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.