Busy week of building

July 22nd, 2010 by Don McMahon

Push to the end..

FYI .. a few people got in touch with me about the building work that I am doing from reading this. If you are interested is seeing pictures please add me on facebook search for macddm@gmail.com . There are lots of pictures there.

Its been a busy but great couple of days. Sunday I relaxed and finally was able to enjoy solid food again. The night before we went to Cap Lanmandu for dinner and the most amazing storm water lighting up the sky across from us. It was pitch dark and then every lightning strike would illuminate the entire bay of Jacmel. Cap sit on a cliff so it an amazing view. On Sunday I went back to Cap Lanmandau Hotel and swam in the pool and and enjoyed the sun. I sat around the pool and hung out with my friends, Talked to a really nice guy from Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief named ray. Now I’m guessing that Ray is LATE sixties..maybe early Seventies.. We sat around talked Sports, Haiti, and talked about favorite types and places to get BBQ. I hung out a little with Salvation Army guys who are based at Cap and we swapped Haitian nightmare building stories. I know I have said it before but Salvation Army International relief is an impressive operation. SA is wrapping up because this building phase is done.. in September they are starting back up. I think they are would be a great group to stay in

Monday there was last bit of work for Salvation Army. it was just a little bit of light roof work but we had a good group people and it was nice to take it a little easier. Monday afternoon Joy and I met Claude our Haitian Security Guard and the best dude in Haiti too look at project. In addition to being the nicest Guy ever, Claude works all night guarding the Second House (Roger), he uses his money to go to school, and he manages a foundation that has a school near Cayes Jacmel (about 20 minutes speeding like hell away from here). The foundation’s school operates out of his Aunts house and often it gets very hot for the students in the living room/classroom. There are about 30 children from the community that needed an additional building that was out of the very hot house… So we went to assess the program and look at putting up some thing about the size of T shelter with a masonry type floor. We were greeted by a group of extremely well behaved children that Stood up and Sang for us. Claude had us sit in special chairs at the front of the class and talk to the students there. It was awesome. At several points in my work down here in Haiti I have been frustrated by parts of Haitian Culture.. and it is easy to become cynical after lots of negative experiences.. It can be annoying when 20 people watch you work but never help.. or don’t help their neighbors.. Or there was the time we were giving out vitamins to children in the Chaos camp.. and I there was one year old baby that obviously needed some more nutrition and I gave the mother a gummy vitamin to give the baby and she knew it was for the baby and she put it in her mouth and gave me a shit eating grin.. (I kinda flipped my shit and told her in my extremely limited Creole that Mom didn’t love her baby.. and shamed her into doing the right thing and the baby got the vitamin.) but of all those Negative experience.. Claude and some of the people that I was involved in Shelter Building really prove there is a point to this. If there is ever going to be Change here it has to be in the next generation coming up.. adults don’t change much.. but the children here are so amazing and needing of love and Claude foundation is a great example of the potential for what can happen here. It is a small group people trying to give children additional educational instruction outside of normal school times.

On Tuesday we started the Wood Shop project that Jaan and I wrote up to the GVN foundation during my first two weeks. Through the course of the day Jon from Scotland, Will from Oregon, Klara from Boulder, Jessica and Jeremy are brothers and sisters from LA, and Emily all helped to frame, square and level up the Work Shop. Hopefully on Friday afternoon we will be able to put the metal roof on it. Tuesday night we had planned to have a party but we all were so tired we fell asleep.

On Wednesday Gracie gave me 800 dollars to go by all the materials for the rest of workshop and the Community Pavilion that GVN Foundation funded. In the morning I went to price material at a different Hardware store past the Airport run by a Haitian named Nester ( I generally refer to this place as Haitian Home Depot) My new friends will and Klara and rode out there then we went to the market in the morning to buy some more clothes and some sandals. We got lost, had sabibon’s Went through the meat market, I found a Prana (a really cool outdoor gear brand) shirt just at a street stand.. my size and everything my new favorite shirt and I finally got that pair of sandals I’ve need for about a month. Later in the Day I met Joy at Mateka (the hardware store in the market) and spent all my money for the two projects. I got back to the Compound and the Wood Shop was all set up. Jon and some of the crew there had completely organized it and rebuild the work shop table. It is really starting to look like something and hopefully it will keep growing..
Wednesday afternoon it started downpour.. a ton. About and hour in to the rain the truck with materials arrived and we all had to rush to unload the materials for the Pavilion and Wood Shop and keep the materials for Claude on the truck for delivery out to Cayes jacmel. I decided to work on replacing the water pump in Roger House and found out there was new problem.. the water had gone from low to no pressure now. Dinner had to be served at the House because of the rain. The Spagetti was much more popular with the 770 gourde or twenty dollar size of parmesan cheese that I bought. I may start asking for donations..

Today we worked on Claudes’ project and got the rock wall .. tomorrow floor.. and right now I am going for a swim..