A Few Days Work

On Monday, Chris, Ben, and I hiked up to the "Source" and went for a cool swim in the water.

Part of the hike is along the wall of a canal.

Me enjoying the cool, clean water.

I don't think they see too many white people up here.

Once we got back to the mission, I grabbed a shovel and helped dig the hole that will be part of the septic tank for the new dorm building. While I was working on this, Chris and Ben got stuck at a clinic down the street. The clutch cable had broke on the VW van and I ran a new one out to them in one of our work trucks. After dropping that off I headed to Canaan, a local orphanage, to drop off the dirt that we had dug up for the septic tank. The land that the orphanage is on, is extremely rocky and they are happy to get soil from us whenever they can. I'm pretty sure they are using it to start a garden so they can grow their own vegetables. After unloading the dirt I headed to Dave and Judy's to pick up a fish they had for us and then headed back home. Nothing to spectacular, but it was the first time I had driven around town on my own.

On Tuesday I replaced the pump on the washing machine and now we can use it again and stop doing laundry by hand. This actually saves us water and laundry detergent.

Maintenance on the Washer

I also took another load of dirt to Canaan. After we got done unloading the dirt, we noticed that I had a flat tire. I had seen Chris do this a few times, so I felt pretty comfortable changing the tires on the work trucks. I threw the spare on, and then needed to get the original tire repaired. Instead of going to the local repair guy by myself and getting charged way too much because I'm white and can't speak Creole, I grabbed a guy that spoke Creole and English from the orphanage to help me. We headed to Montrouis for the local tire repair guy and after getting the tire looked at, realized that the tube was beyond repair. I had to go buy a new tube and and bring it back to have it installed. After that I dropped of my friend at the orphanage and headed back to the mission.

Oh, a random thing I saw while I was waiting for the tire to get fixed: 4-5 goats hog tied, upside-down to the side of a tap-tap. I'm surprised the goats will live banging against the side of a vehicle on the Haitian roads. A tap-tap is what they call taxis here, but not the typical taxi you may be thinking of. A tap-tap is usually a small truck that has a bench welded onto the bed and then is jam packed with people. When asked, "How many people can fit in the back?" The answer is always, "Once more." I need to get a picture of these things so you can understand what I'm talking about.

My first project on Wednesday was to replace the kitchen faucet because it had sprung a leak. After fighting with the mounting hardware for a while I finally got the old one free and installed the new shinny fixture.

New Faucet

Later, Jean Renaud (The head Haitian worker) and I, headed to Saint-Marc to get our gas cylinders for cooking filled and pick up some 1/16" steel sheets. It was good to spend some time with him since I haven't talked to him much. He speaks a little English and we agreed to practice our foreign languages with each other in the future. After we got back I started working on reinforcing the bed of the Volkswagen van with the steel sheets we bought. It has started to rust through and needs some work done on it before it gets too bad.

Starting to work on the truck bed.

Today, I continued the work on the truck bed. Midway through the day I took another load of dirt to Canaan. This time the dirt was loaded into the large work truck. It was the first time I drove this one and should have know that something was bound to happen....so here's the story. I ended up getting to Canaan just fine...except that I drove right past the entrance, which happens to me frequently. Usually I just turn around in the next open area, but since I had the large truck and a full load of dirt I didn't want to slam on the brakes, so I waited till the next spot I thought I could turn around in. Turning around on the roads here isn't the safest thing since trucks and buses barrel down the streets and once they honk, it's your job to move. Needles to say, I try to make any maneuver I do fast. I tried to turn around in one U-turn, but came up short and had to backup. While doing that, the dirt gave way under the back left tire and slide into a ditch. The truck got pulled in also and the truck was almost buried up to the drive shaft. I called Chris and he sent Jean with the smaller work truck to pull me out. Chris said that this stuff happens all the time and started to laugh on the phone. Before we could pull the truck out, we had to unload some of the dirt. After shoveling some of the dirt into the ditch, we quickly hooked up some straps and pulled the truck back into the street...and oncoming traffic. I then headed to Canaan to unload the rest of the dirt and went back to the mission to continue working on the truck.

One last thing. You may notice the "Current Weather" display on the right side of the blog. I found this online and thought it would be fun to show what the weather is like here. When I started writing this it was 91 degrees Fahrenheit. What I really want to show though, is the feels like temperature. It may have been 91 degrees, but the feels like temperature was 108 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't want to complain, but that is pretty hot....especially with no air-conditioning....ever.