Arrival in Haiti

We're here. Yes.

I couldn't stay asleep last night - woke up at 2.30, which was fortunately post-time change so I at least got my extra hour of sleep before I woke up. Wake-up call was set for 4 anyway (that's when they started serving breakfast, and I love CWP breakfast time), so I got up and played on the iPad. Turns out I wasn't the only one, breakfast started early and went long.

I met a couple on the elevator yesterday who I had breakfast with - she's from Niagara Falls. He - it turned out - was long-time fishing buddies with the cousin of the man who sat down next, Irving. "President Carter calls me Irwin, though." Since President Carter is his elder by two years, Irv puts up with it. Turns out Irv is on my house, so I have someone who will do the work-out-the-cot exercises with me. Had so much fun at breakfast I was almost late for my bus.

Have you ever seen the pilot clean
the windshield before?

Travel to Haiti was uneventful, although it was hard to be patient. Jeff Carter was on my shuttle bus, so we sat together on the way over and made devious plans for if the rumor that no alcohol was being served at the bar turned out to be true. I also became the first person to lose my name badge - arm bands just don't work for me, I explained to he person who found it in the sidewalk outside the bus. Waiting for the bus, waiting for the bus to leave, waiting for the bus to get to the airport, waiting to check in, all so that we could wait three hours for the plane to leave. Do I sound like I'm complaining? If you know about my travel anxiety, you'll know that arriving three hours before a flight is a fantasy of mine. Also gives you plenty of time to shop at the Duty Free. The Carter flight left first, in a specially-decorated Habitat plane. We left on a regular Delta flight, but charter flights feature fabulous hot measl, from first class to the back of the plane, so who's complaining?

Speaking of the last row, I was in the window seat in the last row. Me, who kind of needs to be the first person off of a plane, was destined to be the last. I pondered this, and tacked on the phrase, "just the way I like it" — it works. Come time to get off the plane, it gave us time to use the plane's facilities before our 2-hour bus ride. As we patiently waited. Chatting with the other passengers, we watched groups of 50 before us cram onto coaches for the drive. But when it came to our turn, they were a bus short. Wait some more. For an air conditioned coach that only 15 of us had to share. We were in heaven at our good fortune. We put our carry-ons in their own seats to give us more room. I was sure I wouldn't get a window seat to take pictures - I ended up with a window seat on each side of the bus if I wanted it. Last seat on the plane pays off.

Haiti wasn't as shocking as I'd expected, mostly because I'd been to developing nations before and have seen the slums of Mumbai. The earthquake destruction was visible from the air as we landed - neighbourhoods we're dotted with naked foundations. Colourful encampments could also be seen, as well as obvious developments by builders who came before. I the drive, it reminded me of India and Guatemala. Brightly-painted signs belied the depressing wares they hawked. Geto Bank. Philip Barber. Any number of religious sayings on buses crammed unsafely with passengers. Christ Capable. Thank You Mother. I Love You Lucky. Different religion, that.

When passing the encampments, each tent was identified somehow with the group that brought it. US AID, Shelter Box by Rotary, etc. I thought Shelter Box were he nicest of the tents. OxFam had an enormous camp. Red Cross has begun transitional housing. Livestock co-existed - pigs foraging in the drainage ditch, rooster watching over from the roof. Everywhere we went, children on the sidewalk blew kisses and waved. Men waved, too, but a few of them gave us the finger.

Market

Streets were mainly cleared and passable, but here was rubble and debris on the side of he outside lanes. I began to wonder if it were garbage day. Many places I saw people pushing cars, not looking as though they were trying to start it. That's really the only explanation, though, when you see someone pushing someone else on a motorcycle.

Because so much time had elapsed that there was substantial plant growth, I was having a hard time distinguishing between earthquake damage and decay, and at points realized what I thought was falling down was actually something new going up.

Meal Tent

Arrival at camp, the very last ones, was delayed by President Carter's motorcade and apparently also by Tricia Yearwood and Garth Brooks' arrival. Grabbed my suitcases and headed to tent 75, where not only was I the last to arrive and had very little room left to me, but where there were only three cots for four people. Just the way I like it. I tried to request a cot, but you had to go to the meal tent, through the front entrance, and all the way to the ba... This is air conditioned? I'm just going to sit here for a spell... My new-found friends from registration came in - Lisa Nickerson and Jan Eliot - with their friend, Traci, who did not have work boots and was hoping to avail herself of one of my extra pairs, donated by Sue Campbell. They were staying in the Canadian tent, an enormous structure with 14 people in it. Or was it 13? It was, because now its 14, because rather than torture the three women in my tent, I moved into theirs. I mean, it's already Canadian...

Beautiful things started to happen. On the way to dinner, we encountered Scott Lyle carrying a bottle of wine and a stack of cups. The dinner line that had been halfway around the block was only about 25 people long when we finished our wine. Rice pudding appeared out of nowhere for dessert just when I'd decided I'd not had enough carbs. And after chatting with Chip and Jeff Carter for a while about the lay of the land, I stepped aside for the Carters' encourage, only to have Jeff grab my hand and say, "Watch how easy this is." He just brought me along with the family, seating me with them in the front row for the evening's speeches and preaches and dancing. I don't know where the Coke bottle full of wine came from, but it was delicious. Just what I needed to nudge me off to a sweaty sleep to recover for tomorrow. I just have to learn that you can let a mosquito net touch you - it's not like the side of a tent in the rain. Then I can relax.

Jeff, Rosalynn, Jimmy, Chip

(and yes, I couldn't sleep, so I wrote this at 2am, to be proofread at a later and less-sleepy time)

Ding! Ding! Ding! You built a whole house!

My friends rock. Yeah, you guys. Less than two months into a five-month fundraiser, you have reached deep and donated to meet my $5000 goal. Special thanks to Dave Pietrowski, who did the math and made sure I hit goal exactly!


Each home that we build in Haiti costs between $5000-$7000 to construct. While I’ll be down there doing the work, it’s my friends and family who have made sure I have a house to build. Think of that – every one of you who has donated to this campaign is responsible for creating a solid, hurricane-proof cinderblock home in Haiti. The four walls that a family lives within. The roof that keeps them dry. The stability upon which a community can be rebuilt.


We can do more.


We can help purchase tools. Pay for materials for the school. Contribute to training programs that allow our homeowners to find work or start businesses. And make sure there’s money available to start the house I’m going to work on next year.


So, I’m updating my goal to $7000 — the high end of the cost of building one house — in hopes that those who haven’t yet donated can add to what we’ve raised, so we can give that much more to a program that really helps in a country that really, really needs it.


Please keep those donations coming!

Haiti Earthquake: 19 months later...

What is Habitat for Humanity International doing to help piece Haiti back together? 

More than just bricks and mortar...

On Jan. 12, 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti just 10 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

 The earthquake damaged nearly 190,000 houses, of which 105,000 were completely destroyed. Of the more than two million affected survivors, 600,000 are still displaced today. That’s more than twice the population of Buffalo, living in temporary shelters and with little infrastructure in an area not much larger than Western New York.

This summer, Habitat for Humanity will break ground on a permanent housing development in the Santo community of Léogâne. Léogâne is close to the epicenter of the earthquake, where nearly 80 to 90 percent of buildings were damaged or destroyed. The development will provide housing for up to 500 homeless families, or approximately 2,500 individuals.

The Carter Work Project in November will complete 100 homes in one week, toward that goal of 500 homes. The Global Village Program, which organizes volunteer teams to perform short-term assignments at builds all over the world, has put together three week-long trips before the CWP to assist in preparing the foundations for our build.

In light of the number of displaced persons, housing 2,500 people may not seem to make a dent. While Habitat measures their progress by the number of families and individuals served, the impact of their work can be seen in the transformation not only of lives but entire communities. They call it their Urban Development Approach, which is based on empowering and strengthening communities in defined geographic areas. By working closely with communities, Habitat helps them to build self-confidence to take action, identify and prioritize their needs. Habitat also helps them develop community action plans and leverage their collective capacity to advocate for change.

While Habitat has set a goal of serving 50,000 families in the five years after the earthquake, the scope of their services to date goes well beyond building permanent structures:

• more that 24,000 emergency shelter kits have been distributed to those in greatest needs, while 3,000 more have been stockpiled for distribution in the event of a future disaster

• more than 2,500 families have received upgradable shelters (a timber-frame skeleton with pressure-treated plywood walls, a tin roof, and permanent concrete foundation, to which concrete blocks can be added later when the family can afford to upgrade), including the families who will move out of them to occupy the CWP-built homes

• Habitat has assessed housing damage on over 5,000 units, to determine which can be made safe, and launched a repair/rehab program that completed 500 projects by the end of this June

• more than 3,000 Haitians have been trained in construction or construction business practices

• 1,200 Haitians have been trained in financial literacy

• more than 700 Haitians have found job opportunities through Habitat Haiti and Habitat Resource Centers (with unemployment at 60%, rebuilding cannot take place without employment opportunities)

To help in funding these desperately-needed projects in Haiti, all participants in the 2011 Carter Work Project are asked to raise $5000 apiece. Please help rebuild Haiti and allow me to do the same by donating here!

Whaaat? No Bath & Body Works Orange Ginger??

When I did the CWP in Lonavala, India in 2006, we stayed at Velvett Country (life is cheap in India; spelling is cheaper). Velvett Country is a resort, with meditation paths and tennis courts and a masseuse on-staff. Of course, we left before 6 every morning and returned after dinner every night, so we partook of none of that, but there was a lovely deck around the pool large enough to accommodate all of the volunteers as we reviewed the day’s events after sunset. I could catch Sabres highlights on CNN World Sports in my room.

For the CWP in Los Angeles in 2007, we stayed at the LAX Marriott. There were 6 pillows on my bed, and I still use Bath & Body Works Orange Ginger products after using the samples we got as toiletries every day. There was a Starbucks in the lobby and Wifi all around.

In 2008, I went instead on a mission trip with the Lovely Lane Methodist Church, to build a dental clinic in San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala. We stayed in lovely cabins right on the lake, and had homemade dinners with a family who lived nearby every night. The hot water setup was questionable, but the view was fabulous. A little boy I sponsor in Guatemala draws me a picture of the mountain we were looking at with every letter he sends.

The CWP in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2009 involved a long bus ride to the site, which gave us a chance to wake up before arriving at the build site, marking our time in the sun’s rise over the pictures of the King which were affixed everywhere along the route. The hotel had in-room internet so I could argue with my publisher, beautiful teak wood everywhere, and, well, a mall attached, which also included a Starbucks and was showing “2012.” Massages were $11. Hot oil massages were $13.

Haiti is going to be different. Muuuuuch, much different.

My friend Karen Haycox works for Habitat for Humanity International, and has posted a bit on Facebook about the conditions there. First and foremost: security. Karen wrote about how she was always met at the airport by someone to take her where she was going. It wasn’t the royal treatment – it was a necessity. Whereas on all my other trips I have gone early to see the country (and acclimate to the heat before the build), there’s no traveling alone in Haiti. The volunteers will meet in Atlanta first for the Opening Ceremonies, then take charter planes to Haiti and be shuttled directly to the campus together. No shopping, no wandering into town for a beer after a hard day. We’ll only know we’re in Haiti because we won’t actually get to see Haiti (nightly entertainment brought to the campus aside).

Second: pillows. We may or may not get pillows, but we certainly won’t get six of them. Or maid service. Or Starbucks. We will be sleeping in 6-person tents, which I expect are actually a lot nicer than the tents our homeowners were living in before they were accepted to the project. Now, I’ve had powerful good luck with roommates on these builds (Tammy Stines three times, solo once), but Tammy puts up with me being a slob and there’s no guarantee that the other four people will. And six people sweating all day in the hot sun sleeping in an enclosed area with a single fan… well, that brings up…

Three: water. In India the hot water lasted for about 45 seconds and in Guatemala the hot water heater controls were suspended inside the shower, held up only by bare, live wires. Thailand had no hot water problems, and LA of course had Orange Ginger bath products. Haiti will have — a bucket. Portajohns, to be sure, but no running water. We will each get a bucket of water every day for bathing. Not my preferred form of hygiene to begin with, but after a day of working on a build in the hot sun, crusted with mortar or paint flecks, covered with several layers of sunblock and sweat… I may pack a scrub brush. Certainly we’ll all be in the same boat, and will all smell equally bad, but the problem comes on the trip home. After we take charter planes back to Atlanta, people are going to get on connecting flights. And sit next to perfectly innocent, bathing people who are not going to like this one bit. I’m planning on asking my friend Sue to pick me up in Atlanta (after covering her car seats in garbage bags) and let me spend a couple of hours in her shower before I’m fit for sitting next to anyone.

Four: Wifi. This was kind of a surprise. Turns out you can’t go anywhere without Wifi. This is a blitz build let by a former US President, with a couple more brave celebrities backing him up, and great publicity for Habitat for Humanity International. There won’t be as many members of the media present as there were in, say, Los Angeles, but media will be there, and they’ll need the internet. So there will be a computer tent (I expect, along with the First Aid tent, one of the few air conditioned places to be found). And we’ll have some power strips for charging iPhones and iPads. So, if I can bear to touch my favourite electronics with my grimy hands, I get to blog from the site. And maybe even catch some Sabres highlights online.

This is going to be a challenging build, reminiscent of the early days of Habitat when volunteers would be put up in churches and schools for the builds, but without the convenient plumbing that those facilities proudly boast. Given the fundraising requirement (India’s registration was $800; Haiti volunteers need to raise $5000), only the most committed volunteers will be there. The challenges are what make this build so enticing: pushing myself to physical extremes; bonding with a new house crew and tent-mates; learning enough Creole to converse with the homeowners and learn about their experiences with the earthquake (note to self: learn “earthquake” in Creole, or this could get confusing); packing what I’ll need without overpacking like an idiot. Only four more months to work on that packing list…

I'm going to Haiti!

After weeks of anxious waiting, I finally got the e-mail with the news - I've been accepted as a volunteer on the 2011 Carter Work Project (formerly the Jimmy Carter Work Project, but after working by his side on the builds for 24 years, Rosalynn finally got equal billing). Acceptance isn't automatic - I wasn't accepted in 2008, even though I'd worked on the 2006 and 2007 builds. This year only 400 volunteers can go, and 150 of those are affiliated with the corporate sponsors of the build. That leaves 250 of us, several hundred fewer than usually get accepted.

The odds were already against me, number-wise. Add to that my past performance on builds, and, well... See, my first build was in India in 2006. I arrived in India a week early to acclimate to the heat, which never happened. It was over 100° and I was 40 pounds overweight. By the time I got to the build site, I was aware that I was not going to be able to toil in the hot sun oblivious to the heat as I had hoped. I was going to melt and whine about it. I fortuitously ran into my House Leader, Dave Bullen, at the Opening Ceremonies and presented my idea… “I have low blood pressure and can’t go up ladders, I’m wilting in the heat, and I have no particular building skills. I am going to be your Safety Monitor.”

At the Houston build they lost 20% of the volunteers by noon every day because of the heat – we weren’t going to lose anybody. I promised to make everyone drink their water and electrolytes and take breaks, keep the work site clean and hazard-free, and make sure the scaffolding and ladders were safe. In a country where most scaffolding is several stories of bamboo lashed together. And life is cheap.

Everyone drank a bottle of water every 45 minutes, reapplied sunblock every two hours, drank electrolytes every three hours (I had a thing going with the first aid tent to get them to mix and chill the electrolytes for us so they tasted less like sweat). I was known by the local labourers on the site as Pani Ghodi – the Water Nag. But we didn’t lose a single person to heat. One person went to first aid at the end of the day, and they told him he was dehydrated. “No way – there’s this woman on our site who makes us drink water…” We did lose someone to some dodgy eggs, but hell, it’s India!

Despite the fact that I had completely invented the position of Safety Monitor, I took the responsibilities quite seriously. I got to the build site early every day and crashed the Block Leaders’ meeting to find out what the safety concerns of the day were. When Indian film star John Abraham (“Water”) was working two doors down, I kept the lookie-loos from trampling the stacks of roof tiles on our site to get a look by heavily enforcing Hard Hat Thursday. I was so into spreading the electrolyte love that I accidentally offered electrolytes to President Carter outside the first aid tent. Secret Service did not look amused, despite the fact that I have since learned they have quite the sense of humour.

Here’s how good a job I did. The following year I visited one of my crew members on a cross-country drive, and he told me that they were jealous that I “called” Safety Monitor before anyone else. They didn’t realize I had fabricated the position as a coping mechanism. Because of my fine work in India, the next year on the Los Angeles build, there was actually a position called “Safety Monitor” at every site. You had to wear a red hard hat and fill out paperwork on OSHA regs, so I kept my monitoring informal and remained supervisory (and the Home Depot gopher) on that build. In Thailand, because of my connections with the Lovely Lane Methodist Church of Cedar Rapids (which I may or may not explain later), I “Safety Monitored” two houses, which included plenty of ice-, sun-, and cotter pin-management.

Safety Monitoring works on a large scale, when you have enough other workers to go up ladders and work on the roof, and especially when they’re hard workers who wouldn’t come down off the roof to get water so someone has to hand water up to them or catch them when they pass out and fall off. But when there are only 250 volunteers to be chosen? Well, they gave me the benefit of the doubt here. Or they don’t keep careful notes on the volunteers…

Stay tuned to find out how I intend to make myself useful in Haiti…

Fundraising Kickoff

Over the next several months, I will be raising money for Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI). I need to raise $5000 to qualify to go on the Carter Work Project in Haiti in November. I've already overcome the first hurdle - being accepted as one of only 400 volunteers who get to go.

I first became involved in the CWP in 2006 when I was donating money online to HFHI after an earthquake in Pakistan. Whenever there is a disaster, I donate to HFHI, because they're the ones who are there after the cameras and celebrities have gone home, working with the residents to rebuild their lives. On the donation page, a banner advertised, 'Now accepting applications for the CWP in India.' I hate hot weather, was terrified of planes, didn't particularly like travelling, and had no building skills. It was so contrary to my nature, I just had to go...

Through the CWP, I have helped build a village of 100 homes in India, a village of 82 homes (for the King, who turned 82 that year) in Thailand, and rehabbed a home in Los Angeles. I have never felt closer to God than I did at the home dedication in India. These builds are really hard for me, but never as hard as the living conditions that we are helping families leave behind when they get the keys to their new Habitat homes. Please make a difference to someone you'll never meet - I'll do the heavy lifting, I just need your help to get there.

Donations can be made on my Team Member Page - thanks!