A week later…2 days before school opening

It’s been a week since I wrote the previous two posts. I just didn’t have any opportunity in which time and internet collided. So – it’s Saturday, October 09, 2010. 8 PM. I’m sitting outside our house, listening to awful music from some party near by that will probably keep me awake at night and….. using wireless internet! I’m proud to announce the arrival of the 20^th century to Renaissance Village in Haiti! (21^st century coming soon to a theatre near you). 

School opens Monday so naturally it’s been a very very busy week. Tasks for this week included distributing over 3000 books, 300 T-shirts and backpacks to the kids who are planned to start school (done), arranging the classes (partial. We’ll try to finish tomorrow. Missing some chairs), finishing construction (roof on the second building was put today, but there’s still a lot of work to do. We may start inside a construction site), preparing the teachers (we did a best effort. Most teachers spent a lot of time today preparing and decorating their classes), decorating the school (a real painter. Not us. beautiful outcome. Almost done. Will attach pics once done), and some other logistics.

Parents in 'back to school' meeting

School almost ready....

In between we used our Israeli connections to ask the Magen David Adom representative in the general hospital in PaP to come check some of the village handicapped kids. They have a very nice rehabilitation center there, but the opportunity to spend a day outside the city plus a little begging did the trick.

We have a lot of follow-up for that. They all need more attention, physical therapy and new chair. We got an epileptic boy money for an EEG(using connections in a health related organization). Now trying to get finance for medication.

We packed 20000 water bags into a room since we don’t have water at the school yet

a lot of heavy lifting...

And… making our home a little more pleasant. Inbal made shelves and…. I helped J

First time for everything

Outcome

Today in the morning, we moved a big tent to be inside the school compound. We asked some other Israelis to come for a sleepover and help out. Moving the tent turned out to be much easier than anticipated, but we enjoyed the company.

The tent we moved..

Besides that we moved some stuff for the school, went to a near by village to copy some documents (I drove. Very scary), had a meeting with the security folks in the village about security for the school compound and had a visit from French embassy representatives that want to send 4 French volunteers to live here and help out. Plus the usual communication with the people in the village.All in all an easy 12 hour work-day that allows me to sit comfortably in the evening and blog.

Viva la internet.