Communication

So, additionally to being frustrated about language and communication issue, trying to see where I can help with the school, what the community needs and adjusting to everything here, there are some surprises.

Tuesday evening, sitting in the office in the city, waiting for a car to take us back to the village. One of the sponsors of the project arrives at the office and is planning to video an infomercial the next day. Being the most qualified to show people the real Haiti (or alternatively, being without any important plans for the next day – you choose whichever seems more reasonable) we volunteered to accompany the photographer and show him around. Got some rubble/tent shots (very easy. Don’t need to look hard when in PAP)

,   some photos of our teachers training

 and went back “home” to get some school construction and cute kids photos. We called in advance to say we’re coming so that people are not surprised. We have A LOT of communication related mismatches here, so we didn’t even attempt to make the call. The project manager from the office called a committee representative to let him know.



surprise!



Not all kids made it into the photo...

After the initial shock, we took the kids to a parade around the town which should be excellent for publicity even if not really related to building a school.

parade

Communication is more than just language. One of my highest priorities is to at least identify when we’re agreeing with people where each party in the conversation understands totally different things.

The School

So – our organization is building a school. The construction is going on in full speed, although the roof seems to be a few days away at any given point. Toilets are progressing. Electricity is not mandatory for the opening. There are quite a few kids registered and assigned to classes. Although we still get additional requests from people that missed the very last deadline. Teachers are in the second week of teacher training. School year officially opens in 10 days.

Rumors are that the Haitian government will not let us open in time because the schools that were destroyed in the earthquake are not operational yet and it will not be fair towards the kids that are supposed to go to them. Seems that instead of “leave no child behind” the motto here is “let not child progress”.

The School

Food update: The office is working with an international organization to try and get food for the kids in school. If we are approved and fulfill all their requirements we will get rice, beans and oil.

Daily Routine

Our apartment has two bedrooms (one for each) and a kitchen/dining/living room. I usually get up quite early in the morning (yep. Read again.) and have some quiet time before the day really starts. Sometimes we get a driver to take us to the city for meetings or just as a break. Other times we stay around and try to do stuff around the village (visit kids with problems, talk to people about not throwing trash in the streets, etc).

my room

We have a cook that is doing her best to cook healthy vegetarian food. She was surprised with the veggie part, but accepted this as part of the white person craziness. The real breakdown came when we asked her not to use margarine as the core ingredient of the food. We were rewarded by a week of rice and beans. At the end of the week when we finally had a translator with us we found out that when we said not to buy too much food because it gets spoiled (see electricity in the next paragraph) she understood that we dislike anything we gave as an example. For example fruit. Besides that we have another woman coming once a week to manually do laundry. It actually comes out clean if you know what you’re doing. Which she does.

Electricity – close followers of this blog may have noticed an occasional complaint about electricity. A recap:
- First few days: Generator. Very noisy at night. Keeps running out of fuel.
- Installed inverter + batteries. Bliss for a few days. Open Generator for a few hours. Then have a couple of days of electricity. This new setup disconnected the A/C, but we had fans and were happy.
- Inverter started causing issues. Generator stopped working.
- Hot.
- People came to connect us to the electricity. Disconnected both inverter and Generator. Said they will be back in the afternoon. Never saw them again.
- HOT. Dark. Candles. Going to sleep early.
- Reconnected Generator. Doesn’t work. Replaced it.
- Today: knock on wood: sitting at noon with the fan on battery power.

Committee

Working with the village committee continues to be an important part of our daily routine. They dropped by unannounced yesterday evening to discuss some things about the school uniforms and school plans.

Thought you might enjoy a picture of our front “porch” J

Road to Leogane

Last week we went on a trip to visit some Israelis that volunteer in Leogane. Leogane was hurt a lot from the earthquake but it is not as populated as PAP so I think that all in all the damage and human life loss is smaller. As preparation to the really despairing details of PAP, I’m attaching some photos of the road to Leogane.  

(pause. Water pump putting water inside house instead of on the roof. No electricity in our house today. Totally lost line of thought….8 hours later, continuing in an air-conditioned office, decided to practice story telling by photos).

This house is not related to the earthquake..

road side market


<><><>

<><><>

traffic



getting water

Standard street (rather empty)

street side

a small, unorganized camp

<><><><><><>

<>

street/market





Beach

Throughout the week people kept telling us how lucky we are to go to the beach on the weekend. “The beach” is an area with some hotels and “beach houses” that the more fortunate Haitians keep as weekend getaways.


We’ve been here since yesterday and have yet to see anyone else in the water or the shore. An ocean for ourselves. Water is calm, warm and rather perfect. The area is amazing, with grass and trees and lots of shade (one of the amazing things about the rest of Haiti is the lack of shade in a place where it’s most needed). Even the fact that there is no running water (but we should have a shower back home) and that electricity is on-off doesn’t take away from the peace.

And… as I wrote the word peace, the friendly rooster made sure I didn’t forget to mention him. Apparently, the “rooster calling out in the morning” doesn’t apply in Haiti. They are noisy all day long.

House yard

An ocean to ourselves

Fully charged and ready for another week. I will try to send out these weekly posts when I get home.

Writing this blog

Note: there wasn't internet when I got home. A day later posting from the office.

Rosh Hashanah

We celebrated the Jewish new year in an Italian police camp in PAP. They are hosting a delegation of Israeli police man, so they hosted the dinner as well. We were planning to get there really early since it was our official day of “nothing is working, wonder what else will break” and we wanted to get out of the village. In the morning we discovered that our water was finished. The day before we met a Cuban guy involved in the construction of our neighborhood. We called his English speaking engineer that assured us that the Cuban will be dropping in the afternoon with the key to open the door for the pump which is supposed to provide water. (3 days (without running water in the house) later we got a truck that filled our tanks. The Cuban never showed up and stopped answering the phone). Then in the afternoon it started raining so hard that our living room was immediately flooded with water. The mud got the better of my clean pants. So, we weren’t really surprised that it took 3 hours to get there (see the traffic post). But the dinner itself was OK with a strange (but expected) assortment of Jews from the various organizations (Spain, Guatemala, US and most of the Israelis around) and the hosting Italian cops which were very hospitable.

Guatemala UN, Italian Police Chief, UN deputy Chief, Israeli embassador celebrating the new year.