I arrived back in Sacramento late Wednesday night 10/23 and left Thursday morning for San Luis Obispo and the Sierra Vista Hospital to see my mother. I was there with my brother for a week and we watched her make a miraculous recovery. The doctor finally transferred her to a rehabilitation facility at the same location as her assisted living apartment. Once she was settled, stabilized and seemingly showing signs of improvement, I returned to Haiti on 11/03

Days 338 – 344

11/04 – 11/10

Sunday 11/04 – I arrived back in Haiti around noon and got picked up at the airport by Spana. They had opened up the new arrivals terminal in my absence and I was a little confused. You no longer had to take a shuttle bus to the far side of the terminal building and walk into the confusion of having to go through Immigration, get your luggage and go through Customs along with 200 other passengers in a space about the size of an Olympic sized swimming pool. It was very nice and spacious and uncluttered with more stations for passport control. Since I had no checked baggage, I zipped right through and went outside to a completely different area of the parking lot. It took me a while to find Spana, but we finally connected.

I got back to the Guest House and was inundated with concerned questions about my mother from all the staff. They were all very happy that she had been able to recover and was stabilized. In a country where the average life span is 64 years, 98 years seems like a miracle. I love these people and I think the feeling is mutual.

Monday 11/05 - I’m right back in to business as usual. We have 14 teams scheduled in this month, so we have at least 1 team coming or going almost every day. And – the meetings start. Today it’s an informal meeting about the church reconstruction in Olivier. The church was heavily damaged in the earthquake and has finally moved up the priority list and is ready to be addressed. Engineers Laplanche and Derly, and Tom and I met with Pastor Paul to determine if we should proceed with the project. The decision was made to start and we picked the people that should be included in the site visit on Thursday. We decided we should have Pastor Maude, the Circuit Superintendent, the local Church Steward and Engineers Abicher and Elysea in addition to ourselves.

Tuesday 11/06 – Today we had a HRP (Haiti Response Plan) staff meeting with Tom, Danette, Mario, Oge and I along with Susan Meister, our Team Calendar Coordinator in the States, on Skype. The purpose was to discuss the current state of our projects and finances and team projections for 2013. Many of our sites are nearing completion or have reached the stage where the required work is no longer “team friendly” – requires skills that our teams can’t support. We have over 100 teams already scheduled for 2013, so we need to have the EMH make some decisions on project sites from the priority list.

And – UMVIM has finally approved my contract extension proposal. I have agreed to continue for another 6 months starting in January on a 2 weeks a month in-country basis. It requires a lot of traveling but allows me to spend a little more time at home. Now Pastor Paul has to sign off on the contract and he always waits to the very last minute.

Wednesday 11/07 – Our meeting for today is with Pastor Paul and some of the Circuit Superintendents, Elizabeth Petheo and Lauren James from UMCOR and Tom and I. The purpose of the meeting is to go over the damage assessment reports from all of the Circuits on the damage from Hurricane Sandy. I was frankly surprised by the extent of the damage in the mountains and southern part of the island. Although there were 59 known deaths in Haiti, none appeared to be from the Methodist community. However, the property damage in some areas was extensive. The damage was mostly wind related – roofs blown off (including the entire roof of the school in Furcy) and crop damage. There also was a lot of flood damage, but none involving church property. We also discussed our disaster preparedness protocol. Elizabeth (UMCOR Head of Mission) did an outstanding job of alerting all UMCOR/UMVIM staff of the storms progress and the steps to be taken during the emergency. Danette and Tom were in constant contact with our teams in country and a couple of them elected to return to the Guest House to ride out the storm. So – all in all – everyone was given an “A”.

Thursday 11/08 – Today’s agenda is the site visit to Olivier with the Engineers and community leaders. Olivier is in the Petit Goave Circuit and a 2 hour drive from Petionville on a good day. Today was almost good and we made it in 2 ½ hours. While Tom huddled with the Circuit Superintendent and leaders of the congregation to assess their needs and expectations, the other engineers and I went over the structure to assess the damage. I had seen the site several times before, so had a pretty good idea of what needed to be done, but I wanted the Haitian engineers to give their opinions. As with so many structures I have seen in Haiti, this one was on the cusp for total destruction and rebuild. The decision has to be made to either tear it down and start over or repair the existing damage. Many factors need to be considered. One is the needs of the community. They all want a bigger church but in most cases the population doesn’t warrant it. We can’t afford to build a structure large enough to hold the once a year Easter crowd and have it half full the rest of the year. The other consideration is the extent of the damage. Can the building be salvaged and the structural integrity maintained or hopefully improved for less than it would cost to start over. In this case the engineers agreed that the building could be saved. The roof would have to be torn off, columns reinforced, some wall sections replaced and a new, reinforced slap poured, but it was cost effective. Engineer Derly was assigned the task of drawing up the plans and estimate.

Friday 11/09 – The meeting du jour is the Site Review Committee. This is the committee that does a monthly review of all of the UMVIM project sites and as sites are completed picks new ones from the EMH priority list. I have been trying for over 6 months to restructure the committee to combine the Site Review Committee, EMH Pilot Project Committee, the Haiti Home Assistance Program Committee, the Guest House Renovation Project Committee, the New College Bird School Committee and the EMH Property Committee into one EMH Construction and Property Committee. The Committees are comprised mostly of the same people and we end up talking about the same things over and over again. I have handed out org charts, job descriptions, standardized procedure suggestions, etc. However, like everything else in Haiti, new ideas take time to take root. Haiti, for me, has been a Doctorate Degree in diplomacy. I have discovered that nothing happens until it becomes their idea. Today we officially became the “EMH Construction and Property Committee”.

Saturday 11/10 – I met with Engineer Abicher this morning to go over the laundry room addition we’re putting on the Guest House. I’m going to introduce a washing machine and dryer to the Haitian staff who have always done the hundreds of weekly sheets and towels from the Guest House by hand. I have discovered that some of the engineers have trouble understanding plans drawn by someone other than themselves. I don’t know why. I’ve converted to the metric system. It may be a matter of too much detail or some design concept they don’t understand. All that I know is, you better be darn sure they really understand before they start building.

This afternoon I met with Engineer Rouse about the Guest House Staff Annex. We have come to a standstill because of funding. I still have a final draw coming from the UMCOR grant, but there are a couple of milestones that have to be met before I can apply for it. We need to figure out how we’re going to do that. I also need to put out another appeal for donations for the UMVIM portion of the project.