Day Two

Yesterday was my first full day in Haiti. I woke up at 5:45 am and started the day off with a fresh mango from Chris and Leslie's garden. Then I got the tour of the facilities and started helping with any tasks I could. There was a drill press that had a broken switch on it, so Chris asked me to take a look at it and see if I could fix it.

When a switch breaks on anything around here, the typical thing to do is use a light switch to replace the broken one. Well, the broken switch had 3 connecting wires and a light switch has two. Knowing that one was for the ground and not having a working multimeter, I tried certain configurations to see if I could get it to work. After a couple trials, I found one that did something...however, not exactly what I was expecting. Somehow I had wired a short and when I plugged the drill press in, it bogged down the generator, the lights started flickering, I heard a loud pop, and saw sparks coming from the plug. By the end of this the plug had been ejected from the socket and I was a couple feet away with my hands over my head. Not what I wanted to do on my first project.

After looking at the damage, I saw that the cord's insulation had been melted and the switch was fried. With Chris's help I found a new cord and switch, and wired the drill properly. Everything works and there was no major damage done....thankfully. After that Leslie and I took Olivia to get here vaccinations at the local hospital in Pierre Payen. On the way back we walked through the market in town and everyone makes comments at us, but I have no idea what they are saying. The rest of the day was pretty low key and I am staring to work on learning Creole. I took a few pictures of the living arrangements and they are posted below.

Chris and Leslie's Home

The Back Porch

View From Back Porch

Our Water Supply

My Room - 1

My Room - 2

The Bathroom and Laundry Room

Driers do not exist here and our washer is currently broke.