Haiti times

The past two weeks we have been building a water catchment tank and teaching the students here at the training school on how to do this. Teaching is a little difficult with us talking in English then a rough translation to French/Creole -- think mad gab with charades, hand gestures and constant interruptions. 

In between we have been sweatin it out in the hot Haitian sun to finish tank project number #1. just up the road. Sometimes when your mixing cement, the sun gets to you and makes you laugh deliriously at Dax' fat hand because he got stung by a bee, or the fact that you forgot to pack more than one more of shorts so therefore your forced to wear Asha's basketball shorts which are falling off and the kind and generous children are trying to pull your pants up for you while your shoveling sand.

But don't worry you'll never be lonely with not much water to spare after a hot day of work you need to find your shower buddy, head across the street, haul some water out of the cistern (basically an underground tank) and spend some one on one showering romantically by headlamp.

On a good night, the stars will be out and as you lay in your tent on the roof with the 10 other people that live up there you can talk about the beauty and disaster of Haiti. But on the a slightly bad night it might start raining so hard you decide to come inside but on the way down the ladder you slip and fall into a massive bucket and totally soak your pants. Then the Haitian cook that you woke up by falling will come out and be mad at you for wetting your pants no matter how hard you try and explain that you didn't actually have THAT kind of an accident.

This past weekend we woke up early and piled into the back of the truck and drove for 3 hours through the polluted, dusty, dirty, city of Port-au-Prince to a seaside town where us 'blanc's' bought mangos and bananas for lunch and bargained for a boat. We waded through the garbage on the beach and carried out bags somewhat successfully over our heads to our sea-gypsi-red boat to sail across the Caribbean sea to our hideaway beach for the day. The island is like black and white to the capital city in which we currently all live. It's crazy to think such a stunning place is so close.

The lady who took us in her boat said she had a restaurant on the other side, which turned out to be a tin shack, but don't be disappointed because small children kept arriving in their makeshift canoes with chairs and old-school desks. A crazy man screamed at us most of the time but on the plus side he didn't punch Reid which we thought he might. We got to soak up the rays and relax in the sea, wash our bananas and stuff our faces full of mangos.

This week we are preparing to split into three teams and head to different locations to install tanks and offer medical clinics. One team will head to a large tent city which is craazzzzzzzzy, another team to a remote town and I will be headed to an island off Haiti with a small team via our boat which Bernard ensures me 60/40% won't sink. Stay tuned.