Days 359 – 365

01/17 – 01/24

 

 

Thursday 01/17 – Tom, Wendy, Eng. Abicher, Oge and I left early for Furcy. As some of you may recall, Furcy is a small, rural community in the mountains above Petionville. It’s about an hour and a half drive - about half of which is over rough mountain roads. In fact the last half of mile you have to walk unless you have a good 4 wheel drive and don’t mind being tossed around. But it’s worth the effort. It is absolutely beautiful it’s about 7,000 ft. in elevation and cool. There are pine trees and in some areas you would think you were in the Sierras in California rather than in Haiti.

Tom and Wendy have been coming to Furcy for over 10 years and their non-profit, Mountains of Hope, adopted Furcy as their primary project. We came today primarily to assess the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. The building damage is very evident. 90% of the roof is completely missing from one of the 2 school buildings and 50% of the roof is missing from the cook house. We obviously need to get this repaired as soon as possible. Abicher was directed to start the repairs as soon as possible. There is a team coming next week that can help start the process and Tom and Wendy will work on getting additional funding from UMCOR and Mountains of Hope. While we were there we heard stories from some of the local farmers who lost crops and livestock to the high winds. Mother Nature seems to paint a bullseye on Haiti.

Friday 01/18 – Last week Pastor Paul asked Engineer Roger Laplanche and I to prepare a presentation on the Methodist Village to be given at the EMH Annual Conference to be held in Jeremie next week. I reminded him that I still had not received any replies to the questionnaire regarding the Methodist Village that I sent out to the EMH committee members back in Because of that, we could not give any kind of a detailed presentation. He said just a general presentation would be all right. So, in other words, he was looking for a dog and pony show. Today we are going to put it together.

Jeremie, where the Annual Conference is being held, is on the far south western part of the island and difficult to get to. It is an 8 hour hard trip by road or a $240.00 plane ticket to get there. I told Roger that it didn’t make any sense for both of us to take 3 days to drive or $500 to fly. Thankfully he agreed. I really didn’t want to go.

Saturday 01/19 – I spent the day today finishing up details for Roger’s presentation while he prepared the renderings. It’s kind of exciting to see an idea I presented over a year ago begin to take form. Like any new project in Haiti, it’s going to take time. But at least the process has started.

Sunday 01/20 – After back to back road trips and a couple of long days pushing to get a presentation together I was ready for a day off. The rest of the staff has been very busy with teams with up to 5 teams in country at a time – 2 nights this week we had over 55 people at the Guest House. So – they are ready for a breather also. We got 2 teams off to the airport in the morning than headed up to the Hotel Karibe for an afternoon around the pool. We even caught part of the 49ers play-off game.

Monday 01/21 – Since I didn’t have to go to the Annual Conference in Jeremie, I decided to visit some construction sites that I haven’t seen for a while. Today Oge and I went to Le Tremblay to see the new church. The roof is on and the doors and windows are installed. From our (Haiti Response Plan) perspective, this project is completed. The church will be turned over to the community and they will take on the responsibility of doing the remaining finish work.

Tuesday 01/22 – Tapion  is the site for today. We first visited this site, which is a rural site near Petit Goave, last October and our initial evaluation of the church was that although severely damaged it could be salvaged. However, when Engineers Dery, Abicher and I looked at it again today we decided that the damage was greater than we first thought and it would probably be better to tear it down and start over. Derly will draw up some new plans and prepare an estimate so that we can get it approved before the 1^st scheduled team arrives next month.

Wednesday 01/23 – Today is a catch-up on paperwork day. I have to get the final drafts of the No Cost Extension Letters for the Guest House Renovation Project and the Haiti Home Assistance Program in to UMCOR in New York. Both projects have gone over the allocated time period given in the original grants and you have to request an extension in order to get the remaining funding. It’s ironic that the main cause for the schedule overruns has been delays in getting the funding, but that’s the way it goes when working with donated funds. I’ve already received verbal approval for the extensions, but have to follow up with the paperwork.

Thursday 01/24 – I’m up early this morning and on the phone and internet with my engineers making sure that everyone is up to speed on work for the next couple of weeks. I’m heading for the airport and my return home. My first two week tour is over. I think this new schedule is going to work, but I’m going to need to organize my time better. I still have the same amount of work to do, but I have to compress it into a shorter time frame.