Wow. It's finally here. Departure day. I'm really excited, and eager to see what lies ahead. I've just had an awesome week with El Mejor Grupo - a fabulous group of individuals who were some of the hardest working and hilariously silly folks I've ever met. We had a blast, and got a ton of work done on our 2 worksites - the foundations are laid! The walls are ready to be built! Woo hoo!! I'm so impressed with the amount of work we got done, and the especially with the incredibly positive attitudes that everyone maintained. Our work was accelerated to a nearly frenetic pace for 2 days because we were working under the threat of Tropical Stom Emily. She ended up being a total wuss in our part of the country, and luckily she was much weaker than predicted on all of Hispaniola.
Today has been bittersweet - it was sad to say goodbye to my amazing DR team, but exciting to concurrently be greeting and meeting my Haiti team, which promises to be a fascinating group. We have folks with all sorts of international Habitat experience, as well as experts in public health, community organizing, and luckily, Haitian Creole! This is going to be an interesting project too - it seems to have several variations on Habitat's standards. I will know a lot more after this week, but what I do know is that we're going to be working on "core houses," [note - not "whore houses," as one of my DR team members misheard when I was talking about it...] small but permanent and sturdy homes that have 20 square meters of living space. I have been trying to conceptualize what that means...it converts to 215 square feet, but as I'm not a real estate person, it doesn't mean a lot to me. We were discussing it at dinner tonight, and decided it was about 14 by 14 feet, or about the length of our dinner table squared. Hm.
My Haiti team members have been asking me tonight if I'm exhausted transitioning from one team to another so quickly, but I actually feel really energized. Probably mostly because it was an awesome team and lacked energy-sucking challenges, but also because I've had some glimpses into the reality of the crisis in Haiti...
So all week we were working next to a wooden shack that is on the homeowner's land. We stored our materials in there, which was an appropriate use of a slotted wood shack with a dirt floor and hole-filled tin roof. We found out on day 4 that it is also the home of Miguel and Wilton, two Haitian refugees who have been staying there since the earthquake. The homeowner family lets them stay there for free, but will probably kick them out when their house is done because they will need the storage space. They sleep on thin mattresses on the floor and cook inside over wood, on stove which looks like a rusty, dirty hubcap. Still, this is better than what their options are in Haiti so for now they stay there, looking for work on a daily basis and only occasionally with success.
I'll be thinking about them over this next week, and though it will be a challenging Global Village build - all of a sudden my Spanish won't be handy, I won't have an air-conditioned hotel room to sleep in at night, and our group will be preparing our own breakfasts and lunches, it won't even begin to compare to the daily living challenges that Miguel and Wilton have faced for the past 20 months, and, likely, well before that.
Off we go!!
I'll be writing throughout the week, but I don't know if I'll have internet connection to actually post anything, so definitely check back next Saturday, when we get back to the DR!
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