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.