Did I Mention...?

A lot has been happening lately and I have been a little lazy and not updating the blog...but we have a three day weekend now since Friday is a holiday and I'm going to take some time and try to write down some of the things going on here.

Last Tuesday (Oct 7th), I went with the workers as we delivered 34 filters to the Artibonite Valley, north of Pierre Payen.  It always ends up being a long day when we do filter deliveries or installations, but when we go to the Artibonite area we do both the deliveries and installations on the same day since it takes around two hours to get to the filter recipients. We headed out at 5:30 am and ended up getting home around 5:00 pm.  We really like to get our filters in this area since people are so poor there and drink the very dirty canal water.  We took a cooler that Chris had packed with bread, peanut butter, jelly, and pop.  He forgot to put in the bottle opener though and Thony ended up opening everyone's bottle with his teach.  It made me cringe thinking that part of his tooth might chipping off as he bit down on every bottle cap.  I tried to discretely open mine with a knife, but Thony saw me,grabbed the bottle and tore the cap off with his teeth.  Apparently some of the workers had never seen a cold pack before, because after we were done eating they noticed the blue cold packs in the bottom of the cooler and asked if they could drink the juice.  I explained what they were for and said that was probably not a good idea to drink them.

While I was out for the day doing filters, Chris headed to Port-au-Prince to pick up Owen.  Owen  is another volunteer that is checking Clean Water for Haiti out will be here for about a month.  While he is here, him and I are planning to drive up to Milot (near Cap Hatitan) and meet up with the Engineers Without Borders chapter from his alma mater, NJIT.  They are doing a water project and using the biosand filter so we are hoping to be a good resource for them.  Owen is staying out in my side of the dorm and it has been great having him here to get to know and work with.  He has been keeping a record of life in Haiti since his arrival and you can check it out at: http://owenfitz.blogspot.com/

So the rest of the week after Owen arrived was spent getting him acclimated to the work we do here at the mission.  We introduced him to all the workers, gave the typical property tour, and then started making filters.  Another project we worked on was trying to optimize the steal cut-outs for the filter molds.  We used to cut the pieces we needed for the mold and then make one mold.  However, we end up with a lot of scrap metal and Owen and I determined that there should be a better way.  We ended up make some drawings in AutoCAD and finding a good layout to help reduce the waste (when I say "we" I mean Owen did the work and I just offered support whenever I could).  Chris also wanted to get a layout that would work if we ever ended up getting the engineering company in Port to stamp the parts for us.

Over the weekend we had Canadian Thanksgiving.  My U.S. readers may be asking, "What is Canadian Thanksgiving?"  Well, I had never heard of it either until a few weeks ago. It is exactly like normal Thanksgiving, except that Canada wanted to be different so they decided to celebrate it in October (I hope America started celebrating first or I am going to get some angry comments from Canadians).  It was fun though and I was able to meet a lot of the Canadian missionaries in Haiti.  You may also be saying, "Matt, why did you go? You aren't Canadian."  Well, that is true, but Owen and I got to go since we live with Canadians and they would have felt bad leaving us out....see, Canadians are nice people too.

Everyone enjoying the meal.

 © Photo Taken by Owen Fitzgerald

On Monday Leslie's new computer had coffee spilled on it and ended up having quite a few problems with the keyboard and the mouse pad.  I don't like to take computers apart, especially when they are only a month old, but we ended up dismantling the whole thing and trying to clean it out.  It ended up not doing a whole lot and now she has to always use an external keyboard and mouse until some new parts come in.  The other big event on Monday was this:

The VW doesn't look so pretty anymore.

 © Photo Taken by Owen Fitzgerald

After work, Jean was driving the truck to get the filter lids we needed for Tuesday's filter deliveries and on the way the brakes went out.  He was in first gear trying to crawl home when a large truck turned in front of him and he ended up hitting the truck's tire.  He injured is wrist a little and Thony smacked his head against the window....hence the broken window on the passengers side.  Everyone was alright, but it was a little scary for everyone involved.

This past Tuesday we went out to do filter deliveries and installations in the Artibonite Valley again, except this time we had 36 filters and Owen came along.  It was another great experience and we ended up getting orders for two more truck loads while we were out.  

Getting ready to unload some more filter.

 © Photo Taken by Owen Fitzgerald

On Wednesday, Chris and I went to Port.  On the way we delivered a filter to a family running an orphanage that we met at Canadian Thanksgiving.  From there we dropped off five more filters at another missionaries home and then headed to the engineering place to discuss getting our steel molds cut for us...this is probably the fourth of fifth time we have stopped by and talked to them....however, this time we met with the owner and showed him the drawings we made for how he could cut out the pieces on the sheet of steel.  This helped a lot and he said he could make it work.  Having the pieces cut for us will save us money, time, and help us have a more precise mold.  We are pretty excited to see if this first batch of pieces is going to work.  After that stop we headed to Top Tires to get new rear tires on the blue truck.  They were pretty worn down and you tend to get more flats when your are like that.  A couple stops later we ended up at the Toyota dealer near Port.  Chris and Leslie ordered a van back in February and have been waiting for it to get to Haiti ever since.  We received a call that it was ready to be picked up so our last and most exciting stop of the day was to pick up the new van.  It is a Toyota Hiace, seats 15, and has air-conditioning.  To celebrate, Owen took us all out to dinner and we all got to experience the comfort of the new vehicle.

Chris getting introduced to the van before we took it on the maiden voyage.

 © I Actually took this one.

Today we woke up and realized that we had a flat tire.  One of the new tires on the back of the blue truck had deflated overnight because the tube had a leak. That is exactly why we saved the tubes from the old tires we just replaced.  So, you probably thought I was going to say the flat tire happened on the new van...didn't you.  Well, you are half right.  While none of the tires on the van had gone flat, we did find nail inside one of the back tires and if we pulled it out the tire would have gone flat.  Chris took the tire from the truck and the van and went to get them repaired while Owen and I worked on making an underplate for the front of the van to protect all the important components.  We cut it out of steal, but we haven't put it on yet, so I guess Chris will just have to drive extra slow and careful until we can put it on....yeah, right.