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.