Here I am sitting in an internet cafe in Port-au-Prince. It's been an unreal few days (and few months).
I think the story of my latest adventure can wait until I get home and we can talk in person.
Until next time.
Love,
Daniel
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Surreal World: Haiti
So I’m having a bit of a stressful night and I’ll explain why in a second. For this reason, all I’ll say about the last two days was that Friday I did housecleaning in the morning with my buddy Jason then did more teacher-training stuff in the afternoon. Saturday morning there was a teacher training and that went really well. What was really cool was that the training we did took place at the first school HODR built (and it just opened last week)!
Ok so yesterday after plans changed a dozen times, I headed off to Jacmel (beach town two hours away) with Jason. Three friends, Brandi, Sarah, and Avery, were already in Jacmel and they arranged a room for us. Jason and I hopped on a tap-tap to a town just a little ways away to catch a second tap-tap to Jacmel. We waited around for over an hour at the pick-up point but all the vehicles that passed were full. We saw a couple of NGO people in a nice car so I stuck up my thumb and they pulled over. It just so happened that these two doctors and their translator were heading to Jacmel for the night in their AVIS rented 4X4. So we talked in the car and learned they work at a clinic up in a remote mountain town a few hours from Jacmel. We told them our story and in mentioning we were leaving Haiti on Thursday they made a proposition to us – we come to their clinic and stay for a couple nights and work with them then Jason and I go with their translator and take their rental car to Port-au-Prince on Wednesday and drop the car off at AVIS and stay at their base in PAP for the night and head to the airport in the morning. This saves us the money from taking the shuttle and means we don’t have to get up as early Thursday morning. More importantly, though, it means that we get to have an awesome adventure – see a new, different part of Haiti, see how a remote clinic works, spend time with awesome people, and so on (Brandi will be joining us as well). So the reason I’m stressed is because I have to pack all my stuff and make all these arrangements so I can leave for the mountain in the morning.
But today was absolutely amazing. The five of us HODR people went with the two doctors and translator on a hike, which lead us to this gorgeous waterfall. We dove off cliffs and swam all morning. I won’t go into much detail because, honestly, it was indescribable. I can say, however, that it was one of the more wonderful mornings I’ve had in a while (or ever). The last 24 hours has been pretty surreal but I’m going to roll with it.
So it seems I’m in for one more big adventure before I come home. I likely won’t have internet until Wednesday. I look forward to seeing you all soon.
Lets all have a good week.
Love,
Daniel
Ok so yesterday after plans changed a dozen times, I headed off to Jacmel (beach town two hours away) with Jason. Three friends, Brandi, Sarah, and Avery, were already in Jacmel and they arranged a room for us. Jason and I hopped on a tap-tap to a town just a little ways away to catch a second tap-tap to Jacmel. We waited around for over an hour at the pick-up point but all the vehicles that passed were full. We saw a couple of NGO people in a nice car so I stuck up my thumb and they pulled over. It just so happened that these two doctors and their translator were heading to Jacmel for the night in their AVIS rented 4X4. So we talked in the car and learned they work at a clinic up in a remote mountain town a few hours from Jacmel. We told them our story and in mentioning we were leaving Haiti on Thursday they made a proposition to us – we come to their clinic and stay for a couple nights and work with them then Jason and I go with their translator and take their rental car to Port-au-Prince on Wednesday and drop the car off at AVIS and stay at their base in PAP for the night and head to the airport in the morning. This saves us the money from taking the shuttle and means we don’t have to get up as early Thursday morning. More importantly, though, it means that we get to have an awesome adventure – see a new, different part of Haiti, see how a remote clinic works, spend time with awesome people, and so on (Brandi will be joining us as well). So the reason I’m stressed is because I have to pack all my stuff and make all these arrangements so I can leave for the mountain in the morning.
But today was absolutely amazing. The five of us HODR people went with the two doctors and translator on a hike, which lead us to this gorgeous waterfall. We dove off cliffs and swam all morning. I won’t go into much detail because, honestly, it was indescribable. I can say, however, that it was one of the more wonderful mornings I’ve had in a while (or ever). The last 24 hours has been pretty surreal but I’m going to roll with it.
So it seems I’m in for one more big adventure before I come home. I likely won’t have internet until Wednesday. I look forward to seeing you all soon.
Lets all have a good week.
Love,
Daniel
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Acronyms Galore
Wednesday was a typical day of rubble. I went back to the kindergarten site and wheel barrowed the whole day. One cool thing was that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) AKA Doctors Without Borders sent a backhoe and a couple dump trucks to the site to pick up some of our rubble – they’ll be using it as a foundation for a new field hospital (which will probably be around for 2-5 years), which is really exciting. Last night I lay in a hammock with my friends Brandi (from Kentucky) and Jason (from Scotland). In attempting to get all three of us in the hammock (build for 1-2 people), it snapped and we all fell on our ass. None of us got severely hurt AND the hammock wasn’t broken in a vital spot, so no big deal.
Today in the morning I worked on more disaster risk reduction (teacher training) stuff. Again, we have a new group of people joining on this project so I worked on getting them up to speed on the disaster portion of the seminar. For lunch we had spaghetti. Most people don’t love this meal, but I do. It’s noodles, which one must dress with ketchup and mayonnaise, and hotdog, which I cut up and throw in. Today was extra special in that there were hard-boiled egg halves and a piece of Bongu cheese (this funky triangle-shaped, of course unrefrigerated, soft cheese), which I mashed in there as well. In the afternoon I went back to the school rubble site. It was a slow afternoon because we had a Bobcat come to make more room for us to dump our rubble (necessary but inconvenient). This site is RIGHT off the national highway, so there aren’t many safe dumping sites.
Also today there were a bunch of high-level officials from the World Food Program (WFP) and possibly some other organizations that came through HODR. In our backyard we have something called the Joint Logistics Base (JLB). The JLB is five acres, which belongs to HODR that we are renting out to other organizations. Currently the Cooperative Hosing Foundation (CHF), the Canadian Red Cross, and Habitat for Humanity rent space in our JLB. More organizations, such as WFP, are looking at renting space there too. What’s exciting about this is that HODR is getting a lot of exposure to some big names in the NGO community. The people that were here today are, essentially, in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars and there is some potential for HODR to see some benefits in the future. In fact, Hands On is getting a lot of really good press from this project. Prior to Project Leogane, HODR has had 13 projects, beginning with the 2004 tsunami project in Thailand (so it’s a really young organization). I’m getting the impression that this organization is seriously taking off, which is awesome because it is such an amazing organization. I suggest that, if you haven’t already, check out www.HODR.org for more information.
Today was Canada Day so the Canadians have made us all poutine, so I’m going to go check to see if it’s ready.
Tomorrow is Friday! Hooray.
Love,
Daniel
P.S. I’m coming home a week from today. I can’t believe it. Bittersweet times.
Today in the morning I worked on more disaster risk reduction (teacher training) stuff. Again, we have a new group of people joining on this project so I worked on getting them up to speed on the disaster portion of the seminar. For lunch we had spaghetti. Most people don’t love this meal, but I do. It’s noodles, which one must dress with ketchup and mayonnaise, and hotdog, which I cut up and throw in. Today was extra special in that there were hard-boiled egg halves and a piece of Bongu cheese (this funky triangle-shaped, of course unrefrigerated, soft cheese), which I mashed in there as well. In the afternoon I went back to the school rubble site. It was a slow afternoon because we had a Bobcat come to make more room for us to dump our rubble (necessary but inconvenient). This site is RIGHT off the national highway, so there aren’t many safe dumping sites.
Also today there were a bunch of high-level officials from the World Food Program (WFP) and possibly some other organizations that came through HODR. In our backyard we have something called the Joint Logistics Base (JLB). The JLB is five acres, which belongs to HODR that we are renting out to other organizations. Currently the Cooperative Hosing Foundation (CHF), the Canadian Red Cross, and Habitat for Humanity rent space in our JLB. More organizations, such as WFP, are looking at renting space there too. What’s exciting about this is that HODR is getting a lot of exposure to some big names in the NGO community. The people that were here today are, essentially, in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars and there is some potential for HODR to see some benefits in the future. In fact, Hands On is getting a lot of really good press from this project. Prior to Project Leogane, HODR has had 13 projects, beginning with the 2004 tsunami project in Thailand (so it’s a really young organization). I’m getting the impression that this organization is seriously taking off, which is awesome because it is such an amazing organization. I suggest that, if you haven’t already, check out www.HODR.org for more information.
Today was Canada Day so the Canadians have made us all poutine, so I’m going to go check to see if it’s ready.
Tomorrow is Friday! Hooray.
Love,
Daniel
P.S. I’m coming home a week from today. I can’t believe it. Bittersweet times.
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