Days 61 & 62 (11/14 – 15)

Monday – Happy Birthday to a special lady. Wish I was there to help you celebrate. But, I digress. This morning was taken up with a meeting on the EMH Pilot Project. We were trying to finalize the areas of responsibility of the 6 parties to this project – EMH (The Haitian Methodist Church), UMCOR (United Methodist Committee On Relief), the community of Mellier, the community of Carre Four and the 2 contractors WHA (World Hand Alliance) and H4H (Homes 4 Haitians). The EMH engineer Derly Charles, the Project Manager, is doing a good job of coordinating all the pieces and we should be able to actually start construction within the next week. My role as an EMH advisor is to offer technical advice and assistance. So far that has consisted mainly of working on the construction contracts and drawings. Tomorrow the final contract should be signed and the plans submitted to the Mayor of Leogane for permits. Needless to say, we all are very anxious to see that first house start up.

I worked late, via email, with Doug Ahfield, of H4H, on last minute corrections on the plans. I think we’re done!!

Tuesday – This morning we got Tom’s wife Wendy and her team off to Furcey. We got the team and all their baggage and equipment in one van. They left the Guest House looking like the Beverly Hillbillies.

After breakfast John, Tom and I went with Lauren James (UMCOR – EMH Liaison) and Thodleen Dessources (UMCOR Haiti Desk Manager visiting from New York) to look at the new church being built in St. Martin. I’ve got to say it was the best quality of construction I’ve seen so far in Haiti. Not that there are areas that can’t be improved – such as termination of rebar at columns – but all and all, I was very impressed. They even had a stinger for vibrating the concrete in forms – the first one I’ve seen in Haiti. You can’t believe how good it makes me feel to see this kind of progress. We’ve still got a long way to go, but we’re moving in the right direction.

We went from the St. Martin site to the Collegeburg campus where they have a beautiful church and are planning on building new primary, secondary and administration buildings for the school, complete with computer labs. It will be a very ambitious 3 million dollar project.

The trip this morning took me through some parts of Port au Prince that I had not seen before. When you live and work in Petionville, you don’t see a lot of evidence of the earthquake and you tend to forget. But the trip this morning was a grim reminder. We even took a short side trip to the Iron Market, once the central marketplace of all of Port au Prince. It has been fully restored and is still a bustling hub of commerce, filled with stall after stall of Haitian art work and products (even VooDoo). Another interesting day in Haiti.