18Nov11
Sorry for the lack of posts this week. When I’m
working with Dr. Jay and MIA(1) out in Les Cayes,
we spend pretty much the whole trip as a team. We
work all day, then eat and sit on the porch
together each night until we’re all too tired and
fall asleep. Not much time to myself equals very
little in the way of blog posts.
Tonight, though, I am sitting in my room in Grand
Goave at Kay Militon(2). It’s raining, so everyone
went to their rooms fairly early tonight, and then
the internet stopped working. That tends to be a
perfect storm for setting the conditions to write
a blog post.
I didn’t plan to sleep here tonight, but after I
slept in until 11am in Les Cayes, I decided not to
drive the whole way to Archaeie tonight. Turns out
it was a great chance to meet up with some guys
from Massachusetts. I’ve spent the night talking
with Kristen (a student doing an internship with
BLB(3) for her MBA program), and a reporter and
photographer from up in Boston who are here to
cover BLB. It’s been a good night talking with
them, especially as the reporter has been asking
me questions about my life, ministry, and what is
going on here in Haiti. It’s been a lot of fun,
especially since I do things in such a unique way
down here. Maybe I’ll get a little snippet in the
paper, that’d be kinda cool. “Tomorrow they may
wrap fishes in it, but I was a star for one whole
minute” Name the movie, and I’ll be super
impressed. No cheating and using google. 🙂
Anyhow, I should probably give a bit of an update
on what I’ve been up to, and what’s coming up.
First, this past week was great out in Les Cayes.
It was a chance to see a bunch of stuff coming to
fruition. I managed to get the solar power system
at the school restarted. I think I need another
charge controller, which will be about $150, and I
want to put in some more panels (which we already
have), but I finally understand the system and
should be able to get it up and running.
We also swapped out the well pump that was non-
functional (thankfully the backup was still
working), and found out that the pump was not
actually broken. Turns out it was just a broken
wire. Learned an important lesson though.
Apparently, it is crucial to tape or otherwise tie
the electrical wires to the water pipes on a
submersible well pump so they dont shake
themselves free or end up holding the weight of
the pump.
Those projects got finished in the first two days.
Then, I finally moved beyond “putting out fires.”
For the rest of the trip, I was able to stop, look
around, and decide what I felt should be done
next, but had no really pressing issues.
We surveyed the land that MIA is looking to buy.
They are looking to build a guest house/farm
resource center and have a 3 acre plot to put it
on now. This center will be used for agricultural
training seminars for agonomists all over haiti.
The exterior walls will be made with shipping
containers to double as storage, and there will be
lots of gardens and pastureland on the property.
As a side note, I am also looking at using
shipping containers for building a
workshop/garage/living quarters down here now.
Some are available for $600 or so in PAP, with
about a $300 delivery fee. With two, I could put
up a structure to meet my needs. I would place two
containers parallel, with a 15 ft gap in between
to park the truck (with plenty of space to work on
it). Then I just need to put a gate between the
containers on one side and a wall on the other
side. Eventually I’d put down a roof and other
things, but it would be a cheap and safe start.
Also, this week, we got to teach the residents how
to build rabbit cages, organize the container a
bit, and put a passive solar lighting device in
one of the containers.
One day I even spent rewiring the solar panels
(which were the first ones I ever installed) to
catch up to my more current standards, and in the
process started teaching the haitians about
electrical work. And I managed to do all that
without a translator. 🙂
I’m still not fluent in normal conversation, but I
can talk construction just fine with the guys.
Now I’m on my way to Archaeie to work with
Children’s Lifeline. Bill Riggs, from Somerset
welding, donated a welding rig to this
organization, but it was broken during shipping.
He has asked me to take a look at it for him, so
that’s where I’m going next.
After I work on that unit, I’ll head to St. Marc
to visit Destiny Village again and pick up a
couple puppies from them for Dr. Ken and Diane in
Jacmel.
Then I’ll head to Jacmel for Thanksgiving (I
think).
I still need to catch up on Josh’s plans to figure
out what else I’ll be doing before returning home.
In the past two weeks, I have also been stongly
reminded that my factory idea needs to move
forward. One, because of the desperation of the
unemployed that we hire for a week in Les Cayes
with MIA. Two, because I am looking at ways to
provide lighting to the poor who do not have any
other power at their houses.
Boss Luger, Smiley’s older brother, asked me
yesterday to fix his 400 Watt inverter. I couldn’t
without more equipment on site and spare parts,
but it made me realize that even a masonry boss,
whoc should be “middle class” here, is depending
on a 400 Watt inverter, like you use in your car,
to provide lights for his children at night.
Oh, and btw, my truck got used as an ambulance. A
haitian woman came to the clinic that MIA was
running and had a fever of 103 and couldn’t walk.
She had a post-partem infection and was in bad
shape. We got her to the hospital and she was
stabilized and looking like she will recover just
fine.
(1) Missions International of America, based in
Perrysburg, OH
(2) Kay Militon is the beachfront guest property
for Mission of Hope International, run by Pastor
Lex and Renee Edme
(3) Be like Brit, an orphanage project working
closely with MOHI in Grand Goave.
