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!