Settling In

Well, patience has definitely become our specialty as we continue to wait for things - tasks, schedules, routines - to develop... Meanwhile we're trying to be as proactive as possible without knowing the language well enough to really converse, or having a car to get around. We've been looking into getting motos, and have been spending some time each day to learn the language (actually the most simple to learn that i've encountered, its understanding them thats impossible), and i'm finding i'm getting a bit lazy as far as settling with the little english that they do know, and feeling good about 'helping them' learn english, when really I need to be making a strong effort to learn their language, so i can speak in their culture.

The past few days, while we haven't felt like we've got much done, it's been hardly uneventful. In our lack of assigned tasks, tyler and I have began to wander a bit more. This has led us to a few awesome places, one being Child Hope orphanage which is right down the stinking street from where we're living! Child Hope is the organization Tyler and I had been talking with for several weeks about coming and helping, until three days prior to our departure they said that 'they didn't need us'... enter esperanza, who on saturday, two days before we left, said we could come help. Anyway, I could literally throw a rock from our house to theirs its that close! We got to talking with some of the volunteers there, played some basketball with the boys, then went home all gitty at the prospect of being able to come and hang out with the kids when we have downtime. Sooooo I got an email that night saying they wanted to talk with us tomorrow about the possibility of teaching there on a temporary basis while they find more long term personell! Ha! So... tyler and I have a second get together with them today to discuss starting on monday. Hahaha.. and you should see these classrooms, with TINY teacher desks.. we decided we're going to go all out if they want us.. suits, pocket protectors, bi-focals.. Don't worry people... the highest grade we'd be teaching would be a 7th grade equivalent, and just reading, writing, arithmetic. CNN is at the orphanage for a few days as we speak gathering content for a documentary they're going to be airing on this place (it is really sooo cool.. www.childhope.org). I'll keep you posted here as we know it..

So then two days ago, a day after our Child Hope discovery, we decided to wander onto the UN headquarters and look for a meeting we were meant to attend for esperanza regarding the cooperated effort to distribute food packs. Anyway, what an experience! We pretty much walked right on in past security (apparently pasty white skin gets you places in this country), and were free to wander pretty much wherever we wanted.. i say pretty much because at one point we may have gone a bit too far, and an arab soldier made sure we understood this. Ha.. While this place seemed like chaos defined, it was pretty sweet being a bystander and just observing globalism at its finest.. ha. We probably saw at least a dozen nations represented on the base.. and the arab guy, not sure exactly where he was from, he just said in scratchy english that he was arab.. creepy. Anyway, if you haven't figured it by now, the meeting was cancelled, hence the reason we wandered around for what seemed like a few hours.

We tried to go back the next day for another meeting, but the traffic would have put la rush hour to shame as we turned what should have been a 7 minute drive into 45min, making us already 30 min late, so we decided to turn around. We TRIED to leave earlier, but again, communication is key and our driver doesn't speak but a lick of english.

Yesterday was pretty crazy as we've since turned our home into a hostel for NGO workers... we have two volunteers from Rainbow International (a team of surgeons that goes into diseaster areas after everyone has left and operates for free on anyone that needs it) who are evaluating hospitals for future involvement. Also late last night we had two guys from another water filter company come by and are going to be shacking it here for the next two weeks or so. This is so cool! One of the guys is the inventor of the technology (totally different from the other water purification i spoke about earlier). They brought 10 or so filters... now I only know a little about these systems, but they're large weighing 900lbs, and can provide 5,000 gallons of clean water down to .02 microbes, also cleaning viruses (key). Great stuff! I think he's working with GE on this project, or their funding it. I still have more to learn here (duh)... Excited to learn/help though.

In my down time I've also been working to understand the coordinated effort to begin excavation. I've talked with Catepillar logistics, as well as their philanthropic department, and then their head guy in Miami who is responsible for the efforts on the ground in Haiti, Juan. They've donated a butt-load of money, but only 5 pieces of equipment! And sure, they don't own the equipment being a manufacturer, but certainly have relationships with dealers to move equipment. They have one dealer in Haiti, and are running steep discounts on rentals, and then donated 5 pieces for two months at no charge. They're not interested in getting good press out of any efforts to help, they just want to help. They re-routed a shipment of loaders and excavators that was meant to unload in panama, to the DR, and trucked them to PAP. Since this they've been granted access to Seaboard, a port to the north, and will hope to get equipment in through there. As it seems, there isn't any sort of activity on the ground as far as excavating goes, and the purpose of my calling them was in imagining how powerful (from a hope standpoint, as well as marketing) it would be to run a fleet of 50 Cats through the streets of PAP making unbearable amounts of noise, clearing all the crap that right now is being broken and moved with nothing but hammers and shanty wheelbarrows. Long story short, this lead to a conversation with CHF (the largest NGO in haiti), who has a pretty close relationship with CAT and is currently occupying the majority of their equipment. The point in calling them is to figure a way to get my good ol' buddy Branton down here moving concrete around, and they might just have a spot for him! Ha.. oh man.. branton in a tractor powering through the streets of PAP.. thats hope if i've ever seen it!

So, as you can imagine, it seems that finally the storm is forming over the hills and we're about to see a load of work sent our way, whether its setting up water filtration systems and learning how to install them after the GE guys leave, teaching our classes of 6-7 each, continue to distribute the loads of food packs we have coming in soon, or just simply wander around UN headquarters, we're sure to moving! Whohoo! Oh, the storm i was speaking about metaphorically, but its also quite literal as the rains started up about two days ago, turning the tent cities into disease infested mud cities. With the rain came a whole new wave of desperation and helplessness... please pray the rain would hold off, and that the people in the areas most affected by the rain would use their resoursefulness to get out, make better tents, or something so they aren't sloshing in 3 inches of mud. Gahh..

Thats gotta be it for now...

More as it comes!

Shalom,

luke