Milot, EWB, and A Filter Project

The following is an attempt to summarize what took place during one on the busiest, most stressful, most exhausting, and most exciting weeks since I arrived in Haiti. This will not be an all encompassing review of what happened, since that would take forever to write and explain, but it should be adequate to tell what I've been up to lately. I already wrote a little about the time Owen and I spent in Gonaives and Sou Chod, but I thought I would post a few pictures to recap.

Many of the streets in Gonaives are still impassable because people remove the dirt and mud from their homes and then dispose of it in the street. Construction crews are scooping up the debris and taking it just outside the city to dump it. We drove through this dumping wasteland on our way to Sou Chod. It was so dusty that we couldn't see anything a few feet in front of our vehicle.

We stopped by the UN base in Gonaives to meet up with our friends from AMURT. Apparently if you work for the UN they won't let you off the base without an armed escort. Well, Owen and I don't work for the UN so we just came and went with no guns to protect us. If you ask me I think the UN can be a little overprotective at times.

This is the location in Sou Chod where AMURT will be helping the local people start a successful salt farming project. Some of the work has already started, but there is still a lot to be done.

This was the start of the Haitian town meeting to discuss who was doing what work on the salt project. Did I say meeting? Well, it turned into more of a brawl with a lot of drama.

At this point, the guy picking up the rock tried to break the shovel a couple different ways, but in the end using the machete to chop the handle proved to be the most successful. However, about five minutes after all this took place, we noticed that everyone was laughing and smiling...I guess they worked everything in the end....meeting adjourned.

Ok, picking up from there....On Sunday night, Owen and I slept on the roof of AMURT's rental home in Gonaives. It was cooler up there and we thought it would allow us to make an early departure without disturbing too many people. However, when we woke up at 5:00 am, we noticed that we had a tire that was pretty low and needed to be pumped up. We spent the next hour trying to find someone who had a pump and after we got that taken care of, we were off for a four hour journey to Milot.

Oh, here is some background information in case you are wondering what we are going to Milot for. Owen just graduated from NJIT in May. During his last year at school he was involved with the group, Engineers Without Borders (EWB)...as an aside I was also involved with EWB at the University of Cincinnati, but that has no relevance in this story. Anyway, he and a couple other students came to Haiti because a group of doctors near NJIT were coming to volunteer for a week with a hospital in Milot and had recommended EWB do a project on providing clean water to people. After that trip they came to the conclusion that the biosand filter would be the best solution. Owen got in contact with Clean Water for Haiti and had been using them as a resource to learn more about the biosand filter technology and what might be a good plan to implement in Milot. After graduating, Owen decided to visit Clean Water for Haiti to check out the organization and see if this type of work is something he may be interested in doing long-term. It turned out that the NJIT EWB team's return trip was very close to when Owen was already planning to come visit us, so he extended his trip and we both traveled to Milot to provide support and help get the project running. Alright, now back to the story....

We arrived at the Crudem compound in Milot a couple hours before lunch. Crudem is the local hospital run by nuns where the doctors volunteer. The doctors, EWB people, Owen, and I, all ended up all staying in the dorms that Crudem has for the volunteers that come. The EWB people that came were two students, Bryce and Melissa, and the EWB advisor, Dr. Meegota. After arriving we met everyone and helped them find a few sources of water that people use for drinking water. They took the samples back to one of the labs at Crudem to test and Owen and I got our bags from the truck and put them in an empty room in the dorms.

We brought two filter molds, lids, tubes, diffusion plates, and one filter with us from Pierre Payen. We packed the filter between two banana mats and it surprisingly arrived in one piece.

The rest of Monday was spent trying to find the tools necessary to build filters, looking for a location to begin filter construction, and having a meeting to get everyone on the same page. Owen and I spent all of Tuesday morning in meetings with head people from the hospital and the local community trying to secure a site so we would have a base to keep our molds and any completed filters we built. Everyone really liked the idea of the biosand filter and within a couple of hours we had procured the hospital's old generator room as our production area. Another thing we were not expecting was that the local trade school wanted to participate and learn how to build filters. So, as a way of learning how to work with steel molds, learning to make concrete, and giving back to their community, they agreed to build the filters. While the rest of our group worked on cleaning the new area up, Owen and I went on a trip to find get some buckets, cement, and find a local supplier of sand and gravel.

Here we have the closest supplier of sand and gravel. It was about a 20 minute drive to get there from where we were staying.

When we got back from gravel we were surprised to see that they had finished cleaning the area. It may not look like much, but you have to understand what we had to work with...it looked a lot better than it had a few hours before.

On Wednesday we met the students from the trade school and started teaching them how to build filters. Everyone picked the steps up relatively fast and they seemed excited to be learning the new skill. Some other members of the EWB group went to the closest major city, Cap Haitien, and picked up supplies we couldn't get in Milot like: a sieve screen for sand, wheel barrow, tarp, etc... I made a trip to get some gravel so we could build more filters for the next day only to find out the price had doubled from the day before. Well, I didn't buy the truck load I had wanted and only got enough gravel to make a few filters.

Teaching the students proved to be a little difficult with the language barrier, but it worked out.

On Thursday we again trained the students on how to build filters and then had them make a step-by-step list for a reference. We had a lot of people in and out during the day. The mayor stopped by, two people from an NGO in Cap Haitien, and three people from a local orphanage. Later in the day we went to another sand and gravel pit that was about 35 minutes away only to find that they didn't have the type of gravel that we needed. We ended up going back to the old pit and trying to work out a compromise on the price. We put in an order and told them we would be back the next day to pick it up. That night our group met with the "Water Committee" to discuss the biosand filter. The Water Committee is a group of respected Haitians from Milot. The committee includes people like the mayor, school principles, pastors, and doctors. We presented the findings from the water testing and told them they needed to be treating the water they were drinking. Our proposed solution was to filter the water in homes using the biosand filter technology. They gave us their support in wanting to be involved and wanting to move forward with the project. We agreed that we would install three filters before leaving in the homes the committee selected and that the students at the school would construct 25 filters to be installed when EWB does a return trip in January.

These are some of the petri dishes that were incubated with the collected water samples.  Would you drink water that contained this??  I wouldn't....but many of the people in Milot have no choice.

On Friday we let the students do everything by themselves to make sure they were self sufficient and could do it without any input from us.

Here are the students after finishing up the construction of the filters for the day. They were all pretty happy about what they had accomplished.

We spent a decent amount of time going to get the gravel we had ordered the day before because the price we had agreed on had changed once again and Owen and I were not about to compromise on this. We played the waiting game and eventually they gave in and gave us the truck load for the price we had previously discussed. After lunch we installed one of the filters the committee had decided on. Later in the day a group of people who were unable to attend the Water Committee meeting stopped by and we had to go over everything again to get them up to speed about what was happening.

On Saturday the doctors and EWB people left, but Owen and I stayed behind because there was still work to be done. We ended up installing the two other filters that the committee wanted and met with the president of the water committee to make sure everything was in order since we were leaving.

Owen and I after installing one of our newly made filters....I hope that thing works.

After all of our work was completed, we hiked up to the Citadelle which was built by Henri Christophe in the early 1800's. It was constructed to defend Haiti from French attacks and it is the largest fortress in the Western Hemisphere. On the way up to the Citadelle we passed Sans Souci which was Christophe's palace.

On the road to the Citadelle.

There is something like 365 cannons that defend the Citadelle, but I had never seen anything like the short little fat ones in this picture...pretty interesting.

Hanging out on the inside of the fortress.

Sans Souci

After our hike we headed back to Crudem just as the rain started to roll in. By the time we had packed up everything and tied up all loose ends, it was pretty dark and we decided not to try and make it all the way home. Instead, we drove to Cap Haitien and met up with some friends that we met during the week. We got something to eat, talked for a while, and then went to sleep since we were all pretty exhausted. The next morning Owen and I were up just after 6:00 am because our biological clocks wouldn't allow us to sleep in. Once our friends woke up two hours later, we had some breakfast and then headed out on our long drive back to Pierre Payen.

This was the view from the home we stayed at in Cap Haitien.

The drive home seemed a little bumpier than the trip there. That may have been due to the fact that we had no filter or molds to help weigh the truck down or it could have been that we were both sore from all the driving we had been doing in the previous week.

The roads are still pretty bad from the hurricane damage, but they are passable for most vehicles. This road had washed away and one side of the bridge had fallen down, but we still drove up it....it was just steeper than normal.

Did I mention that the roads were rough? Well, this was the first and only flat we got on our journey and it happened about two hours out from home. We thought that was pretty good with all things considered. We threw on the spare and headed for the closest repair station.

Well, that sums up some of what happened during our adventure north.  It is hard to start a successful filter project in Haiti....it is really hard to start a successful project in one week.  I feel like we did the best we could with the time we had and am hopeful that the project will continue to move forward, but only time will tell.  It is hard to spend so much time and energy getting something started and then leave, putting everything into someone else's hands.