Days 189 – 192 (03/06 – 09)

Sunday – My first Sunday back in-country was rather quiet. We got our 1 team off to Arcahaie early so that they could be in time for church service in the new Arcahaie church. They will be the last VIM team at this site as the work there has been completed.

Sarah is still in Hinche and Mario is off doing his thing with family and friends and Tom is officiating at another church. So – it’s just me today. A good day to get myself reorganized – both in the office and my room. I hear a shady spot and a book calling my name this afternoon.

Monday – Today is a team free day, but not a meeting free day. It started with a meeting with Eng. Roger Laplanche, EMH Head Engineer. He wanted to bring me up to date on the New College Bird school project. College Bird is in Port au Prince and is the largest school and church complex in Haiti. Most of the school and administrative offices collapsed in the earthquake. It will be the largest EMH construction project in Haiti (about 3 million dollars), but has been beset by all kinds of problems. They have yet to put the shovel in the ground after 2 years of planning, contract negotiating and governmental obstacles. I’m not quite sure why Roger wants to bring me in on this because it will not be a VIM project. It will be professionally built by a contracting firm. From our meeting this morning, I think that he just wants a sounding board and moral support to relieve some of his frustration with the whole process. It appears even Haitians can get frustrated with the process.

My next meeting was with one of our interpreters who will be getting some assistance in rebuilding his earthquake damaged home from the Haiti Home Assistance Program. Since the program is designed to have the recipient take on the responsibility of securing all of the paper work, finding a contractor, getting the estimates and in general be totally involved in the process, it takes a little hand holding. This is a totally new experience for them all. They are a little overwhelmed with the concept of assistance rather than handout. But, I think it is essential for the Haitians to start taking ownership in their own recovery.

Tuesday – No teams to go out this morning. There has been a barrage of emails coming and going about the Grant Request for the Guest House Renovation Project. It has been sitting at UMCOR in New York for over 4 weeks while everyone is weighing in on who should be contributing. This whole issue came up after I had already submitted the request. The whole thing is political. The reality is that the money all comes from the same initial source. It’s just a matter of who’s name is on it. Meanwhile the project waits. It never ceases to amaze me how convoluted the seemingly simplest of things can become. However, I’m getting the sense that we are seeing some forward motion.

This afternoon we had 2 teams come in - one team returning from their week in La Tremblay and 1 team in from the states. Life goes on at the Guest House.

Wednesday – Back to normal team activity this morning. Our new team was provisioned and sent off to Mellier and our La Tremblay was sent off with our thanks to return home. Then – another meeting. This one was about the Food Program in Thomas that I’ve been involved with from the very start. The team that I came with on my first trip to Haiti in Feb. 2011, started a hot lunch program at the school in Thomas. Through the efforts of our team leader, Warren McGuffin, the program was adopted by our California/Nevada Conference of the UMC and has been developed into a very successful program. However, it has been run as an independent program and has not been integrated into the VIM, UMCOR or EMH plan. I have been trying for the past 6 or 7 months to get the various entities together. Today was the first meeting in that endeavor and I’m glad to say was a positive step forward. The discourse will be continued at the UMCOR Partnerships meeting in Orlando next week.

This afternoon I finally got a chance to thoroughly go through the new set of plans for the Staff Annex that Roger gave to me on Monday. To my dismay, I discovered that he had made a few changes that drastically reduced the size of the rooms. Since the foundation was already in place, enlarging the footprint was not possible - time to get creative. By dinner time I had redrawn a floor plan that gave us four large rooms and four small rooms, reconfigured the bathrooms and added a small closet in each room. While I was busy with that task, Tom and Sarah welcomed our newly arrived team from the States.