Malaria Tuesday

So the internet has been really, really crap recently (including tonight) so I'm just going to give a quick update.

Yesterday and today I was team leader for a site called Desire. It's been on for about a week but needed a new leader to finish it. There was a ton of wheel barrowing, shoveling, picking - all the rubbly things. Today we finished the site. We were hoping to have been site number 100 HODR finished but two other sites also finished today, both before us, so we were 102. It felt good to get it done, though.

Tomorrow I've joined on the demo team. The demolition team is just what it sounds like - we go to houses that still have walls or ceilings or other hazards up and we safely take them down. After a site is demoed, it turns into a rubble site.

Otherwise things are good here. Its been raining everyday for a few days so we've been having much cooler weather. Oh and the reason for my blog title is because I take my malaria pill on Tuesday's.

I'll give a more detailed update soon!

Love,

Daniel

Do a Little Dance

As I figured it would be, Saturday was a pretty laid back day (relatively speaking). In the morning I got together with the same two volunteers as Friday to continue working on an emergency hurricane plan for base. We determined the space we will use in the event of a hurricane – we’ll go to a bakery/storage area connected to base. We also got all the windows measured that we will need to cover with plywood. Through this mini-project I’m learning a lot about the extensive nature of putting together safety plans. There are so many things that need to be taken into account it pretty much makes my head spin. But we’re going to keep working at it because hurricane season is upon us so there is a fair chance that several hurricanes will make landfall this season. After lunch I was on dishwashing duty so that took up my rest time, but everyone’s got to pull there weight on base in order for 100 plus people to be able to peaceably live together. After lunch I went to the side of base where we were holding Plaza Playtime. It started with my being led around Leogane by this little Haitian boy, rounding up all the kids we could find to come to the playtime. I had been asked to round up the kids and I think I possibly got too many of them. It’s okay, though, it all worked out. Sort of. We had one group of kids doing English lessons and the other group doing drawing and painting. After each group had done both activities there was a free-for-all playtime. There were all sorts of sports being played, kids being chased, and so on. It was definitely chaotic – even more so because all our translators were busy so it was pretty wild. Despite being really tired at the end of the workday, it was a really good time. Last night I just hung around with people and even got some soft-serve ice cream at Joe’s next door.

Today, my day off, has been quite nice so far. In the morning I watched The Bucket List with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It wasn’t the greatest film either have done but it was entertaining. Now to understand what happened next in the day I need to give some background. The WakaWaka is a song by Shakira that has become the theme song for the world cup. There is also a campaign behind the song – education for all children in the world. There is a contest to submit an original dance to the song and put it on youtube. One of HODR’s project coordinators, Lenka, choreographed a dance for the song. We’ve been practicing it for some weeks and today we finally took it to the streets. We had a pick-up truck decked out in decorations, a HODR banner, and a sound system in the back. A bunch of volunteers, both international and local, walked behind the truck all around Leogane, dancing. It was pretty awesome. Along the way, residents would join us, dancing and having a good time. The whole thing was filmed, of course. When the video is complete I’ll post a link to it or something. So that took up a couple hours this afternoon and since then I’ve just been bumming around. I watched another movie and read some. Sunday’s are so, so, so nice. It just started raining so that should mean we’re in for a cooler evening. Tomorrow it’s back to work!

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Love,

Daniel

Done.

Thursday morning I took my team to Wesley Vernet for what would be the last time. I thought that finishing would for sure take all day but everyone was committed to finishing in the morning. It was absurdly hot but we powered through, wheel barrowing rubble for hours. We spent the last hour or so of the morning doing touch-up work (scraping the slab and such). Getting on the tap-tap leaving the site, I was so happy to know I’d never have to come back to that monster of a site (which is now clean enough to eat off, by the way). I triumphantly walked into base and took a nap. In the afternoon the disaster preparedness group got together to talk about the teacher training we had today. Yesterday evening, after the meeting, I went up to the roof right as the sun was setting. I put on my headphones and lay in this hammock for the next two hours. I didn’t want to get up but I wanted to take a shower before the lights went off. For game seven of the NBA finals we borrowed a television for the night so after my shower I watched the game. Pretty much everyone was rooting for Boston so the game didn’t make anyone too happy. But we did get to watch it, which I was thankful for. I didn’t get into bed until 11, which is extremely late for me here.

This morning I got up and leisurely ate breakfast, as my workday wasn’t going to start until after 8 a.m. The teacher-training group headed out to a school in Leogane, only about a 10 minute drive away. In total I think there were 11 people from HODR (including two translators-in-training) and six teachers. I suppose if you consider how many students each teacher is responsible for, we really are getting the information across to a lot of people even though a group of six feels pretty small. Things went smoothly and it was actually pretty nice having a small group because there was a lot more time for questions and one-on-one interactions. As a couple of members from my portion of the seminar were missing I covered the section on earthquake safety drills and on floods/hurricanes and fires. In between the two sections of the seminar we had a break with snacks and drinks. We had pate (different than pate in the States) – it’s fried dough with meat and other filling – and they’re delicious. Just put a little spicy Haitian coleslaw on top and you’ve got yourself a hell of a snack. The second portion of the seminar covers some background on trauma and then goes over some methods to help children cope with what they’ve been through. There is an emphasis on creative/art therapy. The teachers really get a kick out of this section – there is singing, dancing, and a little project in which everyone makes something out of objects found in nature. So, as I said, the seminar went well and we were back at base around one. In the afternoon I worked with two other volunteers on emergency plans for HODR. We’re mainly working on a plan for if and when a hurricane hits. Today we set some tools aside, worked on a system for tying all the bunk beds together (so they don’t fly around), and made a list of the supplies we need to get. It’s amazing how complicated it can be to make plans for keeping over 100 people safe in case of an emergency (in Haiti, no less).

So it’s Friday night and what am I going to do? Go to bed early, of course. Tomorrow I’ll be doing more hurricane preparedness work in the morning and in the afternoon will be doing “Plaza Playtime” where I get to play games with kids. Tomorrow is going to be sweet.

Hope everyone had a good week and is looking forward to the weekend.

Love,

Daniel

I Can See the Finish Line...

Monday afternoon we got another good chunk of work done. I can say that I have a lot more motivation in the mornings – I think it’s the two-hour break in between work sessions when I’ll get really tired. But we went back to the site and got some quality work done.

Tuesday was a really awesome day. My team went back out to the site and got a whole lot of work done. I ran a lot of wheelbarrows and built a ramp. As team leader I do a lot of this-and-that – just sort of roam the site and do a little bit of everything. The morning was extremely hot with absolutely no cloud coverage. But my team worked through the heat and we had some nice water breaks under the shade of a huge mango tree. I returned in the afternoon actually feeling pretty good (I had a little nap at lunch). Again, the team worked really hard and we got another big portion of the slab cleared. There were some kids around in the afternoon – usually I don’t allow kids on my site – but for a couple reasons (there were only four kids, it’s a huge site so they could be out of the way, and they really wanted to help out) I parked a wheel barrow on the opposite side of the slab as we were working and let them fill the barrow. They loved it. The afternoon flew by and next thing we were loading the tools on the tap-tap. Talking about time flying by I just want to mention that at no point in my life has time seemed to pass so quickly. Days can sometimes seem long, but the weeks absolutely fly by. It’s like a time vacuum here or something.

So after dinner there was another rousing game of soccer in the back yard. I think I might be getting a little be better but maybe not. The nice thing about the game is that I can just sort of blend in and do what I can, typically sparing myself from embarrassment. The game was a low scoring affair – one to one. These daily soccer games are such an awesome way to spend quality time with our local volunteers. I really think it’s instrumental in helping to maintain cohesiveness between the local and international volunteers. And everybody has fun. We then had our nightly meeting, of course. Afterwards I sat down and talked to a new volunteer named Jason who is from Scotland. It was funny because I was sitting in the courtyard thinking about how cool things were (temperature wise). We had just got a little rain and things felt great. For a little reality check, I asked Jason how he felt – he said it felt hot and muggy. It’s amazing how much you adapt to the climate here, especially not having AC and all.

Today was another day of kick-ass work. My team went out and did a ton of work in the morning and in the afternoon. What’s so nice about this site is that there is a lot of continuity – the people who are working with me on it come back every day because they, too, want to finish it. So we work really well together at this point. As I announced at the meeting this evening when I was giving my report – we are on track to finish the site tomorrow! I’m seriously going to be so happy when it’s done.

Happy hump day.

Love,

Daniel

Real Progress, Soccer, Etc.

Saturday was yet another complicated day at base in regards to the local volunteer situation but, in the end, definitely a fun day for all. Before work in the morning, all signs pointed to it being a normal work morning. In the end the local guys decided they weren’t going to work, which caused lots of the volunteers to decide they weren’t going to work either. In my case, there was a group of teachers at a school waiting for the disaster training. I was happy to get to go out to work, anyway. To me it seems counterproductive to strike. Obviously I came to Haiti to work and I think we can work out a solution with the local volunteer program and still continue to work. Anyways, the training group went out to a school in Leogane, just a few minutes drive away. The seminar itself went pretty well considering most of the group was doing it for their first time. It definitely wasn’t as smooth as when everyone was experienced, but that’s to be expected. Where as before I was doing the section of hurricanes/floods and fire safety, I’m now doing the section on earthquake safety. It’s definitely a better, more interactive section – we talk about scenarios and discuss the best solution, go over earthquake drill procedure, and practice drills. I’ll have a teacher volunteer to be the teacher while the rest pretend to be the students. The volunteer teacher will instruct the class on things like the “key word” (a predetermined word to alert the class that there is an earthquake and it’s time to go), the evacuation point, etc. Overall the disaster preparedness section is dry but the teachers seem to really enjoy getting up and practicing. We had a break in the middle of the two portions of the seminar for a snack and finished in pretty good time. I find this experience is particularly rewarding – the teachers all thank us greatly for the training and tell us they will implement what they’ve learned.

We made it back to base for a partially volunteer-cooked lunch of pasta with actual tomato sauce! I thought it would then be off to watch the soccer game but we hit with yet another meeting. At the meeting we talked a bit more about the situation and TC (HODR Project Coordinator) said his goodbyes. He read his resignation email that he sent to the high-powered HODR staff people. There was some crying and general sadness. Fortunately the meeting ended at around halftime in the game so we got to catch the second half. The game ended up being projected over at Joe’s bar next door. It was a ton of fun watching the game with local and international volunteers alike. I even had USA painted on my stomach. The score came out to 1-1, which didn’t make anyone too happy or too unhappy. There was this overall sense of wellbeing and happiness among most people and that was a really nice change of pace. We played soccer in the back yard of the base (the terrain is entirely flattened rubble) and got beat by the locals. Saturday night I took it easy and just watched a movie. Brian set up his projector screen in the base and we watched The Big Lebowski. I had an unusually difficult time falling asleep that night – it was so hot and I just kept tossing and turning and waking up pretty frequently.

Yesterday was a good and relaxing Sunday. I lounged around for most of the day today until I finally rounded up a group to go to the beach. Eight of us walked to the place to grab a tap-tap (about 20 minutes walk). We got into a stretch tap-tap and rode 15 minutes down the road to Ballismo beach. Now this is the elusive beach Jeanene and I tried to go to some weeks ago but never got to. This time we made it, but were told entry wasn’t free (as it typically is) but someone had rented out the beach for the night and was charging 250 gourde (about six-some US dollars) so we said forget it and walked down the road to another beach. Entry for this was 150 gourde and after much discussion we decided that we had come far enough that it was worth it to just pay. The water was interesting. It was really, really warm, for one. Secondly there was a solid piece of concrete that just dropped into the water – no shoreline with sand, no pebbles, nothing. Third, the water was very rocky and full of coral on the bottom so I had to wear my flip-flops in the water. But overall it was really nice hanging in the water. The view was gorgeous. We left as the sun was setting and hailed a tap-tap and got back to Leogane.

I meant to post this last night but by the time I got back the internet was down. There was a trivia night. My team came in second (only losing by one point) and I can’t stop focusing on the fact that my team and I second-guessed a question about Calcium. At least we won our entry fee back.

It’s now Monday afternoon and I just got back from leading the site Wesley Vernet. We had our 7 a.m. pancake meeting this morning and got the good news that the local volunteer program is going to be reinstated and the numbers will remain the same as they were before. The kinks still need to be worked out but everybody is really happy. It felt so good to get out on site, locals and internationals alike, and work. It was hot as hell but we got a lot of work done.

Hope everyone’s ready for the week.

Love,

Daniel

Progress

Today has been an interesting day. I woke up at 5 this morning and decided not to try to go back to sleep. I set up breakfast and threw on my giant green headphones (as I do every morning). I was set to lead a crew at that rubble site, Wesley Vernet, but a bit after 7 we were called outside for a meeting. For the next several hours, all the local and international volunteers discussed the situation. Basically there are two problems – the threatening note one of our Haitian staff members got and the structure of the local volunteer program. At this point the two problems have become interconnected which is a real problem in and of itself. The management decision is to scale back the local program for the time being and reassess at a later date. Most of us feel that’s not the way to go. So a couple hours into the meeting this morning, one of the local guys, Big Junior, stood up and said that he wanted to tell us the names of those who wrote the note. He shared, in front of the whole meeting, two names of those responsible. We all really appreciated him being courageous and loyal to HODR. The meeting ended with things still in the air – there is a CLEAR consensus about how the volunteers feel so it’s just a matter of waiting for the decision to be reversed from the top. We expressed our solidarity with the local volunteers, letting them know we consider them family. The feeling is clearly mutual.

We ended the meeting with just an hour or so left in the work morning so it was decided that my crew wasn’t going to go out in the morning. In the afternoon I worked more with the teacher-training program. Tomorrow we have a training in the morning at a school in Leogane. After we finished running over things, I spent the rest of the afternoon playing Haitian games with a couple other volunteers and this one little Haitian girl. We had dinner and followed that with a rousing game of soccer. We played out back behind our base so the local guys could play as well. Upon their insistence, we played international volunteers vs. local volunteers. Surprisingly we didn’t get killed (it was 2-2, in fact)! But it was a lot of fun. I played goalie for a while which probably wasn’t such a good idea. I was clearly the worst player out there but it’s all good. Today was, again, tense for a while. But at the end of the day people (both local and international) seem really happy. Things are getting better for sure but Monday will be a pivotal day as that’s (supposedly) the day the restructuring of the local program is going to happen.

Tomorrow is going to be super sweet. Like I said, I’ve got the teacher-training in the morning but all the volunteers get the afternoon off to watch the USA vs. England soccer match. The plan is to get a projector set up in our giant outdoor tent and we’ll close all the sides so it’ll be dark and certainly ridiculously hot. We’re going to eat delicious food (likely homemade pizza) and watch sports, which sounds like a plan to me.

Looking forward to the weekend!

Love,

Daniel

Update Overload

Wednesday was a really great day for the most part. It felt so good to get back to work. I led a rubble crew in the morning and we went to a site called Wesley Vernet, which has been an on-and-off site for about two weeks now. It’s a pretty straightforward site – mostly just shoveling, wheel barrowing, and rebar removal. The site itself is quite nice, it’s in the countryside so it’s quiet and peaceful. About halfway through the morning another rubble team who had finished their site came to assist at our site. So at this point we had over 20 people, which was maybe a bit much. But we did get a lot done. In the afternoon I had to do some work with the disaster preparedness team I’ve been working with. Unfortunately all of the team aside from me has left HODR so we have the difficult task of training up an entirely new group to train the teachers. We’re also training new translators and considering the difficult degree of the material this is also going to be tough. So yesterday I went through the material with the new volunteers and then worked with two Haitian guys who are looking to become translators on this project. We essentially went through the documents line by line and we would stop and discuss especially difficult words or concepts. My work yesterday was really great in getting myself back into the swing of things.

When I say that yesterday was great for the most part, I say it because there was some sad news. A Haitian translator and HODR employee named Jacob, who I’ve gotten to know well and become friends with, announced he will be leaving the project. Now Jacob and I have worked together on the disaster preparedness project since I started working with it and we even went to Jacmel together. And he’s been working for HODR for years. He did the last Haiti project (Project Gonaives) in its entirety and has been with Project Leogane for as long as HODR has been here. As he was saying goodbye he explained that he couldn’t discuss why he was leaving but that it was for personal reasons. I went to give him a hug after the meeting and he explained to me that he had received a very threatening note from (we believe) is one of our local volunteers. The note explained that since Jacob is from Gonaives (a town several hours away) and is getting paid, he is taking potential jobs away from Leogane residents and must leave HODR or else there will be violent consequences. So it seems that the bullying worked as Jacob fears for his life and will thus be leaving the project.

So I’ve sort of been writing this post over the span of a couple days so things are developing and changing. Today was a normal day of rubbling. At lunch we were told there was going to be a meeting to discuss something important but it fell through so we worked through the afternoon. This evening we had the meeting and discussion. So today the highest up people in HODR made the decision to essentially cut the local volunteer program because of the threatening note. Now the local volunteer program is a cornerstone of HODR. It’s probably our best connection with the community and overall just amazing. Basically the program is set up so that local people can sign up to volunteer with HODR in many of its projects. In return for work, the locals get lunch and dinner but no money. The people that are doing this program seem almost exclusively awesome and are really just doing it to help their community. So anyways, without volunteer consultation, the decision was made and told to the local volunteers. It was then announced to the international volunteers at the meeting. Long story short – there was an eruption of outrage from the volunteers. We feel that cutting the program will be a huge set back in so many ways. The meeting turned into a heated discussion and things are pretty weird on base. Some people left for the night. One of the main staff members here is talking about resigning unless the policy is changed. Everyone is just really upset. Apparently the local volunteers are also really upset and hurt. They’ve expressed that the note does not express the views of the group as a whole. There has been a lot to take in so I will post more as things develop. On a positive note, Jacob may not be leaving the project after all. We’ll see.

So tonight hopefully things will simmer down and begin to work themselves out. Tomorrow I’m supposed to be leading a rubble team at Wesley Vernet so hopefully things will be cool by then and we can go out and get some work done.

Missing you all.

Love,

Daniel

P.S. I’ve played soccer (futbol, as some crazy people call it) for the last couple days on base. It’s been pretty awesome, surprisingly. With the World Cup right around the corner people seem to be getting in the mood for soccer. We even have a huge pool going. I picked USA as winning it all. Some call me foolish.