Fresh Gingerbread

Well another week has whisked by so I suppose it’s time to write some more about Julie life in Haiti.  We shall begin with the weekend.  Saturday adventures included driving 1.5 hours or so north of Port-au-Prince to a beach called Onuagu (or something of that nature) for a posh beach experience with five other volunteers from various organizations.  Most beaches in Haiti are private and have some sort of entrance fee.  Depending on the ritziness of the beach that fee may include lunch.  Ours appeared to be that of a wealthy vacation spot for locals and thus included nothing in the entrance fee aside from a grass mat to put on our wood lawn chair.  What a gorgeous joint though (see picture below).  We began our day at the beach with a jolly fine swim.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned the amount in trash in Haiti once or twice yet but it deserves a third time if not.  There is heaps and piles of it here….everywhere…..so you can imagine my surprise when we arrived to our beach destination and it was clean as a whistle.  Rest assured I was quickly comforted by a plastic bottle floating by us as we swam out into the ocean.  And another.  And then one more.  It appears Haiti has a undiscovered sea urchin which I call the “bottlefish” which is constantly breaching.  

I think you all know of my fear of underwater creatures and unlike others who prefer clear water, my motto is the muddier the better (less to see).  Needless to say not ten minutes after we’d swam out did my had graze across something most definitely squishy.  It took three more of us to encounter squishy experiences before we realized we’d found some jellyfish.  Thus ended my interest in anymore swimming and I made my way to shore as the rest of the folks goggled and googled at the jellyfish floating by until a few more got stung and then followed me in suit.  I believe I touched the top of my jellyfish and got away sans stings.  The others weren’t so lucky but their stings were fairly minor.  

I am slowly and surely finding my way around the engineering world in Haiti.  It is difficult to combine engineering design I did some 3-4 years ago in Seattle for building design with Haitian design techniques (and no design code) to build the safest structure.  Did I mention I left ALL my code and design books at home?  Really racking the long term memory for guidance.  <WARNING: Enginerd talk about to occupy a brief spell of this blog>.  Not only does one need to design for an earthquake in Seattle or California, we also must look at hurricane wind loads from Florida.  So you have to design a lateral system that can sustain seismic forces with their confined reinforced masonry system (which is kinda impossible to calculate in the same fashion we do in the USA and is more designed using percentages of things) and then try to design a roof that wont become a giant airplane wing during a cyclone.  That all sounds fine and dandy and fairly simple but it’s really quite the opposite.  Especially with 2 weeks on the ground in Haiti.  And then if all that isn’t complicated enough, you have to find a way to build ALL the above by hand.  And when I mean by hand, that does NOT include power tools OR electricity.  To exhaust the severity of this, another good example is the fact that they make gravel by hand here.  Some dude sits on a pile of already chiseled gravel with a hammer beating larger rocks into smaller ones.  Even getting water to a site can be quite obnoxious as some sites are up on mountain tops with only a little foot access path.  In addition some sites require my best 4-wheeling skills to get to in a little Tacoma truck (most days are spend with my heart in my throat as I drive to said sites).  It boggles my mind getting a truck up there to carry all the cement bags, water, and rebar.  I think we all have a lot to learn about intensive labor from Haiti.  The design part is easy.  It’s the building part that requires the engineering.  All of these problems are typically fairly simply resolved when it’s a house.  

Of course that would make my life easy so James (Calpoly professor) left me a huge community center with a clear span of 28’ and 50’ long that I have to find a specially fabricated roof for.  This week has been spent meeting with a Swiss engineer (did I mentioned a fine looking young man?  My boss has decided she’s going to play matchmaker) who had metal trusses specially fabricated for a school he designed.  I also met with a dutch family that packed up and moved to Haiti some 30 years ago and is now the mass producer of wood trusses for Haitians.  Only glitch is their largest truss span is 8 feet.  Whooops!  Luckily they have done ONE building in the past with a span roughly the same as mine which they had a truss company in the USA engineer.  And they had the truss calc sheet for it.  Phheew!  Now we just need to get Haitian engineers who’ve never worked with wood trusses to install 300 lb trusses correctly (using only manpower of course).  Hah!  Should be entertaining.  This is the most combobulated engineering feat I’ve done yet.  Will definitely be videoing that installation.  Ok enough nerd talk.  

I definitely don’t have a shortage of driving stories here seeing as that is what I spend majority of my time doing.  Unlike many of the workers in my office I am lucky to have the opportunity to really experience Haiti and all it’s poverty as I visit site after site of houses in need of repair day by day.  And my Creole is improving!!!  Ok, not really.  But I try anyways every time I have a spare moment in the car with another young Haitian who is very very patient and helpful with my dilapidated attempt at his language (especially when I bring crackers for us to munch on).  I am getting more and more motivated to improve so I can order fresh gingerbread made daily down the street from the guest house from a lady off the street.  Wow, how did I get from poverty to gingerbread so fast?  My dinner tonight consisted of a can of tuna fish.  Maybe that’s why?  But I digress….so poverty..yes…there’s a lot of that here.  But the nice thing is majority of people aren’t deathly skinny or really too skinny at all.  Just the dogs (SNIFF).  It is still astounding however the mass of people who’s homes are so fractured that they are simply un-repairable by our organization’s budget.  Rebar (that is supposed to be cast within concrete) has been exposed to rain for so long it’s of the same consistency of charred wood but weaker.  

My amazement most days however is how the 4 or 5 or 6 Haitians I visit these sites with each day can find each house with ease.  I mean these houses are basically a maze off the main route.  Driving only gets you so far.  Next you must wind your way up concrete or dirt foot paths among many many many houses (most in desperate need of repair) right and then left and then two more rights and so on.  By the time we arrive at the house they may as well have just blindfolded me and turned me around in several circles and airlifted me into the site.  Forget orienting myself.    But they don’t miss a lick and hit each house on the nose!  My favorite part is watching 4 or 5 fully grown Haitians cram into the back of my Tacoma in those ½ back cabs or whatever they are called with the little fold down chairs that we in America think getting one person in the back is achievement.  Even better, I found out yesterday one of the lady’s crammed in the back is pregnant and bumping and bouncing right along with the rest to our destination.  She darn near delivered prematurely that day as we were waiting for a street corner man to fix a flat I got driving to one house and had to drop her off early.  I think by the end of this adventure even when someone tells me Hitler is still alive and they’ve solved global warming I’ll barely bat an eye.  Each day’s surprise is more interesting than the last.  One things for sure; I sure can’t complain of a dull minute in Haiti.  

Wow, excuse those last few paragraphs.  I was all over the plate on that one.  Don’t think Mrs. Belgard my 9^th grade AP Language Arts teacher would be very proud of that last paragraph structure.  Probably cause there wasn’t any.  You all still following?  I’m lost.  Well I suppose that’s all the news I can report this week.  Life is pretty chill in the evenings with my absence of any social life besides pilates with the mosquitoes out on the back porch (these sessions are consequentially quite short).  On a side note for those of you who don’t know I’ve accepted a job with Boeing as a product review engineer in Everett, WA.  Not sure when my start date will be but my hiring manager is very supportive of my time here in Haiti as long as I give a full report upon my arrival so we’re still working out all the details for a start date.  I’m super stoked at my new position and location as my best friend Elizabeth also just got a job in the same factory.  I will be working on all parts of the 767 (I think) finding fixes for glitches during construction.  Basically I’ll be climbing through airplanes all day with my measuring tap.  Plus this means trail running at lunch for my first 100 miler as there are trails right next to the office!  How perfect is that?  I’ll just be jumping right into that training after not having run for over half a year and recovering from a stress fracture in my knee.  No prob.  Peace of cake. 

My view from the water.  The Jellyfishes view too little did I know. 

Some of the people I have been working with.  The man in blue is Doniel.  He is the patient creole helper. 

To the right is the beneficiary for this house.  His wheelchair is useless as his house is on a mountain top and requires some serious hiking by the average two pod man to get to. 

Ok all well it’s been fun.   Excuse the randomness of this blog.  I’m gonna blame it on my 25% deet bug spray that I apply more often then lotion.  Till next time may you have a happy-happy and a merry-merry!