Is That Your Pile Of Rocks?

At the start of the week I did some random projects that needed to be done like: fixing the latch on the VW so the tailgate would close properly, fixing the toilet in the dorm so it doesn't constantly run and waste all the water in our tank, making a set of shelves for the house, working some more on updating the filter mold drawings. On Wednesday morning, Chris, Leslie, Olivia, and I, went with Jean (our night guard) to his home up in the mountains. I hadn't been there before, so it was a chance for me to see where he lives and meet his family. We have been getting quite a bit of rain in the evenings lately and the path to his house is not typically accessible by vehicle, but we had to hike even farther than normal because the river was too high to cross with the truck.

Apparently this river is normally just a trickle.

Some of the mud.

This is Jean's family. I don't think a lot of Haitians are used to having their picture taken and they tend not to smile very much. This may look like a mug shot, but trust me, they were very happy before and after this photo.

On Thursday, one of the things I was able to do for the first time was to deliver some filters to people nearby in Pierre Payen. We were replacing some of the older units that had been installed and that had cracks or needed to be replaced for some other reason. When I came to Haiti, I thought that I would be doing this kind of work all the time, but this was the first "good" chance I had to go. Typically, the Haitian workers we have at the mission are the ones who go out and find people that need filters and do the delivery and installations. I'll try to explain why as briefly as I can.

1) There is a lot in the culture of Haiti that differs from those in America. In general, if you have white skin, you are viewed as a foreigner and someone that has a lot of money. A lot of people don't like whites because of all the oppression that has happened in Haiti's past (that's the really short version).

2) We typically sell the filters for $40 Haitian dollars. This is not to make money, since the filters cost around $320 Haitian dollars to make. $40 Haitian dollars is not a lot of money for most people here, but it does make them save a little and think if they really want to spend the money. The reason we don't just give them away is because by making people pay a little bit, they take ownership of the filter and want to keep it running because they have invested something in it. If we give them away, which we used to do a long time ago, people will just take them because they are free and then use them for whatever....sometimes filtering water, sometime a flower pot, a source of spare concrete....who knows.

Now that those two things are established, my next statement will hopefully make more sense. If I were to go on the trips to find people that need filters, Haitians would want the filters for free because I'm white a white foreigner that has money. This complicates things tremendously, and most of the time it is better that I don't accompany our workers on these trips. There will be opportunities to go, but it won't be something I normally do. In a way that is good because our Haitian workers do everything in the process: from making the filters, to finding people that need them, to installing and teaching people about them.

After work we all went over to Ben and Heather's and went swimming. We stayed for dinner and had spaghetti and fresh, homemade bread that they had cooked in their solar oven. Fresh bread is so good....and it seems to taste even better knowing that the sun was used to cook it.

Today, Chris and I decided to tackle replacing our burn pit that has gotten pretty fragile and is in need of some work. Our first project was to find some rocks that we could use instead of the cinder blocks that were used in the old one. Here is how you get rocks here: Haiti is doing work on the major road that runs through the country.....which is really exciting for us. They bring in truck loads of material that they are leveling out that serve as the foundation for new asphalt. In the loads there are usually rocks that are too large and the local people will pick them out and make a pile of rocks that becomes theirs. Chris and I drove down the road until we saw some piles of rock and people standing close to them. We asked if they knew who owned the piles and after a while one of them spoke up and said that he owned some of them. Did he really? Who knows, but we bought them and loaded them into our truck. When we got back, Chris started washing the rocks to get all the dirt off and I went with one of our workers to finish installing the filters that we delivered the day before. After that was finished, Chris and I dismantled what was left of the burn pit and then hauled the blocks away the the local dump (which is a small patch of land behind some trees, next to some crops just off the road). Most of mission's property is shaded, but all of this work was done in the sun. Chris and I were drenched in sweat the whole day and our main goal was to not have a heat stroke.