Days 323 – 329

10/07 -10/14

 

With apologies once again to the friends that read this blog for being absent for so long, I shall attempt to bring everyone up to date with a Readers Digest version of the last few months using my appointment calendar and meeting minutes to jog my memory. I’ll leave out the daily in and outs of the teams only to say that we had 15 teams in October and 19 teams in November. I’m amazed that so many people have contacted me about my procrastination. I thought my mother and girlfriend were the only ones reading it. My only excuse is – I’ve really been busy!

 Sunday 10/07 – The first Sunday of each month Tom preaches and officiates at Communion at Thomasin. Tom, Danette and I took Jessica, Eric’s daughter, and two of her friends with us. I enjoy Tom’s sermons, which he gives in English and a translator gives in French. He also includes a lot of music which I like. And – over the past year I have come to know a lot of people in the congregation and enjoy visiting with them. So – all in all, it was a pleasant Sunday morning. After church we dropped the girls off at the Guest House, changed our clothes and drove up to the Hotel Ibolele for lunch and a few hours around the pool - all in all – a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Monday 10/08 – Engineer Roger Laplanche and I had our first meeting with the contractor’s engineer at the New College Bird school site. This the first phase of a 3 phase project funded by UMCOR and COR (Church of the Resurrection) from Kansas City. It will be the largest EMH project in Haiti to date. Roger and I wanted to meet the engineer since we will be interacting with him throughout the project. We also wanted to check out the footprint of the foundation forms and the quality of the rebar placement. The meeting went well and the work to date looked very good. We will be back on Friday for the first concrete pour.

Tuesday 10/09 – Today’s main activity is the Joint Leadership Team meeting. As a reminder, this team is made up of Pastor Paul and Pastor Marco from EMH, Jim Gulley, Elizabeth Petheo and Lauren James from UMCOR and Tom and I from HRP. This is a monthly recap of activities and ongoing future planning. At today’s meeting we had the Director for Habitat in Humanity in Haiti share their experience in establishing new community settlements. It was very informative and pointed out the importance of having the whole community involved in the process from the beginning. Other topics discussed were New College Bird and the Methodist Village.

Wednesday - Thursday 10/10 &11 – Yesterday’s 2 hour meeting went a little over 4 hours (which is normal) so I’ve had to catch up on my usual daily routine of checking with my site engineers and the status of my projects. On Thursday I had a Skype call with the Construction Team from COR about the progress at New College Bird.

Friday 10/12 – Another day of meetings. The first one was the Site Review Committee – Pastor Paul, Pastor Marco, Sylvio Rocourt and Roger Laplanche from EMH, Jim Gulley and Lauren James from UMCOR and  Tom and I. We report on all of the sites under construction and prioritize the remaining sites still on the earthquake damaged list. Then Roger and I had to run to New College Bird for the concrete pour (which ended up being postponed until Saturday).

Saturday 10/13 – Roger and I got an early start to be at New College Bird for the scheduled 8:00 AM pour. Naturally, the first truck didn’t arrive until 9:30. This was my first experience with ready mix trucks in Haiti as most of our sites are either too remote or too small to warrant a truckload (about 10 cubic yds. or 7 cu. meters) at one pour. When the truck arrived the driver had the required paperwork showing the design mix (amount of sand, aggregate, cement)) so we could verify that it was of the required strength (3000 psi). The next step was the slump test which tests the amount of water in the mixture. This test is performed by pouring a sample amount of concrete into a 12” inverted metal cone, then the cone is removed and the cone of concrete should not collapse more than 2 or 3”. This first load failed miserably - it totally collapsed. We all agreed that it was no good and the truck should take it back to the batch plant. Roger and I walked over take a look at the building plans and when we turned around we saw that they were pouring the concrete into the forms. We ran over to the Site Engineer and asked him why he was pouring the load after it failed the slump test. He said, “We can’t waste it”. I said, “If you expect to get paid you will absolutely waste it. Why do you think we test it?” Well, by that time the truck was ¾ empty. The second truck came and failed the slump test. We sent it back. The 3^rd truck came and failed the slump test. We sent it back. By the time we got the 4^th truck they finally realized that we meant what we said. I told them, “We can always add water on-site, but we can’t take it out.” We finally poured 8 truck-loads of cement.

Finally Roger and I met with the lay committee of the Port-au-Prince Circuit to discuss the Methodist Village project. This was the first meeting to discuss the development of this housing project. I told the committee that since we were working with a clear piece of land (in La Tremblay) we had a blank canvas and could make it into anything they wanted. I asked them what they felt was the greatest housing need and after much discussion they agreed that the greatest need was for housing for the elderly. Roger and I were tasked with coming up with concept designs and drawings.

 

 

Sunday 10/14 – Today was mostly a day of rest, although I did spend some time working on some design concepts for the Methodist Village. I’m excited about the possibility of building this project because I feel it really addresses a great need.