Day 2 in Haiti

We never slept so long.  Everyone is up at 6 am whether you like it or not.  You are exhausted from the heat by 8 pm so getting up at 6 isn't all that bad. 

This morning breakfast was at 7, then everyone mills around until someone decides to do something.  They have two seperate teams down here right now.  One is helping build the new medical clinic.  It is a difficult process to work with people that have little or no education. 

The design for the new medical clinic will be built like the big concrete walls you see along the highway.  Four corner pillars, then slide the 12 by 4 foot cement blocks in between them.  They needed to decide on a construction method that they could repeat easily.  I was able to help build some templates to help them build rebar frames for the wall blocks.  Once we did this they went from producing one every hour to seven every hour.  It was an experience to see how little they know about what we might call common sense.  Nothing here is common.

We waited for 3 hours for our bobcat to come back as the loaders at the gravel pit did not work.  So we sent the bobcat to load our gravel.  It was a 45 minute trip for the bobcat and amazingly the bobcat made it back before the gravel truck.  Haiti time teaches everyone that comes to visit what patience really is.

Noah after 12 hours of sleep has become just like one of the "natives"  he is running around with no shirt and no shoes and is covered in dirt.  He loves it.  Nicole will start school tomorrow and we will see how Noah adjusts back to this routine.

Anica as anyone who knows her is loved by all.  She played with Marc and Lisa's kids, got her hair braided and generally enjoyed her day.   She spent some time with the ladies from the crossroads team in the air conditioned room cutting out stencils to paint on the elementry school.

As for Nicole she swept the main compound area at least three times, cleaned a bathroom, had time to sit and read.  We went for a walk to see the goat farm and the site for the new Church and orphanage.  Nicole was great to have as an interpreter with M. Christoph.  With some effort she can understand creole quite well.  We met many of the local people, who were all very friendly.  We saw more people living in tents, huts and under tarps.  It is good to see that kids are all the same wherever we go.  All are happy, full of smiles and really just enjoying life.  The one interesting part was the 4 year old boy, completely naked doing cartwheels for us.  I'm thankful we didn't have the camera for this! He was a happy boy.

The last thing of our day was going to the beach around 4 pm.  We walked about 20 minutes from the compound.  The beach is beautiful and the water very clear.  Too bad for all the garbage on the beach.  The water was like a warm bathtub and soft coral beaches.  We spent almost two hours there.   I looked at my watch at 5:35 when we came out of the water.  By 5:50 it was pitch black as we drove home in the back to the pick-up.  I can see that being out of the compound at night would be a whole different experience.  We probably won't be doing this anytime soon.
 
It's now 9:30 and I'm sweating once again.  We should be fully climatized by the time we leave Haiti.

Sorry that we cannot post more pictures as we only have so much band width and once it is used up we have to wait the full twenty four hours for the bandwidth to start new. 
I will try to add a few photos each day, but will have a long slide show once I return.

We wish you all well.