I am writing this to you now while we are flying, and I will keep adding to it as I have time, that way when I get an internet connection, it won’t take long to send this off and get you up to date. When I get to the airport I have to first go thru immigration, have to make sure they stamp my passport this time, last time they forgot and then I had a problem leaving, because my passport indicated that I had never been there! After that I need to stand in one of the most unorganized baggage claims areas you have every seen and search for my overweight bags! Then I will proceed thru customs where I will basically lie and downplay whats in my bags, hopefully getting thru without paying taxes on the pumps and tools I am bringing in. If that doesn’t work, then its bribe time, (they call it paying taxes, but it has to be US cash and its funny how it goes in customs guys pockets! )
There are two guys that I will be looking for when I get to this point, the one is Donald who is an older guy who kinda supervises all the guys who try to help with you bags and then want to get paid for their help. If you don’t want to pay someone to help, you have to refuse their help repeatedly or they will just grab your cart or bags, drag them outside and then demand payment. However much you give them, its usually not enough! That’s where Donald helps, he decides who actually helps and you give him the money for everyone and he spreads it out and then gets rid of the guys. Traveling by myself, I am not sure if I will use their help, If I can find Jean Gary quickly enough, I should be fine on my own, he is the driver that is supposed to know I am coming and will bring me over to the other small airport. If a goes well, I should be in Les Cayes by 3 or so, although the proposed flight time of 2PM doesn’t always mean very much. It would not be unusual for that plane to take off an hour or two later.
I know I have been doing this for a while and should be getting used to this, but I am not. Took some photographs on the way here that, if they come out alright, will show you how different things here often are! Marc’s new puppy is very cute, a little rotweiler who at the moment is nothing but sharp teeth and curiosity! I couldn’t help playing with him and having s ablast! I think my battery is running low, so I am going to stop now, put this on charge, and probably continue in the early AM. I am also fading out while I am typing, not a good sign!
I got up at 530, showered, shaved, starting sorting all my stuff. Just went for a walk to take a few photos to send you. I have a new bracelet that one of the guys in the art and craft class made for me as a welcome gift! It says Mr. Andy, in red white and blue woven into black! Right now, the “visitor” kind of people that are here include Daniel, an engineering student- hes here for two months, Dan who is here for two years (coordinates a lot of different things), Pasha and Paige two girls in their twenties I think, who are here, I think for the summer to teach arts and crafts and English. We sat in the courtyard of the quad for awhile, having drinks of rum and sprite on ice! Local grown peanuts that have a special local spice on them, they are a little hot but really good! Finally had dinner, fried rice, Creole style, chicken, plantain, lettuce and tomatoes. Of course ended up doing some magic! Just a few card tricks, broken finger trick, etc. the kids were hilarious trying to figure them out or copy them! It was Jeff’s birthday, he is 13 and for some reason he did not tell any of the other kids, so he was allowed to hang out with us for the evening along with 10 or 12 others, mostly older guys. In the summer, they try to send as many kids as possible to live with whatever extended family they have around, so there are only about 300 kids or so here now. No school other than the arts and crafts and English classes, and whatever ongoing work needs to be done, they are currently starting to build a wall/fence around the property.
They said its supposed to be hot today, as I am sitting here, I can feel the sweat rolling down! Daniel and I are going to start right after breakfast at 7, figuring out the best way to take care of this water problem. It sounds like we will work until11 when it starts getting too hot, and then go to the beach! That should be a trip! You know, we often talk about how difficult it is here and about all the problems, and its true, it is very different than home, but there is a much more relaxed atmosphere here, the kids are great, everyone is working together here to make a huge difference in these kids lives and it really gives you a special feeling to be part of it. Most of the photos are self explanatory, but there is one there of Fr. Marc with Eddie at the hospital, he was hit in the eye with a rock on Thursday, or so the story goes, was brought to the hospital bleeding a lot. He doesn’t look that bad now, but he cant see out of his left eye. I looked at it and can tell he definitely has bleeding behind his lens, that’s why he cant see, supposedly they have a pretty good doctor at this hospital now and he was having another doc. Look at it today, hopefully they have someone that can open it and drain it or he will lose vision in that eye. Well, here are a few photos for your viewing pleasure!
This photo is on the way from Port au Prince to Les Cayes, You can see the one main road that goes from North to South in Haiti
Its Sat. night, ten thirty here. Feels later since everyone gets up 5 or 6 in the AM. The real work will begin in earnest on Monday, I think its good that today started out a little slower, we took time to discuss lots of possible projects and began to prioritize, tomorrow I will have a chance to sit with Fr. Marc and make sure our plans are ok with him, and I need to discuss a few other things with him, one being his hopes for a thousand seat pavilion/Chapel where local people can come also. It will be a tiered open air structure with screen shading over the whole thing. There is some disagreement on where to place it on the property and we need to decide soon, since the money for it has mostly been raised already.
Church (Mass) should be interesting tomorrow, in the past the music has always been led by bongo drummers! That’s it, no other instrument! Needless to say, it is usually very upbeat!
On our tour of the property this morning, (Daniel had not been all the way around yet), I noticed there were no more chickens, when I asked Porsha about it, she explained that it was just economical to raise their own chickens, in order to get fat enough chickens they had to buy American pullets, and then give them special feed which is not readily available here, and the whole process was too expensive. It doesn’t pay to raise local chickens either, even though they don’t need any special feed and are very hardy, they are also quite small and skinny. It works out quite a bit cheaper to just order large quantity frozen chickens from one of the humanitarian food suppliers. Once a week, that’s what they do.
I cant believe how hot it is still. I hope the electric holds up for the night so the fan keeps going! We already had delivered today two big tanks that we will be using to collect waste water before pumping it out towards the stream. Monday we are supposed to be getting the thousand feet of pipe we will need.
Started Sunday out with good news and bad news, Eddie with the damaged eye is starting to see again, thank God the bleeding must be dissapating on its own and they are supposed to release him tomorrow. But there was another 2 year old boy at the hospital that Fr. Marc saw and showed me a photo of, he was left playing in his front yard while his mom went to market, the grandmother went to the back of the house to do laundry or something, while she was there, a loose pig came and ate the boys ears off! You see some of the craziest things in countries like this! Other than that, we had a good Mass this morning, a little girl (maybe 5 or 6yrs.) attached herself to me, sat and played next to me the whole service and eventually fell asleep in my lap. we had a delicious lunch, we had rice, mixed green vegatables, beef that was rolled and cooked with other spices and carrots that they called “strangled chicken” or something like that! Spent time with Marc going over a number of issues, it looks like we start construction on a composting toilet house if I can draw up plans for him. Daniel and I hooked up the backhoe on the tractor and we dug the first drainage tank whole. We had to prepare both tanks before we put them in the ground and now tomorrow we will get that going and then start digging a very long trench for the piping. We are going to try to get to La Mandon tonight to send email. Otherwise tomorrow. Until then, miss you all, be safe, and write soon! Yours, Dad/Andy
Hey all, its now Wed., July 4, 2007, Happy Independence day! I guess we will not have fireworks here. But its plenty hot anyway! We finally finished digging the 1400 feet of trench today and got most of the 2” drain pipe hooked up. Right now Daniel and I are waiting for a car to pick us up to take us to LaMandon to meet with Fr. Marc to go over some of the other projects we will be working on over the next week or so. Another group is coming tomorrow from California, not sure what they are doing. It takes some getting used to, having an audience all day long when you are working. Yesterday and today there was this kid, I guess 12 years old or so, Jean Robert, who hung on the backhoe with me most of the time watching me dig, said he wants to run a backhoe when he gets bigger! The masons finished the first grey water collection tank, I guess it doesn’t matter but we asked for it to be square and it is quite a trapezoid! (not level either, oh well) Just don’t have time to teach them everything. I think our ride should be here soon, just want to add a few photos and then try to send this off again later. Talk with everyone soon! Andy
I can’t believe it is Sunday already again! Finished Chapel a little while ago, sat down to start writing and catching up and Daniel and I were called on because the water pump wasn’t working again. Turns out a weld on the pulley of the motor had broken and the thing sounded like it had a busted piston as it tried to run but couldn’t. Toto says he can fix it and he went to get the necessary parts and welder. There is so much to do here all the time. The list of projects never seems to end. We have a lot of work that we have started to do, that now I feel like we have to finish before I leave, and thank goodness Daniel is staying longer to finish what we don’t and to do other projects. Right now we are concentrating on the larger projects that need both of us and especially the things that I know more of. I am pretty sure we will finish almost everything we have started, but it will be busy. The dental clinic (we are building out of two of the containers that are here) was totally out of the blue as is hooking up the main electric panel here to the quad! — while its Hot no less! Anyway, it all keeps life interesting! This morning Dan (the other one who kinda coordinates things here), asked how long he can extend my stay for? I told him that is probably not possible right now!
Yesterday, one of the new girls, Kelly, who was staying here at Castel Pere, decided to move elsewhere—to Mr. Alexander’s where there is A.C. and it’s a little more civilized, and you cant hear the Voodoo drums at night. Its funny, but the night before, Kelly and one or two others were asking all kinds of questions about voodooism and seemed really fascinated, but I guess it got to her when the power went out in the middle of the night, was very dark, and quiet except for the drums.
Took a walk after dinner last night, spaghetti, which was very good, and took photos of a lot of the kids. It was crazy, got mobbed over and over again by the kids who wanted their photos taken! Took some more photos of the two cats here, Mimi and mimi, the bigger one, which is half the size of our cats at home, is supposed to be the mother of the smaller Mimi. She had 3 or 4 kittens, but then they got sick with something and died, at one point someone found the mother cat eating one of the dead babies, grosss.
Last night it was so still and warm, no breeze at all. Its quite warm on the roof and my room is even hotter! Saw some gym mats in the tractor garage recently, think Daniel and I are going to grab a few tomorrow to sleep on the roof. May have to rig up some mosquito netting to make it work well.
I was very overheated yesterday morning and didn’t feel very well for a while, took a little break lunch time but then went back to the heat and the dental clinic project. I will take some photos when we make a little more progress on it, I dug all the footings for the other container, the masons are supposed to make the footings on Monday and then on Wed. we should be able to pull the container onto them. In the meantime we have to finish cutting the doors and windows into the container, its really cool the way we are making the windows using the cutout container piece as an awning for shade and to keep the rain out! It’s a little design that I came up with that works really well! Its cool!
Also have to dig another drainfield and trench from the main kids kitchen, will probably dig that Sunday afternoon, had the gravel for it delivered yesterday.
The kids are so starved for attention, often when we walk from place to place you will have several kids not only tagging along, but also holding your hand or arm! Even some of the older ones!
Daniel just determined that the fridge, which made ice for the first time last night and is at least keeping stuff cool, is straining the wiring, which is way undersized coming over here from the generator. As soon as we hook up the city power, later today, we will run a dedicated line to the fridge to solve that problem. Think I will get back to work now, have a little time before lunch. Hopefully will be able to send this off tonight. Otherwise, maybe tomorrow someone will come and hook up the internet set up for here, that would things much easier! Hope everything is going well at home, I will see everyone soon enough! Love to all, Dad/Andy
—Hey all!—
Cant believe its Friday the 13th, Josh’s birthday! And I am sitting in Port au Prince airport waiting for several hours for my flight home! Have not had much time or energy to write till now, and knew I had no more access to the internet so there was no hurry. I do want to try to summarize all that was done and put in writing some of the things to be done yet.
We did dig a new drainfield for the main kids kitchen sink, found the 2” pipe that “Bamboo” (David Mustain!) had installed a few months ago, unfortunately, when we went to drill drain holes in the pipe we discovered it is largely clogged with all the food scraps and rice that they wash down the sink! The smell was unbelievable! Almost lost it several time, thank goodness one of the kids really wanted to help and use the drill, so I let him finish drilling the drainholes to see if we could get it functioning. Finally decided we need to replace that line with a 4” line going to a settling basin with an overflow, Daniel is going to work on it. The only fun part of that job was teaching Angie, from Utah, how to run the tractor and backhoe. She really enjoyed it and ended up doing some more backhoe work another day too.
We also dug a trench from the quad kitchen which will be lined with gravel and then a new 2” drain line will lead into that area to water the garden area from below. Daniel will also oversee getting that done. The trench was also useful for running the wiring out to the two drainpumps for the wash area and the neighborhood wash area. The pumps and piping for those two areas has been working great! The masons are supposed to finish off the collection boxes today, constructing the lids with access for the pumps. I went over the design of it several times with 3 different people, I think they finally have the idea! They had one formed out and ready to go yesterday when they quit working at 3.
It was really funny when I was out by the wash house yesterday, after we had the power on for a while and discovered that some of the kids were already using the outlets for plugging in cell phones and one small black and white TV that a dozen kids were sitting around on the wash basin floor watching! I know it was one of Fr. Marc’s concerns, that if they had access to electric, they would soon be playing radios and TVs everychance they got until late at night! It would begin a whole new set of problems! Progress! The kids are going to be very disappointed when Daniel installs the heavy duty metal covers he was making to protect the outlets!
The big news is that the Dental Clinic is well underway, the footings were done on Tuesday so we lifted/pushed the 40 trailer onto them on Thursday! It was a bit of a project, a lot of engineering went into figuring out how to accomplish it with a tractor that could only lift one end of the trailer at a time about 3 feet off the ground maximum! Thank-goodness, in low gear four wheel drive, the tractor pushes like a bulldozer. So I figured out a way to make ramps out of some steel U channel they have there for stair building and we pushed and adjusted the container up into place! It took most of the morning and two of the pier footing broke apart fairly well. The boss mason, Jr., said they broke because he didn’t know we were going to be sliding the container over them! I guess he felt guilty that they hadn’t used much cement to hold the rocks together! I am not sure how he expected we would put it into place. I told him it was no big deal, we just need them to be repaired soon.
Before lunch we figured out what lumber we would need for the roofing, made a list and went “shopping”—in one of the other containers and we had the carpentry shop rip some 2×8’s into 2×3’s to save on lumber. Also pulled out of one of the other containers a gas powered compressor I had sent down maybe two years ago and got that set up for use with the air nailer I just sent down in the last container. Noone there knew how to use those things so there was a lot of interest in what we were doing! Took a while to get the compressor going, since the fuel in the carbaretor had turned bad. But once we got it going and ran it for awhile with no load, it worked great! I would like to teach them how to use it in their wood shop, but Daniel thought it may be too dangerous!
Fr. Charlie finally found the 22 cal. Loads I left down there last time so now Daniel can use them to attach some of the wood to the container roof. After lunch we framed out most of the roof, Dan just has to order some roofing metal for it, Daniel will screw it on, and it will be mostly done! Just a few more windows and doors to cut out, security rebar to install, wash and paint to whole thing and put in a few dividing walls!
By the time we finished, around 5, Daniel and I were filthy dirty, sweaty, (I suppose smelly although I didn’t notice!) and that was after I had changed my shirt three times! I parked the tractor (Daniel took a chunck out of the concrete wall of the garage the other day, the day before that he backed into a motor cycle and now he’s afraid to drive it!) We then took a walk to check out the masons work on the wash house and to decide on the location and size of the settling pond the villagers want for our drain project. There is a fair amount of water in the last 300 feet of trench where the pipe now stops since we have been pumping about 3 times per day. The last 100 feet the water is quite clear and leads me to believe that there is river water infiltrating at that point. After the pond is dug (Portia wants to dig it, Daniel taught her how to use the backhoe and she loves it!) , we are still going to put a large gravel area to filter what ever comes out of the pond, I think we will still run piping out into the gravel area to ensure that the water gets that far and gets properly filtered.
Finally got back to the quad! Took a shower, started to pack, gave to Dan and Daniel any tools or supplies that I had brought and planned on leaving there, showed Daniel how to use the power gun to nail concrete or steel, opps, forgot to warn anyone before I shot it off! Gave Paige that two bags of candy I still had to give out to kids as rewards etc. Also fixed her shutters on one window that were sticking badly.
We were going to go to the Bay club for dinner and drinks, but they were planning a farewell party for me, so we stayed home instead. It was probably better that way, got to hang out, relax and draw up plans for a composting, four seater, Privy! I drew a floor plan, side view and rear view, complete with dimensions and materials listed. Dan is going to try to get a price from someone there to build it and hopefully we can get it started soon. I will have to send down or bring down a solar powered vent fan which I came across recently that is made for this kind of house. Have to remember to ask Dan to take photos of the plans and email them to me so I have a copy and can figure out the necessary CFM’s.
Got everything packed into one bag but decided to split it back into two this morning, one was too heavy, must have been the 5 bottles of rum! And other gifts I bought for everyone, didn’t have time to shop really, just bought some things from kids at the orphanage and had Dan send a few people he knew out for some other things. Picked up two huge bags of spiced peanuts at La Mandon on the way to the airport this morning and a DVD player Dan asked if I can get repaired or replaced for him.
I feel really good about everything we accomplished in two weeks! The one big concern I have, and everyone at the party last night agreed, is that the power company is still unreliable. The drain pumps and the water pump at the wash house rely on sufficient power being supplied to them, Idiosh, the power company, didn’t turn the power on for two days so we didn’t get to fill the shower house water tanks any more. Finally around midnight last night, the power came on for the night but we had the breaker to the shower house turned off since we can’t run it off the batteries or the generator at this time. Everyone that was there would still love to see us become mostly power independent if possible, unless someone can guarantee that the city power is going to become more reliable. Time will tell. For now, I told Dan and Daniel, they may have to bring the generator from time to time over to the wash house to fill the water tanks.
It was still hot when I decided to call it a night, slept on the roof for awhile, but then the wind died down, it got hotter and buggier, so around 2:30 I went back to the room and with the fan on, it was not too bad. Slept till 5 and finally left around 6. Everyone seemed very appreciative, Dan explained that some of the older guys said they like the way I work and hope I come back soon! We’ll see…. Lord willing, until then, Andy
