Another night having to wake up at 2:30 in the morning to pee. The walk is always interesting because there are a few flood lights lit, but otherwise the grounds are completely lit by the moon and stars. Amazing...
Lunch was, yet again, rice and beans. But they found a really cool way to spruce it up, and cheaply. Put some pasta sauce on it. I'm encouraged...this is something I could manage to cook at home someday and not screw it up too bad. :)
Today after dinner we had a meeting with Dianne and Chris (aka Eric aka Tom aka, etc....).
[This name game stems from some situational humor...I'll try to depict:
Mike says to me one day, "Hey Brian, did you see Chris that way?"
> "Nope"
> "Oh. ... Chris, you know, the guy with the orange shirt....Mercy Response guy..."
> "OH! No I haven't seen Chris."
So now we refer to Chris as Chris. Or is it Eric? And who's the guy traveling with the other group? Tom? Joe?"
well you get the point.]
We learned a good bit about the history of Vineyard Mercy Response, but what we really neat to hear about what the overall scheme for what is to happen on the compound we're working. This compound, when we finish some of our work here, will be used as a base camp for all sorts of different organizations and individuals seeking to do relief / recovery work in Haiti. The dorms will probably hold close to 100 people total (just a guess). Also on the compound there are plans to expand to clinic into a hospital, and also to have girls' and boys' homes (orphanages, basically). There is currently a school and a church. The property will provide a safe place for people who live in the area to come and take care of their schooling / medical / spiritual needs. Cool stuff.
Other than that, today was just another day of breaking every regulation prescribed by OSHA. Started the day by running 3 conductor electrical wire through the rafters of the soon-to-be dining hall on the compound. Wouldn't it be fitting that they pick the guy who has a moderate distaste of elevations lacking adequate death-grip posts or rails to ride atop a 6 foot scaffold with no outer boundaries to do work entirely over his head. Steel toe boots, hard hat, and double D-ring harness...no where in sight. In a sense though, It was okay because I had my fall protection. It's called white knuckles squeezing the hell out of the metal roof girders. My fall protect also doubled as my self-propulsion, since I had to scoot around the room, and didn't always have someone to push me. Don't worry though, I wouldn't do anything stupid like set the breaks...that would make it entirely too hard to move around the room when I needed to. Upon raising my discomfort to Mike (not really looking for an answer, moreso just for perhaps a bit of understanding and compassion), he kindly responded with, "Oh hush. It build character."
I suppose he had a right to say it though, considering he spent most of his day in a shipping container, moving boxes back and forth in the heat. I'll give you this one, Mike...
2.01.2011
1.31.2011
Chili and a Shipping Container
Met these kids yesterday. The had a blast wearing my hat and playing with my water bottle and phone.
The coolest thing happened, too. Growing up I used to wondering what it was that made black people's hair different from mine.
Turns out these kids had the same reaction to mine. They kept running their hands through it, laughing and being confused at the same time. They crowded my personal space and crawled over me and were endlessly amused by swiping the icons of my iphone screen back and forth and back again. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Today was our first full work day. I'm exhausted.
We worked from 6am till 5pm. Cleaned out lines, then checked flow on the plumbing for the guys' and girls' bathrooms and future staff quarters. Insulated all the walls. Installed showers in the girls' bathroom. Then this afternoon they let me drive the bobcat to pick up some rocks to lay down as filler between the sidewalks and the dorms. That bucket list item is now scratched off my list.
After work we took showers and reported to the dining hall to be greeted by a fresh batch of incredibly seasoned chili with cornbread and snicker doodle cookies. Talk about having meals I didn't expect...
Right when we sat down though, we got the request to help unload a container that had just arrived. It strikes me as odd that it would basically catch everyone by surprise that an 18-wheeler with a shipping container full of boxes was going to arrive. But we're on Haitian time here. Things happen sometimes, and sometimes they don't. Time is different. Dictated by the sun, and that's about it. Wake up with the sun, have dinner when it goes down. Everything in between simply happens or it doesn't. Schedules aren't important.
Speaking of happening. I saw something happen tonight that I did NOT expect to see in Haiti. I expected to see poverty and destruction. Naked children and voodoo. These things I expected.
What I didn't expect to see was what happened after we unloaded the 18-wheeler. The only way time matters down here is when the truck drivers charge by the hour. The quicker you unload and get the container off their truck, the better, and the cheaper.
After we unloaded the container, Art backed a flatbed truck up to the 18-wheeler, and the fork-life and the bobcat (with fork attachment) moved into position on either side of the container, close to the cab of the 18-wheeler. Right then it dawned on me what was about to happen.
Sure enough, the forks, albeit with a bit of accident nudging of the container and wobbling back and forth, lifted the front end of the container in tandem, the the flatbed used its winch to pull the container partially onto it. Once the container was supported by the bobcat, the forklift, and the flatbed, the 18-wheeler drove off. It just pulled right out from under the canopy of metal hovering above it. Doug wondered what OSHA might think about this operation when half the workers were wearing flip flops, and I haven't seen a hard hat the whole time I have been here. I managed to nab a picture, but it was toward the end of the operation.
In other news. I have ants in my pants. More specifically, my underpants.
I guess I should have figured that the pre-packaged snack that American Airlines gave us on the flight would not be ant-tight. Combine that with the unpremeditated placement of said snack in my bag next to my underwear, you can now understand my plight.
Oh yeah, and I took my malaria pills. And after the chili dinner, the boys' dorm is going to be one interesting place tonight...
The coolest thing happened, too. Growing up I used to wondering what it was that made black people's hair different from mine.
Turns out these kids had the same reaction to mine. They kept running their hands through it, laughing and being confused at the same time. They crowded my personal space and crawled over me and were endlessly amused by swiping the icons of my iphone screen back and forth and back again. I enjoyed every minute of it.
Today was our first full work day. I'm exhausted.
We worked from 6am till 5pm. Cleaned out lines, then checked flow on the plumbing for the guys' and girls' bathrooms and future staff quarters. Insulated all the walls. Installed showers in the girls' bathroom. Then this afternoon they let me drive the bobcat to pick up some rocks to lay down as filler between the sidewalks and the dorms. That bucket list item is now scratched off my list.
After work we took showers and reported to the dining hall to be greeted by a fresh batch of incredibly seasoned chili with cornbread and snicker doodle cookies. Talk about having meals I didn't expect...
Right when we sat down though, we got the request to help unload a container that had just arrived. It strikes me as odd that it would basically catch everyone by surprise that an 18-wheeler with a shipping container full of boxes was going to arrive. But we're on Haitian time here. Things happen sometimes, and sometimes they don't. Time is different. Dictated by the sun, and that's about it. Wake up with the sun, have dinner when it goes down. Everything in between simply happens or it doesn't. Schedules aren't important.
Speaking of happening. I saw something happen tonight that I did NOT expect to see in Haiti. I expected to see poverty and destruction. Naked children and voodoo. These things I expected.
What I didn't expect to see was what happened after we unloaded the 18-wheeler. The only way time matters down here is when the truck drivers charge by the hour. The quicker you unload and get the container off their truck, the better, and the cheaper.
After we unloaded the container, Art backed a flatbed truck up to the 18-wheeler, and the fork-life and the bobcat (with fork attachment) moved into position on either side of the container, close to the cab of the 18-wheeler. Right then it dawned on me what was about to happen.
Sure enough, the forks, albeit with a bit of accident nudging of the container and wobbling back and forth, lifted the front end of the container in tandem, the the flatbed used its winch to pull the container partially onto it. Once the container was supported by the bobcat, the forklift, and the flatbed, the 18-wheeler drove off. It just pulled right out from under the canopy of metal hovering above it. Doug wondered what OSHA might think about this operation when half the workers were wearing flip flops, and I haven't seen a hard hat the whole time I have been here. I managed to nab a picture, but it was toward the end of the operation.
In other news. I have ants in my pants. More specifically, my underpants.
I guess I should have figured that the pre-packaged snack that American Airlines gave us on the flight would not be ant-tight. Combine that with the unpremeditated placement of said snack in my bag next to my underwear, you can now understand my plight.
Oh yeah, and I took my malaria pills. And after the chili dinner, the boys' dorm is going to be one interesting place tonight...
1.30.2011
A Lot to Learn
Got to sleep in today since it's Sunday. Normally no work is done on Sundays at the complex, so today will be the last day that I have the privilege of sleeping past 5:30am, which feels like 4:30 New Orleans time. I woke up a few times, but for the most part my body was a champ and let me enjoy the rest.
After a perfect combination of corn flakes topped off with 4 tiny cups of coffee, I finally settled on what to play for church this morning, with some wonderful insight from Mike to assist my decision:
"Some of those songs have notes that I just can't sing..."
I settled on Paul Baloche's classic, "Open the Eyes of My Heart". No big deal. Oldie-by-goodie.
After about 45 minutes of worship, they invited us to sing our song. There were about a dozen of us and we chugged through it in true American fashion, thanks to Chris for holding the microphone by my guitar because it was too heavy for the clip on the stand. I think we sounded pretty decent over all, but there was simply no comparing our song to what we had just heard from the congregation there. We heard a variety of some neat locally flavored music, but also a surprising number of classic American pop worship songs, with most of the lyrics in Creole, I think. Once the band dropped out, though, is when the music really happened. 200 Haitians singing "How Great is Our God" in Creole completely a cappella, and a dozen of us white folk sometimes singing along in English. It was so incredibly moving, to the point of tears, to see how genuinely these people worshipped. Many of them didn't have amazing pitch, but
it
didn't
matter.
We have a lot to learn from these people.
It's like Mike put it today, "These kids are playing around in broken luggage for hours, and our kids have every toy under the sun, and they still get bored."
Granted, it's a different world. A different culture. What I'm suggesting is not that we all learn to live on nothing, although I'm sure there could be some good to come from learning what we really NEED versus what we want, and furthermore to figure out why we want it at all. What I AM suggesting is that we learn how to be content with what we have, no matter what that is. We could learn to live on what we DO have, instead of demanding more and more from everyone and everything around us.
On a lighter note, I got to meet a pretty cool cat (the expression for "dude", not the animal) named Clerice. He's learning how to play guitar and it sounds like later tonight I'll get to show him a few more of my "how to play guitar well enough for non-musicians to think you're good" tricks. (hush up, all you musicians...the muggles don't know you can't play any worship song in the world either in the key of G or E by simply using a capo...let them continue in their bliss.) Oh yeah, and we had some pretty good soccer exchanges too. So far I've played soccer every day I have been here, and this makes me very happy.
Going to miss the friendly guys and gals that left today. Wish we could have had more time to get to work with and know them. But there's plenty of neat people here still, and still plenty of work to do.
After a perfect combination of corn flakes topped off with 4 tiny cups of coffee, I finally settled on what to play for church this morning, with some wonderful insight from Mike to assist my decision:
"Some of those songs have notes that I just can't sing..."
I settled on Paul Baloche's classic, "Open the Eyes of My Heart". No big deal. Oldie-by-goodie.
After about 45 minutes of worship, they invited us to sing our song. There were about a dozen of us and we chugged through it in true American fashion, thanks to Chris for holding the microphone by my guitar because it was too heavy for the clip on the stand. I think we sounded pretty decent over all, but there was simply no comparing our song to what we had just heard from the congregation there. We heard a variety of some neat locally flavored music, but also a surprising number of classic American pop worship songs, with most of the lyrics in Creole, I think. Once the band dropped out, though, is when the music really happened. 200 Haitians singing "How Great is Our God" in Creole completely a cappella, and a dozen of us white folk sometimes singing along in English. It was so incredibly moving, to the point of tears, to see how genuinely these people worshipped. Many of them didn't have amazing pitch, but
it
didn't
matter.
We have a lot to learn from these people.
It's like Mike put it today, "These kids are playing around in broken luggage for hours, and our kids have every toy under the sun, and they still get bored."
Granted, it's a different world. A different culture. What I'm suggesting is not that we all learn to live on nothing, although I'm sure there could be some good to come from learning what we really NEED versus what we want, and furthermore to figure out why we want it at all. What I AM suggesting is that we learn how to be content with what we have, no matter what that is. We could learn to live on what we DO have, instead of demanding more and more from everyone and everything around us.
On a lighter note, I got to meet a pretty cool cat (the expression for "dude", not the animal) named Clerice. He's learning how to play guitar and it sounds like later tonight I'll get to show him a few more of my "how to play guitar well enough for non-musicians to think you're good" tricks. (hush up, all you musicians...the muggles don't know you can't play any worship song in the world either in the key of G or E by simply using a capo...let them continue in their bliss.) Oh yeah, and we had some pretty good soccer exchanges too. So far I've played soccer every day I have been here, and this makes me very happy.
Going to miss the friendly guys and gals that left today. Wish we could have had more time to get to work with and know them. But there's plenty of neat people here still, and still plenty of work to do.
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