Days 48 & 49 (11/01 - 02)

Tuesday - Today is All Saint’s Day and “The Day of the Dead”. I’m not sure what all that means in Haiti, but it sounds ominous. I do know that tomorrow is also a holiday and the only reason given for the holiday is to rest up from the day before. I think we should make the day after Superbowl Sunday a national holiday. All of the kids are out of school today and tomorrow. I don’t think they celebrate a Halloween like we do.

We sent our one team off to La Tremblay this morning and are now teamless until a new arrival from the states tomorrow. It was a good time to finish installing that ceiling fan. I installed a new switch with no result, so decided to do what they’ve been doing here forever, I wired around the apparent problem. We will be rewireing most of the Guest House when we start the renovation, so I justified my solution as a temporary fix. The good news is that the Haitian staff now has a functioning fan and light in their work/living area.  They were very happy.

This afternoon I made an executive decision. I was going to quit beating my head against the wall (it really hurts when you don’t have any hair) and do the renovation estimating myself. I was having no luck finding Haitian contractors to come and give me bids. I have a pretty good idea of material cost and labor rates down here now and I’ve been estimating jobs for 40 years. So – why not? It felt really good to be moving forward again.

Wednesday – “The Day of The Dead” came and went with little notice. No witch doctors or scary characters in sight. The only noticeable differences were less traffic, some businesses closed and no kids in school. It was business as usual for us.

I spent my day glued to the computer working on the estimating - not very exciting, but a necessary part of the job. The best news is that I’m about half way done. I should be able to submit my grant proposal for the Guest House Renovation in the next couple of weeks.

On the Haiti Home Assistance side, I’m still gathering information. I wanted to go look at Nicholas (one of the Guest house caretakers) home site today but Oge and Erick (2 of our drivers) wouldn’t let me go. Apparently Nicholas’ site is in the middle of City Soleil, the worst section of real estate in all of Haiti – even the police and UN troops stay out. Oge said it was just too dangerous and he and Eric would go with Nicholas and take pictures. Our Haitian staff really do take care of us. They came back with pictures of Nicholas’ shelter surrounded by lots of banana trees. They said it really was a pretty site, but it was far off of the main road and to get to it you had to go through the very worst parts of City Soliel. It just as well that I stayed home. It’s not a place for anyone to be wandering around, particularly with my skin color.

This week has been rather quiet with only one or two teams a day coming through. But next week we will be back up to about 4 a day. I’ll take the peace and quiet whenever I can find it.