Days 134 – 136 (2/27 – 29)

Monday – No teams in or out this morning. We will have one team arriving from the states late this afternoon. Mario returned this morning from his R & R. So – our staff is back to full strength for a whole day (Sarah leaves tomorrow). UMCOR has some strategic planning meetings scheduled for later in the week and some of the New York staff is starting to arrive. They all will be staying at the Ebolele Hotel and I don’t have to be at the meetings, so I’m not sure if I’ll see them or not. However, I would like Mellissa Crutchfield to review my Haiti Home Assistance Program grant proposal before I submit it to Pastor Paul for his signature and send it to New York. So – today is dedicated to putting the final touches on the grant proposal.

Tuesday – Tom and I got our one team off to La Tremblay, Sarah off the airport and took off for Carre Four School with Oge at the wheel. We had another meeting with the Mellier EMH contingency. This was the first time that we have been able to get the community leaders, Site Boss, Project Engineer and Pastor Fed, the District Superintendent all together. The community leadership has been unhappy that they have not been involved in the process of building their new church and Pastor Fed is the man in charge. Tom and I are not involved in that part of the process and are acting only as facilitators. I think it was a productive meeting. Everyone got to express their views and Pastor Fed promised to keep the community more involved in the project. The next item on the agenda was the dedication of the new bathrooms at the school. This was one of the first VIM projects started under the Haiti Response Plan and quite a few teams contributed to the project. It was nice to see the completed bathrooms, but a little weird to attend a dedication ceremony. I asked Tom if he had ever blessed a latrine before and he admitted that it was a first for him. We got back to the Guest House in time to welcome the first of two teams to arrive from the states today.

Wednesday – We loaded one team up this morning and sent them off to Hinche. Hinche is one of our most distant sites and is about 4 hours away in the central plateau region of Haiti. The remaining team will be staying at the Guest House and commuting each day to Croix d’Mission one of our closest sites. Then Tom and I rounded up Spana and the D-Max and drove up to the Hotel Ebolele to pick up Judith Santiago the UMCOR Media Coordinator who is part of the delegation here from New York. She wants to do a series of articles and video clips on the Haiti Response Plan. So – we swung by Paco to pick up Lauren James, the UMCOR/EMH Liaison and headed to Mellier to show Judith the new houses being built under the EMH Housing Pilot Project. On the ride to Mellier she played the journalist’s role and asked us questions about ourselves and our jobs in Haiti. When we got to Mellier we visited a couple of the World Hand Alliance sites where they have the footings and stem walls completed. Judith took lots of pictures and taped interviews with some of the beneficiaries of the new homes. We then visited a couple of the Homes for Haitians sites where the homes are almost completed. She taped a couple of interviews with Lauren, Tom and I; took lots of pictures and we all headed back to Petionville. We came back to the Frere campus so she could see the complex and take pictures of some of the school kids. It will be interesting to see what her finished product will look like. Spana then took Judith back to the Ebolele and Lauren back to her office at Delmas 54. Tom and I then greeted Steve Elliot and his Cal/Nev team returning from their week in Thomas.