More about Haiti

Because I was forced to jump back into school so immediatly upon returning from Haiti, I really didn't have a lot of time to process my experience. As these past few weeks have gone by I'm gradually been able to evaluate everything more clearly. That is why you are getting all kinds of posts on Haiti now.

Today I wanted to tell a little bit about what I actually did in Haiti. My trip was part of my senior capstone project for theatre, which sounds rather odd, but somehow managed to work out pretty well. For the past several years Oneal Tankersley and a handfull of various other has gone down to Haiti with a medical team from Pleasant Valley Church of Christ, and made short, culturally relevant health education films in French Creole. As part of this years "film crew" I worked with Oneal to write a script on Wound Care prior to going. Then I was able to assist Oneal in the production of the film. As is true with any kind of mission, every day was a surprise and I really didn't do the same thing twice it seemed. The first day I was busy logging shots and serving as sort of script supervisor/production assistant. Day two I got to try my hand at a bit of directing, along with coaching acting and doing some pretty sweet wound make-up with very limited resources. Day 3 I was a baby sitter and spent 75% of my day playing with kids and trying to keep them "quiet" and out of the shots. Day 4 I was really sick and spent most of the day in bed. And day 5 was saying goodbye to all "my kids" and finishing some cutaway shots. That first day I was very focused on proving that I had something to contribute to the team and focused very little on connecting with the people, but by the end of the week I was realizing that connecting with the people was the most important part. Looking back on the week I'm not convinced that I really did enough "real work", but the experiences I had and the relationships I built were worth much more to me than all that "real work."

I have a few videos of me working on the trip (and one of me learning to dance which is just dang funny). I haven't a clue how to post a video on here, but here's the link to the video courtesy of Jace. http://jklinternational.com/michelle.html

Oh yeah the second video is of this bottle that i made to look like someone had cut their foot on it for a cutaway shot in our wound care film. Be warned it's kind of nasty.

P.S. Granny and Papa you can post comments by clicking on the link at the bottom that says the number of comments. Most likely it'll say "0 comments." You should be able to click on that and post a comment without being a blogger member.