Days 132 & 133 (2/25 & 26)

Saturday – Two teams to the airport this morning and the Guest House is once again teamless. I volunteered to drive me to Thomas got a call from Steve Elliot in Thomas that they were starting on the roof structure and were going to need a couple of circular saws. So – since my trip to Thomas got postponed yesterday and they needed tools, I decided to go out there this morning. I couldn’t get Spana on the phone, so Eric volunteered to drive me to Thomas. Steve also wanted a wax ring to reset a toilet that had come loose on the floor. I told him that they seldom used wax rings down here - they just cement the toilet bowl to the floor on top of the sewer pipe. But, I told him we would try to find one for him. So – Eric and I spent 1 ½ hours driving to 5 different building supply stores without success and finally gave up.

It’s funny. Each driver has his own special short cuts to get out of the Port-au-Prince area (none of which are paved). And since it has been some time since I’ve ridden with Eric, I saw some parts of town that I hadn’t seen for a while. We had average traffic and made it to Thomas in 1 ½ hours. I was pleased with the progress that they were making. The 2^nd story walls were finished and they were in fact starting on the roof. I’m glad that I brought the saws. The Haitian crew was cutting and fitting the roof structure with machetes. I spent about an hour on site talking with people and taking a few pictures and then headed back to PetionVille. As usual when driving in Haiti, we passed an accident. A couple of small pick-ups, a dump truck and a SUV all tried to occupy the same space at the same time. They were loading 3 or 4 injured people in the back of another pick-up as we drove by. Driving is always an adventure in Haiti.

Sunday – We got 2 teams off to the airport this morning. Then Tom, Sarah and I got Spana and the D-Max and set off to see the block making yard of World Hand Alliance. WHA is one of the contractors building houses in Mellier and Carre Four. They have gotten all of their block making equipment set up and running to start manufacturing light weight concrete blocks. Light weight concrete is produced by reducing the amount of aggregate and folding in a foaming agent, like egg whites in a soufflé. This creates air pockets in the mix that take up the space usually occupied by aggregate. The result is a block that is ½ the weight of a standard concrete block but with 80% of the compression strength, which is more than adequate for this type of construction. This has many advantages – lighter blocks are easier to transport and handle - reducing the weight of the structure, particularly in upper walls and roofs, reduces the susceptibility of collapse in an earthquake – the air pockets increase the insulation factor of the block – the finished quality of the block is much better than 90% of the cement blocks currently available in-country. So – we were very interested in seeing the operation. Unfortunately, we realized when we started off that no one knew exactly where we were going. We tried to call Constantine from WHA for directions but his phone wasn’t working. We remembered Costantine saying that the yard was just up the hill behind the Carre Four cemetery and Spana knew how to get to the cemetery. So – we decided to see if we could find it.

Spana got us to the Carre Four cemetery with no problem and we took the first road that went up the hill. The hills of Carre Four are not the Riviera. It is an extremely poor area and was heavily damaged in the earthquake. It is one of the areas where the homes are built on the hillsides on top of each other and collapsed like dominoes. Although much of the rubble has been removed and there is a lot of rebuilding going on, the area is still a devastated region. We wandered along the mountainside, asking directions along the way, with no success. The people were very friendly and helpful and would nod their heads and point further up the hill or to the left or right. But it soon became apparent that they didn’t have a clue where this place was and were just having fun with the dumb blans. So – after an hour or so of wandering around the rabbit warren of the hills of Carre Four we gave up and came home. It was an adventure and we saw some interesting scenery, so no one complained.