Every Tuesday in Marbial, more than 1,000 people travel from near and far – some walk half a day to get here – for the big social event of the week, the market.

The scene is a whirlwind of exotic sights and sounds and smells. You feel like you’ve landed in the middle of a National Geographic spread on some far-away third-world country. Then again, that’s where you are.

Brightly garbed women carry plantains, baskets, buckets and jugs on their heads. Men lead donkeys loaded down with baskets of vegetables, cornmeal, rice, coffee and tobacco. Children ride motorcycles through the market and run around hawking candy and trinkets.

The scene is crowded and chaotic. A guide recommends that anyone who goes down to the Tuesday market bring a partner because it is so big you can get lost.

I ignored the advice and managed to avoid getting lost, but I attracted a following of small, curious children wanting money or food from the single red-headed white person at the market.

A group from the medical mission decided to head down to the market to buy some baskets as souvenirs from their trip. Luckily they had Agathe Mezik with them. Mezik is a nurse in Connecticut who is Haitian by birth. She speaks Creole and is able to haggle with the basket weaver to buy six baskets for the tourist-doctors standing out like sore thumbs in the bustling market.

On the walk back to the medical clinic, a man spoke in Creole to Mezik and told him that his daughter needs to see a doctor, can she help? She told him to go to the clinic and wait in line with his daughter.

“She will get help there,” she says in Creole.