Cold in Haiti

The weather in Cite Soleil is getting cold... I don't know exactly the temperature, but it surely does feel like below 20C... maybe it's due to the rain. I've heard that December should not be really the month when the rainy season in Haiti starts, but somehow, for the past 3 days, it's been raining... In the compound where I am staying, there is no hot water... and that makes taking shower after coming back from the CTC a bit of a challenge, especially in cool days like these... Every evening, I struggle in front of the shower... I turned on the water but I really don't want to get the cold splash on my hair nor my body... but I have to. Not taking a shower after having worked in a cholera centre for the whole day is an insane thing to do... night after night, after taking the shower, I would tell myself, "Good girl, you've managed it. Tomorrow is going to be a little bit easier as the body will adapt to this 'habit'". Well, so far, I haven't really... but it will come, I believe. We eat very early in the evening, too. For some of my colleagues, especially the medical team, they do not have the habit to eat in the CTC so they'd skip lunch. It is very easy to catch cholera as they are working so close to the patients. So they last the whole day with the little breakfast they take. But since we start working at 6am in the morning, by 10am I'm already having a stormy stomach... and I really do need to eat something at lunch. But I'll try to be as careful as I can be: to wash my hands before eating, and I have to eat the food as fast as possible and not to let it sit, because there are flies in the hospital and they surely are the risky medium to spread the cholera... Today I had to run to the market to stock up food for the team as the briefing from the Emergency Coordination Team said that it is anticipated the security risk is going to increase again in the coming days, as the deadline for deciding what to do with the 1st round election results is coming, so violent protests are expected to come again towards the end of this week... it's very frustrating to be not able to step out of the hospital or the house just even one step. Everyday, we get into the car inside the parking of the house, and we leave the car only when we are inside the parking of the hospital... The freedom of being able to walk on the street freely, going to see a bit of the local market, interacting with local people in their daily lives are something I'm so missing...