Haiti Dreams

Maybe it's because it's less than two months away. Maybe it's because people are starting to post on the Facebook page about what tools to bring. Maybe it's because I get my final rabies shot today. Whatever the reason, I had the greatest dream about Haiti last night...

Our tent was 6 times the size of the one I shared with 13 women last year (we even had furniture) but we numbered only eight. The temperature only got to 85 degrees. It rained - briefly - every now and then to cut the humidity. I had discovered an electric hammer that would work on the hurricane clips.  My alarm went off before I found out whether the showers had warm water...

I've been reminded lately of how hard the builds are. Someone at the gym was asking about the trip. I told her it's fun! I have great friends who go every year, and you always make new friends.  We sometimes travel together before the build (forbidden in Haiti). We get to discover new countries.  And then I get to the build site and realise that I've forgotten again how HARD these builds are! Maybe not for everyone, but for me with no building skills, whose low blood pressure keeps her off ladders and scaffolding, who wilts in anything over 80 degrees (build temps are typically closer to 100) - for ME it's really hard! And there are NO NAPS! In India, I started getting lightheaded from the heat and my workboots didn't fit properly. In Thailand, my feet had blisters and I was walking funny the whole time from the pain. Last year in Haiti, I worked all Wednesday feeling like I was going to faint, but made it to almost 3.00, when my roof crew disbanded for other tasks, before I went to the cooling tent.

 Somehow I forget how miserable I was, and only remember the fun part when I sign up every year. Better that way. Hey, a week of freezing cold showers is a small sacrifice to help a family move out of a makeshift tent into a permanent, hurricane-proof home. It's just hard to remember that when the cold water hits you and takes your breath away...

Rabies.

Ha ha ha... wait, seriously?

Today I went to my appointment at the Travel Clinic to see what shots and prescriptions I need to go to Haiti. I went in feeling all experienced since I've been going there almost every year since my trip to India in 2006. I knew where to park, I knew what entrance to go in, I was so far removed from that terrified traveller who darkened their door six years ago.

Yeah, they've moved. Just down the hall, but it was enough to throw me off and remind me that I know nothing.

Debbie pulled out my chart and reviewed my history. World Traveller here didn't need anything - I'm even done with Hepatitis A for life. No Tetanus. No Typhoid. Covered.

"But where you're going, and because you're sleeping in tents, a rabies prophylaxis is recommended."

Yup - bats. They're out there. We saw them. And I, in particular, wander around outside when I can't sleep to avoid waking my tent-mates, so I couldn't even promise just to avoid the bats: I'm their prime target between the hours of 2-5 a.m.

Normally I would have taken my chances with the rabies exposure, but I just read an article about a little girl who got The Plague (yes, that plague) from touching a dead squirrel when she was camping. So, like Yodel before me, I'm getting rabies shots. It takes 3 shots over 4 weeks, so I'm grateful that ECMC is right off the 33, that you park for free on the ER ramp for the travel clinic, and that they're pretty darned efficient in there.

What I'm not grateful for is the cost - today the shot, consult and prescriptions for malaria meds cost me $300. I couldn't help but think that, if I need all these shots to go to Haiti, what do the Haitians need?

I know that big pharma donates plenty, and Haitians are not paying $300 for a shot, but donated supplies are limited, and rural areas where disease is more likely are hard to get to. A cholera outbreak after the last hurricane killed 5,000 Haitians, but cholera hadn't been seen in Haiti in a hundred years: Haiti was blindsided when it was brought in by earthquake relief workers. Last year the Travel Clinic didn't recommend rabies - how many Haitians got rabies before that recommendation surfaced? And Hepatitis? And Typhoid?

While I'm feeling pretty broke, I'm also feeling awfully lucky that I can afford the protection I need and that it's available to me. And the free parking. Free parking at the hospital is huge.

Isaac

Word is that the homes we build last year withstood the storm with minimal damage. Those living in tents weren't so lucky - many lost their homes entirely, while the dirt-floored homes of thousands more are flooded. Despite pleas to evacuate, people remained in their camps, afraid that looters would take what little they had left. Haiti is not yet equipped to handle another disaster, even though the impact of Tropical Storm Isaac was not as bad as it could have been.

NY Times Photo Gallery of damage to Haiti caused by Isaac

Comedy, coming right up!

Our comedy night fundraiser, Headliners for Haiti, is this Sunday, July 22nd at 6.30! Don't forget to buy your tickets (see button to the right) — it's too late to mail them so they'll be waiting for you at Will Call when you get there!


Rob's Comedy Playhouse is inside Dandelion's Restaurant at 1340 North Forest Road, Williamsville.

There is a strip plaza on the northwest corner of North Forest Road and Maple Avenue - there's a Subway, Dessert Deli, M & T Bank. Go north past the strip plaza and Dandelion's is the next driveway on the left. Be warned that the intersection of Maple and North Forest is under construction and down to one lane, so be patient and pay attention there!

The Project in 1:46

As we're gearing up for Headliners for Haiti, I was looking for a video that I might show to the crowd to help them understand where the money is going. This is under two minutes, but shows conditions in Haiti, as well as the houses we finished last year.

Thanks to some very generous donors and a fabulous Lobsters for Lumber event, I'm well over the $2500 milestone that we needed to reach by July 15th. THANK YOU everybody!

A Haitian "Charette"

Last July, Architecture for Humanity was invited to meet with the first 150 homeowners in the Santo project in Léogâne in a design session, or "charette." While I will have helped build four houses by the time this Carter Work Project is done, the Santo project is not just about building homes. Haiti Habitat is building a community, and is using community input to do so, so that the project remains relevant to its inhabitants after Habitat is gone.

The drive to Léogâne at the beginning of the video is interesting in and of istelf, but watching the collaboration of the homeowners expressing their many ideas for living situations, well, kind of made me want to play too. They are first choosing the layout on the lots, and then configuring the lots around a common structure containing showers and toilets and water for the community. If you were on last year's build, it's interesting to get the aerial view - it looks very familiar!

Putting the Fun in Fundraiser

Yeah, I’m thinking about you guys. I’m thinking about the people of Haiti, too, but right now I’m thinking about you guys.

See, last year I had to raise $5,000 for Haiti Habitat in order to go on the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project. And you all came through for me. I didn’t have so much as a party to meet my goal: people just went online and clicked in donations until I was finished. And I went to Haiti and spent a week there that felt like a month. I got to shower with tarantulas and fight vertigo in the heat and try to hammer hurricane clips with my double-vision and spend sleepless nights in the meal tent blogging and sleep in a tent with thirteen other women on a cot under a mosquito net.

Soooo… I wanna do it again! Which means I have to raise $5,000 again. But I want to reward my friends for their unquestioning generosity last year. I want to put the “fun” in “fundraisers” for you. You’re going to love it!

Who doesn’t love lobster? Well, Susannah doesn’t, but as the hostess of the “Peanut Party,” she’s aware that sometimes allergies will keep you home. For everyone else, Jeff Benjamin at Viking Lobster is putting together a menu for our Lobster for Lumber night on June 18^th, and Kate Little will be pairing up wine for us. There will be a basket auction and a live auction — I’ll post more about the auction items as we get closer to the date, but they are FABULOUS! Tickets are $75 and can be purchased by clicking the Lobster for Lumber “Pay Now” button on the right. Hurry – seating is limited!

And who doesn’t love laughing? Well, Susannah sure does, as is evidenced by every night out with her. Rob Lederman at Rob’s Comedy Playhouse will be hosting Headliners for Haiti on July 22^nd from 6.30-9.00. Mark Saldana will be said headliner, and your $25 ticket covers your first two drinks as well. Because Mark is funny, but Mark is funnier to silly drunk people. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased now with the Headliners for Haiti “Pay Now” button to the right.

Are you having fun yet? Because there’s one more, still to be determined. It’s a Guest Bartending Night in late August, featuring all of the Sue Crew (Taylor, Campbell, Currie, Gray, and Deb Oberg, who we love like a Sue). Come to the bar and hear Susannah laugh! Talk to her about her shellfish allergy! And peanut recipes! All of your generous tips that night will go to Haiti Habitat. I mean, monetary tips, not things like, “Wear your sunscreen!” and “Tarantulas are more afraid of you than you are of them!” Because they’re actually not. Not in Haiti…

I hope that makes it more fun for you than listening to me whine and beg. I mean, I’ll still whine about other things, but I won’t beg. As much. Did I mention I love you guys? Because I really, really do.

The Houses We Built!

This is a video of the build site just after the Carter Work Project was over. The painted houses are the ones the Irish group finished before we got there. He uses some English words, and understanding French helps (hint: 'kai' means 'house'). There is always a post-build crew to finish the houses that didn't get done during the blitz; this video shows those crews throughout the site.

Most importantly, it shows the houses I worked on! At 7.15 of the video, you can see the flags we erected on Remembrance Day in the pile of dirt. The houses to the immediate left and right of the pile of dirt are my houses!

For the first time, I was on the crew that was the furthest ahead the first day. We were very lucky to have a good, hard-working crew that was very focused, and a House Leader who knew how to get the best out of everyone. We didn't get all the windows or doors on by the end of the build, but we did so well on the roofs that we ended up sending the "roof crew" to other houses to help them along.

I'm really proud to have been part of that Remembrance Day ceremony - you'll see the woman at the end still wearing her poppy. That was an amazing experience that helped me appreciate the universality of what we were doing.

I'm Okay

Recently, a particularly hostile conservative — one not familiar with sticks and stones and their legendary efficacy — told me that I was “playing at life, with [my] naps and [my] charities.” He then proceeded to call me a “liberal asshole,” followed by blah, blah, blah I stopped listening.

Wait, what’s wrong with naps? There is a plethora of research to show that productivity in the afternoon increases substantially after spending some time studying the back of your eyelids. There are even studies that show that an afternoon nap is part of our natural circadian rhythm. Don’t fight it!

More confusing… since when is fundraising for charity a bad thing, and since when are conservatives against that? My friends in Rotary are a pretty conservative bunch, but they want to do good works and improve the world. I fail to see how trying to make life better for the less fortunate is frivolous.

Since January 2010, Haiti has suffered through an earthquake, a hurricane, and a cholera outbreak, but they still can’t get enough attention to get the roads fixed. We’re building simple, masonry and wood homes that should withstand the next storm. I haven’t been able to confirm it, but I’ve been told that the homes that Habitat had already built in Haiti withstood the earthquake, and were not among the 190,000 homes damaged or destroyed. I fail to find the negative in that.

Haiti Habitat is not just building homes. They are also coordinating recovery efforts, providing transitional and upgradeable housing, and teaching skills that can help Haitians find work in the recovery economy, where the unemployment rate is 60%. Well, that’s just useless, because… wait, why again? I don’t see where fundraising for Haiti Habitat makes me a bad person.

My friends posit that this person probably settled in his life and is jealous of my choices, lashing out at me to justify his own. I’m okay with my choices — my choice not to have a family, my choice to retire early from my law practice, and my choices to accept challenges to do the things that are the most out-of-character and difficult for me. Last year’s Haiti build was so hard, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything, not even a week of naps curled up with Yodel in air conditioning. The build in India was excruciating, but I met some of my closest friends there and felt closer to God there than I ever have before or since. Thailand was miserably hot, but I expanded my group of Habitat friends and was proud of our crews for rising to multiple build challenges. Yes, I still wonder why no one needs a CWP in a more temperate clime…

Not to get carried away — going on the Carter Work Projects doesn’t make me anything special, except lucky. But we like to say that even the biggest jerk on the CWP still gave up a week of their life to work hard to make the lives of strangers better. Not the most pithy of sayings, but we like to say it because it makes dealing with difficult people easier. You know that if I didn’t try to deal with difficult people, Mr. Conservative wouldn’t still be my Facebook friend.

One last thing, Mr. Conservative — I ask what could possibly be wrong with playing at life? Doesn’t that totally sound like the best way to do it?

*    *    *    *    *

Here’s another entry from my packing list. I think I got this poem from my friend Lisa’s blog, a long time ago (I miss your blog, Lisa). My hostile conservative friend may not think much of me, but God thinks I’m okay.

God Says Yes To Me

Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don't paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I'm telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

Not A Vacation

My first foray into Voluntourism was in 2006, when I discovered the Carter Work Project. I decided to travel through India by myself for a month around the week-long build. I’m smart, but not so smart, you know? Since then I’ve visited a few interesting places for the purpose of hauling some cinder blocks, always on my own dime. And with other people. Safer.

The last CWP was the exception. Kind of. We were asked to fundraise $5,000 in order to qualify to go. I donated about $1000 of that — enough, I presume, to cover Habitat’s expenses to get me and keep me there (based on the fact that I’d never paid that much for a CWP fee to date, add a charter flight). You see, the problem with raising money for Voluntourism is that people are reticent to pay for your “vacation.”

Here is Habitat’s stance on our being “on vacation”:

“The build week will be far from a vacation. Volunteers will work 5 days straight, 8 hours a day, under very tough conditions. While a portion of the $5,000 fee will cover transportation and lodging expenses for volunteers, a large percentage of it and anything raised beyond it will go directly to Habitat Haiti to build the homes in the Santo community, including construction materials, site preparation, labor to prep the land, and construction of latrines with shower areas and water points to provide fresh, clean water.” 

Not to mention that we were without hot water or an actual roof to sleep under or a mattress to sleep on. We slept under mosquito nets and took malaria medication and sprayed our clothes with Permithrin. At the time, Haiti was on the travellers’ warning list for Canadians. If that was a vacation, I apparently missed the beach volleyball and karaoke night.

Still, I’m committed to donating enough to this year's fundraiser to once again cover Habitat’s cost of having me there, so that contributors to my fundraisers know that their donations are going directly to Habitat Haiti, and not to, for example, pay the guy with the big gun who rides our bus between the site and our camp, or for my coffee or those weird sandwiches we couldn’t identify. I got that for ya.

Headliners for Haiti!

We've finalised the details on our first fundraiser, which will actually be the second fundraiser in the series.

I really wanted to make the fundraisers fun for everyone — fundraisers that I would want to go to. So I tried to think of what fundraiser I'd been to in the last year that I didn't go to because of the cause or because a friend was on the board. This winter I went to a fundraiser for a Little League team! LITTLE LEAGUE. A non-hockey-playing group of child-people — can you think of anything I would care about less?

And what made me hand over my money for 50/50 tickets and basket raffles and bar food? Comedy. And not even the cool Neitzsche's comedy, because I'm still mad at Nietzsche's for making me share the bar with a cat all those years and then not letting my dog in. No, this was SUBURBAN comedy. Rob's Comedy Playhouse in Williamsville. Which sounded really far away to me, but really only took me twenty minutes to get to, so I should stop my whining about that.

Here's the thing about Rob's Comedy Playhouse. It's in Dandelions, on North Forest Road. I grew up on North Forest Road, just past the next intersection from Dandelions. And my next-door neighbour owned Dandelions. While I lived there. But this winter was the very first time I went inSIDE of Dandelions, reinforcing my long-held belief that I actually never go anywhere.

So, join us on July 22nd at Rob's Comedy Playhouse, on North Forest near the corner of Maple Road. Tickets are $25, and include your first two drinks. Doors open at 6.30, show goes 7.30-9.00. Basket raffles (plenty of hockey stuff, of course) and a 50/50 (no, we probably can't convince a Sabres Alum to do the draw), and hilarious laughs courtesy of Rob Lederman and Mark Saldana!


Look for the Pay Now button in the right-hand column to purchase tickets to Headliners for Haiti!

An Important Question

Anyone who has travelled with me will not be surprised to know that I have a perpetual packing list. I'm still not at all comfortable travelling, and I have to be prepared for every eventuality in order to minimise my anxiety when I leave home. This is known to the rest of the world as "over-packing." Mock if you want, but the other option is to stay home where I know all my stuff is. So I accept my over-packing and I get out of my rut and I go. Call it a coping mechanism.


My roommate for the 2006 build in India, Tammy has travelled with me on many occasions now, and is the only person I know with whom I can travel for a week and still have something to talk about on the way to the airport to go home. One day I'm going to make her a trophy for that talent.


In 2008, neither of us were able to make the Carter Work Project, so she asked me to go on a mission trip with her church to build a dental clinic in Guatemala instead. (This was actually the trip that got me over my white-knuckle fear of flying, from which I graduated to just being very, very bad at flying.) We roomed together on the trip, which required a GREAT deal of patience on her part. I felt I made up for being a pain in the ass a little bit because whenever she needed something she hadn't packed, I was able to accommodate her from my enormous array of luggage. It's a long story, but I even had a soccer ball and a slinky.


One day, she asked if I had a comb. "A comb? You didn't even pack a comb?" Tammy unapologetically explained her strategy: "I knew I didn't have to pack much, since you'd have everything." Huh. Not just a hat rack.


So, on this perpetual packing list, I've collected some quotes and poems and one joke that I like to review when I'm travelling to alleviate my anxiety. (To take some of the suspense out of it, I now e-mail my packing list du voyage to Tammy shortly before we go anywhere together. Now it's over-packing for the good of the many.) The joke is from Reader's Digest, the back-issues of which I read voraciously all summer long as a child, which may explain my digest-sized attention span now. As I'm getting ready for a Carter-cation today, I reread the joke, and it put me in mind of last year's Haiti build. And, for no other reason than that, I'm sharing it here...

IN A REMOTE VILLAGE in Sierra Leone, West Africa, I befriended Alpha, one of the local men on our building crew.

Alpha was impressed with my tool set and was amazed to find a woman working in construction. He'd bring extra rice and greens for lunch and we'd sit and talk. He asked about my husband, and I told him I wasn't married.

Alpha said he wanted sons and that he would marry soon. He wondered whether I'd stay in his country, and then surprised me by saying he had an important question for me. 

I was nervous about his impending marriage proposal, and the next day Alpha was solemn as he asked if I was ready to answer his question. I nodded. "When you go back to America," he said, "may I have your trowel? "  

— "All In a Day's Work"

Game on!

This post was written on 04 April, but I was waiting to finish posting from last year's build so they'd all be in consecutive order...

I got the acceptance email today - God willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be going to Haiti again for this year's Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project. I think this is the most excited I have ever been to get that email - even more excited when I found out I was going to India for my first build in 2006.

I think I'm excited because we were there, because we saw what needs to be done. We saw the acres and acres of tents organised into makeshift communities, with businesses like banks and barbers and markets set up in plywood shacks. We saw the desperation of the people we passed who resented the project because they weren't one of the lucky ones getting a home or even a job. We witnessed the extreme concern for our safety, traveling only in convoys, with armed guards on every bus and police escorts taking us between the build and the camp in which we lived. We heard stories about the protests at the pre-builds - protestors throwing rocks over the fences at the volunteers, rumored to have taken Haitian jobs, and digging trenches in the roads to prevent the buses from leaving the build site.

I also think I'm excited because last year was so amazing.  I judge the intensity of an experience by how long it takes me to stop seeing it every time I close my eyes. Haiti took almost a full month. I met such wonderful people, had great tent-mates, had great crew members. How can we top that? This year the build is after Thanksgiving, so we won't repeat the moving ceremony for Remembrance/Veteran's Day. With a full 50% increase in the number volunteers, if Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood give a concert again, will it feel as intimate? Heck, with a full 50% increase in the number of volunteers, will there be enough beer and electrical outlets?

I'm also excited to see how I'm going to raise $5000. Last year my friends were so quick with their generosity that I was done in half the time. This year I'd like to not barrage my Facebook page with fundraising information and try to increase awareness of the project by getting local businesses to sponsor. Might actually get a press release out, since I have a better idea of what to expect and could actually answer questions.

One theme was constant last year: after the build, go out and tell Haiti's story. They need people to remember that it's not a country that can fix itself, and the corruption is keeping even outside aid from getting to the intended recipients.

Last year President Carter sat down with the President of Haiti. Eschewing pleasantries, he simply said, "You can go down in history as the president who stopped the corruption and helped his own people, or you can be just another president." this year we'll get an idea of which path he chose.

In the meantime, the next seven months will be about telling Haiti’s story to my already generous friends. Game on.