A Typical Day at Habitat Haiti

I have to admit that when we first arrived on Sunday night and I looked around the tent, saw my cot with the foam padding, and realized that we were jammed with way too many people. . . I thought I wasn't going to make it!  I was hot and overwhelmed and looked at Jeanna and said "This was your idea!"  After saying that, survival mode takes over and you just adapt to your new surroundings and conditions making the best of it!  My lesson learned is that I am very resilient (okay I might have had one or two small meltdowns).

 The pictures above are of our camp at Christainville.  They give you the idea of how close our quarters were in the camp.  They used every square inch of the land provided to put up tents.  We were in one of the long white tents, the blue tents were for the lucky people that only had 4 -6 people in a tent.

Our typical day began with alarms going off between 5:00-5:30am.  As you can see our friend Gayle loves the morning and was ready to go!  You can also see how close our cots were together, it was almost like sharing a bed with someone!

 They did a really good job on the bathrooms!  There were flush toilets and water for the sinks, the water was treated but it was not safe to drink so you had to brush your teeth with bottled water.  There were shower stalls with pretty decent flow of cold water.  It actually felt good to take a cold shower at the end of the day.  The showers were open every day from 4pm-9pm.

We would then head to the mess tent for breakfast starting at 6am.  Breakfast usually consisted of some kind of eggs, oatmeal, cold cereal, bread, and juice.  After a quick breakfast we would gather our tool bag and get in line for the buses to the work site.  The last bus left at 7am.

Just outside the camp fence we passed a school when we were boarding the buses.  The children were all in their uniforms playing in the school yard waiting for school to start.  There uniforms were neatly cleaned and pressed!  We did wonder how their uniforms were so clean knowing the scarcity of water in the surrounding area.  

When we arrived at the work site we would unload the buses and head to our respective houses.  This was a good day for me. . .I think this was Wednesday, I had on a clean shirt!!

The entire work site was fenced in and there was barbed wire on the fence to keep people from stealing supplies.  There were guards everywhere inside the work site to protect us from any danger.  I never felt in danger at any time during the trip, however we did have some materials stolen from our house.

 These were our bathrooms on the work site.  The port-a-potties were very clean, but they were like thermal heat boxes!  You had to be very quick doing your business because the heat could overtake you.  One of my biggest fears was passing out in the port-a-potty and not being found!

 Our House Leader was with a large group from Florida so they had pink flamingos for each of the houses they were working on.  On the last day we each signed the flamingo and gave it to the homeowner!  The tradition is that on each anniversary on their move in date they are to put the flamingo in their yard!

 I am nailing in the hurricane brackets on the roof trusses to help prevent the house from being destroyed in the event of another hurricane.  The unfortunate problem with the hurricane brackets was the fact the nails were too large for the metal plates.  So in the picture below you can see me using a punch and a hammer to make each hole in the hurricane bracket bigger so they could be nailed on the house.  Each bracket had 8 nail holes and there must have been around 100 brackets.  I am now well skilled in this area!!!

This picture was taken at the beginning of Day 2 and you can see that everyone has their roof trusses and purlins up on their houses.

This is the house by the beginning of the day Friday.  The house had all the siding installed but we still had to build the porch roof, add the roof cap and install the window coverings by 3pm!

 Jeanna was the Queen of the porch roof construction!  She set all the porch posts, built the roof frame and installed the purlins.  The porch purlins "disappeared" sometime in the first few days and there were no more 16ft lengths of 2x4's so we had to measure and cut 9 separate pieces for the porch roof.  Trust me the roof would have been much easier if those materials had been around!!

 Our work day ended each day around 4pm with clean up starting at 3:15-3:30.  We boarded the buses back to the camp.  The big decision of the afternoon was whether or not to run the gauntlet to get to the shower before dinner or wait until after dinner.  The shower right away felt better because you were so hot from being out in the sun all day but there was often a long line if you were not in the first bus.  But showering after dinner was nice because you had the place pretty much to yourself but the water felt much colder!

After dinner each night there was so form of entertainment and the bar opened at 7pm.  Monday night we had Haitian singers and dancers perform for us.  Tuesday night was an incredible impromptu concert by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood!  Garth hadn't brought a guitar with him but they found him one and he played a great concert!  Thursday night was a wonderful evening with President and Mrs. Carter talking about their work since leaving the White House.  I am so impressed with the work the Carters and the Carter Center have done!  Mrs. Carter spoke of her passion of ensuring equal rights for women and girls across the globe and preventing various diseases in third world nations.  President Carter does a lot of work in foreign policy and opening the lines of communications across the globe.  These are people that have dedicated their lives to public service and definitely "walk the talk!"  

Bedtime came early because we were beat from the heat and the hard work and 5:00am comes pretty quickly!  So that was our typical day during the Carter Work Week in Haiti.  Tomorrow's blog will talk about the last day on the site and heading home!