The ridge beam is up!

The ridge beam is up on the main building and the men hang around at the end of this long day of work and look up.  They are reluctant to leave, they high five and hug each other; their excitement is palpable says Ray. This is an accomplishment for this crew still learning construction skills. Seeing what they can do, what they have learned and the concrete evidence of their efforts is a high point. They are proud and rightly so. It is a victory against the odds, against the elements, against all the challenges that have led them to work on the construction of the Village Notre Dame de Lourdes. It is a symbol of their power to change things for themselves and for their country.  A seemingly fairly minor undertaking for a western crew becomes a symbol of hope in Haiti.

We finally have drinking water on the site!



YES!  That water will be clear and pure!





Carrie Emard, Maud Laurent, Stephanie Peterson

 En Francais: la liste des microbes elimines!




A big THANK YOU to Carrie Emard and Stephanie Peterson of the Foundation “For One Another” who brought to us a central water purification system and contributed a water cistern. They also distributed water filters to our crew and taught us how to train people in using the system properly. Their support and contribution means that there is now drinking water on the site of the construction of the Village and that more than 35 families can purify their own water!  What a great gift!

The children of the “Foyer Notre Dame de Lourdes”

I am back in the US but their faces and stories haunt me.

Is Emma going to stop crying her heart out, the way she does now because she is not getting the attention she craves? Will Strung ever get filled up: when a child is abandoned by his mother on a trash heap and no one comes for him for two days, does he ever get over it? Will Joseph and his earnest seeking face find the godmother for his communion that would make him feel he is special to someone? And Stevenson: what are the chances he will get the operation to stop his incontinence? At 21 it must be excruciatingly difficult to accept to wear a diaper and it is so unfair what the earthquake did to him: crushed his lower body so he can’t walk anymore and killed his parents.

These are only a few of the stories of the children of the Foyer, Emma was born in the street from a teenage mother who ran away from her life of enslavement and prefers to be free and live of expedients on the streets of Port au Prince.  She delivered her baby on the pavement surrounded by other women in her same situation.  A few months later she brought her to Maud and said she never wanted to see her baby again!  Emma is somewhere between 2 and 3 and she has the brightest most cheerful smile, she runs to foreigners and grabs their heart… yet, often, she cries… not just the normal tears when something doesn’t go your way and you are about 2 years old, but deep sobs coming from way deep inside …what is this sorrow about?

Maud has said her house is full, and we are pushing to get the funds and pursue the construction  of the complex ( dorms, kitchen, elementary school and vocational center) but she is scarred: the last time she refused to accept a small baby , the mother of the child put a plastic bag over her baby’s head….so how can she turn down the baby of the 15 year old who approached her recently because she got raped by her own uncle?

Joseph

Strung

Water in Haiti: a journey!

Drill rig

Tapping so it keeps going

Keeping mud out while digging

Francois, Maud and Fenal with the newly capped well

Witny finished the roof over the well house

Ray installs the pump

Everyone helps feed the pipe into the well.

Sister Denise admires the new water.

“Water is life” that cliché is such a vibrant truth!  To get water is not a simple task and it is a journey that has taken over a year!  Maud had hired a “sourcier” who identified that there was water on her property at a specific spot. A year or so later, RT 1 comes along and with the generous help of Canadian donors gets a rig to drill a hole to 185 feet ( it took two weeks). The engine is an antique worthy of museums and needed prompting with stone tapping to keep going…water was discovered at 25 feet and so there is more than 150 feet of water which in theory means that the children will never run out  of water even during dry spells.   

A house to protect the well and the pump had to be built. Then Ray brought a submersible pump from the US including piping. ( he actually researched the size of the cargo door of the American Airlines flight he was taking back to Haiti and had the pipes folded so that they would fit through….. he won the argument with the AA agent J )and managed to install it in spite of not having the proper welding tool.

Now it was a matter of power to make the pump work and of course the generator we had, wasn’t strong enough. Ever resourceful Maud found a broken one that a technician repaired, then I found an electrician and talked him into dropping his current job to help set up the proper exterior wiring connection.  The next day Maud brought a couple of other technicians and VOILA…water is finally here…. It is clear and abundant…I never thought it could look so beautiful!

Creative Haitian boy

Ricarlens started talking to me across the fence: very shyly he came every day for about a week . Then one day he asked me for a piece of cardboard that was lying around. An hour later, he came back with a little house that he had made.  The next day, I brought him another cardboard box and he asked for my pocket knife. A couple of hours later he came back with my knife AND a beautiful two room house, with a door , window and a portico, all made of cardboard, twigs and wiring from an old broken radio. He also brought me drawings and when I asked if he had learned how to do this in school he said no. My pencil brought a huge smile on his face and when he lost it down a pit; his face expressed the deepest distress. His dream? A knife… so he can have a different tool to work with than the razor blade he currently uses.

What a crew !

The heat is unbearable: 98 F in the shade, yet the men keep at it: it’s grueling work, with picks and shovels, carrying stones and gravel in buckets that keep breaking, because the wheel barrows broke once more. From 7 am to 3. 30 pm with a ½ hour lunch break of rice and beans, they keep plugging away. I wonder what other country could provide such strong, resilient, determined workers.  The equipment bought in Haiti has been imported mostly from China and is of poor quality no matter what price. ( as much as possible Rt 1 equips its men with tools that Ray brings in …yet we know that it isn’t the way to stimulate the local economy…but if we don’t , so much of our limited budget goes into replacing bad tools!

At 3 , the men slowly drift towards the pit where water has been dumped from a truck.  They have been in the process of building the well house but it isn’t quite ready yet. Since sophisticated power tools and expert labor are not available , construction goes at ¼ of the speed it does in the US for instance. We can’t risk installing the water pump until it will be protected by walls, a roof and a steel door. By the time they pack themselves in the back of the pick-up truck, all 25workers  look clean and fresh,  ready to face their families without a trace of the hard hard work they have just accomplished during the entire day.  They do get prestige in their neighborhoods from being hired to work with foreigners on a construction project  but that and their small  salarIes ( small by US standards= $15/day )  seems to be little compensation for the tremendous effort they have been exerting  six days a week since March 15.

I have to remember that our work ( Ray training them, directing the construction, my bi-lingual administration, the gathering of  grants and support) has given these 36 men ( among whom six are orphans from NDL) a way to earn a living as we are building this new home and school for the 90 children of Maud’s Maison Notre Dame de Lourdes. 

What I appreciate the most? Their good humor... their cheerfulness and laughters..

Hope for one boy

The earthquake crippled him.

Stevenson at Work

Stevenson lost both parents and was stuck under rubbles for two days after the earthquake in Port au Prince in January 2010 when his cousin found him and dug him out.  Using a borrowed wheelchair Jakson brought him to the Missionaries of Christ the King who took him to a hospital. He was operated on and a metal plate inserted to replace his shine bone… the operation didn’t go well, his leg keeps getting infected and he can no longer walk. He lives with the other 89 children at the Foyer Notre Dame de Lourdes and until recently, he spent his days in bed with nothing to do.  He is 20 years old, he can barely read and write.

 At the site of the future orphanage, there are many rigorous jobs that demand resilience and physical strength but thanks to Maud’ s idea, Stevenson is finding his place among the men.   As of last Monday he has a half time job with Relief Team One participating in the construction; he cuts tie wire for the reinforcement column.  He is helping out and he is out of bed.   His grin is a mile long.