November 4, 2014

Darenda left for Pittsburgh early this morning, her leadership duties complete. And it was probably a good thing, since she had developed a sore throat and wasn’t feeling all that great. An amazing thing happened on the way to the airport, though. She was riding along with Ancy in the Kia and noticed someone who looked familiar riding alongside on a moto (motorcycle taxi). He looked up and recognized her - I guess there aren’t all that many lady “blancs” with curly blonde hair driving through Port Au Prince traffic in big blue Kias these days. Anyhow, he hopped off the moto and hopped into the Kia - turns out it was Pastor Daniel for whom we installed a system in his Valiere orphanage last year! He rode on to the airport with her and they had a good discussion of what is going on with his system!

Betsy was feeling a little under the weather this morning, but popping some Pepto Bismol seems to doing the trick. When first I saw her, she told me that I might have to do today solo. Thank goodness it didn’t work out that way! Education is a lot easier and less stressful with two of us tag-teaming!

View of Port Au Prince from the Life is Wealth orphanage

We got started at Life is Wealth orphanage right on schedule this morning. Our students showed up relatively on time (at least for Haiti) and the guys got right to work on finishing the system installation.  So it was a good morning. Afternoon instruction consisted of us coaching our four ‘education leaders’ as they repeated the morning’s lessons for Crystal’s group of leadership girls. Everyone got really competitive when we did the exercise where we have them lotion their hands with a fluorescent lotion and then try to get it all washed off so nothing showed under our little black light flashlights. You’ve never seen a group of people wash their hands so thoroughly or for so long! 

Checking for remnants of glo-lotion after thorough hand washing

Pastor Yves instructs the leadership team girls

Creating a water use priority ladder

 At the end of the education session we had help from our students making a colorful banner with the admonition “Good Water + Clean Hands = Healthy Bodies”. The banner will be hung on the water building tomorrow for the celebration. Making the banner’s messy, but everyone enjoyed planting their own colorful handprint and signature on the initially clean white sheet.

Making the banner

We got some help from the girls to make paper chains for the system dedication celebration tomorrow afternoon. They also brought all the 5 and 2 ½ gallon water bottles downstairs and plastered LWW labels on them. So now we’ve got the bottles all ready to go for the first day of system service.

Labeling bottles

The guys completed their installation. There was a leak, so they had to go back and fix that, but now all is done and ready to go. Valdes even got started training the operators. The hitch was Rick noticed from photos sent to him that the switches were wired backwards, potentially causing problems with the pump. So after an exchange of emails, a new part was purchased, the board was quickly re-wired and all is well.

Installed water purification system prior to the rewiring exercise

Karl and his best bud

Alan and Betsy relax with friends at the end of the day

The only other hiccup in the otherwise pretty perfect day occurred when we got back to Pacot Breeze where we’re staying. When we arrived we were told that our Haitian colleagues did not have a room reservation for the night and would have to leave. Turns out, the reservation agent made the reservation for Sunday to Tuesday, not Monday to Wednesday. So even though the guys didn’t occupy a room on Sunday, we were being charged for it. We were pretty upset but the poor girl at the desk was just doing her job by the book. As it turns out, their room was still available, so they are staying. We just had to figure out if Pacot Breeze will make us pay for an extra night or not. Finally the manager waded into the whole thing and decided we didn’t need to pay for our Haitian colleagues for tonight after all. All is well that ends well!

We had a nice dinner on the terrace this evening with good conversation all around in the excellent company of our Haitian colleagues. Karl leaves tomorrow morning early so he won’t be here to enjoy the dedication. He’ll be missed.