Our first day on the worksite was great. We left our compound in Port au Prince around 7:30 AM and the drive takes about an hour and a half. Traffic inside the city is absolutely terrible, and the potholes are rampant. Although it’s a long drive, it’s a good opportunity to observe what’s going on around the city because we ride around in a pickup truck or something called a tap-tap, which is a pickup truck with a topper and bench seats.
As we see more and more of the country, I realize how much worse off Haiti is than other poor countries that I’ve seen in Africa or even El Salvador. It’s not necessarily the countryside — they have running water in the countryside, which helps, but inside the city, there is filth absolutely everywhere. Mounds of trash a heaped beside the streets and sewers are clogged with it, so the stench of waste fills the air. Often I can smell smoke from the burning of this trash, which is seemingly the best way to get rid of it.
We’ve had a lot of good conversations amoungst team members about how the Haitian people can still have hope that things will get better. After all, before the earthquake last year, things weren’t good to start off with. It’s amazing to me that everyone here is so resilient and hard-working that they continue to plug away at improving their infrastructure and living conditions, which is a daunting task. Before Rob and Karla left, they did say how bad things were right after the earthquake, so some of the progress is apparent.
Anyway, back to the first day of work…the worksite is a village of about 25,000 called Balan. It’s almost surreal because the village looks like it’s in the desert. The soil is arid and the only plants that can withstand conditions are cacti or thorny trees. Outside the village there is a school which was built by Jesuit Priests. There will be both a primary and secondary school, but the construction for the secondary school is yet underway.
Our project the first day was to dig footers for a small house. This house was 16′ 4″ square. To put it in perspective, my bedroom is larger than this. Nonetheless, this will be a tremendous improvement for those living under tarps or metal shanties and will withstand future earthquakes since it has a solid foundation and will be made from rebar-reinforced concrete. We’re building the houses for families who have moved to the countryside after the earthquake to stay with their extended family members. It’s really neat to see the seed of a new community which will offer a fresh start for thousands of families, and most importantly, their children.
By the end of day one, we had dug (and picked) the 16′ 4″ square footers 20″ deep. Part of the team also worked on cleaning up a guesthouse where future volunteers will be able to stay. Our work in the sun was grueling, but still rewarding to be able to step back and see what we’d accomplished together: the essence of ‘slow and steady’ progress.
By the end of the day when we headed home we were exhausted and fell asleep early.
