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.
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