of protein for the farmers.

I carefully loaded up the small tuberculin syringe with a mid-range dose of sedative. Since we had no cattle chute to chase the bull into, we planned on partially blocking off one end of the alleyway between church and medical clinic. We left just enough head room where the bull could see out. The walls of the church and clinic would protect us from the powerful side kick of the bull. I had Millot explain to the farmers our plan. Two of the brave farmers starting yelling at the bull from behind. I positioned myself in one of the glassless windows in the dental room of the clinic. Dr. Henri just gave me a funny look and continued working. Patients had trekked up to 6 miles on mountain paths, just to see him. He wasn’t going to let an upset bull ruin his rhythm. I said a silent prayer that our wooden barricade in the front held. We put some grass and grain near the front to hopefully distract him. If the barricade didn’t hold he would go flying off the other side of the mountain, which would be not be good.

As the bull entered our makeshift chute, I suddenly heard Pastor Olivet leading the remaining patients and staff in the old hymn How Great Thou Art in Haitian Creole. When I matched the creole words to “Then sings my soul, my savior God to me,” I bent out of the window, scratched his rump, and smoothly injected the needle into his hide. I was also able to reach over by his ear and remove the vaccine needle and syringe By the last refrain of the song, I could see his firm muscles start to relax under the sheen of sweat on his hide. It was then that I noticed the blood streaking down his leg leading me to the view of a four-inch infected laceration near the top of his hamstrings. No wonder the poor guy was so easily spooked by the dogs.

It's funny how an emergency can give clarity to a situation. My mind went instantly to work on how to make the bull feel better and save him from the very type of life-threatening bacterial infection that was in vaccine syringe. While I could use some of Dr. Henri’s lidocaine to numb up the area for cleaning. I simply did not have a suture pack with a needle that could easily go through his hide. That is when an old trick came to mind which I learned from my mentor Dr. Rich. I could put the two ends of the hide together with an 18 gauge 1 1/2” needle, thread large suture through it, pull the needle out and tie the ends in a simple interrupted suture pattern. Luckily the bull was pretty sedate, because it would feel like getting a series of vaccine pokes all over again.

Through all the sweat, the bull’s blood, the flies that I had Millot spray away with essential oils, and the rain drops I considered as blessed tears from heaven we were able start the difficult task at hand. While I was able to get the bull cleaned up, give an injection of penicillin that Dr. Hall donated to me for this trip, and sufficiently numb up the wound, I needed to get closer to place the sutures. On top of that issue, we only had about ten more minutes before the sedation would wear off and it would be back to unhappy bull status in no time at all.

Life either teaches us to be brave and stand in the gap or fold in fear. The age old advice that I used to give my veterinary clients about being stronger than you know began to ring in my ears. The closest experience to spending any time on top of a bull was when I paid $20 to last about 2 seconds on a steer in our veterinary school rodeo. In those moments, I learned what a fun and total adrenaline release that could be for someone. I was just praying that this situation would not turn into that type of an entertaining spectacle. I gently stepped out of the window, down onto the bull’s muscular back and eased myself into a position where I was sitting backwards on his hips. Pastor Olivet now led the growing congregation in a rendition of Amazing Grace. Millot’s job was to keep a firm hand of the base of the bull’s ear while kept telling him what a handsome bull (bel bef) he was, and Nurse Fabienne handed me instruments and gauze from Dr. Henri’s surgery tray.

I finished tying the knot on my final stitch when my friend the bull I now called Frankenbull (or Frank for short) began tail swishing and shifting his weight from leg to leg. I took the cue as my signal to leave and Millot and Nurse Fabienne helped back up through the window.

Since we could not let Frank go out the front of the barricade, we had the farmers slowly move him back with a piece of wood, waving hands and a series of clicks. When his horizontal vision caught sight of the road he turned and let his owner grab his lead rope. The farmer’s wife and five children followed happily behind carrying their colorful back packs. Each was filled with a small sack of rice, seed packets, a few hygiene items, a small toy, and school supplies that we handed out to each of them during visit to the healthcare staff.

That night, the ladies of community served us rice, fried plantains and black bean gravy for dinner. The conversation flowed freely as we ate our meal in the church at the green wooden picnic tables lighted with kerosene lamps. The same church where the community worshipped on Sundays and provided our team shelter also protected us today, both physically and emotionally. For me, it brought true meaning to providing medical care using community based assets.

As we sipped our after dinner ginger tea, Nurse Fabienne looked over at me and smiled. “Did we have a fun adventure today Laura?”

“While my peaceful kingdom didn’t stay quiet for long, I can’t wait to tell everyone back home that I rode a bull for longer than eight seconds” I answered.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “Everyone in these mountains will remember the day that Dr. Laura tamed the wild beast just to keep her peaceful kingdom!”