Toothbrush ants

Alas my first week long training workshop was not a complete failure!  Actually I believe it went quite well.  I’m not sure who learned more; my students or me.  What a blast it was to see the results of my teaching visually before my eyes in a building.  After day one in the classroom the remainder of the week was spent starting construction of a classroom for a church community just outside of Port-au-Prince.  I believe I spoke about this in my past blog.  Well the remaining three days were filled with adventure.  Thursday’s adventure consisted of a flat tire and waiting at the hardware store for 2.5 hours for materials.  I arrived on site at 1pm.  Class ended at 2pm.  Whoops!  Sue mentioned that the most stressful aspect of these workshops for James when he was here was the fact that nothing goes as planned.  I agree.  No one has plans.  And if there is a plan no one really follows it.  Plans are more like weak guidelines.  And it’s not like in the states where flexibility is defined as having plans but if things go wrong we simply replan in a jolly fashion.  Here even if you have a plan and something comes up you can’t replan if something goes awry because the person or organization you are attempting to replan with has no plans.  Or concept of planning.  Forward thinking isn’t even an afterthought here.  I tried this the first day when we were arriving late.  I mentioned to my translator that even though we didn’t have the materials to start building, the masons could start carting blocks back to the building site.  This thought was so silly to him he didn’t even bother translating it.  

I’m learning that Haitian mentality is how can I get rich fast and not have to work a day in my life.  Haitians don’t like to work.  The goal is to become educated and get an office job so you can sit behind closed doors and not really do anything besides receive your paycheck.  They don’t realize that you have to work pretty gosh darn hard to make a good living.  And that’s not to say that most Haitians don’t work pretty gosh darn hard.  I’d say they work crazy hard.  But they don’t want to.  And they don’t see that as success.  Success is finding a way in life where you can bask in your pool with your martini ordering others to do your work.  In the states being unemployed is, let’s face it people, pretty embarrassing.  Even if you are receiving unemployment or another source of financial support being unemployed is not desired.  Even retired people find a job because we just like to work.  Wow, as I write this I’m beginning to see how weird minded we are.  Or obsessed with work?  Hmmm….Please note I am not talking about official employment here.  Being a stay-at-home mom or dad is a full time job in my eyes.  But the point I’m trying to make is Americans (well at least most anyways) like to work.  Maybe this is because for the most part people’s career selection is actually what they enjoy and is a large piece of who they are.  

I was talking to a Haitian man the other day.  We met for drinks on his way home and he said “I had a really bad day.  I worked today”.  Now this guy is a very successful business man who lives in a nice home and owns his own car.  So he’s financially very stable.  Basically the equivalent to middle class in the US and yet he’s unhappy.  He doesn’t like his job because he was forced into business rather than pursuing his ideal job as an architect or construction manager.  These jobs don’t make any money so Haitians steer their children away from them.  Even if it leads to discontent.  But in the US we stress obtaining a degree doing what you “love”.  As I write I realize that it’s not only in Haiti they do this.  Ok here we go with the stereotyping people.  Bear with me.  Asians commonly veer towards high paying careers revolving around computers.  Middle Easterners (even women who will forever be stay-at-home moms) choose medical, computer and engineering paths regardless of a passion for it.  So why in the US do we get a PhD in History and teach at a middle school and are totally content?  Is it because we didn’t grow up in poverty (and people, poverty in the US is NOT poverty) and have absolutely no concept of what it would be like to go back.  Maybe when you grow up with nothing maybe it’s more common to shoot for the absolute top to get as far away from the bottom as you can to avoid falling back in the hole?   I realize these are drastic categorizations/stereotypes/assumptions (whatever) and there’s several carrots in the apple basket but makes you think huh?  

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking of what is actually best for Haiti and how to instate sustainability here rather than just feed and clothe people for the rest of the universe’s existence.  NGOs and the UN are the reason food is at an obnoxiously high level (you won’t get a plate of food at a US equivalent restaurant here for any less than $15 and the standard is closer to $20.  Most people make $3 a day) but we can’t exactly pull out now.  People have become too dependent.  So the #1 solution is providing education and jobs maybe?  Don’t hire an expat engineer.  Train a Haitian engineer.  Don’t bring in a group of US construction workers.  Train Haitian labors and hire them.  But the complication comes with the will to work hard.  And I don’t really think that’s in the mindset here.  At least professionally.  Or if it is here it’s a far cry from the “Haitian Dream”.  

In the engineering side of things it seems that they kinda just don’t care.  Some do.  Most don’t.  Some of the problem lies in engineers that were educated 50 years ago and haven’t really engineered since then (i.e. limited technical skills).  Another part of the problem lies in the “I don’t really give a sugar” because I have a home, wife, and car and you aren’t my close family so why should I care about you or making the house you’re building structurally adequate when I can build cheap and pocket more mullah.    Along the same lines (but the reverse) is “This engineer is my brother so he wouldn’t do any less than quality work and I will use him in all the house construction in our village”.  Never mind the fact that the man never went to engineering school and that all the houses he built fell down during the earthquake.  That was due to voodoo not poor construction!  Muuhuh?    Another cultural aspect is the fear of offending.  An engineer doesn’t exactly tell his brother, the mason, to tear down an entire wall because it’s constructed poorly.  Flip that around and you have the other situation.  Engineers come out to a site and make the mason tear everything down solely for power control.  What a mess!  We have all this in the US but the difference is we have a code to back people up.  

Ok I’m gonna take another site track.  If you’re lost please catch up cause this is some deep Julie thinking.  Opinions are gladly accepted.  The voodoo thing.  People are diehard Christians here yet polygamy is practiced regularly and voodoo is feared.  Even people who claim they won’t touch voodoo with a 100 foot stick still believe in it (or perhaps fear it).  So going out at night when people are possessed and turn into chickens (yes, exact words from a Haitian I was talking to and he wasn’t talking mentally.  He was talking literally.  This guy is a very advanced Haitian in his mental thought process and slightly Americanized as well) is avoided.  I came to realization that voodoo is Haitian’s way of defining the mentally handicapped or clinically ill.  Think about it.  If you saw a person walking down a street erupt into a tirade of seizures and you have a second grade education level (at best), my guess is diagnosing a case of epilepsy won’t exactly be the first thing that comes to mind.  Pretty fascinating stuff.  Too me.  I’ve probably bored your balls off.  Sorry.  What were we talking about?  Oh yeah my workshop.

So after two days of charades and using 2 French words with 3 Spanish words combined with 1 Creole word to complete a sentence I realized my need to have my translator come back.  So Friday consisted of a 3 hour review on site as I worked from the foundation up and reiterated all the things I’d taught them that week with visual demonstrations using their own work.  They asked super great questions and honestly we really learned together.  I stressed the importance of building how you know how to build and not trying to build like France or Nicaragua or Seattle, WA.  I also stressed that the building method in Haiti IS strong and it CAN resist earthquakes if done properly.  They taught me about what’s hard to find and the reasoning behind why they’ve switching to building the way they build (poorly).  

Saturday night I headed out dancing yet again but this time solo.  It’s actually more dangerous for me to pick up my friend and then drive her home (and then myself home) then just going alone.  I met my new found salsa instructor friend at the dance studio and we conversed back and forth; me butchering his language and him royally confusing me with his English.  You can imagine the conversation we had, especially with salsa music pumping in the background.  This time I took our Land Cruiser.  What a beast that thing is.  Best part is the chains that rattle against the back as you drive which closely resembles a tank or some sort of World War II military ambulance.  Anyways I called it an early night to get home at a reasonable hour.  

Sunday I was invited to a Haitian birthday party from one of the men I’ve been working with in a partner organization.  What a neat experience that was.  He is more in the upper middle class here in Haiti and lives high up in the mountains with 11 acres.  The cool thing is his house is so cute and reasonably sized and he has such a cute family and community.  There was a live band and another English speaker that was invited to the party and I had a blast.  Few Haitians approached us to meet us but that is to be expected.  Neither of us spoke great Creole so that was quite a barrier.   

Today I drank a coke that was bottled in Haiti that had some large chunk in it.  Instead of spitting it out since it was a gift from Pastor Yvon (and he was sitting right next to me) I simply swallowed it whole.  If I’m dead tomorrow you’re all my witnesses.  Sorry, totally random but I just remembered that.  I just can’t stop thinking about the thumb in the coke story that went around in junior high.  

This week has been spent returning to the school we are building to make field inspections.  I’m super excited because MCC I think is going to move toward hiring a Haitian Engineer to replace me when I leave.  I think that is definitely the best move for the next 3 years for sustainability.  I’ll be working with a few candidates in the next few months before I leave.  Another idea I had is taking a few block makers in the community where Pastor Yvon is to a testing facility.  We will break a few of their blocks so they can see themselves the strength of the block they are producing.  Then we will take them to a block factory and show how things are done there.  We’re calling it a field trip.  My idea is to try and work towards getting block makers on the street to adhere to correct block making since many many families are still buying these blocks to rebuild even though they are of poor quality.  Many of these block makers add SIKA product to their blocks to improve the quality.  I want to see how this affects the strength.  

In addition to the block maker field trip I am planning to visit 4 or 5 technical schools to see what they are teaching masons and engineers in their classes.  Should be interesting.  So I’m not really sure why I gave myself three more jobs on top of the ones MCC has given me while I’m here but I s’pose it’s cause I’m passionate about finding solutions that Haitians suggest, not how US or Canada, or wherever suggest.  My assumption is if they suggest it and we find that it’ll work, it’s more likely to stick and be done.  

Well I’m half way through my time here.  I feel that I’ve really adapted to Haiti.  I only stall the Tacoma once a week instead of twice a day on the steep hills here.  I have developed the bad-ass mean face as I walk around so people don’t bother me (advice given from one of our partners out in the country).  I know how to say food, sleep, and bathroom in Creole.  I think it’ll be quite a shock to move back home in December but I am incredibly excited for my new position at Boeing and to settle back into life where my heart is truly at.  Still, I’ll miss picking ants out of my toothbrush and following the cockroaches back to bed after a midnight bathroom run.  I will NOT miss the almond tree outside my window that gladly drops almonds on the land cruiser’s metal roof below.  Sounds like a gun shot and I swear I loose a year of my life every time it happens, which is daily.  Shoot, that’d make me what…….90 something right now?  I will also not miss sweating profusely each and every day.  I think my skin will not miss the deet I apply to it every day.  The grocery store is going to miss me though.  I keep them in business single handily with the amount of chocolate I purchase each week.  

World War II Ambulance (aka Land Cruiser).  She's a beast

My students during our workshop

How to make stirrups for tieing rebar. 

They all graduated!

Seat of the Land Cruiser.  Too funny when you're in salsa dancing outfit

Ok kids, that’s all for now.  Miss you all so very much.  I’m headed to the mountains this weekend for some hiking, an attempt at running on the ol’ knee, and some mad exploring!

Mmmmm....cow skin

Two words for you.  Goat’s blood.  Three more words for you.  I ate it.  Yup!  <Proud Smile>.  Sadly it was Manje but I felt since he’d already sacrificed himself for us (or a member of our Haitian staff had sacrificed him for us) I may as well make use of the…blood?  Needless to say it was kinda like escargot.  Very flavorful but the texture is far from palatable.  I’ll also have you know that I did infact eat mr. New arrival goat and I knew this because the meat was much softer.  One of our Haitian staff members educated me on how eating younger goats and meat is much tenderer so that is how I will know which goat I’m eating.  Manje was an old guy.  Apparently.  Other odd food items that can be recorded in the Julie book of fine-dining (or not so fine-dining in some cases) is cow’s skin. Love the cow meat here.  Skin, however, is a whole other ballgame.  I must not be 100% Haitian yet because my translator jumped out of his chair at my offer of cow skin to him including the piece I’d bitten off my tasting chunk from.  

So last week was met with the wedding weekend which evokes many stories.  First off, coordinating cars to the wedding was a bit of a headache (and that’s being kind).  At one point I got excited thinking we would get to take the limo.  Of course the limo here is the cattle truck which holds a heap load of people who sit on wood planks in a truckbed in the same orientation we would at the front of the bus facing each other (kinda like a limo?!?!).  Add an ice chest with some drinks and you’re there in my book!  Alas due to the fact that American’s and Canadians are born and bred to plan plan plan, rides were eventually found for everyone sans limo.  <Sad Face>.  

The wedding was gorgeous and very Americanly done.  It even started on time!  And only lasted 1.5 hrs!  WOW!  It was higher up the mountain where the air is cooler and a tad freer of polluting smog.  I think the most memorable thing in this wedding for me would be the assumingly French lady wearing her odd masquerade hat from the Rhett Butler and Scarlet era.  (See picture below).  It’s a tie between that or throwing rice at the bride and groom as they ran out.  Who gets to do THAT anymore in the US?  I just learned tonight from one of the men who went to Kurt’s (groom) bachelor party that it is THE tradition in Haiti for bachelor parties to go get pedicures and manicures.  No that’s not a typo, and yes I did mean to type “bachelor”.  Sounds silly but here’s the scoop.  To not work with your hands in Haiti is an honor.  It shows you are wealthy and educated.  Put two and two together and you can see what manicures and pedicures will do for your social status.  Men will even grow their nails out a smidge for extra gloating rights.  Try keeping long nails as a mason.  Forget it!   

So after the happy couple made their way to their honey moon we headed farther up the hill to a bakery.  YUM!  Most memorable part about this bakery is that it had a petting zoo, church, cholera clinic, restaurant, and missionary guest house.  Ok…so the bakery was only part of this Fairmont Baptist Mission but that was what I was going for.  The petting zoo was a depressing sight with a single pitiful sign in the middle of many animals in cages that explained how all the animals had been injured and were being kept in captivity for their own protection.  After seeing the grounds man beating several peacocks back into their cage we wondered where exactly the “injuring” had taken place.  I have completely desensitized myself from animal abuse over here.  If I didn’t I’d probably set up shop with my new vet clinic and be known as the “blah moun fou” (crazy white lady) who believes in nurturing animals.   I’d be dirt poor and out of aid supplies in the first hour. 

 

Ok enough sad animal talk.  On to sad engineering talk.  Really it’s not sad, just mostly inspiring and quite the learning curve.  That was just my transition sentence which many a-writers would frown at the irrationality of but alas here we are onto the engineering side of things so I supposed it worked?  Unless you have derailed and are on your own train of English studies.  Alas I digress.  The workshop pulled through and I find myself in my first week of a training workshop.  Talk about drinking through a fire hose.  The workshop consists of a 3-4 hour power point presentation given by yours truly.  The location was quite a hoot.  It was held in the old church that was fractured so badly it is considered non-repairable and thus the reason for my presence (teaching a workshop to build a new church).  Nothing brings it home quite like a presentation with real life examples.  So as I explained out-of-plane and in-plane fractures I simply left my slides and walked around the room pointing out massive cracks.  Funniest part was the fact that they decided to arrange the classroom chairs under the half of the building where the trusses had been completely split midspan during the earthquake and were holding the roof up by an act of God alone.   I was thankful my location at the front of the room was near an exit.  

Gary, my translator, is a wonderful Haitian man who worked with James (professor whose place I filled) during his some 11 or 12 presentations.  I came to realize about an hour or so into it that he really didn’t need me there as he has pretty much memorized James’s presentation.  The point at which I realized this was when several students were asking questions.  I thought Gary was speaking back to them to clarify exactly what the question was so he could then translate it to me.  It wasn’t until he stopped abruptly and turned to explain to me that he already knew the answer to the question and informed me of what he was telling them that I realized my ignorance.  All was not lost as I was still needed for the enginerdy questions which came later and in much abundance.  

The questions I was asked during my presentation were not at all like I’d expected.  Which is to be expected I suppose?  One thing my students kept accentuating was the fact that many times materials are purchased by the homeowner for the mason to build with.  So the mason has no control over what materials he buys and if he wants the job he must build with those materials.  It seems the weak link is not in the mason’s knowledge but in the ignorance of homeowners in Haiti.  Which means we have to educate them all!  Hah! Good luck on that one.  The most popular question of the day is “I need to feed my family.  How can I be competitive in my field when you are asking me to spend more money on materials and spend more time on a house when I can build two in one day”.  Every answer I came up with was met with a reason why they can’t do it.  One thing Haitians are good at is complaining. This was evident during my class.  They aren’t so motivated to find a solution and instead are more motivated to tell you all the things wrong with what you are proposing.  Regardless many of the things I’ve been told by other engineers here or James seemed quite silly as I was presenting.  I was confirmed of this as each time all the masons would erupt in laughter and give me the “moun fou” look.  My favorite, the STOP DROP and COVER method for earthquakes.  Tell that to someone who has actually BEEN in a 7.0 magnitude earthquake and you’ll realize you only have time to STOP.  Dropping happens naturally as you are being thrown back and forth.  Forget covering.  Another fun one was explaining the need for watering concrete for 7 days to help the curing process when these people barely have enough to wash their hands with it.  

None the less I felt quite a sense of accomplishment after my 4 hours of having 19 little beady eyes looking at me and pelting me with questions.  I must admit I think I learned more than they did.  They also had some great alternatives to what I was proposing of which would require more investigation before confirming acceptable.  Haitians are not less intelligent then us educated smarty-pants.  They’re just poor.  You’ve got to be genius to build well in a poor country!

Another fun and common thing in Haiti is organization.  Or lack there off.  And forward thinking.  So after affirming yesterday that the pastor of the church we are building for will have the materials this morning at 8am, we get a call at 6am this morning saying he was unable to do that.    Thus four hours of our six hour field work today was spent driving to and standing in the hardware store waiting for materials to be shipped from another store uphill down.  I should look up the word for preordering in my creole-english dictionary but I’m pretty confident such a word doesn’t exist here.  

So today’s few hours was spent teaching 18 masons how to build a confined masonry church.  I left out telling them the part where I’ve never built a confined masonry church (or building in general) ever in my life.  An interesting discovering today was the complication from single rebars within the concrete blocks.  This is typical construction in the US but today has assured me this is NOT a good idea in Haiti.  It just doesn’t work.  I mean it can work, but not for the technology they have here.  I had talked to a few people from another NGO that were using these techniques to build here and were having quite a lot of difficulty in getting the masons to build this way properly.  I can see why.  I never realized the strategic measuring that must be done to align all these single rebars so that they are within the blocks in both directions.  If you align the block holes with the rebar then your block count is off and you are forced to chip blocks smaller to get them all to fit.  NOT good! All the poor building I have seen in the past month I now know WHY it’s done.  So today’s lesson was how to arrange the blocks to minimize chipping and using small block pieces or thick mortar joints to fill the gaps.  We were successful!  Needless to say I still hate the person who built the foundation with those single rebars.  Peoples, leave your United States building in the United States!!!!  

I think my favorite part of today was seeing my lil’ students all dutifully wearing their hardhats.  Apparently a hardhat here in Haiti gives you the official I’m-smart-and-I-mean-business look.  No ringing their necks to wear them was required.  In fact I didn’t even comment that that’s what they were there for.  They went and grabbed them themselves.  Too adorable.  Well the remainder of the week should be quite a bit more entertaining as I’ve said au revoir to my translator and must now express myself in Creole.  Nothin’ like being thrown into the pack of wolves.  I need it though.  Up to this point I really haven’t had too much of a need to speak Creole.  Most of the Haitians I’ve encountered either speak English or are salsa dancing with me and I’m silently glad they can’t speak English and I can’t speak Creole.  One of my students actually was bold enough to outwardly say it would be much better if I was fluent in Creole.  I agree!  

There is an engineer in this group that took my class that MCC has decided to snatch up and see if he’s any good.  I will be taking him out in the field to assess houses next week and “Test” him a little to see what he knows.  He built a house in the same area as the training prior to the earthquake that has not even a single crack.  Nothing quite like testing your own design than a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in a high ground water area (aka unstable soil).  Cross your fingers he is good and maybe could take my place?!?!  My opinion is we need to hire a Haitian engineer, not another expat to do this work.  That is the only way to be sustainable.    Plus he speaks the language, he’s DONE the work himself (all engineers have to work as foreman for 4 years I think.  Wish we did this in the states), and he knows the culture and barriers against his students.  Brilliant I say!  

Can we say WHOOPSIE on that design?  This is the Palace.  Sue said she saw a man with a wheelbarrow wheeling across the roof the other day removing ruble.  Only in Haiti.....

Wedding Day!

Crazy hat Lady.  I was secretly jealous.

The Happy Couple being pelted with rice.  You can see how much Kurt was enjoying it.  Classic shot!

Classroom.  Notice the enormous splice in the bottom chord of the truss. 

Some of my students.  Check out those hardhats!  :)

Gary my translator

Awesome viewpoint overlooking Port-au-Prince.  We are looking North.  If this country wasn't so poor it would be crawling with tourists.  Already kinda is.  We call them service workers.  Same idea. 

Bottles up for 3 more days of learning for Julie!  Clink!  Hope you all are doing well!  FYI, I’ll be available for moonlight contracting work for building confined masonry homes when I relocate back to Seattle.  We’ll have to hire Haitian masons to do the grunt work though cause I think they’re the only breed that can handle the labor. 

Manje the Goat

Well this week’s blog will most definitely have to start out with Saturday night’s salsa dancing extravaganza.  Raoul, one of the men from an organization I’m working with (Raoul I told you you’d make it in my blog soon!  Fair warning!) informed me of a club which has salsa dancing Saturday nights and also teaches lessons during the week.  After dragging two other MCC employees around by day to locate both this club and another few dance clubs to get times and cover charges, I selected this venue for Saturday evening.  I dragged a friend of a friend who had a reputation for enjoying dancing (not salsa dancing mind you) out with me.  She lives about 20 minutes away from my house in the opposite direction of the club and since it was dark by the time we were to head out, it was necessary for me to go collect her in our company truck before heading up the hill to our destination.  

I will have to say that this driving trip to pick her up goes down in my book of “firsts” that are so amazingly absurd they require documentation.  I spend most of my days on the road driving from site to site and thus am typically instructed to take back roads from my fellow carmates to avoid traffic jams.  This has gotten me exceptionally knowledgeable of all the short cuts and back roads, however I can’t for the life of me find my way around on any “main” (I use the parenthesis here because main doesn’t necessarily mean paved or it good condition) road.  Then you add pitch black to that and forget figuring out where you are.  So I stuck to my roots and headed out in my Cinderella sparkle 3” high dance heels and red Toyota Tacoma to her house.  Of course back roads here can hardly be compared to logging roads in the US.  No that’s much to tame of a comparison.    I’d say they are more approximately simulated with serious off-roading in the US.  You know that recreational sport men do where the main goal is to see how far one can drive before getting stuck?  Then they proceed to spend the remaining 10 hours of their day winching themselves out?  Yep that’s transportation at its best in Port-au-Prince, and my evening commute.  And you know what’s hard to see when it’s dark?  Dark people!  Which we have a lot of here.  And they walk to get everywhere.  Summary of the last two paragraphs:  It’s quite challenging to off-road down a street in the dark avoiding Haitian children, grownups, and dogs alike in Cinderella sparkle high heels….while laughing hysterically at the ridiculousness of it all THE ENTIRE WAY.  Needless to say I made it to her house with no injuries to myself or any surrounding people or objects.  Off to the club we went!

We arrived at our destination safely and after waiting for a Voodoo priests to finishing putting a hex on our car (yeah..don’t ask cause I really can’t explain that one) we made a break for the club entrance.  We of course arrived at the dance club much too early which was both good and bad.  Bad, because we soon realized our much hoped bedtime of 10pm (and more importantly getting off the roads at a decent hour) was not going to be met.  Good, because we got personal attention from a dance instructor at the club who joined us at our table and remained there for the rest of the night.  So needless to say my dance card was quite full.  By the time our new found friend had “advertised” me for a dance or two many other strapping young (and old) gentlemen game to request a dance.  I contemplated the entire night how best to describe the setting and aura of the club in my blog and I think I’ve figured it out.  I’d say it was 1950’s American ball meets Latin performance showcase meets Haiti.  Not a single soul in that room, aside from my friend and I, had had less than a year of weekly dance lessons in Rumba, Cha-cha-cha, Bachata, Salsa, and Tango.  I found myself leaving my street style hip bumps and shoulder shakes at home and uprooting some of my best (or at least what I’d seen on TV) formal performance dance frame combinations.  The 1950’s American ball atmosphere was brought about from men kindly asking you to dance, walking you up on stage (from behind to make sure you got up the stairs ok and then in front once feet hit the dance floor), and then thanking you for the dance and returning you to your seat, regardless of how far your seat was from theirs.  Quite the process just for one dance.  You think they’d double up or something on the number of dances they had with each lady.  More bang for your dance!

The evening’s festivities proved to be quite enjoyable and we both had a blast.  Come 11:30pm we decided to head home.  Earlier in the evening Sue (lady I live with) had sent me off with a final note saying “If you feel like you’re being followed on your way home when you arrive at our gate don’t get out of the car.  Just honk your horn to wake the guard across the street and myself and we’ll come out”.  Since that doesn’t scream 100% security we will just note that my solo drive back to my house after dropping off my friend was done at a much faster speed then I will openly admit.  The suspension on the Tacoma might have seen happier days as well.  Never has simply going salsa dancing been such an outing (and such a heart stopper in entirely NOT the way you would think) and yet I’m sure I will do it again soon…maybe this Friday.  I just be a livin’ on the edge…

This coming weekend we are all happily preparing for Kurt’s (our MCC Haiti rep..aka: boss) wedding.  The start of the weekends festivities include a party this Wednesday at the guest house/office.  For the party Kurt has purchased a goat which he offloaded into our backyard last week to graze and plumpify.  I believe I have mentioned said goat in previous posts.  I regret to inform y’all that a terrible no-good-very-bad-thing has happened and that is that I have BONDED with mr. goat.  He has sort of become my new county fair 4-H project (we can thank the lovely Sally Sandoz for that description).  Of course bonding here can be defined as feeding it stale leftover toast from breakfasts and apple cores.  After going a week without naming the poor devil I’ve succumbed and titled him manje (“food” in Creole).  Manje is a black little goat who got loose Saturday and required quite a bit of coaxing (more of that bonding stuff) to return to his pasture out back.  He bhahhs and complains all day until you head out to feed him something and then he shuts up while you chill with him which makes eating him seeming less and less appealing.  I have been notified that we will be getting one more goat tomorrow as well (a friend for Manje! Oh joy! <tear>) so I hope to bond a little less with the new arrival so that I may be able to slightly enjoy my feast on Wednesday.  I intend to reiterate to myself as I’m eating goat at the party that it is NOT Manje but instead Mr. New Arrival.  

On the engineer front (since I suppose that’s what I SHOULD actually be blogging about) it looks like I will be teaching my first workshop next week if everything goes as planned.  That being said and with my given 4 weeks of experience with Haitian organization, I think there will be about a 50% chance of that happening.  Regardless I am excited for a change of pace and will be working with my translator this week to make sure the process goes smoothly.  

After getting lost for an hour and a half on Sunday in a cattle field on our way to church (what a mucky off-roading experience that was in our Sunday’s finest) we headed over to my “problem-child” site (City Soleil with the community center and long spanning trusses) to take down some measurements for the trusses we are planning to have built.  This community center is a concrete fenced in area with a soccer field and several buildings.  When we arrived a boy’s soccer game was in full session with kompa music cranked at an ear piercing level.  I can not explain the sense of achievement and excitement I had at that moment to be a part (even though I haven’t really been involved until these past few weeks) of such an impressive project.  This is a project that is providing a safe location for the city slums to instate a sense of community without the fears of what remains on the exterior side of those walls (not gonna lie, it aint puurty folks.  A local doctor was murdered last week and some have started burning down tent camps near by).  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  So that means a video must be worth, what, a billion or so?  Thus, I took a video which I will attempt to download onto my blog to provide a visual display.  If you look closely as the viewport pans from left to right past the concrete soccer field you will see a Haitian man in a green shirt walking towards me dancing.  Little did I know that this man (Daniel, the man who is overseeing this project and who I am working with) was walking towards me.  Little did he know I was videoing.  :)

Well I suppose I better put my pretty little head to bed.  Until next week, I hope this blog finds you well and without a goat in your backyard who has become your friend whom you must eat on Wednesday.  Night!