Domes for Haiti

2011-03-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

2011-01-12T09:39:00.000-08:00

Today is the one year anniversary of the Earthquake in Haiti.
I am sending a shout out to all the kids I met while I was there, Children living in the orphanages all over Port Au Prince. Although I know you can't read this, my thoughts are with you, always.

Best wishes to all the orphanages we built domes at:
Judy Hangel's Orphanage, Henri's Orphanage, The Upper Room, Ti Moun Se Moun, Pastor Joseph's Orphanage, Dr. Robert's Orphanage, Desamour Eyannette's Orphanage and Pastor Serge Platel's Orphanage.

Shout out to my crew!
Nephtalie, Nellie, Madson, Watson and Marco
You guys are the best!

To all the friends I made in Haiti, Bon Ane Nouvo! Stay strong, stay healthy!
To all the aid workers who have committed themselves to helping with the rebuilding efforts, sometimes at personal detriment to their own health, financial stability, freedom and sanity. Thank you for all you've done, all you continue to do and all you will do in the future.

Shout out to Konbit Shelter, Ayiti Rise, Kleiwerks, Vie de France School, Give Love, Grassroots United and Can-do

Keep on doing what you do!

Haiti Inspired Artworks

2010-12-19T16:04:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I posted anything on this blog, so I thought I would put up some of the Haiti inspired artwork I have been making in the months since I have been back....
this is a large scale drawing 4' x 2'

these are large scale stencil paintings
4 ft by 2 ft

2010-11-30T12:10:00.001-08:00

GADE! (music video) from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

DIY Humanitarian Project Summary

2010-10-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

Domes for Haiti recently completed our first humanitarian effort. This project was embarked upon by one individual who was deeply moved and affected by the suffering in Haiti as seen through the lens of photojournalists and the keyboards of writers who were witnessing first hand the devastation after the Earthquake hit Haiti in January. I'm an artist, activist and stagehand living in Brooklyn, NYC. I was angered by the lack of actual aid reaching the people in need on the ground. I was upset by the calls for donations of money to help Haiti because I knew that the majority of those donations would be absorbed by the large operating costs of NGO's who spend tons on lodging and food to maintain a lifestyle far above the average Haitian person. The hypocrisy and injustice of that was enough to spur me into action.

I was eager to go directly to Haiti in the beginning of February to help, but I knew I would be just another mouth to feed and body to house. I didn't want to put more of a strain on the limited resources in country, maybe taking away from the people who really needed food and shelter. Instead, I decided to bring something with me to help, so as not to come empty handed.

Being a huge fan of Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Domes, I began to explore how to build pre-fabricated domes. I thought that a pre-fab dome structure would be an ideal transitional shelter, easy to fabricate, very portable and simple to assemble with a minimum of tools required.

I decided on what seemed to be a realistic number, 10 domes, to not get too grandiose in my plan, so I could actually accomplish it and not get overwhelmed. Ten domes could house at least 100 kids. I also decided to build the domes for orphanages because getting involved in the IDP camps seemed too complicated and giving shelters to individual families problematic on many levels.

I started to make calls, talk to people in my community and things started happening. I had to find a non-profit organization willing to serve as my fiscal sponsor. I contacted Buckminster Fuller Institute, which is located in Brooklyn. Will Elkins answered the phone when I called. When I told him why I was calling, he already knew about my project. He invited me to come the next day to meet with himself and the director, Elizabeth Thompson. They were extremely positive and supportive about my idea and they were willing to be my fiscal sponsor. However, after about a week, it became clear that they would require at least a month to sort the paperwork out. Too long. So I continued to search for a willing non-profit. I found one with a local activist group called "Not an Alternative" They were immediately supportive and took quick action to give me fiscal sponsorship within a week of the initial conversation.

During this time, I was researching how to fabricate the frames out of conduit pipe. I found all the information I needed on the good old world wide web. Anyone can do what I did. I googled it. "How to build a Geodesic Dome". Blammo. Done. I found this website: Desert Domes They had all the information I needed to build the frames on that site. My friends at 3rd Ward in Bushwick gave me access to their metal shop to fabricate a prototype to make sure the calculations were correct to build a 17' dome. The size was chosen because with the calculations, for a 2 frequency dome, there would be no waste from the offcuts from ten foot conduit pipe pieces. David Seigel at 3rd Ward was a huge help in this initial phase. Zach Tucker from Swimming Cities also helped a huge amount- he and I spent more than a few hours pressing the ends of conduit pipes with a hydraulic press at a motorcycle shop in Greenpoint. Many other people helped as well. The first dome build happened at Bushwick Project for the Arts. It was a huge relief when the calculations were spot on and it went up in less than 2 hours!

When you are on the right path, things tend to fall into place without a lot of effort. I was on a roll. Many people were getting excited to donate their resources towards Domes for Haiti. Turtle and Hughes, a woman owned electrical supply company in New Jersey was the first major donor. They donated 3500 feet of 1" EMT conduit pipe.

I needed to find someone willing to do the metal fabrication. After experiencing what it took to fabricate 65 struts for one dome, I knew I had to redefine the meaning of "DIY" to "GSETDIFY" (get someone else to do it for you) John Laidman of Laidman Fabrication didn't take that much convincing. I cold called him and after hearing the words "orphans, Haiti, shelter" he agreed to fabricate all 700 pieces Free of Charge. In a ten minute telephone conversation.

I called up Turtle & Hughes and gave them John's shop address in Greenpoint. They delivered the 3500 feet of conduit pipe the next day.

Then I got stuck. I hit a wall with the prototype for the covers. I had originally thought I could make the covers out of recycled vinyl banners from the tv and advertising industry in NYC. I thought I could do it myself, DIY style. I found a pattern on the wonderful world wide web for a 17ft dome cover and used my position as a stage hand to gather up a large supply of vinyl mostly donated by MTV and Scenic Corps. I found what I thought to be a vinyl welding machine, actually two of them, from a guy that worked at the company I used to work at. It turned out to be a machine designed to melt plastic bags shut, not thick vinyl!
As you can imagine, there was a lot of trial and error over the course of this project.
I decided to glue the vinyl together using this special glue called HH-66 which, incidentally, is super toxic. It basically re-arranges the molecules of the vinyl and melts the shit together.

I found a wonderful pattern maker through a friend who was working for a major clothing label (that which cannot be named) who pirated her own time at work to make us a to scale pattern template. We went into my friend Brett Lord's former place of employment in the fabric district and used their cutting machines and tables to cut out enough pieces to make the first dome cover prototype. (Brett has since moved on to a full time pursuit of his performance career and you can see his ariel expertise in the new production of the House of Yes's Horror Show this week!) I spent the next week staying up into the wee hours every night at Bushwick Project For the Arts, wearing a gas mask, gluing vinyl shapes together. When it was done, it didn't fit the dome, it was too large. It was a horrible week full of toxicity. It was a total bust. But I did learn a lot. Mistakes are valuable lessons. Failure is one of the steps to success, if you keep walking.

I completely canned the idea altogether of fabricating the covers out of vinyl when I learned that when it burns, it gives off poisonous gases. It also off gasses toxic fumes. This was a case of my DIY, dumpster diving ideals not panning out at all. It was a wee bit crushing, but I got over it.

I spent the next forever looking for a tensile structure manufacturer who would not only be willing to prioritize my project but also give us a significant discount in the manufacturing of ten geodesic dome covers. It was a very difficult search. I must have called every tent, awning and dome manufacturer in the states. No one was willing to do it. I was extremely disheartened. I thought my project was going to fail. The momentum we had reached kept me going. We did a bunch of fundraisers. An old friend of mine on the west coast, a dj named Little John, put together an electronic music compilation of some really great artists who all donated their musical tracks to make a compilation for Domes for Haiti. There is a link on the sidebar. Everyone who downloads tracks sends donations to Domes For Haiti.

I kept searching and talking about my project to people. I gathered tools and shipping crates. We packed up the finished struts. I tried to raise more money. It was slow going.
One day I was looking online at the good old world wide web. I was on Facebook, looking at Grassroots United's photo albums. I saw a photo of a beautiful canopy tent that looked kind of like a circus tent. It was in Haiti. There was a note on it that the tent was made by Nantucket Tents. I immediately called them up and introduced myself and Domes for Haiti. They were very friendly and they told me that they didn't make the tent themselves. They refereed me to a sail maker in Massachusetts named Matt Sperry who has a company named Sperry Sails.

I called Matt up. He showed an immediate openness and enthusiasm for the project.

He agreed to build the covers, to prioritize the project and to give us a great deal on the price.
Even with the huge discount he was willing to give us, it was the single largest expense we had encountered along the way. He needed a little over $11,000 to manufacture the covers.
I was overjoyed and stressed at the same time. At the time, our total budget that we had raised for the entire project was under 5 grand. But we didn't give up.

I told him to go ahead with it and we'd raise the money somehow.

My friends Swoon and Ben were working on another Haiti project called Konbit Shelter.
They were having a drag benefit dinner presentation for their project and they invited me to come do a presentation of Domes for Haiti at the event. That is the kind of community I live in. People work together to help each other realize their dreams. It's an amazing place, Brooklyn, full of amazing and wonderful artists. Most of them are absolutely crazy and totally beautiful. Many people in this community spend most of their time working and building collaborative art projects without pay. People here have been known to occasionally eat out of dumpsters so that they can do what they are passionate about. Art. The DIY mentality is deeply rooted here. It was during this presentation that my friend Will Etundi got inspired to help me raise the money I needed to pay to have the covers manufactured. I had been asking him, pestering him actually, for weeks to throw a benefit party for Domes for Haiti. He is a very successful underground party promoter. His parties are called " the Danger"

He strolled up to me after the dinner party. He said to me, "Lopi, I had no idea you were so close to completing your project. Let's do a party for you"

We set the date. 3rd Ward gave us the use of their warehouse space. I called all of my friends and invited them to do art installations for the party. Will called all the musicians and performers. We built 3 large domes inside the warehouse and 3 small domes and set about creating installations on the theme of "Home, Water, Trash" I made an installation of my interpretation of a post disaster home.

My friend Arielle Bier made an installation inside another dome of a waterfall.

Bobby Dangerously made a sound installation to go with it. Olivia Katz and Brett Lord made the third dome installation out of found objects and trash.

Ryan O'Connor joined in the fray with his sculptural expertise and did an installation of a camp fire. Anna Ieggio came and worked on the small domes. We invited the Konbit Shelter crew to do an art auction on the first floor. It was an all out community wide effort to throw a huge benefit party for Haiti projects.

The night of the party, we somehow completed everything just in time. We left to go get cleaned up and have dinner. When we came back to the party, there was a line all the way down the block. I couldn't stop crying for joy all night long. It was a huge success, beyond my wildest dreams. I had been wishing for a long time that I could inspire my community to get into doing humanitarian work and this night was extremely moving and inspiring to me. The possibilities for future projects are limitless when we work together.

The next day Will and I sat down to count the money. I had never seen that much cash in my life. We counted it and there was $25,000. We paid out a bunch, donated some to Konbit Shelter and I walked away from it with a little over $20,000, dizzy with excitement.
I would now be able to not only pay for the covers to be made, but also fund my entire project in Haiti.
my Cat Joe protecting the cash

From the inception to this point, it took from February 23rd to June 7th. That amount of time would have been cut in half if I had had more experience, if I had had funding and if I knew what the hell I was doing. All of that ultimately doesn't really matter. I did it anyway, with the help of community support and my own personal insanity. Giving up was never an option because each person or business that donated their time, services and goods would have been disrespected if I had given up. It's about integrity and follow through. I was super committed to finishing this project at all costs. I was obsessed. I couldn't get the kids in Haiti out of my mind. I was stressed out that everything was taking too long and in the meantime they were sleeping in the mud or standing up all night long every night to avoid the flooding in crappy excuses for shelters.

I was next confronted with how to get the entire shipment of struts, covers and tools into Haiti. I found, through my friend Kara Blossom, a willing company named Atelier 4 who agreed to ship everything from Brooklyn to Miami free of charge if we could pack it up nice. We set about packing it all up. I had crates and boxes and shrink wrap coming out of my ears. 3rd Ward continued to give amazing support by allowing me to utilize their warehouse to pack up the whole thing. We packed it. They showed up and picked up the shipment and I kissed it goodbye. Another mile stone in this project. Each milestone gave me more inspiration to keep going.

I found more support through Mutual Aid for Disaster Relief They provided airline travel vouchers for myself and my friend Kara Blossom to fly to Miami and on to Port Au Prince. Kara and I got all of our shots and gathered up our camping supplies and headed for Haiti on July 17th. The shipment was sent via cargo plane by Amerijet on the same day. I was given a generous 40% discount in the shipping costs by them.

I was eager to arrive in Port Au Prince and to meet our in country hosts, Grassroots United who had contacted me months prior to offer up their base as a place to land and work out of. They are an organization that supports small NGO's by providing a secure home base with camping accommodations and internet access. The accommodations were kind of crappy, but compared to people living in the camps, we were well off and protected by a high wall of concrete blocks with razor wire on the top. At the time we arrived there, GRU was housing several great organizations. European Disaster Volunteers, Give Love and Kleiwerks. Micheal Reynolds from Earthship Biotecture had just built an earthship on the property. They had a geodesic dome and two container houses, a regular house and plenty of tents that volunteers were sleeping in.
There was a feeling of camaraderie present in the air. It was a great welcome that we received.

Kara Blossom and I unpacked, set up our tents and got acclimated.

After I got a bit acquainted with the place, the next morning, Sam Block, the director of GRU drove me to a customs broker to explore my options for getting my shipment out of the Amerijet warehouse it was being held at. The customs broker informed us that the normal waiting period for a humanitarian shipment to get through customs was anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months. For a commercial shipment, it would take 3 days and approximately 10% of the overall worth of the entire shipment. For Domes for Haiti, that meant somewhere in the ball park of $3,000. It was absolutely out of the question. That was half of my entire budget for the second phase of the project. We thanked him and got back on the blistering hot moto seat and drove off. I made a note to never wear shorts while riding a moto again. Owch.
Shipment in Jail

The following day, Sam had arranged for a man to come over who was not your normal customs broker. He was a Haitian man, a mercenary who runs a business that hires out body guards to the government and other NGO's. He claimed he could get my shipment out in 48 hours. He talked on and on about his commitment to helping humanitarian shipments into the country and how wrong it is that they make it so much harder to get donations in then commercial goods. He claimed he had donated a whole shipment of food from Miami himself shortly after the earthquake and that the customs officials had cut open his food containers, spilling the contents out and ruining the shipment. For his services, he would charge me the modest fee of $1500 US. "How does that sound?" He asked me.

"How does free sound?" I asked him. I told him that I didn't have money in my budget for that much. He said he couldn't do it for free. I offered to pay 300 US. He said he'd do it for $500 US. I agreed to the price, but with the stipulation that I would not pay him until I had the shipment in my hands.

48 hours passed. No shipment. I asked the Sam to call the guy. He did and was told "tomorrow for sure" This was repeated ad nauseum. For two weeks.

My friend who was supposed to be my project director, Kara left. I was getting desperate, but I was making productive use of the time spent waiting. I hired a translator who was introduced to me by Mike Hague. His name is Julian Noze and he turned out to be a great guy who lived for many years in Brooklyn.
Grassroots United provided me with a list of orphanages.
Julian with Desamour, one of the orphanage's Directors.

I needed a motorbike to ride if I was ever going to get anywhere in Port Au Prince traffic. One of the long term volunteers at Grassroots United had a motorcycle. It was Pauline Paris's bike.
Pauline Paris
She was super generous with it and let me drive all over Port Au Prince on it. I hadn't driven a motorcycle since I was 15.

I had not been able to find orphanages while I was still in Brooklyn because the orphanages I wanted to help did not have internet access let alone websites. The list GRU provided was crucial to finding those places in need. I set about doing site surveys with Julian on the back of the moto, clinging for dear life. We drove through the craziest most chaotic traffic I have ever seen. We drove through herds of goats, cows and people in the market place. I did not die.

I attribute our survival to angels, however fantastical that sounds, I dont care. Angels are the only plausible explanation I can come up with.

We visited about 20 orphanages and assessed their needs. We decided on sites for domes based on various criteria. Did they have a lease or a deed for the property? Were they an official orphanage and did they have paperwork to prove it? Did they need a shelter? Did they have space for one? These were the main concerns we addressed.

The man we hired to get our stuff through customs turned out to be a real jerk. He showed up one day, urgently demanding $250 US in cash. On TOP of what I already agreed to. He said there was a government official he needed to bribe. I was dubious. I didn't want to give it to him. Especially considering how long I had already waited to no avail. He had promised 48 hours. This was like at the 2 week marker. He demanded the money. Sam, the director, told me to pay it! He told me "things are done differently here in Haiti" Not only did he urge me to pay up, he told me to get in the SUV with the Mafia dude and his two gun toting henchmen and go and deliver it in person to the "official" down by the duone (customs). Everything in me was saying "NO" but Sam said, "Do it" and reassured me that I would be safe. I didn't feel safe. At all. I got in the SUV anyway. It was a strange display that this a-hole of a man was orchestrating for my benefit. To prove to me that he was bribing someone, apparently. We promptly got stuck in the worst traffic jam I've ever witnessed. There was no order in the streets of Port Au Prince. Cars, trucks, UN Tanks, motos, old dudes pulling giant hand trucks with enormous piles of twisted metal on top, goats, skinny cows, street kids all wove in and out of each other going every which way. Then it was just stopped. An enormous pre fab house on wheels was stuck in the mud. We were across from the slums. It was a miserable shanty town, mud everywhere, people squatting in the mud selling fruit that was in a pile inches from huge piles of garbage. It was insane.
The dude, who is going unnamed because he might try to kill me if I name him, was prattling off endlessly about how Aristede killed his father and how much he hated him and everyone around us. He mocked a deranged looking woman who walked by. He mocked a hungry looking pregnant woman who passed by. His driver nearly ran over an old lady. They were vicious evil men. I prayed for the traffic to clear up, just to be done with this dubious delivery to not be in his presence any more. We passed by a blown out cathedral. I asked if I could get out and take photos of it. They said, "no" but I got out anyway. The two body guards got out too and followed me like I was some kind of visiting royalty. I disappeared into a hole in the wall, snapped some shots and came back out, nonchalantly got back in the car. We finally got to the customs office and this man in business slacks and a button down shirt with a tie was standing on the sidewalk. Dude that wont be named handed him the envelope with my cash in it. We drove back to the base. The dude made some more empty promises and left.

A week later, when Brenda called to check in on the progress, he started screaming over the phone at her. I couldn't take it anymore, I decided to take the bull by the horns and get my stuff out of customs without that dude. I have documented the entire tedious process in this very blog. If you've a mind to, you can read all about it by going back to the links in July and August. I found out that the main delay in getting it out was because the dude, the big impressive macho guy who took my money and delivered nil, he had filled out the paperwork improperly and it took awhile to get to that. The Madame at the Ministry of Finance had a headache or was muy fatique. She would wave me away like an irritated royal.

I finally got my shipment free on August 11th, just 6 days shy of a month from when I first arrived. I am thankful that it didn't take three months.

I decided to fly home to Brooklyn and get recharged for the next phase. It was a wise move, I arrived back in Haiti, ready to tackle the building of ten domes, re-energized by friends, good food and the cool air in Brooklyn. I felt strangely patriotic during my brief visit home. That was an unfamiliar feeling for me.

When I got back to Haiti, I hired a team of 5 Haitian teenagers to be my crew. The crew was headed up by two sisters, Nephtalie and Nelleke. Nelleke
Nephtalie

They are 14 and 15 years old. I put them in charge of the build crew.

It was part of my goal to inspire and empower Haitian youth to be in leadership roles and to learn basic building / construction skills. Especially young women. My crew of 5 was totally awesome and we bonded over the next month, working daily together in the hot Haitian sun. They got so good at building the domes, I barely had to give any guidance at all after the 3rd dome. Nelleke proved to be more adept at record keeping and number crunching and her sister Nephtalie showed a natural ability to wield tools. The rest of the crew, the guys Marco, Madson and Watson are all friends that grew up together with the girls and so the vibe was incredibly positive every day.

There was a fair amount of flirting going on within the crew, but that's what you get when you put girl teenagers in charge of hiring the best workers. They hired the hottest guys they knew and then had a great time every day working with them! Lucky for me, those guys were hard workers and strong . We had a portable ryobi radio that kept us dancing as we worked. These kids mean the world to me and I plan on staying connected to them for the rest of my life. I paid them and fed them in exchange for their labor and enthusiasm.
build crew

We put up 9 domes in Port Au Prince at 8 orphanages. One orphanage received two domes to accommodate the amount of kids being served. 1 dome was built in Jacmel, down on the coast at an orphanage that was in great need there.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong over the course of the month that it took to build the domes. I got malaria, tires blew out, I got in a bike accident, trucks broke down, got stuck in the mud, thunderstorms, bad roads, ran out of gas and we got lost more than once. That is Haiti. Haiti is Hard.

This project challenged me on every level of my being. It drew upon resources I didn't even know I had.

Looking back on it now gives me a great sense of accomplishment. I am also nagged by a persistent feeling of incompleteness, a feeling that I am not finished in Haiti or maybe Haiti is not finished with me. In light of the current cholera epidemic that has been rated a level 4 emergency I am brainstorming ways to help in future projects.

I am keenly worried about several of the orphanages I built domes at. They were the more destitute of the 9. Their water sources were very sketchy. They had no support in terms of ongoing regular food or medical. Look for more details on each orphanage we built domes at in my next blog post.

If anyone is reading this who is considering starting up a project to help people anywhere in the world, I highly recommend it. I don't care who you are, where you live, what age you are or if you are poor or rich. Do it. You can do it yourself. If you are a nurse, a doctor, a sanitation worker, a sewage specialist, a builder or simply a motivated worker, Haiti needs you. NOW. Please contact one of the organizations I mentioned in this post to see how you can get involved.

Thanks, as always for reading.

Cholera Outbreak in Haiti

2010-10-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

2010-10-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

Culture Shock

2010-10-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

I've been back in the states for 2 1/2 weeks now and the culture shock is starting to wear off a little bit. I still crumple paper money up in a wad like the Haitians do and when I ride my bike in the streets I tend to weave in and out of traffic a little bit more than I used to. I am also so much more appreciative of the modern conveniences that we so easily take for granted here. Things like refrigerators, sinks, showers, toaster ovens, laundromats, water faucets and regular garbage collection seem almost miraculous to me now. Another thing that is freaking me out is that one can eat better out of the Trader Joe's dumpster on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn than most Haitian people can eat on a daily basis. I myself have been known to dumpster dive with wildly bountiful results.

My community here in Brooklyn are as active as ever. Three different groups are putting together various sized art and performance projects. After an initial burst of visiting all my friends, I've been a bit of a shut in inside my studio, working on some large drawings and stencils of kids from Haiti. I will be putting together a show of my new work sometime in the next couple months.

I got word the other day that they built my tenth dome in Jacmel! It went up without problem, they built up the ground first with rubble and dug a good drainage ditch around it and anchored it in with the rebar stakes and cement. It's solid and kids are sleeping in it.
They sent me these photos.... The kids look kind of bored except the one on the right, he is totally psyched! These are boys from Pastor Joseph's orphanage in Jacmel, Haiti. His kids have been sleeping, eating, having classes and everything else in a tiny room. Now they can sleep in the dome!

Thanks to Adam and Kara from Living for A Cause and Dave from Calvary Chapel for project managing the tenth dome build for me! Meeting them the last week I was in Haiti was inspiring, they are totally sweet people doing really good work in Haiti. They are missionaries. I am not a missionary, but I dont see any conflict of interests in collaborating with people who share the same focus of working with Haitians to improve their situations.
I know that Dave from Calvary Chapel just scored an entire wood shop's worth of tools that some organization donated to his mission in Jacmel. They are building a wood shop!

I am in the preliminary stages of planning my next small project in Haiti. As I mentioned previously, I plan on commissioning some Haitian builders to construct 50 bunk beds out of bamboo for the orphanages I built domes at. Many of these places had no beds besides dirty old mattresses that the kids shared and were simply laid out on the ground for them to sleep on. I will be headed back to Haiti soon to visit the orphanages and check the domes.
It will be a quick trip to assess the domes and make arrangements to start the bunk bed build in motion. Rest assured that if you feel inspired to donate any amount of cash, it will be utilized towards this goal. I am hoping that I can get the price down to 30$ US for each bed. I am negotiating the price now with a potential partner in Jacmel.

Keep an eye out for an announcement on here for a slide presentation/ potluck which is coming soon to Brooklyn where I will show some of the highlights of my trip and outline future plans. It will be probably the first week in November at my friend Will's loft in Dumbo.

Try telling these three about your problems. Watch your problems dissolve in comparison.
I met these kids at the orphanage we surprised one day with no prior warning. We found them because the walls in their neighborhood were painted with arrows and the word "orphelinat" and we just followed the arrows. You can read that story here

Thanks for reading!!

2010-10-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

2010-10-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

Maswife: Life in Camp Pinchinat (Trailer) from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

musings

2010-10-04T18:37:00.000-07:00

I keep thinking about the abandoned and gutted school buses that are all up and down the sides of the roads in Jacmel. I have this idea that they could be made into a giant art piece.

The good thing about this art piece is that it has a dual purpose. It is also a shelter or a library or a school.

I have this vision of taking a group of sculptors from the US and bringing them down to work with Haitian welders and see what they would come up with.
I was picturing building a library out of the school buses arranged in a star pattern, stacked up in the middle, held at the sides with posts, which would also make it impervious to floods.

I think the best solutions for Haiti have to involve utilizing what is already there in the country. Using gutted school buses and cars welded together would address two problems with one solution. Cleaning up the environment, turning trash into a usable building.

One of the problems with building shelter or libraries out of old school buses is without insulation they are hot. So combining bamboo with the buses a paneling of bamboo slats could be added to the interior of the buses with an air pocket in between the outside metal and the inside bamboo. It could be further insulated with styrofoam or even dirt. Dirt might be a good insulating material, creating a thermal mass on the inside of the bus structure. Further cooling could be added by building some sort of roof to go over the roofs of the buses that would attach to the roof itself but be made out of bamboo poles and palm frond thatch. That would likely cool it down considerably and look nice as well.

Of course the buses could be painted with murals and bright colors, like the colorful tap taps that are the Haitian public transportation system.

This project would be a huge undertaking and would require consultation with engineers and architects to weigh in on the feasibility of building permanent structures out of recycled buses. It is still on the boiler plate and would be a project that would require the acquisition of land and books and major funding to realize. I am open to finding interested collaborative partners for this project. There is plenty of incentive to inspire artists to come build a giant art sculpture/library in Jakmel which is located on the coast of the Caribbean Sea. The funding for it could come from both the art world and NGO's or government funds.
I am wishing that art could merge more with disaster relief and third world development.
The DIY mentality needs to be applied to the reconstruction of Haiti.

Utilizing bamboo for future projects in Haiti is important because it stimulates the need for bamboo farming in Haiti which is good on many different levels.

The Taiwanese government sent a bamboo expert named Jimmy Jine who is paid by the government of Taiwan to serve as a consultant for a Haitian Organization called Complex Bamboo located in Kay Jakmel. I met him while I was visiting Jakmel.

They support the reforestation of Haiti with bamboo, improved poultry production and the cultivation of tropical fruit trees among the peasant farmers in Haiti. They have a bamboo nursery, a bamboo furniture factory and they also raise chickens.

Many, if not most of the orphanages we built domes at still need beds.
This is where my next project starts. Bamboo Bunk Beds.
This is a short term project and one that would be very simple to realize.
All I need for this project is funding because I already have the connections in Haiti to build the beds and the locations for the recipients are my dome sites in Port Au Prince and Jakmel.

Bamboo is the perfect solution to building good strong bunk beds for orphans.
Not only is it lightweight and easy to transport, they can be made pre-fab and easy to assemble on site. Further benefits are the lack of customs and importation hassles, as well as supporting the economy in Haiti from the ground up. Bunk beds are good for domes because you can stack up more kids in one dome and they are up away from the ground to avoid any potential flooding.

I spoke with Pastor Abraham about this idea and he loved it. He knows everyone in Jakmel, or rather everyone knows him. I am sure I could realize this project rather easily if I had funding. I do have a little bit of money left over in the budget which is a start towards this aim. If you are thinking about donating money to Domes For Haiti, your donation will go towards the building of these beds. So far I have about $2000. I have to work up a budget to see how much I need to make this happen. I think the beds might be able to be built for under 50$ each, but this requires more research.

With funding, I believe the bamboo bunk bed project could be realized pretty quickly. It also would not require my presence for the entire build. I could go down to Haiti, make arrangements for the beds to be built and then return to deliver them when they were done. It wouldn't cost alot for operating expenses, the money could all go to the actual beds to be built, thus making more beds for the money. However, knowing how long everything takes in Haiti, I would double any time estimates. If you are interested in helping with this project, please contact me at info@domesforhaiti.org

thanks for reading!

Countries that are reading this blog include: Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, South Korea, Chile, Haiti, Dominican Republic, UK, Japan, Germany, Canada, Hungary, Croatia, Australia, USA, Denmark, France and Russia. If you are reading and you are in one of these countries or another country I failed to mention, please post a comment saying what country you live in!

c wrench

2010-09-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

samde maten

2010-09-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

My last day in Haiti. Swam in the ocean. Organized my tools. Moved into storage with Calvary Chapel who will be project managing my last dome build. I am confident in their abilities and happy and relieved that the last dome will go up in capable hands. It is good for me to step back and allow someone else to have the pleasure of giving a shelter to a worthy recipient.

Got rained on. Road a moto into town. Gave red leather to an old shoemaker. Received the sandals he made for me after looking at my sandals for 5 minutes, made out of 1/100th of the leather I gave him. I brought an interpreter who helped me talk with him about collaborating on some sandal designs. He is really good at what he does. It seems like a nearly lost art to know how to make shoes by hand.

Met with Abraham, who was building a wooden stage for the funeral of his Father tomorrow morning, early. Talked with him about the possibilities of working with the bamboo workers to make beds. He loved the idea and promised to ask the govt people about using their warehouse to build bunk beds out of bamboo for orphanages in port au prince and jacmel.

We talked in the truck without brakes while moving my container into the Calvary Chapel storage place. It's a relief to have a save space to store it so I can access it when I return in a couple months.

Met another artist dude, rasta on the street. Gave a soccer ball to Peter, who I randomly ran into in the ghetto playing soccer on the street in the rain. Drew our names on the ball.

Walked in the rain with dreadlock artist dude and went into a woodshop where they had a coffin they had made. Ducked in out of the rain in Jackson's house, who lost a leg in a car accident before the earthquake and is part of an artist organization that involves alot of the artistic community here. They will email me their project information as soon as they get it translated into English so I can post it here. Many of the artists I met are involved in this collective.

fwi

2010-09-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

I went this morning to visit Pastor Joseph's orphanage. It is in a bad way. I brought them a 5 gallon bucket of organic peanut butter, a gallon of dr. bronner's soap and a soccer ball. I bought them a 50 gallon barrel to use to catch the rainwater that keeps flooding their shelter, so that they can catch the rain and use it for washing. I checked out the site, took measurements and I believe the dome can be built right under their existing structure. It will be perfect for shade so the dome is not so hot. The site needs too much work to be done in a day and a half. I am meeting with Dave tonight to go over plans for his crew to build the last dome. I will give him money for the rubble and to pay the crew and show him how to build the dome. I can't do it and do it right in the time I have left here. He is excited to build it because he already has a relationship with the orphanage and has an interest in improving their situation.

Yesterday my friend Badio took me to meet a shoe maker. He was not home, but I met his son. Today after I visited with Joseph, I went by Vie De France to pick up some of the leather I brought in from Brooklyn. I took it to the shoemaker and gave it to him. He was asking me in creole, "how much?" and I said "zero" and ou bezwen? wi mwe bezwen he said.
I think he is making me some sandals. I need to go pick up the rest and carry it to him.
My job right now is super fun. I get to give things to people. What a fun job!

I was walking after the shoemaker scene and this lady shouted out her front porch at me. "My Blan!" they call me "my white!' i stopped and said to her "mwe pa blan" and "mwe chan" which means I am not white i am tan. She really thought that was funny. She repeated me with gusto and soon we were both enthusiastically shouting "mwe chan!" at the top of our lungs. A few minutes later someone said "how are you?" to me and I turned and there was a very tall, very black young man walking next to me. He had a deep scar on his left cheek. He said in English, "what i need from you is a verse" I said "you need a verse? you mean you want a poem?" he said yes. I said to him "this is the first time anyone has asked me for a poem!" and "Everyone just asks for money and things" I talked with this guy, whose name, it turns out is "cool dog" and he is a rapper. I interviewed him with my little camera and then he spit a rhyme for me.
He loves snoop dog and I told him I met him before and then he said "please blow me up"

The building of the last dome is in good hands.

fly birdy fly

2010-09-22T09:21:00.002-07:00

I woke up this morning and realized I was getting distracted by the bamboo bed plan. I got sidetracked by the need for beds. However, I need to stay on point to complete my current project and starting a new project before my current one is complete is fool hardy. Especially if I ever want to get home. It''s good to have something to work towards, a new plan, but this final dome needs to go up. The bamboo plan is a good one, but it opens a huge can of worms I am not ready to deal with. It could take another two months.

I am at Cine Institute right now. It's a Haitian Film School located at a beautiful old hotel by the ocean. I met with Zaka, the filmmaker I mentioned a couple posts back, to talk with him about his work and ask him for any leads he might have on an orphanage that might need a temporary shelter. The orphanage he had mentioned to me the other day, turns out, doesn't need one. The director is a famous French Filmmaker. I dont know his name yet. Apparently, though, he has plenty of financial support and backing from France.

Zaka is a bright kid. One of his films is here: Cine Institute He told me that for this film, he wrote a screenplay, but the actors , who are some local guys he knows, cant read, so he told them basically what he wanted them to do and say and they improvised. The film has a documentary feel and follows these dudes through one day in their lives. Check it out. Zaka is headed to Vermont this weekend to do an installation of his work there.

After talking with Zaka, I gave Dave from Calvary Chapel a call. He is a good man and I trust him and his commitment to do good work with orphans. Pastor Abraham is an associate of his as well. I spoke with him about the possibilities of collaborating on getting this last dome up and occupied. It looks like he would be able to project manage it next week with some of his volunteers. It's not my first choice, but if I can't get it together to build in the next two days, I will fall back on the plan "b" to give him instructions and let him and his crew do it without me. He said it would be no problem and he'd be happy to document it with photos.

I would very much like to build it myself, but the time is slipping away and I have to get back to Brooklyn. Haiti time is not conducive to a "get er done" mentality and I am feeling I have reached a point where I really need to go home. Now. Sometimes one has to realize there are certain limits to their resources and let the ego go. As long as the dome is up and occupied, then my mission is accomplished. I really wanted to have the last photo of me, covered with mud, next to a dome with the number 10 on it, but it would be at my own detriment to do so just for a photo op and my own sense of victory.

Pastor Abraham lost his father a couple days ago. He was very sick with both Malaria and Typhoid. He is busy constructing a mausoleum for his Dad and planning the funeral for Saturday morning. I called him just now to offer my condolences. He sounded ok, but very sad. He told me that I am welcome to store my tools with him so that when I come back I can use them to continue my work in Haiti. This is a big relief. I can also leave my personal survival kit with him as well so when I return in a couple months I will be already set up.

So I am trying to tie up all the loose ends and get myself home by Saturday night.
Things are happening here that are not good and I cant really post about it other than to say I was assaulted this morning and it was pretty scary. I need, for my own safety, to leave as soon as possible. I will fly from Jacmel to Pap and catch a flight from there to arrive in NYC by Saturday night.

People that seem your friends are not always your friends. I think Bob Marley said it really well in that song "who the cap fit, let them wear it" Give it a listen.

thanks for reading. Au fum

sa ka pase

2010-09-21T17:51:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up to a deluge of water. Actually, I went to sleep to one as well. The room I have been staying in is at the end of a row of rooms and as the end room one wall is the outside wall. There is basically no wall under the eaves of the roof until about a quarter of the way down, so plenty of water just pours in. Might open a tourist attraction to see the waterfall pouring down into my cowboy boots. A new roadside attraction! Me under my mosquito net with an led flashlight will entertain you further with shadow puppetry.

I went to tell the lady, the manman, that the dlo was coming in. I first consulted my creole book to see how to say it. la pli a ap vini nan chanm mwen. i said it a few times to get used to the sound and went to talk to her. Manman means Mom in Creole. Man man. Kind of like kava kava or tap tap. Man man! When I told her about it, she just said "un plus?" which means basically "alot?" and I said "wee" and thought something would happen, but she sent a dude to walk over and look at it, when we got in the room he was staring at the ceiling in the middle ignoring the torrent on the side. He then went outside and climbed up in the tree and waved the branches around a bit and then went back up to the front house to watch rap videos.

After a while, nothing else happened, so I looked into my book again to figure out how to ask for a different room. So I went and asked and they understood me and I got a new room.
I spent a bunch of time working on my budget and then we were supposed to go to complex bamboo to talk about getting beds made. I tried to shut my door but then it fell off its hinges.
The Manman and the Man were both gone for the day by then and I wanted to lock my door so I started to try to fix it myself. The wood was completely rotten, so there was nothing for the screws to hold on to. I managed to pound some nails into the wood using bottle caps as washers. It sort of closes now.

While I was working on my budget, Benoit was hanging out with me trying to sew patches on his jeans. The maid came and the little girl, the daughter of the manman. The maid girl really believes I am some sort of mail order catalog, I swear. Every day she is asking me for things. Yesterday she said to me "Lopi, give me the money" "The Money" Not "money"
Today she asked me for a bathing suit and some new jeans. I asked her if I am a mail order catalog. She said "oui" and I said to her "where is the money? Give me the money"
I tried to explain to her what she didn't bother asking me, which is why I am in Haiti.
Benoit helped with the translation. He is French so has an advantage with the language.
She didn't really get it, I dont think. I am sure tomorrow she is going to ask me for a Porsche or a pony or something. Maybe she will ask me for a unicorn.

We went and spoke with one of the craftsmen at Complex Bamboo. It's way more complicated than I thought it would be. My only question is when will my persistent belief that things are going to be easy die? When will the reality of making stuff happen in Haiti sink into my psyche further? I am still in a fantasy land, apparently. I dont have that much out of common with the maid girl after all. It is going to take awhile to set up bamboo bed production. I believe I can though. There is a warehouse where some craftsmen make bamboo furniture. It is owned by the govt, they take a percentage of the workers commission for allowing them to use the space. I am going to go speak with the minister tomorrow to see if they can donate the space to start making bamboo beds for orphanages...

If I can get it set up, many many beds could be produced. At the same time as making nice beds for kids, we could be giving good work for the craftsmen and creating demand for more bamboo to be grown in Haiti. All good. I think I can get this set up and then head back to Brooklyn. It will take about a month to have about twenty bunk beds made. I think they will be a good price, like around $35 bucks American per which is a whole hell of alot cheaper than the metal beds in carrefour. If I go back up to BK I can get access to "the money" and then come back down in a month to deliver beds. Nothing is instantaneous and although they need beds NOW, I am sure they will still need them then. Necessity is the manman of invention.

The two orphanages Dave took me to the other day need beds. Especially the one, poorer of the two places. It was pretty destitute, but at least with Dave's help they have a supply of food. The kids were really dirty but one of them was painting, I assume because he had paint all over his arms. The other place is the orphanage for kids with Aids and it is pretty well set up. It looks nice, its clean, there are already a bunch of beds and three nannies full time. I will help the needy one. I want to have a larger impact. I want to do so much more than I can with limited funds and limited time. There is also the problem of my own sustainability. I am sure all of this can be solved. Time. Patience has never been my strong suit. It's getting stronger though. My patience muscles are sore so that means they are getting bigger. Soon they will be huge and I will be like Buddha. Laughing all the time and dancing.

Last night I went back to this place in town by the beach where they have a big trailer set up for dj's on the weekend. This place makes great, clean food. By "clean" I mean it isnt fried and it isn't cooked in meat. It's boiled yams, bananas and avocado salad. I love it. When I got there it looked closed. Monday night is not hopping there. The chairs were wearily leaning against the tables. I went around to the side where the kitchen is and greeted the ladies. They were so nice to me. The manman there remembered me from the night before when I was trying so hard to say salt. "Sal" i kept saying, she kept saying "sauce?" i was like, no "sal"but I found out that salt is actually "sel" which is only one vowel off from what i was saying.

One vowel can ruin your whole day if you let it. Ask Vanna White.

I got a delicious meal, her kids sat with me and we communicated the best we could. I showed them my little water color and the boy, Peter was really entranced by it. He stared at it and it was like his eyes were caressing it. I drew a picture of him in red pen on my pad. He liked it, but said "pa senblan mwe" which is "it doesnt look like me" I agreed. I gave him the pad to draw on and he made two drawings of people with funny arms. One had a giant bowl of fruit on their head. He wrote by it "Pilo" and "Peter" He thought my name was Pilo, which is fine with me, I like Pilo. Maybe I should change my name again, it's been 20 years at least with Lopi.

I also went off the vegetarian wagon because I tried conch. It's called Lambi here. Oh my god it's delicious! It tastes like gourmet mushrooms.

I will call Zaka tomorrow and ask him to show me the third orphanage. I am all about wrapping this stuff up so I can return to the states. I love Haiti, but I really am beginning to think I will never get out of here. It's like trying to swim in quicksand all up in this piece. It's surreal at times. Today walking up the road in the rain the neighbor girl walked with me. She had a giant metal bowl on her head full of green bananas and a giant leaf from a palm as her umbrella. I walked with her and was washed over with this feeling of being in a dream world.

My old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. (rumi)

thanks for reading me. for now, photos are a no go. comments are appreciated!!
My phone number in Haiti is 509 3110 7529
would love to hear from anyone out there reading this glob

pa pli mal

2010-09-20T09:22:00.001-07:00

I can't believe I am still in Haiti. I believe it, but it's kind of amazing that I actually believed I could finish this first phase of the project in 3 weeks. It's been 2 months and 2 days. I am not done yet. Somehow, the finishing touches on this, the first phase of my first humanitarian effort, are hard to bring to a close. Things keep popping up to do.
Build beds out of bamboo, build one more dome, network with NGOs in Jacmel...begin plans my next project,,,,

I almost no longer believe in the random. Things happen that are supposed to happen.
Without getting too woo, I am starting to trust the universe more. Ok, that was pretty woo.

Yesterday, I was wandering around Jakmel, a lazy Sunday, looking for artisans, artists and shoemakers. I found the place of a shoemaker who I am going back to visit today. His name is Watson. I am going to bring him some leather and talk to him about designing sandals.

Lately I have been getting upset at people here who are constantly overcharging me because I am white. Almost every single person I meet tries to squeeze me. Its depressing. I basically quit my job to make a project to help Haitian orphans have shelter and instead of thanking me they charge me triple.

Occasionally I meet a Haitian person who gets it and offers to help me for free. Like Aldy. He came out on the last build in PaP and though he knew I was paying the crew, he said "I'm like you, if you are volunteering, so am I" I paid him anyway, because he is always working for free volunteering for other NGO's and I know he needs money. Also, Pastor Abraham gets it. He drove all the way to Port Au Prince and back to carry my project and me down to Jakmel and he didnt even ask for a penny. I tried to give him money for gas and he wouldnt take it. I like paying Haitian workers, that was part of my plan to stimulate the economy. But I am on a tight budget and unlike the other NGO"s here in Haiti, I cant afford to stimulate the economy that much!

It's a relief when I meet people who want to help because its a good project, not because they look at me and see dollar signs floating around me like amoebas. It's an illusion. Those are actually lice, home boy. That's what you get when you hang around a bunch of adorable orphans. I dont mind them, actually, they keep me company at night, the lice.

I was hoping to meet a certain artist here in Jakmel, but I had lost my phone, so that makes things more difficult. He is a friend of an acquaintance of mine and she had given me his name and phone number and encouraged me to call him. He is a member of an artist collective here in Jakmel. His name is Badio Joseph Junior. So I was wandering around, looking at the makeshift galleries by the bay and then walking on the beach taking photos of old boats. This dude who looked like Bob Marley came up to me and started talking to me in English. He seemed really nice and said he was an artist. I asked his name and he said "Pheonix" So I told him that a friend named Keely gave me a number of an artist to call and it turned out to be him. Its just the nature of the non - randomness of things. He showed me around at an ateliar of young artists and showed me some of his work.. He makes sculptures, collages, out of found objects. I love this type of art and I really enjoyed seeing things normally considered "garbage" come to life as something aesthetically interesting. He also makes paintings of a surreal nature. I took a bunch of photos, but am having some internet issues today (normal) and cant upload.

Yesterday I met another young Haitian artist named Zaka. He is working as a filmmaker. He studies at the Cine Institute. He is doing a documentary about an American artist who died in the earthquake. She was from Vermont.
This is an article about him in the globe and mail
He told me of an orphanage he knows of and I will call him in a bit and ask him to introduce me to the orphanage. I am also going to hire him as a translator so I can call all the orphanages I built domes at so far to check and make sure they are still ok, dry inside etc. I am also hoping to send more beds before I leave Haiti. More on that later in this blog.

So, on the way to town this morning on the back of the nice moto taxi guy who didn't try to double charge me, I see the two big school buses of Vie De France parked outside of this big place. I ask the driver to tally a bit and we drive inside. Vie De France is my friend zamni mwen Pastor Abraham's school. So I go inside and there are about 100 school children, orphans, and a bunch of white people wearing matching teeshirts and sporting fancy cameras. I see a large bag of soccer balls. I see Jean Claude, Abrahams driver and we hug each other. I love that guy, he is so positive all the time. He is the one who taught me "ang proteje nou" means Angels are protecting us. I believe it's quite possible that angels are protecting me and all of us. I mean, I can't prove it, but I can't prove otherwise either, so I might as well imagine angels flying around. It's fun to picture what kind of clothes they might be wearing. My angels wear vests for sure and suspenders and cool hats and cowboy boots or old funny shoes from the 30's

I turn and meet the only white guy there who is not wearing a matching teeshirt so I guess he is in charge of the teeshirt people. He has a sweet silver goatee and reflective sunglasses, so our entire conversation I am looking back at my own reflection and trying to imagine what his eyes are saying. His name is Dave Bird and he is a pastor. He instantly reminds me of my Aunt Mary for some reason. He has some sort of similar vibe about him.

Dave tells me he has a project called Calvary Chapel. They are working with orphanages doing a feeding program, building shelters and they play soccer with the kids. From the look of it, they are doing some great work.

I tell him about Domes For Haiti and he says he knows of two orphanages that might need help here in Jakmel. He says to call him later and he can come pick me up and take me out to visit these joints. I say sweet and go to get back on the moto. About 6 dudes shake my hand as I walk to the bike, "I'm Jose, I'm Frank, I'm Doodaddy" I get back on the bike and continue to struggle with the conversation with the moto dude who speaks dominican spanish. He shows me his little bottle of "cuervo" and (its about 8am)
takes a nip. He explains he likes to drink while he is working. His work is driving, so basically, I am getting a ride with a drinking driver. Awesome. Buenas Dias! I shout to him in the wind.

I get to town, buy a new phone to replace the old phone that a dude found after it fell out of my pocket while driving the motobike in PaP in a particularly hairy series of pot holes. The dude wouldn't give my phone back and I have been phoneless for about two weeks. Its made things unduly hard in an already arduous world, so I finally broke down and bought a new one and replaced the sim card so the dude with my old phone will not be using my Haiti number anymore and when I come back to Haiti I will have a phone already on arrival. The number is 011- 509 - 3110 - 7529 incidentally, and if you call it from the states, it is a fact that it charges my phone minutes up. So, please feel free to call me to say "hello, you are an insane weirdo" or whatever you want to say to me. It will add minutes! In Haiti, you buy as you go on cell phones. Call me, ask me smart ass questions, go ahead, I'll answer them the best I can.

I am hoping to wrap things up here pretty quick so I can get back to the states and figure out my life and start planning for my next project.

I am hoping to hire some furniture makers in Jakmel who work with bamboo to build some bunk beds for the street kids orphanage and the orphanage down here in Jakmel
I love bamboo and I want to support cottage industry utilizing bamboo. The furniture they make is so pretty too and its light weight, so it will be easy to transport it back up to Port Au Prince. The money people have been donating since Joan's article will be spent towards these new beds. My last little burst of goodness before I go back to Brooklyn will be to purchase as many beds as I can with the money I am finding in my paypal account. Thank you to all of you who are making such generous donations!

Joan is writing a follow up article about Haiti and will be featuring my budget in there, I think, so if you are curious about how the money has been spent, please have a look at the National Catholic Reporter in about a week. Or email me. I would be happy to send you a copy if you are curious. This project has a very tight turn around when it comes to donations. We hadn't been receiving any donations while I have been in Haiti until Joan wrote that article. It stimulated interest and we saw an immediate result. Thank You Joan Chittister for writing about this project! I am currently trying to figure out how to turn that money into cash in hand in Haiti so I can buy some more beds.

I will be going to meet with the bamboo people soon to negotiate the job of building bunk beds to bring back to the orphanages in PaP. I hope to get at least 5 made each for the orphanages that need beds. How many I can have made depends on how much money I find in my paypal and if I can manage to access my funds via a bank here. It should be doable.

I apologize for the lack of photos lately, it's very challenging to upload photos on limited internet access. It just doesn't work that well down here!! When I get back to Brooklyn, I will be uploading many many photos and some videos too. You can also take a look at my flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lopilaroe/

The possibilities for networking here are immense. I keep meeting people from various NGO's that are in high positions. I hope that for my next project I have more support from the inception because having no funding last time really slowed me down considerably. Shout out to Will Etundi for helping me to raise the much needed funds to get this project off the ground!! Thanks Will!! Thanks to 3rd Ward and all of my Brooklyn Peeps. I love you guys.

I went the other day to a Shelter Cluster Meeting. It was pretty posh, the chairs had satin covers with red bows around them and they handed you a pad of paper and a pen when you walked in the door. The moderators were speaking Upper Class Creole which is very close to French. I sat near a man with beautiful grey dreadlocks who was translating for a blond american woman. My new friend Laura from SIDR and I sat close to him so we could hear what was going on. It was alot of ranting about bureaucracy and status and then they got to the really good stuff. The promised funding. They listed huge sums of money and what it was to go towards. This is what they call "soft" money. It's not actual "hard cash" but promised donations. It seemed rather dubious who would actually put their hands on the money and when but they were encouraging the NGO's present to make proposals for building permanent shelters with the funding. Very few actual permanent structures have gone up. I am amazed at the types of construction that I see on the ground here. Tin roof shacks which will splinter like toothpicks in a hurricane are prevalent. I met a man named Marco from World Hunger. The man with the grey dreads is from Konpay. His name is Joe. They are building shelters as well. I had a conversation with them about using bamboo.

I left the meeting to use the loo and couldnt help but notice what looked like a pretty good spread being laid out for the NGO's. Free Lunch!! Oh yea, it was yummy too, lots of vegetarian choices.

The problem with the current bamboo situation here is that the bamboo that is prevalent in Haiti right now is not good for building with. It has too much sugar in it, so it attracts termites. Cultivating a new strain takes time. Thinking long term rebuilding of Haiti, Bamboo cultivation is of the highest priority. In about 10 years they should have a really good bamboo farming industry here. It has to be cultivated in a certain way, so that the older stalks can be accessed with out cutting the younger ones.

Getting access to the money from the paypal is going to be an interesting challenge. There are no ATM's in Jakmel, apparently... I am probably going to western union some money to myself to pick up here.

I just phoned Dave from Calvary Chapel and he is on his way to pick me up to take me to see some orphanages. It should be good. I hope to visit an orphanage that accepts only kids with AIDS.

I just got back from the orphanage visit with Dave. He showed me two. One of them is in pretty bad shape and it looks like they could use a new shelter. Score! Also, they have no beds. Score! Looks like I have some work to do now. Maybe I will finish this project soon after all....

thanks for reading me. comments are always welcome!

paz y luce

Ang Proteje Nou

2010-09-17T12:53:00.001-07:00

Me and Eva at the orphanage site...... she is a real sweetheart

Finishing up in Port Au Prince was not a simple task. What could have been simple
under normal circumstances became another obstacle maze to navigate. We
finished off both domes with front porches and sand paths leading up to
them, but we had to make a shade structure and the anchors needed to
set over night. I had been given a deadline to leave GRU because of
irreconcilable incompatibility. More about that later....

David and I had decided to go on the motorbike on Sunday to attempt to
construct the shade structure between the two of us. So, after packing
all morning into the early afternoon, we finally got on the bike to go.
After we were driving for about ten minutes, the bike started to swerve
back and forth in a somewhat alarming way. The back wheel had gone flat,
leaving us swishing back and forth like a drunken fish. I managed to
pull safely over to the side of the road. It being sunday, everything
was closed. But a couple friendly guys on the side of the road told us
in creole there was a place just a short distance ahead. So, I
determinedly started to push the bike, arduously in the hot sun towards
the distant wheel repair spot. The guys watched as they were
walking and then they started to tell me something in Creole. I figured
out that they meant to start up the bike and put it in first gear and
walk next to it, it would be easier. So I did, only I didn't realize you
could just let it idle, so I was sort of run/walking next to the bike,
clumsily trying to keep up with it as i gave it little bursts of gas.
David was walking behind and watching me.

The men started shouting at us again in Creole. We figured out again
they were saying you dont need to put the gas on, just let it idle and
it would go at a better speed for walking. Sometimes communication is
such a simple thing. Words just get in the way.

So, we go to the spot, I negotiate a price with the dude, quite badly,
actually, which creates an instant camaraderie because we are both
laughing at me and we agree on 150 gourdes which is just about 3 bucks
American, and they commence to fixing it. When Haitian tire fixer
vendors fix tires, they have an entirely different method than
Americans. They have this little contraption that you light up and then
it heats up a sort of metal press. They stick some gummy looking stuff
on the tire where its busted and shove it under the hot press, leaving
it to melt for a very scientific amount of time. In this case it was
exactly how long it took the dude to pry off the tire from a ginormous
truck rim. So he gets it all fixed up, i pay him, we get back on the
bike and drive away. The sky looks pretty ominous at this point and then
I go over a bridge and realize I am not going the right way at all. We
are lost! So, I ask David if he is hungry and he says yes, so we decide,
fuck it, lets go to the store and buy some food and go back to the base
and cook a vegetarian dish. We are both tired of the psuedo vegi food
we've been being fed for weeks now. Haitians dont really get the concept
of a meat free dish. They think as long as you pluck out the chunks of
goat meat or cow or pig or chicken or fish that its good to go. My
standards have definitely loosened since being in Haiti. I realized that on my
flight back to Haiti after my last visit to NYC when suddenly the airline was serving food
(surprise surprise) and then it was a chicken and pasta dish. I asked for a vegetarian
option, of course there wasn't one and I was hungry. So I just plucked
the chicken out of the pasta and ate what was left.

So we head back to the base and make dinner. It's my last night at GRUB.
BZ and Emma are cooking in the kitchen. We join in for a kitchen party.

David and I stay up late talking about building container houses out of
old containers with old cars attached to them in odd ways to create
bedrooms and chill out spaces. He is working with Give Love on Humanure and container houses. He is very into shit. He calls himself the shit man.

The next morning, David and I set out to make another attempt at
constructing the shade shelter before noon when Pastor Abraham is coming
with a truck to get me and all my gear and the last dome to bring it
all to Jacmel.

So, I make sure to get really good directions from Aldy and we jump on
the bike and go. I am driving and I am remembering the way. I am
notoriously bad at directions. I can drive somewhere 100 times and still
get lost. It's not that I am unobservant, I am overly observant, I
notice odd things, expressions on people's faces, bits of trash, a
skinny dog, an ancient man pulling a giant wooden two wheeled cart...
those things are not always good landmarks, though. This time I dont get
lost. I see all the landmarks. The UN, the painted wall, the police
station, the park with the clothes hanging in the trees, the broken down
hearse with the american flag in the garbage in front of it... Dr Roberts orphanage is on the way and we pass that too. Suddenly, the bike just stops. Out of gas! Brilliant.

So I coast up to a dude with a shelving unit on the sidewalk with diesel
fuel on top and gas on the bottom in plastic half gallon jugs. He puts
one half gallon in and then attempts to charge me the equivalent of 7
bucks american for it! I swear most Haitians equate "Blan" with "Lejan"
which is money, gat mo mo. I sometimes feel like I dont look human at
all to these people but more like a dollar bill with arms and legs. The
legs are only there to carry me to them and the arms are only there to
hand them cash. My head is just a bobbing bauble babbling bad Creole.
But it's getting better.

I definitely know enough Creole to shut them up when they start asking
for money. Mostly I say "Mwen Pov" which means "I'm poor" which they never believe and they usually respond with "Ou pa pov" or "blan pa pov" or "Mwen POV" to which
I respond "Nou Pov" which means "We are poor" But there are many
variations to this exchange and it sometimes attracts a crowd as I get
more and more animated.
I am better than tv, apparently. That's not saying much, tv sucks.

Anyway. I hand the guy 150 gourdes and say "Fini" and we get on the bike
and drive away. We have a shade structure to build! I drive for about 5
minutes and the bike starts feeling weird again. I pull over to the
side of the street and look down and sure enough, the back tire is flat!
Again! The scientific method from the day before failed! Marde!

These days when shit happens, I just deal with it, I dont even get upset
anymore. It's just Haiti. David and I theorize that the tire dudes are
throwing nails in the street to pop our tires to get more business, but
it's hard telling, no knowing. So, we look around. There are no tire
repair places in sight but there is a bicycle repair situation across
the street. So we push the bike over and indicate the pwoblem. They say
they cant repair it, they point across the street where I can buy yet
another inner tube for this bike tire. I had to buy one a week before in
Jacmel where we had a similar patch job go south. That was a two flat
day, that day in Jacmel. It was splendorous. Aldy and I ate in a fancy
restaurant while we waited for the guy to fix our tire. They had real plates, metal
silverware, ice cubes in glasses! The luxury was over the top.

So, we walk across the street and I buy an inner tube to go with my
inner teen who loves driving a motorbike so much. I go back across the
street and then the dudes tell us they still cant repair it. One of the
bicycle dudes, who are my people, incidentally, says he can find someone
and leaves to go retrieve a fixer upper out of the crowd of people in
the market across the street.

He comes back with a short kid with a big crescent wrench. I mean, he
is short because he is a kid, he is not a particularly short kid. The
wrench looks even bigger in comparison to him, though

You give a kid a tool and they can do wonders with it. This kid set to
work removing the back wheel while a group of grown men stood around
watching. Us Blan went to chill in the shade of a big tree and drink Tampico and
smoke cigs. Bad habit I picked back up in Haiti. The cigarettes are good here, no
chemical additives. David and I have alot to talk about.

Give Love responded immediately when I introduced the new orphanage
site. They set up a site survey the very next day to assess the
possibilities of the proposed site. Kevin from Kleiworks came out to see the site as well.
When they saw the positive potential they followed through with making
contact with the Director
I am happy to report that Give Love is negotiating to build a
compost toilet at the street kids orphanage. I love Give Love. David
tells me that I remind him of another woman he met from Brooklyn when he
was in Costa Rica, where he is studying permaculture. I ask him how I
am similar to her and he says "she was unstoppable" I take it as a
compliment.

I look over and one of the dudes standing around nods at me indicating
that the job is done.
So we get up and stroll over. This happy dude starts saying Rastafari
and Hali Salasie to David and grinning because David is a Swiss German
dude with Blond Dreadlocks.
We laugh. The bike dude says its 100 gourde and holds his hand out. I
take out 100 gourde and give it to the kid. They all laugh. I pick up
the used inner tube and put it around the kids neck like a rubber scarf
and give him the equivalent of a high five, which in Haiti is a fist
pound and then you punch your heart. We get on the bike and have no
pwoblems and we get back to the orphanage.

Bruce Lee is there working and we are happy to see each other. David and
I start to construct the shade shelter. We take the giant tarp and spread it out
and roll up either side to the center mark to carry it over to the spot where we have two bamboo posts prepped to go up with the tarp attached to it. However, we happened to choose the windiest day I have witnessed so far in Haiti to put up a shade structure with not enough people and not enough time. The neighbor dude joins Bruce Lee and his builder friend to try to assist us. They start shouting at us in Creole.

We stop and go sit in the shade to show them our drawing. We have it all figured out.
Bruce Lee's broken English collides with my broken Creole and David's Swiss German to make quite a shit stack. The neighbor suddenly jumps up and runs to get another neighbor and returns with a well dressed guy who, it turns out, speaks English, Creole and Swiss German! What are the chances of that?

I am getting nervous because Pastor Abraham is on his way to pick me and my entire project up from GRUB to bring me to Jacmel. I call him and luckily he is stuck in traffic. It is buying me more time, but not enough to really build this thing. But I have 100 american dollars in my pocket. So I offer the dudes a job. They accept.
We explain it all to them, I give the builder dude my tape measure because he doesnt have one and I have two and we leave.

I get back to the base, have lunch with David and do last minute packing. Sam checks my suitcase and boxes to make sure I am not stealing anything. Thank God! I would hate to be accused of taking things that dont belong to me to help Haitians rebuild their country.

I visit and say my goodbyes to Kevin from Kleiworks, Lucho from Give Love, Emma from GRU, Joanne the cook and Aldy. Pastor Abraham shows up and we load up his truck. I meet Jean-Claude his driver. We set out for Jacmel in their truck heavily loaded with Domes for Haiti's tools and last dome.

The trip is spent well with Abraham and I having a great conversation about God, service, education and community. I really enjoy talking with him even though I am not a religious person. To me, God is not some dude in white robes sitting up in the clouds. God is a concept invented by humans. My version of God is simple.
God = Love

On the way, before we hit the mountains, we are driving at quite a clip and suddenly there is a truck coming right for us. Jean-Claude expertly navigates us off the side of the road just in time to avoid hitting a person on the side of the road and the truck coming at us! Then I learn a new Haitian phrase. "Ang Proteje Nou" which means Angels are protecting us.

I have been in Jacmel for a few days now. Internet access is spotty.

I will update more tomorrow or the next day to let you all know what I have been up to here in Jacmel.

Briefly I will say that I am still looking for my last site. I have decided with Pastor Abraham that my tenth dome could have a greater impact at a different site. I am currently networking in Jacmel to meet artisans, future project collaborators and to find an orphanage that needs a good temporary transitional shelter.

I am coming to the conclusion that my next phase is going to involve transforming the domes I have built so far into permanent structures by removing the skins and adding concrete. I am still planning this.

I am expecting to head back up to Port Au Prince on my way out of dodge for two days and buy some more beds for my orphanages and check in on them before heading back to brooklyn

Today I went to a shelter cluster meeting which seemed like a rant session but they did serve us a great buffet! I also met a great lady from SIDR.

more later..... thanks for reading.

mwe parle creole tounkou chat

2010-09-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

We returned full force to the street kids orphanage site early yesterday morning, the crew, increased in size from 5 to 7, was piled into Petends tap tap with all of our gear. Aldy in the front seat with Petends. I took the motorbike and passed them until I got unsure about the way and then would tally for them to catch up. We played leap frog through the Port Au Prince morning traffic,the ever present teams of yellow shirted Haitian workers lining the streets wearing rubber boots pulling all manner of slime out of the gutters and forming bucket brigade lines handing rubble, piece by piece into a giant mack truck. I thought to myself, holy shit, I bought an entire truck of that stuff for 2000 gourdes. How much does each worker get paid, I wondered.

We arrived at the site and got to work finishing up the drainage ditches. Moving rubble to fill in the muddy yard. Around 11:30, Nephtalie and I took off on the moto to go pick up lunch. We went to some obscure joint on a twisty dirt road to buy 8 plates of food only to find it shut for the day. We turned around and ended up finding another lady cooking on the side of the road. She had a nice set up with a sort of shack restaurant with tables and chairs. She smiled and said it would be ready in ten minutes.

We filled up three plastic bags full of styrofoam containers of food for the crew and magically managed to balance it slightly unprecariously on the back of the bike. We then stopped at this little store to buy drinks. Aldy had requested a Guinness Stout and they actually had one, which i took to be something short of a miracle.

We had lunch under the tree and got back to work, finishing up the second dome and making 6 anchor supports for the shade structure. Keeping 7 workers busy is like juggling peeled mangoes. It's slippery at best. Add in a language barrier and you become like a ridiculous mime juggling peeled mangoes. I am sure I was quite a site, covered with mud pantomiming various tools and actions with a creole word inserted here and there for good measure.

We took the crate that Greg Henderson made back in Brooklyn to ship all the struts for all ten domese in and made it into a front porch for dome number 8. We took the palette that Matt Sperry shipped all the dome skins on an made that into a little porch for dome number nine. We made two little sand paths leading up to each dome and they looked sweeeeeet. The porch on dome number eight features graffitti tags from Jersey Hammer and LMNOP. The stencil of my cat Joe is painted on it as is Domes for Haiti and Brooklyn NYC. Got to represent, yo.

We got it all done and the kids had a spontaneous dance party while tamping down the white paths.

It was a pretty awesome day, altogether, but I still have to return to the site today to put up the shade structure which we couldnt do yesterday because the concrete anchors needed time to set. I am using six bamboo poles, six anchors, 6 ratchet straps, some rope and a giant tarp with NEED CASH? written in large bold letters on the top. It has an 800 number on it too. No doubt this will increase their marketing scheme tenfold..... It's ironic as hell to be housing a bunch of street kids under a sign reading "need cash" maybe not even ironic, more just redundant.

Today I am packing up my stuff, getting ready to leave GRUB. Laundry, packing and sorting is actually pretty enjoyable for me. A group of us are under the mango tree doing laundry. There were a bunch of people laying on two cots drinking rum and beer, but they all disappeared. Maybe they went back to bed or to the beach.

I am excited and relieved to be this close to completion of the first phase of my first humanitarian project. I am super excited to spend a week in Jacmel, meeting people, building dome number ten and painting some portraits on the beach.

I will be sad to say good bye to some of the people here at GRU. It's been a long two months! Some long lasting friendships have been formed with both locals from the community and partner organizations and volunteers based here.

I collected a bunch of water bags and typical Haitian trash to bring back to the states with me. Yes, I am bringing Haitian trash back to the states! I am going to be experimenting with designing some sort of handbag out of plastic trash with the hopes of bringing the design back to Haiti in a few months to get a cottage business started transforming trash into money.

thanks for reading!

mud pies

2010-09-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

I am still in Port Au Prince.

Making plans in Haiti is a silly person's endeavor. It always never turns out as you planned, so why do I bother with plans? I am a silly human, that is why. Humans are funny creatures.

I was supposed to leave here on Friday at noon to head to Jacmel to build dome number TEN. But then mud happened. It has been the hardest build of the entire trip.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, we are building a new orphanage. One for street kids.

Only, its a completely raw space, there is nothing there. I found out, day two, after we got hit with a doozy of a thunder and lightening storm on day one, that the water table on the land is extremely high. This makes it extremely MUDDY!

We returned the next day to find a veritable lake under the dome frames we had set up, two of them. It was completely perplexing situation, not to mention that I hadn't brought any rubber boots for the crew to work in, so I had to leave them to return to the base to collect all the rubber boots on the premises. Of course I got stuck in a two hour traffic jam while the kids were over there slogging around barefoot in the mud trying to dig canals. Worst day ever. My back went out too, so I was somewhat rigidly postured all day, in extreme pain. Wonderful day!

So last night, I was extremely disheartened and in total back pain when I returned to the base. I appealed to Emma, the Orphanage Coordinator at GRU to help me get more help to finish this project. This morning I was given a project manager, Aldy and two more haitian volunteers, only I would be paying them so they are technically not volunteers when they are on my crew. I was totally happy because Aldy is bon zammi mwe..

I am really very fortunate to have been able to work with pretty much only Haitian locals as my team. There have been a few volunteers who have helped who were north americans of some sort or other, (shout out to Hannah) but for the most part I have been solely working with Haitians.

It's why I came here, so this is important to me. I am learning Creole, feeling part of the community more and more here.

Yesterday was intense. When I returned to the site with the rubber boots, I was hoping that the truck of rubble we ordered had arrived. I had high hopes for a huge pile of rubble being spread out in a circle. My hopes were dashed into the mud. (oh the drama!) There was no pearly white shining rubble pile. Marde. We spend most of the time in Haitii waiting. Sometimes the thing that you are waiting for comes, eventually. Other times it doesnt come at all. Most times the pwoblem is machine related. Sometimes something entirely unexpected shows up. You make do with what you got.

We tried to find someone else to call to bring rubble, but to no avail. So the madame that lives there suggested we walk out to the road and flag down a passing mack truck full of rubble. I am not kidding you. We went out to the road, Nephtalie me and this lady. Pretty soon, sure enough, here comes a huge truck full of rubble. I start waving my arms like a mad blanc. The truck stops. We run up to it and start to negotiate a price.
They want 6,000 gourde! It's like 150 bucks american. I'm like, uh no, merci

And then we trudge back to the site through the muddy mudfilled mud lane dejectedly. I am feeling literally swamped. I had plans! In Jacmel! I felt like I would never get this build done. I couldn't put the domes up on top of mud, but I had a deadline to get out of GRU by Saturday at noon. Not self imposed. More about that later.

So, I ask the lady again, after a long coversation about why I dont have any kids. if she knows anyonne who can deliver rubble, today. She says oui. She calls a dude who says he can bring a load over and drop it on the site for 2000 gourdes, which is almost 50 US. So I say oui and pretty soon here comes a guy in a big mack dump truck filled up with rubble. I was excited!

The dude promptly got stuck in the neighbor's front yard. His giant tire was sunk in the soft soil. He seems quite irate and everyone is yelling ideas and suggestions at the same time. The guy suddenly starts to dump his entire load behind himself btween the rear of his truck and the road, thus blocking himself in. Because there is no way forward besides a very muddy area where he would never be able to make it. BUT there is a back alley way kind of path on the other side of the site that I had already noticed as a possible truck route for dumping the gravel.

The back of his truck starts lifting, rubbles start falling, I shout, "STOP!" "FINI!'
Until the guy stops. Immediately when he stops, everyone watching, all my crew, all the neighbors, even the kids, start yelling. No one is listening to anyone else.
Its a cacophony of sound, a calvicade of voices. I again shout "SILENCIO" which I think is actually Spanish. Everyone is quiet. I say listen to me, and tell Nellie to translate to the driver for me. I tell him not to dump the load there ,but to back the truck up instead because he would get stuck in the mud on the other side. Of course he didn't listen;
I told him if you dump the rubble there, I am not paying for it. He says I dont care if you pay for it or not, i need to get out of here. So he dumps it behind himself and then gets his truck unstuck and drives right up the mud driveway and just sinks his giant front wheel into a really deep sink hole. Blam. Stuck. Um, yeah, hate to say I told you so, and I dont know how to say that in Creole yet.

Anyway there is an even bigger commotion but then I get tired of this dude and all his drama, I pay him 1500 gourde, to be fair because he dropped the load where I did not want it, creating an entire extra day labor to move the stuff with a wheel barrow. If he had just listened to me in the first place, he could have driven it up the back way where it was firm and dumped in practically on the exact spot..

So we made do.

Now, a day later, we managed to get one dome up and skinned and the other plot mostly prepped, but it still needs more work. Also, it is raining alot right now, so
we'll see how good the canals work. I am sure it will be flooded around the dome, but I am pretty sure the dome itself will be dry inside. I am hoping.

One can only hope.

I had no idea this was going to prove to be the hardest build of all. I mean, I thought it would be a simple build, I was wrong. I am hoping to finish it up by tomorrow night, but this is Haiti. I got an extension on my deadline, more on that later.

I am getting very tired. I have alot of work to do tomorrow.
Shout out to Aldy and my entire crew. You guys are amazing.

I have many many awesome photos of this build! I haven't time right now to upload them, however. If you check back on Sunday night, I'll have them up.

Thanks for reading me!

ou se bon zanmi mwe

2010-09-08T07:19:00.000-07:00

I am waiting for a truck to come and pick up my crew, equipment and myself today to go to Bon Repos to build two domes at one location. We are helping an organization start a brand new orphanage. I am extremely excited to be in a position to help the street kids of Port Au Prince be taken care of. A few days ago, Lynn Currier from the Haitkaah Social Justice Project contacted me the other day. She wrote a long email to me explaining how she has been struggling to find support for her project to build an orphanage to house the street kids on Port Au Prince, whom it seems, have fallen through the cracks in many ways and are without any support whatsoever. I was excited by her email and responded immediately telling her that if she wanted a dome built on her site she would have to move swiftly because I am leaving Port Au Prince on Friday to go to Jacmel to build there.
I told her that I would be happy to go and assess any sites they had in mind to see if it was an appropriate place to put a dome (or two)

Dr. Julie Bertrand of Kore Timoun met up with us and brought me to see two sites. The second one I viewed in the dark. I decided after lengthy discussions with this wonderful woman who started her own project when she was 12 (!) to support their endeavors with everything I could muster.

One of the beauties of being a small organization, with basically one core member is that decisions can be made quickly and acted upon just as swiftly. From the time she contacted me to the time I am building on her site is just 3 days. The domes will go up in one and a half days. We will build a shade structure over the two domes with some bamboo I am purchasing from my colleagues at Kleiworks and some tarps being donated by Dave Holmes from International Medical Corps.

Once the shelters are in place, the orphanage will start to take shape. There are several organizations poised to place amenities on the site, but they require shelters to be present before they can act. I am providing the necessary puzzle piece to start the ball rolling to get those kids in housing. Many of them are severely malnourished. Many of them are runaway restavecs.

I dont even know what the orphanage is going to be called yet!

This will be dome number eight and nine.

Dome number ten will be being build in Jacmel this weekend. I met a man named Pastor Abraham who runs a school and orphanage in Jacmel who I made a very solid connection with. He has 800 students at his school which he founded in 1999. His curriculum includes music, art, construction and dance in addition to the basic reading, writing arithmetic. My next project is forming in my mind as this, my first humanitarian project comes to a close. When I was in art school, a favorite teacher of mine told me to always start a new painting before the one I was working on was done. That way you would have your foot in the pool ready to start swimming again when the work was done.

I have my foot in a new pool. The connections I am making with Haitian organizations are cherished by me. This is what I came here for. To work with and for Haitians.

I am excited as well to begin designing a hub system for bamboo dome construction. When I was in Jacmel over the weekend we met with a Taiwanese bamboo expert named Jimmy Jine who is paid by the government of Taiwan to serve as a consultant for a Haitian Organization called Complex Bamboo. They support the reforestation of Haiti with bamboo, improved poultry production and the cultivation of tropical fruit trees among the peasant farmers in Haiti. They have a bamboo nursery, a bamboo furniture factory and they also raise chickens.

I absolutely loved Jacmel.
I am excited to be donating all of my tools to an excellent school where many people will benefit from them. I will be moving my entire project to Jacmel on Friday to wrap it up with the final build of dome number ten.

I am still waiting for this darn truck to pick us up. It's Haiti. It's hot. Part of my tent collapsed this morning inexplicably. I guess it sensed that my time is coming to a close here in Port Au Prince.

Our trip back from Jacmel was intense. We were on two motorbikes and we rode over the mountain pass at the perfect time of day to do so; sunset. It was superb. Many people were perched along the road in groups socializing as the sun set. It was a serene drive.. until we hit Carrefore. Then all hell broke loose! Mud!

Huge holes in the road, trucks, cars, people, motobikes all swarming around like crazy wind up toys who somehow magically dont collide. I videotaped from the back of the bike, but I cant upload it until I get back to my home computer in Brooklyn

I plan on spending a few days decompressing on the beach in Jacmel, doing some water color portraits and drinking coconuts before I return to the states to start resourcing for the next trip to Haiti.

beds

2010-09-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Emmaus for the donation of $500! Thanks also to the individual donations that have come in in the last few days. I went today and spent $300 bucks of it on beds for an orphanage in Carrefore that we had found yesterday after a long day searching for an orphanage to construct the dome we had in the truck on.

We got up early, thinking we had an orphanage lined up based on another organization's recomendation. I normally dont go blindly to an orphanage to build without first visiting and making an assessment. The reason I decided to do it yesterday was because I was getting a little desperate. I had spent much of the previous day calling around to orphanages and getting little results. We had reached one in Carrefore and they had said that they both needed a shelter and had space for one. But then a friend told me she had a spot for a dome that had been assessed by another organization to be in desperate need of a shelter.

The crew arrived at 9am, ready to go. The tap tap driver's truck had other plans other than functioning. It was functioning on its plan "b" which was to "not go" and take the "day off"
So I desperately called around to find another tap tap. Finally, we reached Gin Gin the dude that had driven us a few times. He agreed to send Caleb, his teenaged son (might I add, Angst ridden to that description?) if I agreed to pay $60. I said I would agree to pay $60 bucks if he was there in 15 minutes. Ha ha, that turned out to be a pretty good joke and a worthless bluff. An hour and a half later, he showed up.

We loaded up the truck and started driving. Emma from GRU decided to join us that day.
Emma is great. The Aussie Orphanage chick. It was her contact that had given us the thumbs up on the orphanage that needed shelter. So we headed over, it was in Bon Repos, again. We got there and it was a pretty awful set up. Half the property was under water and swampy. The other half was rocks and garbage, the other half ( i know my fractions are not lining up, its artistic license. ) was the front yard, which turns out the "master" would not allow building upon. Yes, I said Master. That's what the pastor, who was lying on a cot under a tree called the owner of the house. The worst translator ever was sitting next to him. We proceeded to have the most confusing and circular conversation in history. It made no sense whatsoever. He said the Master was kicking him out, but yet he was still living there. I am not going to explain all of the perplexing ins and outs of the conversation, but it was shady as hell, so we disentangled ourselves from him and left.

We decided to go to Carrefore to find this orphanage we had made contact with the day before on the phone. They had said that their shelter had recently blown away. Carrefore is pretty far from where we were, so we drove and drove and then the angsty teenaged driver Caleb, started asking and calling the woman at the orphanage to ask directions. It took alot of figuring out. The roads were insane. San Fransisco has nothing on these roads. Straight up the side of a freaking mountain. Dirt road with ruts and big huge holes and random piles of rubble and garbage. Beautiful scenery though. Gorgeous cliffs covered with stucco looking houses. Verdant Fauna, huge palm trees, banana trees, papaya trees. Just gorgeous. The Creole word for banana is "fig" thats rather confusing.

Emma in the back seat of the cab of the truck with me and angst boy who is beeping at kids and recklessly driving like an insane person. The giant container of peanut butter in the back seat with Emma spills. We have the great peanut butter spill in the back seat. It gets all over her foot. It looks like shit. We are laughing our asses off. The driver has steam coming out his ears. We finally arrive. We laughingly ask for some water to wash her foot off. That's our introduction. They look at us warily. We try to laugh it off.

The lady takes me and Nephtalie into a little shack. It s a gorgeous site, on top of a mountain. They totally totally need shelter, thank god. She tells me about her orphanage and the activities she does with the kids. I am understanding more and more of Creole. She points to the arts and crafts, the games, karate uniforms... I introduce myself and my project to her. I tell her I am a very small organization of one person. I tell her my community in Brooklyn raised money to send me. I start to get choked up at that point. I tell her I have a team of Haitian teens who I trained how to build the domes and I am paying to be my crew.
We ask her if we can build a dome on her property if she wants one. She says that they had been praying to God to send them a new shelter and she believes I am the answer to that prayer.

I dont argue about it.

We start to unload the truck and notice the thunder clouds and lightening. They say, "the rain is coming" I say to the kids "should we leave?" they are like "NO!" so we decide to build it in the fucking rain! So we get to work and build that shit. Quickly.

I go and meet the kids. They are sitting under a partial building watching the Lion king on a tv. They are super friendly and as all Haitian kids seem to love getting their photos taken.

I look at their chalk board and it reminds me of a Cy Twombly painting.

I make friends with the Turkey

We build it and the Pastor asks me if I am an Indian. I say, you think I am Indian?
He says "I am a spiritual man" I say "Yes! I'm an Indian!"

It was a wonderful day. On the way back it started to pour rain and I got in the back of the truck with the kids so that I would also get wet. No need for me to be the dry person in the front while they are all getting soaked.

I cant write a full account! I am trying to get out of here to go to Jakmel.

This is going to have to be enough for now. Check back later, I will write more about the dome being on the roof unexpectedly and post a photo of it. ha ha

I went to visit dome number one the day before yesterday to deliver some beds to them and was totally shocked beyond my wildest dreams to see that they had moved the dome!
It was on the ROOF! It was the most surprizing moment of my entire trip to Haiti.
Photos to follow and a much longer blog post.

We are having a mini burning man here on the base tonite. A few of the weirdos here built an effigy of a man and we are going to set it on fire at midnight.

Tomorrow I am going to Jacmel for the day. I am hoping to meet with a man named Pastor Abraham and see about donating tools to his technical college and building a dome for his orphanage.

I am gearing up to finish up this phase of my project in about a weeks time.

I am going to Jakmel to make a connection there to see about building a dome down there. Dome number ten. Monday I will visit Kay Famn and bring them the sewing machine that Kae Burke gave me along with all the fabric and notions I brought from MTFA (sorry! I know its supposed to be only for the five burroughs!)

Tuesday and Wed will be build days. Thursday packing day. Friday I hope to move all my shit to Jakmel.

I hope to be back in the states soon, eating blueberries and riding my bike.

ti fi kay

2010-09-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today we built Dome Number 6. Yesterday we did not build. It was my birthday!
Monday we constructed Dome Number 5.

I will start with today and go backwards this time, just for a little change of pace.

We made our way back to Bon Repos to bring a dome to Dr. Robert's Orphanage and School. Dr. Robert's teaches at a nurse's school but he also is the director of a small orphanage as well. He is a sweet man who speaks some English and reminds me of Mr. Rogers, but instead of a sweater, he is wearing a scrubs shirt.

Pretty large and awesome yard the kids have to play in, with several big trees providing ample shade and appendages to support several swings. There is a shack with a chalk board and desks for the kids to sit at, kind of an outdoorsy classroom. They have a cement building where they prepare food and the girls have been sleeping. The boys have two large tents that they share. Today, we were building a dome for the girls!

Half way through the day, I realized I had forgotten the bag of zip ties back at the base. Also there was a guy at the base working who works also for an orphanage. He wanted to show me the orphanage so I could see if they need a dome. So, today's driver, Dan, and I went back to the base and I left Nephtalie in charge of the build. A first. Leaving them to supervise themselves and build it right.

the Dome Team!
So we went back, I got the zip ties and scarfed down a peanut butter sandwich. The Dream Team was eating spaghetti for lunch at the dome site but it had hot dogs in it which I dont care too much about eating. I dont usually munch on hot dogs, not since I was a kid and had serious food poisoning from a hot dog. Right, Jen? My sister remembers that trip to Buffalo. We had a great time puking on the train. But that is another story, another lifetime ago!

We arrived back at the dome site, handed off the zip ties and I checked the work. Perfect.
Dr. Roberts had invited a friend of his who also runs an orphanage "nearby" for me to meet.
He wanted to show me his orphanage to see if maybe I would put a dome there, I guess.
So, I decided to let the Dream Teens to continue supervising themselves on doing the hardest part of the build without me, putting the cover on, while I went with Jefflo and this other dude and the driver to check out the other two orphanages.

First, we followed dude in his totally new SUV to his "nearby" orphanage. It was totally far! I really get frustrated when people stretch the truth to suit their needs. Its pretty annoying. But, this is Haiti. So we finally arrived at the guys Orphanage. I immediately couldn't help but notice that he had Two Houses, which were completely undamaged in any way. It added to my feeling of irritation a wee bit that not only was his place not "nearby" at all, he clearly didn't need shelter. When I said this to him, in as polite a manner as possible, through a translator, he claimed that they didn't use the nicer of the two houses at all. As he was saying this I was taking mental notes of the fresh fluffy looking curtains in the window and the kids freely coming and going from inside the house he doesn't use at all. Truth was rather like putty in this fellows hands. When he realized I wasn't buying what he was selling, salt water taffy, he changed his horse midstream. "We need food" he stammered. I did not doubt this in the least. Everyone needs Mange. "I dont have food" I said to him through a translator, "I only have shelter, and clearly, you do not need shelter. Not like some places who have nothing. I hope you can agree that there are other places who are in greater need of shelter than you, oui?"

It's sometimes precarious for me to even visit an orphanage. I do not like the unrealistic expectations that my visits can unintentionally set up. It is by nature of the climate in Haiti that a person with my complexion from elsewhere is seen as some sort of potential savior. It makes me feel totally insufficient to their needs at times. I am being seen as a one stop warehouse for all the necessities of life when all I truly can provide is pretty limited to shelter. And a soccer ball. And a bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap and some organic peanut butter. A minuscule amount compared to what they actually require to survive.

We got back into the tap tap, Dan's tap tap, and drove off to find the other orphanage Jefflo's place. This time I was told, "it's really far' and it was! We went a great distance on a pretty smooth road, fortunately, so we could go fast at least. It was a beautiful ride into the country side, but according to the driver, we were still in Port Au Prince. They told me the name of the town, but I can't remember. I have kind of a terrible memory for place names...
The hillsides were spotted with an assortment of shacks made out of tarps, fragile looking wood, tin and cloth. They were chaotically dispersed amongst the greenery. The plant life was mostly bushes, not alot of trees, so to my eyes, the shelters looked hot. We passed at least one tent encampment, though, that consisted of a plethora of same looking orderly rowed shelters. All blue. Bright blue. I couldn't help but wonder whose color choice that was and why on earth did they think people would enjoy living in a bright blue community.

So we go quite far and up this winding bumpy dirt tract to the top where this kid's orphanage is located. Their gate consists of a wooden frame with a wool blanket on it. I would have taken photos but it seemed too objectifying at the moment. I wish I did, though, so you could have seen this place. It was on a beautiful piece of land. There were about 20 kids and some elderly ladies hanging around. A few men. Jefflo had told me that there were 70 kids living there. There was a rather large, rectangular structure, long and sort of narrow with a cement floor and a tin roof. Some of the walls were made of cinder block. Inside it was surprisingly cool and neat. Bunk beds lined the walls in an orderly fashion. There was an absence of the odor of urine. I thought it was pretty nice.

We went back outside and I sat down on the blanket next to an ancient looking woman with white hair braided in corn rows. She seemed startled by my sudden plopping down besides her and said "get the chair for her" I said in creole " mwen bezwen pa gen chèz" (i need no chair) Jefflo then started to ply me with reasons they need a dome. He pointed to a dilapidated looking tent and explained it was the old madame's tent. I hated to tell him that the domes were intended for orphans, exclusively.

It's hard when you know that people need stuff you have. But they are not the people you had in mind when you dreamed up the project.It's hard to stick to your plan when looking into the sweet old eyes of some lady sitting on a blanket on the top of a mountain.

I said, I didn't know and I'd think about it and we had to go now to pick up the Dream team

I gave them a soccer ball which the kids immediately started playing with

We left and went to check out dome number six. The house for the girls at Dr. Robert's
They were super excited and they ran up to me. "thank you thank you" they said in English. "Pou fi?" they asked me "for girls?" "Oui, ti fi kay" I said to them. They were super psyched and it was then I noticed a fierce rivalry between the boys and girls. "Garcon?" a boy demanded of me, pointing at the dome. "Pa garcon" I said and pointed to their two nice tents

I found it pretty funny and I think they all did too, within reason. I took a photo of the girls in frront of the dome. The kids there are pretty rough, compared to some I have met at orphanages. They seem a bit wild here. They are little wise guys in a way I totally respect. I was having alot of fun with them, they were making really funny faces when I was taking their fotos.

this girl was killing me, she was so adorable.

this boy spoke some english and said he wanted to be a musician

So that was today. Now a brief synopsis of Monday's build

We went to a church community center / orphanage and built them a dome.

we had a bunch of leveling to do on the ground before we built it.
We also had to dig a good sized trench or canal to allow for water drainage..

at this moment, Watson laughed at me and said in creole
not to fart in Nellie's face. Ha ha.

there were several fierce looking women with total new born babies.

this girl had quite a scar above her left eye.
I told her that I thought her scar made her very special.

this boy was rather shy but liked having his foto taken
He had a smudge of dirt on his face and when the other kids saw the foto, they pointed at the dirt and laughed.

this kid spoke english and asked me "do you love jesus?"
I told him I didnt really know him and then realized he would probably
take that the wrong way. So I added that I loved him, though
and then he told me he would love me for eternity

these ladies are in charge there, it seems. At one point, after we had the cover on the dome, Nellie told me, "that lady (the one with the white turbin on) just said she was going to sleep in the dome." That kind of pissed me off, actually. Being as how I was pretty specific that we were building the dome for the kids to sleep in. I didn't work for seven months to house this lady, quite frankly. So I had Nellie, who reluctantly agreed, tell her and the man there very pointedly and specifically that the domes are for kids, only. The man insisted, "two or three grown ups will sleep in there too" "No, absolutely not," I said. They then claimed that there was a rule there that a grownup has to sleep with the kids. I said, "ok, but just one' and they were still insisting on Two! I told them if I came back and checked and found out that the grownups were living in the dome, I would have no qualms about having the team take the dome down, immediately and give it to another orphanage that would use it for the kids, in the way it was intended.

I still think they are going to be sleeping in the damn dome. It makes me mad to think about it, but really, what can I do now?? I guess just hope for the best and spring a surprise visit on their ass. And bring the contract for them to sign that specifically spells it all out for them, in creole, exactly what the agreement is. I wrote it up last night. I will be bringing it to all ten orphanages before I leave country.

I got the kids all excited in the dome. they were being really dramatical
I was showing them how to freeze in cool positions and they caught on right away

Here they were showing me their tough side

Tomorrow I am going back to Desamours place to bring her the rest of the mattresses I promised her. There is a whole stack of mattresses in the giant dome warehouse at Grub, but gaining access to them is proving to be rather wrought with red tapes.

I have run out of orphanage dome sites. I will be scouting some out tomorrow with the moto bike in the morning. I've been mostly staying off the motorcycle since I got back this time, but it's about time I jumped back on the horse!

thanks for reading, and always, if you want to donate money, that is totally appreciated!
If I get enough money I can buy more beds.
I contacted two organizations that provide beds for orphanages today, we'll see how they respond to my request for collaboration!

peace

dako

2010-08-31T07:27:00.000-07:00

We built Dome Number five yesterday!
this is a water color portrait I made the other day

We are trying to raise money to purchase bunk beds for the domes. I found a location that sells them for 160 bucks US here in Port Au Prince. These bunks come with out mattresses. To buy mattresses will cost about 30 bucks US a piece.
These kids deserve beds. My budget doesn't allow for this expense....
If you feel inspired by this project and would like to help out, please consider making a donation today! The money will go directly to buy mattresses and bunk beds.

thanks for the support!

dom dulse dom

2010-08-28T14:31:00.000-07:00

Where did I leave off? Two Days ago?

So... yea, we got lost, found a different orphanage, built a dome there instead spontaneously and called it a day, lending Henri some of our tools so he could work on stuff before we got back in the morning. I had decided to come back the next morning to do more work there dealing with their significant water drainage pwoblems. (that's not a typo)

In the morning, I sent an email to the orphanage co-ordinator for GRU, Emma, who has been on "holiday" for the last two weeks (shes an Aussie, they call it that). Emma and I had been collaborating on the orphanage assessments and so I had shared my notes with her. So she had the dude from the Upper Room's contact info! The one that I had been searching for when we got hopelessly lost and hopefully found the other joint instead....So I planned on visiting the Upper Room in the Later Afternoon.

The "Dream Dome Teen Team" all showed up around 9:30 and we waited for what seemed an eternity for Gingin, the tap tap driver driver to come come. It was very redundant and he finally showed up claiming "blockage" slowed him down with his sweet smile. I am falling for this guy, he is old like me. (come on, not really, he is married!)

Before we headed back out to Bon Repose to Henri's orphanage I decided to stop at the grocery store on the way and buy some food for the kids. They had no food. I spent like 100 bucks american and it still was not enough at all. I bought a couple huge watermelons off the street too. When we arrived we found that the heavy rains the night before had flooded under the dome because we hadn't dug a trench aka canal in Kreyol.
So they hadn't slept in there. Also, the zipper door wouldn't close. Luckily, I figured out why. When we put the dome together sans the missing strut, it really was an illusion that it was just fine without it. The geometries of geodesics are intrinsically linked! Of course if one strut is missing, it's going to throw off the rest of the gestalt. So it had been stretched out in that part so the skin was too taut to close easily.
Nellie
'Talli
Lopi

Nellie, 'Talli and I set about to fixing that situation while the guys set to work digging a nice trench around the dome for water to be diverted away from under it.

Marco in his Superman Pose

At the same time, the orphanage dude, Henri, had a whole posse of child labor industriously clearing rubble off the foundation where his house had stood pre "event" and filling in under their other tent shelter structure where it had been flooding every night.

(a rat just ran by me, just fyi and there is a rooster walking in front of me with a baby chick. I am sitting under a mango tree listening to Ray LaMontagne as I type this. It's about 4 in the afternoon and the sweat of the day is dried on my hot skin which is turned yet another shade darker today. There is a nice breeze. All is well in the world. Mwe kontan)

I spent some time digging trenches yesterday. I also chilled in the shade with the petit timoun too. Just quietly sitting with them all staring intently into my face, looking for signs of intelligence I suppose. I wonder if they found any. I know I saw brilliance reflecting out of their sweet eyes. They pet my skin like I am a cat. They pull my braids tenderly, fixing the ends of them by braiding the shit out of them to the very tippy tips. I have to admit I love being groomed by orphans. Is that not PC? I dont give a damn ha ha. I am aware that they might have some sort of bugs or other living on them, not by their own fault, but how can I refuse their sweet affection? I dont give a shit if I get lice or ticks or scabies or whatever. I really dont.

I fell in love with two kids in particular at this orphanage. One of them is called "Pastor Wilson" That's his name!! He is Tiny! They call him "Pastor" I think, because he says poetic things is what I am guessing. The name just tickled me to the gills. How can I forget this kid?
Pastor Wilson

Jessica

The other one is called Jessica and she is just a skinny little girl with dimples on both sides of her mouth. She loves dancing and her and I had a good dance session in the afternoon.

We worked really very hard digging trenches and moving earth and rubble around that day. The kids ate oats and watermelon and some of them worked just as hard as we did!

We finished up, Henri asked if he could borrow some tools again and I said sure and we called up the dude from the Upper Room and he came and met us at the huge yellow church.
He got in the front of the truck with Gingin and navigated us to his place. It was SO CLOSE! We could have spit up into a good wind and it would have hit the goat outside his door square between the eye balls. We all had a good laugh over how close it was while we had been driving circles around looking for it the other day.

We stopped in, scoped it out and told him we'd be back the next day to build them a dome.
When we got back to the base, I was totally wiped out but with a good feeling of satisfaction.

We got an early start this morning, left the base with our truck all loaded up by 9am, headed back to Bon Repose to the Upper Room Orphanage to build them a dome.

This is becoming routine. We are getting used to this daily ritual. I go to work each day with a group of teens and a nice guy driving us all in a pick up truck full of gear and dome parts. It's not your typical 9 to 5. My day starts usually at about 6am, but the funny thing is, I dont need an alarm clock. I dont even look at the time in the morning. I just get up and fill up a bucket with cold water, walk over to the shower booth and then pretty much just dump the thing over my head. Then I go in my tent and get dressed. After that I go to the kitchen and make tea and I've been making chia seed pudding every morning. Yum. Beats spaghetti by a stones throw.

The thing about chia seed pudding is; one, you dont have to cook it, just add water and let it sit for five minutes, voila! Also, it gives you tons of energy and also, well, it makes you shit.
Speaking of shitting, I want to tell about the outhouse here at GRUB. It's a composting toilet located next to the earth shit I mean ship. It's basically a 55 gallon drum with a toilet seat on top. It's quite a throne and when your done with your bidness, you throw sugar cane bagass in on top of it. When the drum is full, it is emptied on a special compost pile where it is again covered with another layer of bagass. It will sit and compost for 6 months at which time it is ready to be used as fertilizer on fruit trees.

It's funny to go to the shitter at night when it's dark out. Someone installed a motion detector light on the palm tree next to it. So when you approach it, the light goes on so you can see the throne. You then are illuminated by the light while you sit on the toilet. It's like a broadway show in there! Also, there is a strategically located window that you can gaze out upon the yard through. Thing I always wonder is, how much of me can someone looking in see? Is it like I am Ernie and Bert from Sesame Street and you only see me from the chest up? I sure hope so!

We went to the orphanage, the Upper Room. We built a dome.

this dude's hat is the shit

While we were at the Upper Room building a dome, the director stopped by to meet me.

A nice guy named Jean Raymond.
He is a pastor too, just like Pastor Wilson.
He spoke with me in English, which was a relief, honestly.
I've been learning alot of Kreyol, but sometimes its just a relief to not have to struggle

Remember a few weeks ago when I met the man with the typewriter under the tree?
I swear to god I met his predecessor today! Out of all the kids, this kid was the only one with a crisp, button down shirt on like someone would wear in the office, or under the tree with a typewriter:

This is Kerlyn, the Mom of the orphanage with the Pastor in their real office. She wants me to paint a mural on the wall when I come back. When I come back. Notice she didnt say "if"

This is the cook:

When we were done with the dome, the kids were all in their cool little dining hall eating, so I didn't get the requisite, "kids standing in front of the dome" photo. I got this one instead:

So here is Dome Number Four:

We left and drove the short distance to the Random orphanage that we dropped a surprize dome on the other day to pick up the borrowed tools and say hi to them.
Just a word about driving. Again. I keep skipping over this part and just saying that "we drove here we drove there' but the driving itself is ALWAYS an event, an adventure. The roads we've been going down are positively rivers and lakes and mud ponds. We have been using the truck like a boat at times. It's really exciting!
So, today, my thing was to open the door and jump out unexpectedly and start walking away. When the kids in the back look at me, I say "later" and "peace out" and act like I am leaving.
I dont know why I kept doing that, but it was entertaining to me. I was really just wanting to walk a little bit and usually you can walk pretty much as fast as the truck can carry all of everyone.

So, when we got close to the orphanage, I did the, "later" gaff and then told them, "allie, allie" which means "go" I was admiring the dome from a distance and I wanted to take a photo of it.

When we got over to the orphanage, Henri and his partner were Beaming at me. They couldn't wait to show me the work they had done using the tools I lent them. It was actually quite remarkable what they had accomplished! The whole back had been a pile of rubble formerly known as "house" What I saw today was a cleared out area that was elevated and flat with a nice stone floor.

He was so proud of it and I was totally touched. He asked if he could borrow the tools for another day. How could I say no??? Everyone needs tools, actually. When I am done with the dome builds, I am going to be giving tools away to some deserving people like Henri. Probably Henri himself. Haitians are funny, by the way, they are always mistakenly calling a he a she or vise versa. It's because there is only one pronoun here for male and female. It's "Li"

I am also looking forward to after I finish all the dome builds. I have other things I brought to give away to people. Like leather. I have a bunch of leather I got from Materials for the Arts. The last few days on the way driving, I noticed a shoe maker sitting in the same place everyday. He looked like a really cool, kind of earthy crafty guy. Maybe I will drop off some of the leather with him.

The flooded shelter was all built up with the rubble they had moved. No more flooding!
Then the real moment of fruition for me came. They showed me the inside of the dome.
It was Beautiful. They had put all the bunk beds in there and covered the floor with the scraps of vinyl I had given them and a bit of rug here and there, but it looked AWESOME. The one guys wife was in there and she came up to me and kissed me on the cheek.

I think today was the day I have been waiting for since February.

tout sa ou bezwen se ami

2010-08-26T16:38:00.000-07:00

Two more domes went up in the last two days.

l
this kid's name is Giovanni and he kept whispering to me in the cutest voice.

Two more domes went up in the last two days.
Wednesday we got a surprizingly early start, considering how long you normally end up waiting for a hired tap tap driver to show up, but this one, Gingin, he is different, he showed up at 8:30 am, ready to go and we were ready for him, my crew of 5 Haitian teens and I. I had invited Hannah, who is visiting from SF, to come along on what promised to be a really great day. We were going to visit Judy, who I had met on my 3rd day in Haiti, about a month ago now.
this is Judy
She was one of my favorite people I had met so far in Haiti and I was anxious to go and see her and her kids and build them a dome. So, we loaded up Gingin's tap tap (why is everything being repeated? it reminds me of kava kava. is it not the same as kava? but i digress......)
When we got it all loaded, Gingin looked dubious at the weight of all the stuff, but we talked him into going for it...
It was an easy build, there was not alot of prep needed at Judy's place, she has a well drained yard and honestly, she has a really good scene there. She has a good support network, the kids are well cared for emotionally and physically.
this kid's name is Nixon. He was very curious about how the dome was put together. He helped out.
these guys were having lunch on a little table behind the dome
I decided that I was going to kick back and take it easy on this build, not only because, well, I had just gotten over an alleged bought of malaria, but more importantly, I wanted to test the kids and see how well they were learning how to build the domes themselves without me.
So I chilled and talked at length with Judy, who speaks English really well and admitted to me that she speaks French better than Creole. "but if anyone else said that to me, I would be mad!" she laughed.

i still haven't gotten a ladder...
All I can say is Nellie, Nephtalie, Marco and the two new kids, Madson and Watson (i am not kidding) did a stellar job. They kicked serious ass and needed minimal guidance from me.

I still had to be the one to climb up the dome when it came time to pull the cover over it, but otherwise, I let them figure it out. Nellie had a few ideas on how to do things and I let her take charge. Marco is totally always one step ahead of the game.
'Tali is pounding the sledge and keeping up with the boys just fine, laughing the whole time.
Hannah chillin' in the shade..

The two new crew members, Watson and Madson, are keepers, they work hard and are total sweethearts. They live next door to the sisters and they have all grown up together like siblings. I'm having a great time hanging out with these kids.. On the way back from the job, they were getting a kick out of teaching me to curse in Creole and laughing their asses off when I said the words with angst and made up songs using the new lexicon at my disposal.

On the way back we stopped at the grocery store so I could buy some spray paint. I am planning on doing a little beautification project on the side while I am here....
We got back to the base and the kids unloaded the truck, I paid everyone and they left.

When we pulled into the compound I saw a dude with about 20 cans of spray paint lined up on the top of an SUV. I knew right away it was Jerry, Haiti's #1 graffiti artist. I am a huge fan of his work I have seen on the streets of Port Au Prince. So I was totally excited to meet him and I showed him my stencil painting of Joe, my cat, which is on one of the palettes that my stuff was shipped here on. We had a great conversation about Banksy and turns out both of our favorite stencil artist a french guy named Christian Guémy who is also known as C215. He paints all over Brooklyn, actually.... Anyway, Jerry was there painting some portraits for the Give Love Project's Container House's outhouse. He painted Bob Marley, Che Guevera and Patricia Arquette. And then he invited me to come out with him the next time he does a street piece. That was really exciting for me.

I was not as prepared for the next day, this morning's build because last week I had left my notebook in this other tap tap and never gotten it back. Inside the notebook is all the notes on every assessment I have gone on since being here. Which is fine, mostly, because I still have the list of all the orphanages telephone numbers and addresses, except one. This one that I promised a dome to. I really liked the guy running the place alot and I feel really bad that I lost his contact info. His name is Roberto and his orphanage is called the Upper Room. The only person I know who knows where it is is Julian, my translator friend, but he got a job in Jacmel so hasn't been around. He told me the other day he really feels like he should be with me, we are the ones that went around together and assessed all of the orphanages and he is very involved in the project. So I called him up this morning and asked him did he think he could explain how to get there over the phone to the driver well enough to get me there and he said "sure" So I decided to show up unannounced at the Upper Room and just throw up a dome for them. We loaded up the tap tap and drove off after Gingin had a conversation with Julian over the phone.

I dont know why I felt so confident. Haitians are notoriously bad at giving directions! They also inexplicably and pretty universally can't read maps. So we drove really fucking far and got really fucking lost. We were sweating our asses off too, of course and everyone was getting a bit frustrated. We were asking people on the streets, everyone was telling us different ways to go, we were following arrows spray painted on walls until we pulled up in front of the most destitute orphanage I have ever seen.
this is where the arrows led us

We asked them did they know where the Upper Room Orphanage was. No, they did not, but they obviously needed help, more help than the Upper Room, honestly. The kids were sick, the shelter was flooded, they had no food to speak of, some of the kids were naked, I assumed because they had no clothes.

petit fleur
I spontaneously decided, after the man, Henri, showed us around a bit, and showed me a significant amount of official paperwork including a Haitian Organization Quittus and the deed to the land in his name, to build the goddamn dome right there instead! It was a blessing that we found them at all. I felt like maybe it was providence that guided us there. Who am I to argue? I apologized to Henri for not having more to offer but a few jars of organic peanut butter and some liquid Dr. Bonner's soap. We went up the street to have lunch and when we got back, unloaded the tap tap and the kids got to work building the dome.

I pulled out the soccer ball and made friends with the kids. They were shy, but affectionate. One or two of them spoke English, but my Creole is getting a little better, so we had fun.

My crew needed even less guidance than yesterday. In fact, when Nellie would ask me a question, I would tell her she already knew the answer and then she would realize she did.
Half way through assembling the frame, there was a major pwoblem, though. A blue strut was missing! The dreaded missing strut! It showed it's ugly head and we were way out in the middle of no where. No chance of running back to get a spare back at the base. So, we improvised. We put it together with a large door opening and it worked fine.
What a relief!

After the dome was nearly completed, I found Nellie sitting alone on the sandbags, holding a small naked child and looking really sad.

His stomach was totally distended, he had scabs on his knees and his eyes looked deeply sad.

Nellie said, "look at his ears, they are so dirty"
We both started crying a little, feeling so desperate to help these kids. I reassured Nellie, "dont worry, we can help them now that we've found them"

On the way back to the base I called Big Paul to see if he could send a couple nurses with me tomorrow to do a de-worming on the kids and he told me to call him back in three hours, which is right about now. Hold on, while I give him a ring to see if he can send a medical team out with us tomorrow when we go back to fix their water drainage problem....

I just got off the phone with him and he said he wasn't able to find anyone available to go out there with us in the morning, but to write down the directions so they could try to go at a different time. Directions? Directions in Haiti is insane. There are seldom any street signs and the landmarks move around constantly. You can't say turn left at the cow and hang a right over by the giant puddle next to the pile of rubble and expect anyone to know where you are talking about. But we will try.

I am going to stop at the grocery store on the way over there tomorrow and buy them some food. I can't show up with nothing knowing that these kids dont have anything to eat!

Henri and this other very sweet man showed Nellie and I the back area where they have this make shift shelter with a row of bunk beds in it. The floor floods everytime it rains. It's raining right now, incidentally. He also has a bunch of rubble where his house once was. So we described to him how he could clear out all the beds, bring in the rubble to build up the floor, dig a ditch around the whole thing to divert the water away from the beds and then he told us he has no tools. So I said I would give him one of our shovels. But I knew that was totally insufficient for the job.

So after a little thought, I told him we'd be back in the morning and would leave a couple shovels with him so he could get started. I asked him to have all the beds out by the time we get there so we could get right to work. I am staying on track because I just did an assessment, found another dome site and built dome number three all in one day!

When you are basically a one person organization, you have the freedom to make spontaneous decisions and see instant results. I like it that way. These people woke up this morning without any idea that they were going to go to bed in a new house. They got one today just as soon as they realized it was going to happen, it did. Life should be like that more often.

I wish I had more resources available to me to pass on to people like this.

busy week back in Haiti

2010-08-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy 6 days since I returned to Haiti. I got back from Brooklyn last Wednesday raring to go, all pumped up from a good dose of BK love, ready to see this project through to completion. I arrived back to the Port Au Prince airport to join enthusiastically in what appears to be a new sport called "Bikrim Grab your bag off the Carousel Wrestling" I actually filmed a little bit of it before a guard reprimanded me. I can't upload it with this computer however, so you'll just have to wait for the movie version..
A nice guy named Nick picked me up at the airport in his air conditioned Jeep and we headed back over to the GRUB base. The new painting on the gate looks great and was painted by the well known Haitian graffiti artist Jerry.
I arrived back close to the end of the day, so I just got settled in and caught up with folks on what had been happening while I was away. They completed the razor wire fence around the entire compound which a couple of us joked about not knowing if it was meant to keep us in or interlopers out. Of course we are free to leave the compound, ha ha.

The next morning I got to work sorting out my shipment which if you remember, had taken me four and a half weeks to get free through Haitian Customs.

I had a couple volunteers from Global Volunteer Network come and replace the ill fated rice bags that had deteriorated in a couple weeks of the hot haitian sun and intense rains with the hefty sand bags from my friendly Hassidic building supply store in Brooklyn. I came back with my bags bulging with sand bags.

Nephtalie came over and brought an iron to do the last step of the silk screening process for the new batch of DFH t-shirts I made at Bushwick Print Lab when I was back home. Shout of to Ray Cross! Ironing the t-shirts is one way to fuse the ink into the clothe so it doesn't wash off. The other way is to throw it in a clothes dryer for an hour, seeing as how clothes dryers are not exactly easy to find in Port Au Prince, the iron was a god-send. The t-shirts are for crew as well as to sell to help raise money to buy beds for the kids to sleep on in the domes.
I sorted out the nuts and bolts into one dome portions and labeled all of Domes for Haiti's tools gave a few spare tools to GRU to add to their tool library. No, they dont read the tools, silly, they lend them. I also blew up a soccer ball to bring with me to the first orphanage.

here is the tool kit and dome cover all ready to go for the first dome build.

here I am in my tent the night before the first build....

As I mentioned, there is a cinderblock wall all the way around the GRUB base. We are contained safely inside. The security guards stay at the gate all night armed with machetes, a billy club, bright lights and an air horn in case of intruders. But there is a hole in the wall. It's a backwards "L" shaped opening into the back yard of our neighbors. They sell beer, soda and cold water through it. I had mentioned it in an earlier post but some of you requested a photo of "the hole in the wall" which is what we call it. Here it is, with Nephtalie and Nellie's big brother Daniel looking through.

The morning of the first build I was woken, as usual, by the rooster cock a doodling his doo directly on the other side of my tent next to my ear, which is, I have to say, a damn good alarm clock. You dont even need a battery! The poor fellow's days are supposedly numbered, however, according to the hungry carnivores at GRUB. For a hippie commune they sure like to eat meat around these parts. When I got back, I found out the alleged rooster killing weapon which had started as a piece of board and was then a tent pole to be thrown like a javalen had been replaced by a brand new weapon- a sling shot. That poor rooster, I really am going to miss it. I dont believe they will actually kill it. I was just informed by Aaron that he also eats the lizards. He was dead serious, he bbq's them and bites their little heads off. Vicious, I tell you, and he is an Engishman.

I had planned on having a crew the morning of the build which was supposed to consist of 2 North American volunteers, the two Haitian girls from the hole in the wall and 2 of the local Haitian guys, Jo Jo and Jimmy. However, Jo Jo and Jimmy had mistaken hydrogen pyroxcide
for something to drink the night before (despite the skull and cross bones clearly drawn on the side of the bottle), so they were not feeling too well and didn't show up at all that morning. 2 down, I was relieved when 2 Canadian Asian volunteers showed up to help and Nellie and Nephtallie came ready to work. The tap tap driver didnt arrive until 10 am, so we had plenty of time for me to teach the four of them the basics of geodesics and how to operate a crescent wrench. There was some talk of their being a manifestation that day, because it had been announced that Wyclef Jean was not going to be allowed to run for president. A manifestation is a day of protests which are potentially riotous. So word came that the two Canadian Asian volunteers would be returned to their base pronto for their safety. 4 down!

Now all I had for a crew was two sisters and I am all for girl power, but I knew I needed some brawn to complete the work we had to do in digging trenches and leveling the ground on the site. So I was a wee bit stressed out. Nellie went to find a couple friends to gather up. She brought back Marco and Lolo. Kind of like Marco and Polo, come to think of it.

The tap tap driver finally showed up. Aaron told me to avoid busy intersections and call him every couple hours to let him know we were ok, we loaded up the truck with all the tools and misc parts needed and we set off to Desamour's Orphanage to build her a dome.

On the way, we hit several hills which we discovered the truck could not make it up! We actually all had to jump out of the truck and push it up the hills. This happened several times. We stopped and bought six watermelons which made the load even heavier, but I could not show up at the orphanage without bringing something to eat.
Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of us all pushing the freaking tap tap up the hills, but I did get a photo of the flat tire we got along the way. Here it is:

nothing is easy in Haiti!
But everyone has such a good attitude about things going wrong, it's really quite contagious.
Here is Marco and Lolo:

This is Nellie hanging out in the tap tap as the driver was jacking it up to repair the tire.

This is Nephtallie ready to go to work with her wrench sticking out of her pocket. Looking like a capable stage hand, actually.

When we got to the site, we first measured out the circle with a half a ratchet strap and one of the anchors pounded in the ground in the center.

Using it like a giant compass, we drew the circle in the dirt. We then set about the hard work of leveling the ground and digging a trench around the spot for water runoff and drainage so the dome wont get flooded when it rains. Which it does, frequently. The kids were very excited by all the tools and activities and some of them were eager to help out. Here is one little dude with a shovel.

The kids all got quite a kick out of my hat, which has a bike inner tube nozzle sewn onto it.
I pretended it was used to fill my head up with air, mimed my head getting really large and me floating away. They all laughed pretty hard at that. I also showed them all each tool and told them the names of them in English and they told me the names in Creole.

We took a break shortly after arriving to eat the watermelons. The kids eagerly ate melon.

We drank a bunch of water and got back to work. It took alot of the day just to prep the ground and have a lunch break, but mid afternoon, Nellie and I started putting the frame together. I put her in charge of instructing the other crew members on how to assemble it.
She has the makings of a great crew lead. So we put the pentagons together and then it was time to put the whole thing together. "It's like the five pentagons are holding hands in a circle" I told them. They quickly grasped the concept and we set about making the circle.

Everyone got involved, but we had to shoo the little kids out of the way. They are called Petit Timoun. Little kids. It's too dangerous to build with them under foot because the struts can become unruly even in experienced hands.

We got the sides all connected and then came the part that would prove to be the most challenging. Putting the final pentagon on top. Nellie said to me "you forgot the ladder" I said, "no, I didn't forget it, I never had one" So we stacked cinder blocks on top of two chairs and myself and the tap tap driver, who had pitched in all day, turning out to be a very big asset to the process, thank god, got on top of the cinder blocks on top of the chairs and had them pass the pentagon to us. I really should have bought a ladder! Then one of the bolts got stuck and we couldn't undo it to reattach the final connection. It was slightly stripped from rubbing on the struts. I will have to show the kids how to not strip the bolts before the next build. I was wrenching on it, the tap tap dude was wrenching on it, neither of us could get it to budge. So I asked the driver's driver (i know it sounds weird but you'd get it if you were here) for some engine oil. He went out to the truck and came back with a container and carefully poured a little bit in the cap and handed it up to me warning me not to get it in my eye. I looked at it and it did not look like oil. I touched it and it did not feel like oil. I asked to see the container. "brake fluid" was printed on the label in english. So I asked the ladies for some cooking oil. They brought some out and I put it on the troubled bolt and nut relationship and waited a minute and then wrenched it and it opened! What a relief.

The next step was to put the cover on. Normally, I would have done the anchors next, but the day was nearly over and we definitely didn't have time to do ten anchors, and I could not leave it over night uncovered because it looks like a giant jungle gym to kids, even some "grown-ups" I know. While that could prove to be quite fun, with fun often comes danger and that one I was not willing to risk having one of the timoun get injured having a blast climbing on the dome. So cover it was. We dragged out a large tarp to unfurl the cover on top of. Unrolling the cover was a moment of discovery for all involved including myself. I had not seen the covers yet either! I have to say that Matt Sperry's crew did an excellent job of fabricating the covers, turns out. You can see his blog here: http://www.sperryfabricarchitecture.blogspot.com/ Thanks Matt!

So, not to set a bad example, but out of necessity, I climbed up to the top of the dome to pull the cover over it, which turned out to be an unintentionally dramatic moment for everyone else. So, just to satisfy them, i did a little victory dance on top of the dome. Then we carefully pulled on her dress. It was a very tight fit but we managed to get it over the dome. She is fat though.

It was getting dark as we finished and we were all exhausted.
Some of the women who had been around all day, Nellie, Nephtalie and Desamour the Madame of the Orphanage went inside the dome for a photo.

from left to right Nellie, Desamour, a friend, Nephtalie, Me and another friend
Here is a photo of my crew for the day including the tap tap driver on the far right and the tap tap driver's driver on the far left. I am in the viewfinder.

End of Day One of the first dome build. The crew was very tired but in high spirits and we all went and had dinner together.

I've got alot of ground to cover and this is going to be a very long blog post. Perhaps you might consider breaking it into edible portions....

The next morning was Saturday and we got going bright and curly with a stack of mattresses on top of a car to go back to Desamour's place to finish it off.

We didn't need a truck for this day, mattresses are light!
Our goal for the day was simple, to make ten anchors for the dome using the cement and rebar anchors we had left over at the orphanage the day before. We ratchet strapped the mattresses and the post hole digger to the roof and shoved the rest of the gear in the trunk, piled in the car and were off! The kids were happy to see us when we arrived. I was beginning to feel a bit ill after we arrived and it was a particularly hot day, so I asked to use their "twalet" and while I was waiting for Desamour to make it presentable to me, the kids all crowded around to say hi.

It was a wee bit overwhelming with my stomach aching the way it was... They were saying to me "hey blanc, hey blanc!" Which basically means "hey whitey" which I know they dont mean offense by, but I dont necessarily like it anyway, so I made a point of telling them, "mwe reli pa blan, mwe reli Lopi" and I persisted and said it a bunch of times.
which means "my name is not whitey, my name is Lopi"
They started repeating my name, which was really cute. I am learning some Creole, but still cannot understand most of what is being said. I get by with miming. One of the kids was pointing to my hands and to their hands, saying "blanc" and I sort of guessed he was saying something to the effect of "look our hands are white too, just like yours" so I had them all put their hands out and I took a photo of them

It was a cool moment, but I have to admit, I was very relieved when Desamour showed me to the john. I was really starting to feel ill. When I came out the kids were curiously waiting. Yes. Everyone poops. I love that book. Have you seen it? It's a kid's book!

So, we set about marking the spots for the anchors and then we had to shift the entire dome to get at the spots to dig the holes with a post hole digger. The crew had never used one before, so I had to do a little demo for them.

The guys got the hang of it pretty quickly and dug ten holes about a foot and a half deep.
While they were on the outside digging the holes I had Nellie and Nephtallie on the inside of the dome putting padding on the bolt ends to make it safe for the kids not to get poked by them.

Next we had to mix the cement which is made from sifted aggregate sand , cement and water.

I showed them the ratios and Nellie took the lead again and mixed up the cement, which I was relieved by because I was starting to feel rather feverish as well as nausea. Not a great day for me, honestly, but I was determined to get through it.

Nellie was not feeling great either. She thought it was from the chicken they had eaten the night before. Nephtellie had a really bad crimp in her neck all day too. We were quite a team!
Good thing Marco and Lolo were feeling fine.

This is how the anchors looked after we filled them in with cement. Ten of them at regular intervals all around the circumference of the dome.

After we were done with this part, we were almost finished. I had Nellie go into the dome and zip tie all the grommets to the bottom struts while I sat with Desamour and this other guy and they told me that I was now the official Godmother of the Orphanage. They presented me with a very official looking document with a stamp from a notary public on it and everything. I was as gracious as I could be while wishing I could be at home curled up in a fetal position in abdominal pain. I really wish I could have relished that moment more, but you have to take what life gives you. So I did the best I could and we took some more photos...

I love this one of everyone in a pile on the floor of the dome. What a sense of accomplishment after our first successful build. I am now the Godmother of all of these kids! What a huge responsibility!

you can see me in my pre-malarial state leaning on Desamour.

These two boys were playing with the soccer ball I brought for the orphanage. They really wanted me to take their photo.

one more shot of the teenagers, the best crew!

The first dome, ready to be occupied by the kids!

We load up the car, pile in, the kids are in a great mood, I feel like I am on fire, I am getting more ill by the minute, I cant wait to get back to the base. So we get back and I pay the kids, pay the driver, we unload all the gear and I hug the kids, they each say "wow" in that drawn out way that Haitians say "wow" its like a two syllable word for them. They are all impressed with how much heat is coming off of me. I go collapse in my tent and then I call Aaron. From my tent. I tell him, I am in my tent and I cant move. He sends Les to come see me. Les is from Brooklyn and he is a solid guy. He recently got in a motorcycle wreck, so he is hobbling around on an injured foot. He comes and ducks into my tent and asks me whats up. I tell him I have fever, I have a thermometer but I literally cant move. It's like I expended every ounce of energy just to complete the job and then I couldn't move I was in that much pain. Les was golden, a blessing. He took my temp and it was 103.8 degrees. He called up Big Paul to come and take me to the hospital right away. Big Paul is a fashion photographer in normal life but is also an EMT

He took me to the hospital after Les put an IV in my arm and started some saline solution into me right away. Andy came out and asked me if he could give me some water, I asked him to pour it over my head. I was in a hot heat, no sweat at all. He poured water over my head and it felt so good. Big Paul is a character. He was non stop making me laugh the whole time even though I was in terrible shape. He brought me to Medishare, which is a hospital of sorts in Port Au Prince. They did a rapid malaria test on me right away. BP and Les had already taken my vitals. My blood pressure was extremely low. A guy was brought into the emergency room while I was in there that had been stabbed in the chest with a machete. He was lying on a bed next to me, totally naked. He looked not alive. It was really intense. A bunch of EMT's and MD's from all over the states were standing around him talking in medical talk and working on him. He was making gurgling noises and I really thought he was dying.
After a while, Big Paul came over and peered into my face. "Is he dead?" I asked Paul smiled, "no, he is not going to die" I am just not used to this kind of stuff, I dont have what it takes to be an emergency doctor. I do like to take care of people and know a little bit about natural medicines, but when it comes to blood and stuff, not the best at that, honestly.
Thank God for the medics of the world. So, I ended up testing negative for malaria but they said that often the test they do comes back negative when the person actually has malaria. TIH, is what people here say, "this is haiti"
So the docs decided to treat me as if I had malaria because all of my symptoms were pointing to that. Including my extremely low blood pressure and sudden spike in fever. Plus I had not taken the anti malarial drugs when I came down here because the first day I did them, they made me so ill! I wish now that I had done them because Malaria sucks. It was a horrible 2 days. I want to publicly thank the people at Medishare for caring for me, thanks to Les for making a special trip down later to check on me, thanks to Big Paul for keeping me in good spirits by making horrible jokes. Thanks to all the GRU folks who came down to see me on Sunday too. I was very lucky to have such great support.

Last night I took the last round of the chloroquine. I made sure to have something in my stomach before I took it so as to avoid the horrible nausea and diarrhea that comes with it. Then I watched "Lost in Translation" on my tiny laptop. I found that to be very comforting. I love Bill Murray. it's an excellent movie. I felt somewhat better as I was falling asleep, but I had no idea what the dream world had in store for me. Apparently this drug is notorious for the psychedelic and sometimes terrifying dreams it invokes. I had the most insane dreams last night. I had a group of women flying me around in the air with crazy eyes. One of them had a face which seemed to be molded out of grey clay with huge alien eyes, she said to me, remember that you were dreaming but you were awake in your dream. It gave me the chills. I had a giant woman singing to me while removing face after face layers of faces and even parts of her face revealing other faces underneath. Like she removed a normal looking face to reveal a giant beaked nose which she took off to reveal a smaller nose under it, she removed her eyes to reveal other eyes underneath and so forth. I kept waking up and thinking, holy shit, this is crazy. It was unclear to me when I was awake and when I was dreaming. At one point I thought I was awake and I was looking outside my tent window and saw all kinds of stuff flying by, like newspapers and debris, then my entire tent was flying through the air, spinning around like dorothy in the wizard of oz. I woke up from that like woah! then I fell asleep again and thought a few guys had come into my tent. They had a list of drugs written on papers and they were asking me if I had taken them, I said no to each one. Then they said something like, she wasnt supposed to know how to read and started saying mean things about me which I did not like, so I told them to shut up but it was hard to form the words, so I had to say it very forcefully which caused me to wake myself up by shouting why dont you just shut up! I really didnt want to go back to sleep after that because the guys voices were really evil sounding and scary I remember the last thing one of them said was "where did she go?" and another said "she went back to the highway of the mind" which was pretty epic but I still was totally creeped out by it, so I tried to stay awake, but failed. Next I found myself on a trip to the land of the dead where everyone had really strange heads. It was underwater and I had to walk down a spiral staircase which wound down and through this weird guy's room. The guy was weird because his head was a giant brain without the normal skin outer covering, but I had to pretend he was normal. I said, "sorry, just passing through" He answered me in a normal voice, "oh, thats ok" I said, "nice room" he said, "i keep it neat" I said, "yeah its nice, no clutter" and made my way down. Next I saw a handsome blond pirate hanging by his feet. His hair was dry even though we were under water. He told me he was not supposed to be dead yet. The people there were all very nice although they looked hideous and strange. I said I didn't want to leave, could I stay? The king of them told me "no, it's not your time yet" I sailed back with the pirate to see if he could come with me back to the land of the living. There was a dude at the gate who granted me permission to enter with loud dramatic music, but I woke up before I found out if the pirate made it through. I woke up feeling rather tired.

Today I feel somewhat better. I have spent almost the entire day writing this blog post. I am hoping to go to Judy's orphanage tomorrow to build dome number two.

thanks for reading me

Dome Home

2010-08-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

Hiatus

2010-08-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

If you have been wondering where the updates with the beautiful photos of the domes being built are, please be patient! If this project has taught me anything at all, it's that everything comes in good time. There are no photos yet, because we haven't started building yet. The domes, tools and accouterments are safely stored at the Grassroots United base waiting for my return. After the month long struggle to get my shipment simply to clear customs, I needed a break to regroup and recharge.

Yup. I ain't in Port Au Prince right now, toto.

I made a special trip back to Brooklyn for a much needed respite. I had some business to attend to in NYC, bills to pay, cats to buy food for, supplies to pick up. I also had a date. With a very comfortable bed. My bed.

this is me hugging Thenther, Elizabeth's cat

I will be returning to Port Au Prince on Wednesday morning. We begin building the first dome on Thursday. It has been a long wait. It will be very rewarding to actually provide shelter for some very deserving kids who have been through way too much in one lifetime.

I am bringing back 500 sandbags among other supplies. I got work gloves for the girls. I am excited to teach them how to use a c-wrench and drill.

Being in Brooklyn after a month in Haiti really opened my eyes. I have been experiencing this country in an entirely new way since being here for the last few days. Everything works!
Water comes out of the faucets! There is so much food in the supermarket, I had to do deep breathing exercises to avoid hyperventilation.

I also rode my bicycle in traffic, in Brooklyn, as though i was in Port Au Prince driving a motorcycle, only when I went to honk the horn, it sounded like a bell. Not very effective means to warn motorists of my presence. They would be more likely to think I was an ice cream vendor if they heard it at all.

Apparently there is some sort of baggage embargo on with Port Au Prince. American Airlines only allows two checked bags and one carry on. You cannot check more bags AT ALL, even if you pay a penalty. You can't check boxes. So I have been trying to find a very large suitcase or two to pack the 500 sandbags and other misc supplies into. I didn't wish to purchase new suitcases. I am working hard to conserve money.

I just went over to visit my friend's Iris, Catherine and Elizabeth. Elizabeth took me down into the basement which resembled a suitcase grave yard to me. I found a rather large and moldy suitcase and a nice large duffel bag with wheels down there. The sandbags will fit nicely in both cases. Sand bags dont care about mildew, they dont require a fancy vessel to travel within. I had found a source of sandbags right here in my neighborhood in Brooklyn a few weeks before I packed up the initial shipment. Before purchasing them, I consulted with the logistics director at Grassroots United about sourcing them in Haiti. She had told me, "no problem, we can get them here" What she didn't tell me was that the ones available in country were actually rice bags and not designed to be mildew and uv resistant.

After filling 200 of them with sand and then letting them sit in the sun and rain for a few weeks, many of them deteriorated. This was rather disappointing to me. The role the sandbags play is not intrinsic to the anchoring of the frame of the domes, but they are going to be used to hold down the mud flaps on the outer circumference of the covers so that water doesn't flow in.

So, the first thing I did when I got back was call up the place in my neighborhood and ask about the bags. They reassured me that they are indeed designed to hold sand and not rot.
So I went over to pick them up. When I got there I found a young Hassidic woman at the counter. Her eyes got really big when I told her about my project. I said to her, "it's a mitzvah" and she said "you know what a mitzvah is??"

I rode my bike up Myrtle the other day and found a street party happening. There were many people dancing in the street. A troupe of young teenagers performed a hip hop dance routine. A lady got on the mike and asked if there were any men on the block.

I love Brooklyn.

I will be returning to Port Au Prince, recharged and ready for the work ahead.

Stay tuned! The best part of the project is on its way. This final phase is what I have been working towards since the beginning of February.

MVI 0362

2010-08-13T23:06:00.000-07:00

success!

2010-08-11T17:14:00.001-07:00

go team!

there are 5 brand new SUV's gathering moss at the Amerijet ware house.

I finally got my shit out of customs today!!!!

It's worth celebrating. The last day was like the painful final push on a very difficult birth. The labor lasted for an entire month.

We had to go through the inspection one more time and the same customs official inspected my stuff again. Even though he had already seen every single thing in all the cases, he still found the need to inspect them. After I had closed the cases back up and locked them, he came back out and was all in a tizzy about the soccer ball pump. "Where is the pump? where is the pump??" So I had to open it all back up and show him a very inconsequential item.

It's totally odd to me how they pay so much heed to the things I brought as just extra, bonus items. They didnt even bat an eye at the 650 some odd metal struts or the dome covers. But the peanut butter. Holy shit, the peanut butter!!

Before we got back to the Amerijet warehouse, however, there was a weird moment when this dude claimed he was going to be coming with us on every build to "supervise the distribution" I was going to have to pay this dude to come every where we were going! I was like "what the ??" and "I dont have money to pay him!" Plus, not to mention, I dont want or need his "supervision" Does he have super vision?
So I turned him around and we marched back into the Duone and spoke to his boss who was in the expediated customs office I had explained a few posts back. The super uber air conditioned room with five desks with a very blank empty look to them. Anyway, it became even odder to me when his boss very easily said, "ok, he doesn't have to supervise."
I dodged the bullet on that one. I wonder if some people agree to that??
But this man did come with us all day and dolefully look on as we went through each maddening step. I guess he was "supervising" and then I had to pay for his transportation ( i wasnt going to carry two dudes on the back of my motobike) and then towards the end of the day he threatened me with having to pay him over time.

But when it was all unloaded and he was waiting in the truck to leave, he didn't ask me for money, but was just smiling at me. Very odd. I gave him 20 bucks. I didn't know what he was expecting, he didnt' tell me anything.

When we got back to the Grassroots base, everyone was cheering. It was awesome and everyone pitched in to unload the truck. Special shout out and thanks to the entire volunteer crew and staff at GRUB. You guys rock! Thank YOU!

I am a very happy camper right now. Oh, and I also found some Haitian music cd's today. I bought 6 of them for the equivalent of 10 bucks. I cant wait to listen to them, though I dont have a cd player ha ha.

I feel like this blog post is rather disjointed. That's ok. It's Haiti.

New piece by Jerry

presidential palace

freedome

2010-08-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday we were told by the Madame that we should "call her" at 11am to find out if the Minister of Finance would approve my customs paperwork or dossier as they call it. We called at 11am and were told to call back at 1pm. We called at 1pm and were told that she was too busy today to sign anything or send it to the duone or whatever it is that is required. She told us to call back. This kept up all day until around 3 she told us that we could come to the Ministry in the morning and pick her up and she would bring our dossier to the duone (aka customs) for the final approval. Allegedly we will be getting our shipment out of prison in the warehouse tomorrow. I say allegedly because I have had my hopes bolstered so many times only to be popped like a silly red balloon bouncing along happily suddenly turned into a useless red rubber bit. I've adopted Les's saying "I'll believe it when I see it"

I could explain all the steps I've been made to go through, but it would be hella tedious. It's bad enough to be made to go through tedium without repeating it blow by blow for a reading audience. No offense to anyone reading this. I am sure you are chomping at the bit to read a blow by blow of tedium and tweedledee but I, dear reader, am going to have to disappoint you this time.

I will surely let you know when I get my domes there freedome.

In the meantime, go do something for a stranger, and enjoy the ease with which you were able to help them. It's so easy!!

como ou rele?

2010-08-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

waiting for godome

2010-08-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

Friday was a complete bust, we were on lock down all day at the Grassroots Base. They wouldnt let anyone leave because of civil unrest throughout the entire city. It's called a manifestation here when people randomly riot and protest through the day. During the hottest part of the day it calms down because everyone is probably passed out under a tree drinking prestige.

Apparently its a known occurrence during these days for people to grab someone and stick them in a stack of car tires and set it on fire. It's easy to forget sometimes that this is a dangerous place. default mode for humans is to trust. Maybe that ought to be posed as a question.

People are protesting Preval violating term limits by running for office again. There is also alot of animosity towards NGO's.

Tonight there was a tragedy. Or should I say there is one unfolding as I write this. There was a young boy misdiagnosed. He had typhoid and his bowels burst. He needed blood to get surgery. Only place in Port Au Prince that has it is the Red Cross. They are closed on Saturday. No amount of begging or hammering on their door would make them open. This boy will die tonight because the Red Cross is closed on Saturday. Everyone needs a day off, especially relief workers, but how hard is it to stagger the days off so it remains open all the time? I am sure without a doubt that they of all the NGO's could easily afford to.

I am sitting in my tent, which is quite large. It's like a tiny shack. I can actually stand up in it. I have a battery operated fan, only it's not on right now because it's raining like hell outside and its so refreshing. Only its not refreshing for the kids without a tent. It's potentially life threatening to be wet and cold and to get no sleep.

That is one thing that always gives me pause when ever I think I cant take the heat or the lack of whatever comforts I am accustomed to. Just put it into perspective. How can I complain about the mosquitoes or the lack of whatevers???? I have a tent! I have food.

I have been making plans for the dome build. For when the domes are out of jail. They are in Jail right now just up the road. I hope the warehouse people put my cases in out of the rain at least. Its all a bit out of my reach which I cant think about right now or else I might melt. All that would be left of me is my vest, shorts and boots.

I have found two local crew members from my neighborhood. They are sisters, Naftalie and Nellie. 14 and 15 years old. Women in Haiti dont usually build things. These girls are eager to learn how. They both would do it for free, Nellie said love is a good payment. She says that God speaks to some people directly and others need a translator. I will be paying them for their work as they learn. It is my intention to put women in places of empowerment and to model leadership over men for them. I was accused of being sexist today because I want a woman project manager. I wish I had a Haitian woman project manager. Maybe in 5 years after Nellie turns 20. I'm ok with being called sexist. In a world dominated by men, it helps to tip the scales the other way occasionally. Actually, that is what it will take to even it out. So,, yes. I am sexist. Women are smarter than men.

I would that I had at least a woman project manager to assist me in coordinating the builds. But I have Steve. Steve is pretty awesome though.

I wish Kara was still here. She would have been a really great role model for some of these young women on how to seriously kick ass. I'll be modeling being in charge and I am going to be very hands on, I will have to be because I am the only one who knows how to build a dome among the crew. That will change after the first couple go up.

Its a difficult task to try to empower women in a culture that is very entrenched in gender roles. It's a paradigm kept in place by both the men and the women. It is a very sensitive area. I wish I could have an entire crew of women to build the domes because I think it would shake things up in a much needed way. You may ask who am I to decide how another person's culture needs shaking. I would say that if women knew how to build homes there would be twice as many.

Tomorrow I will be going to a community meeting held in the neighborhood by women. They meet once a month to discuss important topics concerning the community. They solve problems. I will be approaching them with a proposal for an opportunity to learn how to build shelters/domes by helping to build some for orphans. I will approach it as if I have all my sights already built to avoid creating a distraction and mixed agendas. I will also be withholding the information that it is a paid gig. I will present it as an opportunity to help me help the orphanages at the same time as teach the skills I know to them. I will have a sheet of paper for interested women to sign up on. I will carefully intuit each interested person and then I will go home and decide on one or two and call them up for the first day. We will have a pre meeting where I will explain to them that they need work gloves and clothes and to be prepared to work hard "like a man"

On the first build day I will observe who is the best workers, who are the quick studies. I am talking about women who probably never held a crescent wrench in their life, let alone an electric drill. I'll see how it goes. I am well aware it will take much longer to build with inexperienced workers. That is ok with me because it's so valuable to show them that they can build shit too.

I will have a mixture of workers on the crews. I am going to have two white guys. Steve and Arandel. Arandel is from Canadia. He speaks Canadian French. He cant wait to build some stuff he has been the IT guy at Grub for the last week and it's not that great because the internet is spotty here.

So, there will be two white guys. Me.. Julian and the two girls. So far. I might have a couple more girls. Maybe the first day should be a trail run to see which ones can step up to the task.

There are alot of logistics to arrange. A truck of sand has to be delivered, half to the first site and half to the second site. We need to buy rubble. Believe it or not, you cant really get it for free. Granted it's cheap at twenty bucks a truck load, but think about it. If all you had left of your house was rubble, you'd want to sell it too.

Something as simple as making sure there is water to mix the cement is not simple here. I have to call the first two sites and check about that on monday. If they dont have water, I'll buy a couple plastic garbage cans and set them out to catch rain water. Hello. It rains buckets every day. Mercy buckets. Everyone ought to have a water catchmit system. Not sure why they dont. Even Grub doesnt have one.

I'm glad Steve is helping. He is a sweet guy. His eyes are disturbingly blue. He said he refuses to wear a dress. His response to me telling him I really wanted a female project manager, no offense to him for his gender. I am also glad for Julian. He continues to be my right hand man. I cant wait to see him get dirty. The guy is impeccable at all times.

I am going to go see what songs they are singing on the back porch. I wanted to go out to a party tonight but it started to rain and the security guys told us to stay in.

thanks for reading

it's the peanut butter

2010-08-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

I found out what is slowing my shipment down. Peanut butter. Not surprising. Peanut butter is by nature slow. It sticks to the roof of your mouth. The two 3 gallon buckets of organic peanut butter that was donated at the last minute to send to the orphanages is creating a sticky situation. That and hiring a dude that apparently doesn't know how to fill out customs documents despite his extravagant claims of a seemingly magical ability to get your stuff through in 48 hours. Now three weeks later and $260 poorer he has disappeared. When I call him he screams at me. I quit him.

You might be thinking, "she is failing, she really didn't plan that well for customs" You are sort of right. I am flailing a bit. It's Haiti, though. There is no systematic protocol for customs. They change on you willy nilly. Even large NGO's have had shipments stuck in customs for months and months. The failure is of epic proportions and it's across the board no matter what size org you are. I would have been wiser to build the domes here, but I had no funding whatsoever. I did what I could do within the means available to me. Nothing in my experience is a waste of time. All the mistakes are lessons to do it better next time.

It was another hard day. I woke up not feeling positive. Just going through the motions. Wake up with the cock a doodling doo doo, look at the clock on my ipod, get a bucket of water out of the cistern, dump it over my head, make mate, drink mate, eat spagetti and hard boiled eggs, got on the bike to go meet Phanio at the Duone. I had a meeting with Madame Decsolines at the Protection Civil at 8:30 am and so I had arranged to meet Phanio at 8 at the Duone and drive us up there. I got there and he was not there. It was 8:05. This was the beginning of a long hard hot day.

I called Phanio and he said he was at the garage where the car he crashed yesterday was being fixed. Nice. So I called up Julian who really is my ace the hole. He is totally dependable. He said to meet him at his place on Delma 18. He gave me directions. I got lost. Surprise! Haiti is Hard.
Even getting lost is not easily solved. I called Julian. "I'm lost" he said, "give the phone to someone on the street so I can ask them where you are" Genius. Julian is awesome. He moved to NYC when he was 14. We have a symbiotic relationship. I pay him to be my guide and translator. He is learning how to be a good translator with me. I am very attentive to conversations. Sometimes I make him say things he is too polite to say. He also has my back in ways I cant even describe in words. I love this guy. He was furious with me today for not calling him yesterday to help navigate the customs shit because Phanio royally screwed it up by creating a second folder. He wanted to help but it made matters worse and it gave Madame a headache.

I went back to the traffic circle with the giant globe and the three hands holding it up. I stopped the bike in the shade and waited for him. I was already drenched with sweat, my appearance was not crisp and clean for my meeting with the Madame and I was terribly horribly late. Staying clean and presentable in Haiti is impossible. You are filthy and sweat drenched within a half hour of pouring buckets of water over your noodle. I call them Mercy Buckets

He got on the bike and directed me. To the ministry of finance. The wrong one. I told him, this is not where we were yesterday. We called Phanio and he magically appeared a few minutes later. I dont know how that happened. I was annoyed with him but he kissed me on the cheek. He gave us directions and I made Julian write them down.

We drove off. We went to see the Madame. She was not pleased. We have two folders. She had a headache. We did everything backwards and we have peanut butter. It wasnt looking good. She got annoyed when I told her that I knew Anderson Cooper and he was very interested in my story. She didn't know who that is so I said I was going to call up CNN. Not a good idea. She got pissed off. I was told last night that I never listen to people's advice. It's not true, but I decided to listen to someone's advice and pull the Anderson Cooper card. It was bad. Maybe I dont listen to people's advice because it usually sucks. Just saying. I listen when it's good, though.

So she cooled out, I apologized, she told us what we needed to do, there was a certificate that needed to be re-made as well as one of the documents. The dude I hired didn't make them right the first time and the one that the guy under the tree by the air duon was just the same. It didn't list peanut butter! or Liquid Soap! Or Tools! Or Leather! Holy shit!

So we drove back to the Duon and the typewriter dude was still there! I love that guy. He is so calm and efficient with his pens in his shirt pocket and his manual typewriter and rusty stapler. What else do you need? A fax machine? Dare to dream. He has a fan club too it seems. A bunch of guys were hanging out with him. We called up the Madame to make sure that we got the words right this time. She was not happy that we were not using her guy. Apparently she had a guy we were supposed to be using. So we left Mr. Typewriter and decided to grab a bite to eat across from the airport.

There are a bunch of food venders set up across from the airport. It's a kind of an outdoor restaurant situation. I ordered vegetarian food, salad and rice and beans ha ha. It was really good. There were a bunch of street kids begging aggressively and then a couple kids sitting quietly at the end of our table, patiently waiting for us to get full and give them the rest of what we didnt eat. The patiently waiting tactic pays off better than the agressive begging technique. The lady serving food looked exhausted and tres cho. She tried to hit the aggressive beggar kid with a wicker chair. There was a lady making smoothies of like fifty different fruits. I could not resist, it smelled so good. It was amazing. I am totally starved for fruit. The smoothies were enormous. We couldn't drink them all. A tiny somewhat aggressive kid came up to us with a styrofoam cup and stared longingly at my smoothie. We filled up his cup

We paid up and drove back through the hairy est traffic on the planet and went to the other Duone the boat one and met another dude. He was in an air conditioned Truck. We got in. He poured over our dossier and asked alot of questions about the peanut butter and the machete.

He got it all figured out and then he brought up the payment. He was going to charge 80 bucks! American! To type up a couple documents. He didnt even have a manual typewriter. Just a real office that we were sitting in a truck in front of. I told him that the guy under the tree charged 6 bucks. We bartered back and forth. It was merciless. I told him I'd rather spend the money on buying 3 mattresses for the orphans. He finally relented and agreed to do it for free.

He went back up into his office and left us sitting in his truck. I got out and went across the street and bought a couple drinks from a guy making fresh squeezed orange juice. It was so DELICIOUS.

I had Julian call the Madame and tell her we would be back in a half hour to get her signature. She said she was done for the day. Maybe she had a migraine or cramps. I'm sure it was unbearable, whatever it was, to make her end her day at 3pm

We got the documents and hit the dusty dirty treacherously garbage covered streets, There is a stretch of road by the Duone that is just hideously bad. People are sorting through enormous piles of clothes by the side of the road. I asked Julian, "whats up with the clothes?" He said "those are the clothes other people are finished wearing' Oh, I said, used clothing sale. It was nothing like the bargain barn in santa cruz, though.

I told Julian I needed to get a nice shirt and pants to wear to customs. My shit is dirty and not presentable at all. I brought work clothes and short shorts. It's all I wear. This shows how tolerant Julian is. He took me clothes shopping. Shopping on the street is like going to war or something. People assault you physically. Or maybe they were just assaulting me because I am white. It's rare to see other white people. When I do, they are usually whizzing by in an SUV with all the windows rolled up.

I just wanted to get a simple button up blouse with short sleeves. and some linen pants or light weight ones. The woman's clothing market was an outdoor doo dad. The shirts were so frilly and lacy. I cant represent that. I managed to find one cotton blouse for under ten bucks. Woman venders were yelling at me and actually hitting me with their shirts and dresses. I have never understood this tactic of selling shit. Do you really think I am going to want to buy something with you standing there yelling at me?
Chill out, ladies. I found a blouse and then bought a couple men's wife beaters and a special little washcloth sweat rag. Everyone carries them, to mop the sweat off your face.

I'm super sleepy. Thanks for reading. Tomorrow is a new day. Thanks to everyone for commenting. I love feedback and it's a real boost to hear from folks.

pwoblems

2010-08-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

Solidarity we waste

Today I woke up ready to make things happen. I was all showered, mate-ed and I even ate Joanne's polenta which she cooks with some sort of fish juice by 7:30 am. I would have drank fish juice without flinching this morning I was in such a positive mood. Coming from a vegetarian, that is no small matter. But these days food choices are trivial. So many people have no food at all. The house fell on their motherbrothersisterdaughterauntgrandmasonfatherunclefriend and they are sitting outside cooking food over an open flame on the sidewalk.

At 7:30am I was carrying palettes to the front gate to be ready to receive the struts off the truck.

Today I was supposed to get my shipment. I was meant to ship my get.

Morning meeting was different today, Richard didnt even mention "how fucking hard is it to clean your dishes or bring the bucket back from the shower?? it's not rocket science people!" Which, frankly, was a bit disappointing to me, I really love his morning rants. He works himself up properly and for an english gentleman that can be quite entertaining. No, the focus was on Domes for Haiti for the most part and a congratulatory speech by Chad about how I persevered and was bringing the domes to the compound today.

My airline ticket said I was going to fly to JFK today. I disagreed with it. Oh no you dint airline ticket, no you dint say that and no I am not going. Not going back to Brooklyn empty handed so to speak. Not leaving until it's finished. I was waiting in line for the teller at American Airlines desk at the Port Au Prince airport. Little did I know when the man standing next to me struck up an amiable conversation in perfect english that he was going to turn on me maliciously.

I told him I was supposed to leave today but I was staying longer. He asked what I was working on and I told him "Shelters for Orphanages, geodesic domes" He said, "oh are you from Washington?" I said "No, I'm from Brooklyn" He asked me "Are you working with the government?" I said "Are you kidding? No, I am not working with the government. If I was it would take a year just to do the paperwork" I think I might have hinted at the fact that I am not a big fan of the government. I think that is where he began to get worked up. He thought I meant the Haitian government. He asked me if the shelters were approved for safety. I told him yes, Buckminster Fuller invented the geodesic dome in 1954 and the structure is one of the strongest known to mankind. He started in on me then. "You people think you are helping but you are actually causing more suffering in the long run" That might be true in some cases, I countered, but I am not in that category. he grew more animated and vicious in his attack. He accused me of being patronizing, of not talking or listening to the Haitian people and practically single handedly destroying his entire country. I told him "You dont know me or anything about what I am doing, you are making some serious assumptions, my friend" He then accused me of being rude and arrogant. It's always interesting to me when people accuse you of exactly what they are doing. I told him I came to help. He viciously made quotation marks in the air and said "yes, you are here to Help"

You are tearing buildings down, it's too late for transitional housing." I told him, oh, I guess I should just go home then. I told him I am not tearing any buildings down, only giving shelter to orphans who have NONE. The tents that they were given 6 months ago are torn and destroyed by now.It's not too late for them to get transitional housing, they haven't gotten any other kind, thanks to mismanagement by someone or other but definitely not my fault.

He accused me of not listening to what the Haitian people are saying. He was so way off base. I just spent the last 3 weeks visiting orphanages and interviewing the people in charge and asking what they need the most. I have visited at least 10 orphanages so far and did my best to asses their needs by directly asking them what those needs are. He was blind. He didnt see me but rather only saw his own frustration at the history of NGO's coming into his country and creating dependency and then leaving. I get it. Only he doesn't know I get it. Because he wasnt asking me. I am invisible to him. He was so sure I was evil and had only my interests at heart.
Yes. Apparently basically quitting my job and working for 6 months on a very grass roots level to bring some sort of relief to a few kids living in mud is very self serving. I admit it! I do get alot out of this. I am living in luxury accommodations, for example.

I tried to tell him that he didn't know me or my intentions or history. I suggested that maybe he might consider asking a person these things before he jumped to conclusions about them. He told me he doesn't care about me or my history. That is when the conversation was over.

I told him the conversation was over and please to stop talking to me. He refused and kept on me with more accusations founded on absolutely nothing I have ever thought or done. I said, "Dude, please stop talking to me" He said "Dont call me dude" I said "Dude, I would if you'd quit talking to me, dude" I finally had to tune him out by putting on my ipod and cranking Bob Marley in my headphones. He started talking to the family in front of him in Creole. They all kept looking at me like I was the most evil person in the world. I just had to shake my head. They dont know me and they never will. Furthermore, if the Dude needs a scapegoat, I might as well be it. So go ahead, dude, have at it or me all you want. I'll still build some domes for some kids no matter what you say or think about me.

I changed my ticket for Sept 7th. Somehow, with the change of return flight, everything I saw today sunk in that much more. All of the destruction was even more deeply affecting to me. Every house, every building I saw collapsed in on itself represents unimaginable pain and suffering and death and loss. Even so, the people I see everywhere are way cleaner and more well dressed than me and most of my friends back in Brooklyn.

I walked out of the airport feeling more committed to this country's renewal and regeneration than I have ever felt committed to anything in my entire life. I am here. That is my commitment. I am listening. I am paying attention. What more can I give?

I walked over to the Amerijet warehouse and met Phanio on the street as I was buying a phone card from one of the street vendors. He was smiling and I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. We walked into the warehouse and were greeted by Julio who I met yesterday. We went back into the tiny air conditioned Duon office and there was a large man in there who Phanio handed our folder to. He started talking to me in Creole and I actually understood him. He asked me my name and I told him "Lopi" but had to follow it with "that's my nickname" which is really kind of a lie, it's my actual name, but not on the documents. Ah, the pitfalls of having a chosen name that is different from your legal name. He told me his nickname is "Big" because he is not getting any smaller. I told him he should stay Big.

We went out in the warehouse and Julio was driving the fork and he got all my stuff together and put it outside in the back. The customs official came out and told me to open the trunk. I took out my key and opened it. The first thing I saw in there was a bag that was a bag that was my Mom's full of thread. It hit me in a soft spot to see it. He reached into the bag and fingered the threads coming off the spools. I touched everything in that trunk. I was so happy to see the colorful leather! The sledgehammer, pick axe, crow bars and zip ties! Hello my friends, hello.

Next was the wooden rolling case. Hello Brooklyn. I opened it and saw again the two rolling dollies I had spray painted "Domes for Haiti, Brooklyn NYC" proudly on them. The orange bucket from home despot, case of dr. bronner's soap, the buckets of organic peanut butter, the cases full of nuts and bolts, wrenches, vice grips, pliers and a sharpie! Hello sharpie.
The dude tried to take my sharpie. Oh no, you can't have that.

The other crates were easy. Dome covers. Dome struts. Tools. Done.

He went back into his office and I locked all the boxes back up and went to get some Dlo for Phanio and I to drink. I had a pleasant conversation with the ladies selling treats at the gas station. Ill feit cho, I said and they said oui, m'cho. I noticed one of them had some interesting square shaped scars on her arm. I pointed to them and she mimed falling down and laughed. I knew they were teasing me because you dont really fall and get perfect rectangular marks on your arm. I was sure it was some sort of scar tattoo thing so I showed her my tattoo.

Anyway, I went back into the office and the dude was still puzzling over peanut butter or something and Phanio typed "he is stupid" on his cell phone and showed it to me. We laughed and then I went out and asked Julio if he knew anyone with a truck that would deliver my shipment for me. He said yes and then I met truck dude (i am forgetting his name! sorry!!) He said he needed to look at the shipment to give me the price. He looked at it and said $200 us. I said "$150 and he said "Wi" I asked if he was sure his truck was struck enough and he said "Wi" and walked me out into the parking lot and showed me an enormous box truck with a full lift gate! I got really excited and hugged him.

We went back in and the customs guy gave us the dossier and we walked over to the main Duon over across from the airport. He said there was one more step we needed to take care of before the shipment was released. I was so kontan!
When we arrived, it was break time. People were not sleeping on their desks but eating from syrofoam containers. Mostly rice and beans and fried meat of some sort. One woman had a perfect looking avocado. I was so grengou but I tried not to stare at their food too much.

We were told we needed one more stamp and we'd have to go all the way back to the Ministry of Finance to get it. Ug. Ok, so this time Phanio borrowed a car from a friend and we started driving. Driving in a car takes so much longer than a moto. Traffic is endless.

We went to the MoF and were told we had to go to the Protection Civil again. There we hit a wall. We were sitting in a room for what seemed like an eternity. I was nodding off, having short nonsensical dreams about swimming in fresh water and eating avocados and riding my bike. I kept waking up to a place I did not want to be. Finally a lady gestured for Phanio to come forward and sit in the chair by her desk. They started a heated discussion about my folder which I was not included in because I dont speak the language. I caught a word here and there. Original. Document. Dossier. I decided to try to join the conversation. I pulled my chair up. Both of them ignored me. I tried to get in but the door was shut to me.

The dispute was about the fact that there was an original dossier that contained original documents and the one we had consisted largely of copies. The original airbill that we had triumphantly located yesterday had no weight whatsoever with this lady. The fact that the duon had already inspected my entire shipment down to the last thread and soccer ball meant nothing. We were out of order. We had hit the tilt button.

Then an elderly, distinquished gentleman entered the room and joined the conversation. By this time I was totally chomping at the air, trying to digest words I had no palette for. They continued to discuss my shipment that I had worked so hard to get into the country quickly on a freaking airplane at extra expense and continued to ignore me. Anyone who knows me knows how this would affect me. I tried to remain calm.

Finally the distinguished guy finally started talking to me. He said, "be cool, be quiet"
Not what I wanted to hear. "What is going on, please" I asked, although I think I had gotten the gist. They asked me who the man with the beard was. I balked. He is angry I said.

I said, "it is my shipment, it's shelters for orphans, I have been waiting three weeks" He smiled at me. This went on ad nauseous.
Finally, the man told me that the original documents were awaiting Franchise approval from the minister of finance. He said we would go and get the dossier now. I was momentarily hopeful. It was brief.

We went there, got the dossier but were not actually given it. It turned out that we'd have to wait for tomorrow or maybe the next day or the next. More eternal clouds of the spotted time field.

My mission was absolutely thwarted. We stepped out of the building and walked towards the exit. Suddenly a woman came running out to stop the Civil Protection Man. They went back in. We stood around in the sweating air with the cops with guns that look like a cross between pistols and shotguns. They carry them like sticks. Like they really couldnt blow your head off. Almost like they could be used for a shovel instead.

The Man came back out. He told me Madame would like to interview me about my shipment. I said, sure, anything, ask me anything. Phanio had to go return the car. He said he would come back in a couple hours to get me. We went inside and then Madame said she was Muy Fatique. I was to come back in the morning at 8:30 to be interviewed. My ride was gone.
I called Phanio up and said can you come back? He said Sure.

I went out on the street and a bunch of rastas were getting into a heated argument. I moved away from them and sat under a tree and waited. Phanio came driving up. I got in and looked at him. He looked totally stressed out. I asked "what is wrong?" he said "there was an accident" and pointed to the back of the car. It was smashed in really badly. Shit.

He had tried to help me, and now he'd have to pay for his friend's car. I told him I would help. I apologized. He said it was his fault. He said you will see the accident scene in a minute. I thought we would drive by and he'd say "it happened here" and we'd continue driving. No. He pulled up on the sidewalk and got out. There were police and a crowd of upset yelling men. I retreated to a tree and sort of hid. Apparently Phanio had hit a dude's vending stand. It was destroyed. Batteries, glasses and playing cards were scattered on the ground.

It was getting ugly. I flagged down a moto and negotiated 250 goude for a ride to Jedco. He drove me home. Empty handed. Better than going to Brooklyn empty handed but I am feeling really homesick right now. I miss my cat.

Tomorrow I will try to answer all the questions right so the Madame Fatique will sign the document.

strawberries

2010-08-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

Today I feel like I really accomplished something major. I woke up absolutely determined to take control of the customs situation. I was done with Mr. DB and his eternal cloud of the hopeless tomorrows. Just so done with it, completely over it. So I got completely determined to get it done myself. Today.

I got on the bike and drove over to the amerijet warehouse. I figured if I brought all the copies of the documents there, the lady who speaks perfect english would at least let me lay eyes on my shipment. I thought that would be a good starting point. When I asked her where she was from she said "all over" new jersey, new york etc

She said she could certainly let me look at my stuff.

I walked back into the warehouse and a nice dude named Julio showed me to them. There they were! I nearly wept with tears of joy at our reunion. Actually, I am lying, I was not ready to cry joy yet and I was more swept over by an intense urge to steal a fork lift and drive the shit all the way back to base on it. But I calmed down and took some photos.

I went back into the office and had a conversation with the lady from all over. I asked her what the order of events would be if my stuff was already in inspections as DB had claimed last thursday. She informed me that the Duon downtown which we had went to the other day to find the expedited customs orifice is the Duon (customs) for Ships. The airplane Duon is the one across from the airport. Oh! The sweet taste of discovery filled my taste buds.

She told me that there is a little mini customs office right there in her warehouse. We went back there and had a little chat with them and I took note of the meticulous order of the place. Folders were stacked in every corner of the room and there was several log books which look like they had not only survived the earthquake but also a few million years of erosion. They were the first of many of the exact same type of books I was to see today.

They poured over the logbook with their eyes, using their hands as if they were massaging the pages of the books. As if they were written in Braille. Their entire data base had crashed when the earthquake happened. Their data base was stored in the minds of the men and women who died. That explains much of the confusion among the customs workers on how things should work. Add to that the displacement of offices and normal protocol just flies out the window. Normal was ill functioning at best, I am pretty sure.

The folder was not there. She told me to go to the customs office across from the airport about two blocks away. So I jumped on the bike and went over there. I went into the office and was welcomed by a cool blast. I looked around and recognized the lady I "spoke" with last time. Spoke is used very generously in this instance. Mimed would be more accurately used.

I gave her the bundle of papers I had in my hands and made a gesture like I was praying. She smiled. "We will looking" I needed the originals to get my shipment out. She handed my papers to a young man sitting at another table. I watched keenly from across the room to see what would be done with the papers. The woman sitting next to the young man was totally crashed out with her head down on a pile of folders. This was not the first person I saw today totally unabashedly sleeping on their desks.

I watched the guy listlessly move the paper this way and that, saw him staring off into space for a while, I tried to look to see what he was staring at and it was a point somewhere up near the air conditioning unit. He then started to fan himself with my papers. That's when I caught his eye. He said something, I dont know what, but I vigorously nodded my head yes.

He signaled me to come over. That was my introduction to the guy that was to become my savior today. His name is Phanio. He spoke very little English but enough to communicate with me. He said, "we going to amerijet warehouse now" we went outside and I asked if we were going to walk he said yes. In creole you would say ale nan pye which means to go by foot. I said I have a motorbike. We got on and drove over. We went into the same small room, this time they had the tv on with what looked like a telenova playing on it.

They did more folder sorting and log book massaging to no avail. He asked me again if he could call the guy, Mr. DB. I said no, he is very angry. Finally I agreed to call him. He went from zero to 200 in less than a minute when he realized it was me. "I really dont like you" he yelled. I said "I dont care if you like me, where is my paperwork??" He screamed "It's at the Minister of Finance and I will call you when he calls me!!!" I hung up. I told Phanio, "It's at the Minister of Finance" He said, "we will go there and get it" There was another man standing there, who I later learned was a Pastor named Cange Victor. He has a school called "College Bird" He told me this later, so I will come back to it, but I will say that I recognized the name because one of the orphanages I visited said he gives them food. I asked the both of them if they thought I was dressed properly for the Minister of Finance. The answer was pretty clear. No. Cover your legs. Wear a button up shirt.

So I dropped him off back at the Duon and headed back to camp to get presentable. I was sorely tempted to wear a tutu and ballet slippers but damn if there were none available at the base. So I borrowed a nice white button up blouse from BZ and put on my only long pants, some army green doo dads. I showered before I got dressed. It works better that way. By "shower" I mean, I poured a bucket of cold water over me.

I went back and picked up my new friend and we drove off. We went further than I've driven yet. Some of the roads were actually better than the streets in Brooklyn. I was impressed. Not for long as we drove up the side of a mountain and down the other side in brutal traffic and mid day sun. We drove and drove and then drove some more me weaving in and out the mad loom of traffic.

We arrived and went inside the building. Found more sleeping workers at their desks. I said "muy fatigue" and pointed to one of the sleepers. He laughed.
We went to another location. I waited and nearly became a sleeping waiter. Better than a sleeping policeman, at least no one runs you over.

We went all over the place back and forth and up and down and finally Phanio walked out of one of the offices triumphantly holding up the elusive original airbill. Victory!

We made our way back to the Duon by the airport. I bought a new folder from a lady there. Watched more people sleep at their desks and then we went outside to get this old dude sitting under a tree to type some forms for us using a manual typewriter.

He had a rusty stapler and a beat up looking satchel to carry his mobile office inside of. He had old fashioned carbon paper. This guy was slick. I paid him 250 goudes. ( about $6.50) and he gave us the documents to complete our folder.

We went back over to the warehouse and met Pastor Dude again and waited for some officials who didnt come. There was a giant shipment of strawberries though and cold grapes from California. My eyes lit up when I saw them and the guy whose shipment is was noticed. He said some thing to me in Creole. I didnt know what he said but I knew what he meant, I say Oui! he gave me a bag of cold grapes and a generous helping of fresh strawberries. That really made my day.

I shared them around with the pastor, his friend and Phanio. We ate them and we talked. Turns out the Pastor had been waiting for four months for his shipment to clear. Sounds like he went through a whole lot more than me to get what turned out to be shelter systems domes! For a school he runs. . Buckminster Fuller strikes again! He shared with me that this morning when I arrived on the motorbike it made him very happy to see me. He showed me an amazing looking scar on his knee he got from a motorcycle accident.

The orphanage I went to visit last week when I drove through the crowded market was one of his. He asked where my office is. I told him. He asked if he could come visit me there. I said, Of course.
the view out on the warehouse yard, many orgs shipments are stalled here........

So, we waited for them to find crate number five which happened to be the dome covers on their palette. The guy, Julio, told me "we cant find it" He looked like he was joking. But he wasn't unfortunately. It was closing time. He said, "come back in the morning and we will find it' Not my favorite solution, but do able.

As we were walking out of the warehouse, my eyes were scanning every package on 4 or 5 levels of shelves. I suddenly spotted it! "It's there!" I shouted. It was on the very top shelf. They confirmed the correct number. Phanio said "You have snake eyes!"

As we were leaving I saw a whole stack of boxes being forklifted and there was this sound emanating from it. I looked over and realized that it was a shipment of chicks! I was excited until i realized that at least 60 % of the little guys were dead. Ug. Who ships chicks anyway?

I drove Phanio home. As I was turning the corner on the way back, a car cut me off and I put on the brakes. The bike I was riding has shitty brakes. I wiped out. I did a full face plant on the street. I landed on my chin and my arms and legs were akimbo like super man trying to fly on the ground. I rolled over and looked up. There was a bus load of Haitian people staring at me. All traffic had stopped. Everyone was watching me. A MINUSTAH dude ran up. His name was Hubert Gonzalez. He helped me to my feet as I was saying over and over, I'm ok I'm ok and he said in English "where are you from " I said New York City. His face changed with some sort of realization. He said where do you live? I said "across from Jedco" He picked up the bike which was still running. I got on. A car full of women were looking back at me with concerned looks on their faces. I gave them the thumbs up and patted my chest as if to say I'm really all right. I felt incredibly cared for. I drove off, kind of trembling and tearing up a bit. Just so much to process and so much effort put out and some real results coming back made me feel a whole lot of gratitude.

I drove up the dirt street to the base and saw some of my people sitting four against a wall drinking sodas. I pulled up. Lifted my helmet visor and said, "guess who's getting her shit tomorrow morning?" Aaron gave me the finger. That means "Fucking fantastic" apparently.

I am in my tent. It's a big tent that the Give Love people gave me. I can stand up in it. I have a table in it now, a small end table. I have the RYOB fan going on me. I am listening to the Books on my ipod. A little while ago a voice broke through the earplugs saying Lopi Lopi did you loose your phone? It was Sam. He was on the phone with the MINUSTAH dude who apparently found my phone on the street where I crashed. Sam said "someone found a phone after a motorcycle accident" and Did you crash on the bike? I sheepishly said, "yeah". I just got on the back of Les's bike and he drove me to the intersection and picked up the phone. Hubert Gonzalez is a real sweetheart.

The domes are almost here! Funny that the whole time they've been sitting in a warehouse a little over a mile away. Funny ha ha. Oh the hurting.

I'm tired! I have a bruised chin.

On Thursday, we will be building two domes in one day. That is the plan. I can't wait!

dream city

2010-08-02T17:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it feels like a dream when traversing what they call streets in Port Au Prince.
Logic does not apply in this city.

I went today to the Duon aka Customs to find the Expediated Customs office. I found it. It was just as the NGO dude had described to me at the posh $116 a night hotel restaurant. It was a sparse air conditioned room. There were 6 desks. There were 5 men and 1 woman. They had nothing on their desks for the most part. One guy had a blackberry and a cell phone. One dude had a laptop and was listening raptly to pimsluer english lessons. I approached the only woman in the room's desk and put my motorcycle helmet down on her desk.

Communicating through a translator is extremely tedious. I say what I want to say while looking straight into the person's eyes. They speak back to the translator. They talk on and on. The translation is eon's shorter than the lengthy speeches they seem to be giving.

I ask questions. Like "what is your job?" I dont know if they get asked these questions.
Admittedly, I am a wee bit of a control freak. It doesn't work in translation.

I managed to find out that this office was indeed brand new as of last week and it was in fact set up to assist humanitarian goods entering the country more expediently. They, however, told me that in order to use their services, I would have to go to another location to register my NGO or as they call it here, OGN, I asked if they had an information sheet or pamphlet. The man smiled. No.

Julian and I walked over to the other location. He told me that this was the most dangerous part of Port Au Prince. It didn't look too dangerous to me, just a fucked up looking park with razor wire spiraling around it. Some dudes were walking around with bags of bags of water on their heads saying "Dlo" over and over and some other folks selling bananas and a group of cops chilling in the shade of a large tree. There was a statue laying on its side with its pedestal broken next to it. That's what happens when you put shit up on pedestals, I thought, they fall off eventually.

We walked into the other office building. A bunch of dudes were sitting around in a sort of anti chamber/entrance room with fans blowing on them. When we asked if the office we needed to go to was there, they said yes but we couldnt go in. When Julian asked them why not, the dude looked at me and apparently stated I was not dressed properly. I was wearing cut off jean shorts, a t shirt and my cowboy boots. I was driving a motor cycle for gods sake. It's hot as hell outside. What am I supposed to be wearing? A tutu? When Julian told me, I said "are you crazy?" which apparently does not mean the same thing in Haiti. You dont call people crazy in a light hearted way in Haiti. So many have been driven insane by the earthquake and it's a very touchy subject. I knew that but forgot for a moment in my incredulity. The man asked, Did she just say we are crazy? I got it right away and said, No, I said "are you kidding me?" either way the dude was not having my cut off jean shorts boots wearing personage traipsing around in their pristine rubble strewn courtyard.

Julian entered without me. He came out empty handed saying the guy said he'd email me the forms. Right then I got a call from BZ back at the base that Mr. DB (my affectionate name for the customs broker) had called and was coming by to pick up the copies of our paperwork to bring to customs. So we jumped on the bike and rode back through the dream city back to Rue Pelican and Grassroots United Base.

After lunch, Mike from MMRC and I took a drive up to Peitionville to pick up a replacement camera. I cant not document my project. So I had to get another one. It took a while going there and back. The ride was beautiful we kept going up and up and the air got cooler and there were alot of trees. Its the rich part of town as is true probably mostly anywhere in the world. The rich like to live up on the hilltops. I bought the cheapest canon I could find and we drove back down the hill.

At the base later, BZ, Scruff muffin, Delphine and Sam were cooking up a storm in the kitchen while Joanne the cook giddily watched. They had taken over the kitchen for the day to cook us a thai food dinner. The energy around the base was festive for no reason in particular and Aaron had a charcoal fire going in the back in a pit and in between chasing the rooster with a half burned log he was cooking chicken over open flames.

It was the best dinner I've had since being here. The sunset was gorgeous. I just figured out that I can get internet in my tent of all places so I am ensconced in my tent writing this blog and sweating my butt off waiting for the rain. I hope it comes soon. Oh, and the domes. That would be amazing if I could get my domes tomorrow.

I am hoping to go in the morning to visit an orphanage that is not on anyone's list. You have to hike up a goat trail to get to it. Mike said he would show it to me. There will be photos tomorrow.

I am changing my ticket which was supposed to fly back to JFK on wed. I aint coming back until I finish what I came here to do. I am not sure how long it will take. Everything takes so much longer here.

Thanks for reading.

cherry popped

2010-08-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

i

in the back of the ill fated pick up truck headed to the beach

Today was a day off. Three of us set out on an adventure traversing Port Au Prince via tap tap with only broken french, spanish and unbroken english to aid us.

Haitian people are incredibly helpful, especially the men. They always have something friendly to say to women.

We ended up in a pick up truck ostensibly going to the plaza hotel but then I noticed we were headed out of the city, we were passing cite solel. I got us out of that one using my new york attitude. We saw some incredible sights today and I took some really fantastic photos. Too bad I'll never show them to anyone except the person who pickpocketed me.

I've had my cherry popped today! My pickpocket cherry that is. I borrowed a couple of photos of the day from Lanette from Fertile Earth, though. But I'll never see that one of the tiny pink shack with the entire family perfectly framed in the doorway or the awesome door with the prestige label painted on it or the national palace or the intensely crowded street scene unfolding down a narrow street on a steep hill or the enormous pile of knarled wood with the guy cutting it with a machete or the ginormous tangle of metal or the dudes in the barber shop or the ancient looking woman with the white hair sitting on the sidewalk with her hand outstretched or the colorful tap taps or the shop with a doorway showing the outside and a pile of rubble. and on and on (as kurt vonnegut would say)

But it's all good. I was going to give that camera away anyway.

I got a tip from a NGO dude at the Blanc hotel who was sitting in the restaurant with an apple laptop, an apple touch and a portable scanner. He told me there is a new office at the customs place downtown. It's called "expediated customs for NGO's" First thing in the morning I am so all over that place. Good thing I get up at 6am everyday.

I am considering buying a motorcycle to get around PaP with. My friend Richmond is advising against it because of safety issues. But getting around in a tap tap or a truck or car is just stupid. It takes 4 times as long, easy. I would sell it upon my exit from this country, if I ever do leave. I can't believe that non profit workers stay at a hotel that costs $116 bucks a night. That is insane.. Also the juxtaposition of the tent city in front of the National Palace and the Plaza Hotel is pretty jolting. We were walking along and there was a stage set up with a full sound system playing piped in music of a woman singing Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" and I was walking, listening to that and seeing the people's faces who were living there. It was another incredibly moving moment.

The day ended with all three of us riding on the back of a motorcycle all the way back to the compound.

Time for bed. I have a busy day tomorrow

thanks for reading and special shout out to my Aunt, Sister Mary!

dayang

2010-07-30T18:57:00.000-07:00

awesome hat

crying animals filled the air. Market day.

everybody needs shade

Aristide's former residence

the girl on the right is jennifer.

Today while riding the motorbike through yet another rush hour (which seems to last all day) i noticed the bike in front of me had the word "dayang" on the back of the seat. I thought to myself, "dayang!' and then I heard loud snorting emanating from the back of a white box truck, back open, stuffed full of humans and apparently pigs.
It was market day. I had my boots on. Why it has taken me this long to realize that I should wear my cowboy boots while driving the motorbike instead of sandals is beyond me. But wearing them, I swear, increased my expertise on the bike ten fold. I am not over confidant, though I did feel more fierce. Yesterday I got a leg burn on the exhaust pipe. Not today. Today I was driving Julian and I to a couple orphanages. Julian and I are becoming good friends. He directs me from the back of the bike and encourages me. The first day I drove us, while I was hesitating at an intersection, wondering how to enter into it, kind of like skipping rope, he leaned in and said in my ear "engage with the traffic" He is like yoda or something.

Today. Julian on the back, "that way" me"that way?" he"that way" and he pointed at a dense crowd of people and goats walking in the market place. "what the fuck?" I shouted back at him. He said "do it, honk the horn"

Ok. It's one kind of fear to enter into a danger dance with vehicular traffic and an altogether different kind of fear to enter into human traffic. I prefer to risk my own life than to risk running over another person or even a goat. As we rode through, we hit this enormous rubble patch and I had no alternative but through it. crazy. I saw a SUV driving through, we were behind them and the dude driving started running over an old ladies basket of grains. Harsh.

We drove into a field full of people and animals and sought shade under a tree with a bunch of other people and goats. Julian bought us some bags of water. I am still not used to sucking water out of a plastic bag. I squirted it into my water bottle and wadded up the plastic. I cant bring myself to throw it on the ground as is customary here. I just cant do it. I'm a fucking environmentalist. He laughed at me and said, "give it to me" and I almost did until i noticed the glint in his eye. He was going to pretend to pocket it and then throw it down. I grabbed it and put it in our bag. People were watching us curiously. the goats even seemed interested.

I looked over at the field of milling people and goats and cows and I imagined I heard sadness and lament in the crying voices of the animals. Today they would be bought and slaughtered. I get itl, the beauty and connection between people and their relationship to food. It's so intrinsic here, unlike shopping in whole foods and buying a packaged slab of meat. I still feel bad for the animals. I cant help it. There is a rooster on the compound where I am staying. Every morning without fail at 6 am, it comes right up to my tent and cock a doodles his doo dad right in my earlobe brain cell. I gather from what I've heard that there used to be 7 roosters on the property. Not very popular. Kind of like the greasy wheel and not as necessary.

Vegetarians are unherd of here. People look at me like I am insane when I tell them I dont eat meat. I am insane but not for that reason.

Today I realized that people have been commenting on my blog. Friends and relatives. It was like christmas when I found out. Thanks for reading and commenting! It makes me feel so happy and good.

I cleared it with the Grub logistics coordinator. Any of my close friends who have the inclination and means to come down here are welcome. The only requirement is that you fill out their volunteer questionnaire. I highly recommend coming. It's an experience you'll never forget your entire life. There are plenty of projects to plug into here and we will put you right to work and house and feed you.

I have an empty tent waiting! I will personally pick you up at the airport.

I was sent into a giddy revelry imagining various favorite human friends of mine here with this international community of folks staying at Grassroots United. I would love any one of you to come. If you are thinking about it, please email me.

Went to two more locations today but was unclear whether they were actually orphanages or not. One was more like a day care. None of the kids were orphans, just children of really poor people who cant feed their kids. It was actually a sweet location, a nice house with trees and a back garden. Some kids were on the back porch watching a haitian singer on the tv, it was showing scenes of the streets and the music was beautiful. I asked the guy where his kids were and he said they were "out playing" in the streets. He wants to start a school. As it is the kids just come and eat when he has something to give. I have always marveled at the generosity of the poorest and the lack there of among the "haves" What exactly is up with that? He had one of the kids go out and gather up the others and they all sat politely and curiously on a bench under the shade of a welcoming tree as I interviewed the young man in charge with the help of Julian. I was disturbed when I saw the kids drinking water out of the hose. I asked and he said they haven;t gotten sick from it. I want to bring him a water filter and books and food and so much more. This cat is golden. I asked him "why are you doing this?" and he said "These kids will be me in the future" I got really choked up at that. I tried unsuccessfully to hide it. Julian asked me if I was alright and I said yes. I told the guy "What you are doing is really beautiful" and I thanked him. They dont need a dome.

I took some photos of the kids which really livened them up. They said "magic" and "jennifer" one of the girls names is Jennifer. I thought of my dear sister up in Alaska. Hi Jen! These kids are the future. Can we please take care of them.

We said goodbye and got on the bike and drove away. That is when we hit the marketplace and the me driving into the human sea. We were headed to the next location and it was arduous as hell getting there. But we made it alive. Thats good news.

The next place was hard to decipher. But I liked the ladies hat alot.

We passed Aristides house today and I had to get off the bike and take a photo.

We headed back to the base and found our friend Mike from MMRC chilling on the front porch. We had lunch. It was three oclock.

Naftalie came by and told me more about her friend who has 36 kids living in a tent nearby. I will go visit them as soon as I can. I went out back and did laundry. I asked Naftalie "do you know what a laundrymat is" she said "Yes." I love the way this kid says yes. She draws out the s in an adorable way. When I asked if they have them in Haiti she laughed at me. A big laugh.

I threw the bucket down into the cistern and pulled up a bucket of water and sat in the shade and scrubbed my dirty clothes. Really dirty. It's enjoyable. It takes awhile. I hung the clothes up on the line and then the storm came. A huge thunderstorm. The lightening danced across the sky in a brilliant stripe shaped like the roots of trees. Loud thunderclaps shock the ears and guts. I thought of all the kids I have seen so far and their pathetic shelters. I thought of them trying to stay dry under there unsuccessfully. I cringed and growled to myself over my lack of domes and my inability to provide the meager help I had hoped to give. I could have already made a difference a significant one in their lives. I have to wait. Waiting has never been my strong suit. Never. It has to become it or else I will just go insane. I mean bad insane not the good kind.

I sat with the folks on the back porch, yakking about the state of Haiti and various solutions they are implementing or thinking of implementing. I watched the rain in the trees and on the vinyl roof of the 60 ft dome warehouse. I watched the gutter coming off the roof spew an impressive stream of water. I got the 50 ft stare. I wasnt listening to the people around me. I got up and took off my vest and got under the gutter and had a shower in my bikini. The pressure was fantastic.

A word about the customs man. He came today and said it;s almost out. He made it sound like he was going to go get the stuff today and then disappeared. Its Friday. I would be a million goude that it wont be here until at least monday and if it is here on monday, I will be the luckiest person in history.

Thanks to all the people at Grassroots United for supporting this project by welcoming me into their compound and family. I love this place.

many hands make light work

2010-07-29T20:39:00.000-07:00

this little girl was out back, playing by herself, making a small shelter out of sticks and an old umbrella cover. She was the tipping factor to make me chose her orphanage as a dome site.

these are the current latrines at the site we visited yesterday.
too bad the photo isnt scratch and sniff

I believe this is their cistern

The back area of the orphanage we went to visit yesterday

the kids loved Emily's sunglasses..........

being with the kids i meet at the orphanages is when i most keenly feel the sting of my lack of creole. we cannot communicate verbally for the most part, other than them saying "what is your name?" over and over and me saying "se bon" or "mwen pa pale creole" its a wee bit maddening. but there are plenty of non verbal means of communication available to us, so we manage to connect despite the language barrier.

the kids took turns wearing my bike helmet
yea, i know what you are thinking and i dont care

Domes are still stuck in the other country known as "Customs'
It's incredibly frustrating to have worked for 6 months on a project with alot of forward momentum only to be stalled on the ground in country. However, I am redefining the meaning of forward momentum by utilizing my time in ways that are both edifying and productive. Just being here is an education. Learning to drive a motorcycle in Haitian traffic is like boot camp for the insane. I have been visiting orphanages and doing assessment interviews. I have located 6 solid sites for the domes and had my eyes opened to a myriad of deceit. With the opening of my eyes comes the understanding of what is behind these deceits. It's a system flooded with orphans at the same time a devastatingly poor in monetary terms country. So with the observations comes a grain of compassion, however infinitesimal, however horrible the abuse, it's a result at least in a small part due to the environment.
The environment does not excuse the behavior in any way shape or form, but it does frame it accordingly.
The place I mentioned in an earlier post will be having a visit tomorrow from a team who will bust them and get the kids out of whatever shitty situation their parentless state has put them in. Grown up people preying on children as an economic means is absolutely unacceptable.

I'm sitting on the back porch of Grub, five mosquito coils burning quietly silently while the crickets sing along with my friend Richmond's guitar playing. He shaved his enormous beard and cut his shaggy hair off about an hour ago. He looks like a entirely new person with a chin.. We decided his name is now Jack. I dont know why.

For some reason, at 11pm at night, a semi truck is suddenly backing into the compound. Voices in the dark are shouting in creole directions to the driver. Another shipment of medical goods perhaps for the new warehouse that is a 60 ft geodesic dome.
In a word, it's awesome. I love Buckminster Fuller. The night before we put the skin on the dome, I laid out on the concrete slab and looked up through the patterns of interlocking triangles and marveled at the intricate geometry of the thing. Pure genius. Pentagon in the center surrounded by hexagons forming ever widening pentagons made of triangles. The full moon crawled its way across it's map as I listened on my ipod to the voices of friends singing in another time and another place. I got up and danced and danced and danced. Kind of like the other night when I had so much energy I did laps around and around and around in the cool of the night until I was sweating through my clothes. Only then could I go to sleep.

This is me, waiting for my domes. In a community, a closed compound with some of the most amazing people I've met in my life. We venture out fairly freely during the day, but there is a curfew of 10 pm. It's not so dangerous out there though. Just people.

Today I went out to amerijet and customs and got very little accomplished and then came back to the compound and stuffed aggregate sand into plastic liter bottles to be used for building shelters with. I then made some hummus. Tahini is delicious. Is this interesting reading? I dont really mind if you think it's not pertinent to my project.

Later I took Emma on the back of the motor bike and we headed out to a "close by" orphanage that she has been working with for a couple months. Turned out to be rush hour. Oops. Some things are the same no matter where the fuck you are. The thing that is not the same is that you have never seen rush hour traffic like you see in Ayiti. It's insane. My friend almost got hit with a dresser one day. A dresser in traffic. You couldn't make up the shit you see on the streets. In NYC, riding a bicycle in traffic is one kind of crazy. Here, riding a motorbike in traffic is taking it up 500 knotches and adding an 360 degree radius of potential projectiles. I am learning to weave in and out of all manner of pedestrians rolling tires, wheelbarrows, giant carts, motorbikes with three people and huge chunks of ice on the back, a kind of air conditioning I reckon, mack trucks, water tanks, houses being transported, this writing is not doing it justice at all, the speed with which things appear is insane. I have learned that the best place for a motorbike is in the middle between oncoming vehicles. But then something might come up in that path that makes it nessecary to cut over to the side for a minute. Honking the horn does actually work wonders. Today a person nearly backed out on me and I beeped and it was interesting because when I beeped a whole slew of random people on the street yelled instantaneously at the driver to stop. Haitians are reckless. They will jump on the back of a moving semi truck and cling to it like lizards, bouncing along the insanely bumpy roads.

We went to an orphanage. We met some kids. They were awesome and totally affectionate

I have to go help unload the truck now. Be right back.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

those plus marks indicate time passing and alot of boxes being handed hand to hand
to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand an entire semi truck worth of miscellaneous goods ..... 15 people, some already in bed, got up and got busy. its done, the truck is gone, the dome is fuller. buckminster that is

shady

2010-07-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

I'm taking in some IV saline solution right now because I got really sick from dehydration this morning. It was weird because I started out the day feeling fine, we even had a mini dance party in one of the domes at around 7:15am to start the day right. Afterwards, I took a quick bucket shower and then suddenly my ears went all muffled and i felt really ill.

I called up my friend Mike from MMRC and they were here in 10 minutes. Heather, my home girl from Brooklyn, got me hooked up to an IV really quickly and efficiently. I love her. So I've been sitting here getting dripped.

So much has happened since I wrote in here, the other day.

Julian, my new translator and guide, is fucking awesome. He grew up in Haiti until he was 15 and then moved to NYC to live with his Mom. He and I have been cruising around on the motorcycle, me driving (!) to do orphanage assessments. We visited 4 in one day on saturday. Extremely productive. I found 2 sites for domes, one amazing shelter for girl victims of abuse called Kay Fanm, and one shady operation that we are going to try to shut down.

I'll start with the suspicious place. We were in this neighborhood and some people were telling us there is an orphanage nearby to there so we went, unannounced to check it out. The young man and woman who answered the gate were extremely unwelcoming, at first only peering out a small opening in the gate, a peephole that closed and opened..
We finally got them to open the gate and they stepped out. I got the intuitive feeling immediately that they were uncomfortable, kind of like when you catch someone with their hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. We explained that we were humanitarian workers and we were there to see if there way anything we could help them with. We asked if we could come in and look around and they said no. I asked if they needed anything and the kid said he didnt know. I kind of laughed and said, surely you know if you have food, water and shelter? He said we had to ask his boss. We called him up and Julian spoke with him and he granted us entry. Julian told me later that the dude said to him something to the affect of, "if you get us some stuff, we'll make it worth your while"
When we entered, the kids looked really scared. There was a yard with one tent and a pretty large two story house. The first floor of the house looked like a storage shed with boxes piled up pretty high. When we asked what was in the boxes, he said it was stuff that had been donated to them by the french people. Apparently, it wasn't an orphanage but rather an adoption agency for French people. He claimed that the boxes of stuff was being given out on the streets to people who need it, but I dont believe that. I think they are selling it for a profit. The kids are certainly not benefiting from it, they looked ill cared for, dirty, hungry and not clothed well. I asked the guy, through Julian, my translator, "is this a non profit or for profit venture" and he said non profit, of course.

Being in Haiti is all about networking. On the grassroots level, that is what we do. We share resources and information freely to better help those in need. For example, right now, by buddie from MMRC, the ones who just gave me an IV, just went and got a truck load of palettes for our new warehouse full of medical supplies and then they took Julian and went to visit one of the orphanages we visited on Saturday to give the kids some medical attention. The Woman who runs that orphanage said some of her kids were sick with fever and chills. So we do what we can with the human resources available.

So, Tara, who works for Heartwood Alliance, can maybe do something to stop whatever weird abuse or possible for profit adoption business is going on there. I gave her the address and name of the dude who is living in the second floor of the building in probably luxury while these kids live below him in a storage room.

Now for the Positive. Enter Yolette Jeanty from Kay Fanm.

She welcomed us into her compound with open arms. When we entered through her gate we found a beautiful yard with music playing, girls with wheelbarrows moving rubble, gardening, a full on construction site, trees, alot of activity, girls sewing and washing clothes and cleaning the premises. The vibe was happy and productive.

Yolette showed Julian and I around and spoke at great length about her hopes and plans for the shelters she is building for the girls. They had been renting a shelter in PaP for the girls but it fell down in the quake. So she took the girls, 15 of them and brought them to her home, pitched a giant tent for them and then she got a grant from Unifem to build with. She doesnt need shelters, but she could use other stuff like furniture, beds, water tank and filter system. She has two treadle sewing machines for the kids to use to learn how to sew garments as a mini cottage industry.

Additionally, I told Yolette about another org staying at Grassroots United called Kleiworks. They have a mission to empower women to learn construction skills in permaculture building. Yolette was very excited by this concept and so I put her in touch with Kevin right away. I can also help her help the girls learn to support themselves by donating the fabric and notions I brought with me if I ever get my freaking shit out of customs. I would like to buy them an electric sewing machine.

Also, they could use a composting toilet as it is there is alot of people using one toilet there. She was interested and open to the concept. I am in touch with Amy from Soil so will see if they can go throw one up over there in her lovely compound full of budding flowers.

I was extremely touched and moved by my visit with Yolette at Kay Fanm.
People like her are rebuilding Haiti, one person at a time. The only real way to get things done is to start small and grow.

We got on the bike and drove away. Driving this motorcycle is at the same time exhilarating and terrifying. A perfect Challenge for me. I'm glad Julian trusts me, but then again, he is used to this chaos

Women can do whatever we set our minds to. We are just as strong as men, proportionately.

I noticed many many girls staring at me on the bike. Julian said its because women dont normally drive motorbikes.. HA! they were adorable and I hammed it up a little bit to cover up the fact that I am really not such an expert. Especially when it comes to U turns. I did wipe out, I am not going to lie, but only once! In a mud puddle! we did not get hurt. I was embarrassed though, but that doesnt hurt that much.

On a side note, Kara Blossom left today to head back to NYC. Her time here was too short!! Everyone loves her and she has promised to come back in 20 days..... Thanks Blossom! You are truly Awesome.

The next place we visited was called Foyer Des Orphalins D'Haiti and they have 35 kids living in very squallid conditions.

There is a bombed out looking cinder block building and a large open air type of tent. Kids were abundant and they looked well cared for but hungry. Desamours Eyanette is a lawyer who lost her job in the quake and owns the property where the kids are staying. This is our next dome site.

They desperately need shelter, food and the kids are sick with fever and chills. I just sent a EMT team there to give them some medical attention. I will bring them a dome and build it there as soon as I get my freaking shipment. (today??? who knows, I am waiting, pretending to be patient, beginning to wonder if I will make it back to NYC before August is over. I do want to have my birthday party in Haiti, though. Ef Burningman. my bday is the 31st )

Julian and Desamour

We visited one more place, to get to we drove through Cite de Solel.
I will have to blog about that one later, I am hydrated and although I feel a wee nauseous, we are going out to see another orphanage or two today.

Keep your fingers crossed that my shipment comes in today!

haiti cell

2010-07-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

if anyone reading this is in haiti and would like to contact me, i have a cellphone now, the number is 509 31 10 75 29. please contact me if you have any of the following:
1. A connection to an orphanage or home for kids at risk that needs shelter, food or medicine.
2. A desire to volunteer your time to help prep sites for domes, ie clear rubble
3. If you would like to build a compost outhouse for an orphanage so they can move onto land

My customs broker came today to update me on the situation with my shipment. Apparently I need two more signatures and then they can approve the release of the shipment. It may seem to some of you reading this that having my stuff held up for a week in customs is a long time, but in the larger scheme of things, it's nada nunca.
Other huge NGO's have had their shit held up for months. I will be lucky if it gets delivered on monday.

I hired a dude today named Julian who was referred to me by some medics from MMRC, one of them is a power house of a woman named Heather. she is from Brooklyn! Julian is a Haitian guy who speaks excellent english and is willing to drive a motorcycle. In fact, he lived in Brooklyn on flatbush for awhile. I will be paying him cash 35 bucks a day. We start tomorro morning. I have a list of orphanages we will start calling in the morning on my new cell

I realized today that I am just now getting my Haiti legs, so to speak. The culture and environment here is so foreign it took me a week to fully grasp it, well, grasp it enough to know how to proceed, realistically in this environment. I have learned not to travel via car, truck tap tap if I want to get anything done besides getting stuck in traffic. That alone can save me days.

I drove around today by myself on a motor cycle. I got a wicked sunburn on my arms.
I weaved in and out of traffic, avoided humoungus potholes, mudslicks, kids trying to hop on the back at intersections, UN vehicles hogging the road, aggressive vendors and beggers....

I just want to say a word here about time. Time is a concept that is relative.
When I first got inspired to do this (very small) project, I naively thought it would take three months. Three months from start to finish, that is. From concept to realization.
It took me 6 months so far. The first phase was slow because that is how long it took me to raise the money. In the US, the determining factor was mainly money. I managed to get a substantial amount of the funding in the form of in kind donations, but to complete it, I really needed cash money. Thanks to my community back in Brooklyn, I was able to realize the funding goal and get my ass to Haiti along with ten domes, tools, soccer balls, peanut butter, soap, fabric, notions and leather. Actually, the goods are not officially in Haiti yet because among aid workers, "customs" is not Haiti. Its a country in and of itself.

Now, the second phase of the project, in Haiti, I allotted myself, 3 weeks HA HA!
If I use the model of the US as a time estimate, I can double the projected time and get the realistic time. In Haiti, do you think it's going to take double the time? Well, I think I can easily add triple time. Getting shit done in Haiti takes at least triple the time it does in the US. I think that is a conservative estimate.

I'm just saying.

Today I met Patricia Arquette. I've been hanging out with her brother Richmond for a week. They are with the Give Love foundation and they are building container houses. They were building it at Cite Sole but they moved it to the Grassroots base. It is almost finished, it's a two container house connected in the middle with a roof. It's really nice. Today I learned that she plans on building these container houses for an orphanage. But guess what? It's going to take a few months to build them and in the meantime, the kids need a place to live. Hmmmm.. .. tomorrow they are hoping to go visit the orphanage in its present location. If they do, they invited me to come along.

It's difficult to see through the labyrinth of smoke screens thrown up by any given potential recipient orphanages. There are so many ways to be deceived. I have had my Haiti cherry popped already.

peace and love from Haiti

patience

2010-07-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

sand bags full of sand waiting for domes to anchor...............

I've never been a terribly patient person. In Haiti, impatience is not a productive use of time. It would probably follow that the same would apply anywhere in the world, but I am not sure of that. I am picturing someone with big hair in the US getting all red in the face because her latte wasn't served up quickly enough. Maybe her red complexion and shrill voice would make the worker deliver her latte quicker, perhaps it would have the opposite effect. It would just depend on the psychology of the cafe worker, if they were more inclined to exert their power to make the impatient one suffer more or if they were more inclined to just get the impatient one to go away thus serving them more quickly.

In Haiti, impatience only hurts the impatient. So what's the point? Just put your attention elsewhere and get done what can be done and hope that by the time you get all the other stuff done, the thing you were waiting for would have happened by then.

The domes are still in Customs. It's what is. There is nothing that can be done that hasn't already been done to make it happen quicker. Getting red in the face metaphorically has no results other than bursting blood vessels. I have been told that the earliest they will arrive is today and the latest is by monday. All of the paperwork is in the hands it's supposed to be in, I just need one signature from one dude and then the other dude can pick the stuff up from customs and bring it on over to the base.

In the meantime, I am spending my time going on excursions to orphanages to asses whether or not they are in need of shelter and if there is room for it. Locating orphanages is no mean feat. It can take hours just to find the orphanage, especially if one is traveling by car or tap tap. Tap tap is a sort of public transportation device that is basically a pick up truck painted all fancy on the outside with an extra plastic truck bed insert attached to it upside down on the top to create a roof. People jam inside like sardines. You catch a ride with one, if you are lucky enough to find one with any room at all, by standing on the side of the road and pointing at the ground in front of you.
People bounce along the crappy streets on wooden benches in the back of the truck that really hurt your ass.

Yesterday, Emma, who is the Grassroots Unitied's Orphanage Project Manager, Naftalie, who is the young girl who lives behind GRUB and serves beer and drinks through the magical "hole in the wall" and is a translator at 15 years old, all three of us set out on foot from GRUB to go visit, unannounced, an orphanage we thought was close by. It was raining and I luckily found an umbrella to use because wearing a rain coat is sweltering.
Naftalie happily wore my raincoat which has bikes printed all over it in bright orange. (Thanks Ray for letting me use your screen)

We started walking and soon had a posse of motorcycle guys haggling over who would give us a ride and how much it would cost. It was rather unpleasant and I didnt like the tone of voice they were using with Naftalie. So I encouraged us all to walk away. Just walk away, so we did. We ended up getting into a car, a sort of gypsy cab and the dude started driving. Emma and I looked at each other and she said, "this is the bit when we go missing" and we both laughed. The driver drove us really really far. We got lost, we were on crazy dirt roads that you might think require a 4 wheel drive vehicle to surmount but somehow this dudes crappy 4 door sedan made it. I started to feel dubious about our visit when I noticed the neighborhood improving, the amount of green stenciled letters on buildings was increasing and the size of the houses was actually rather huge. We finally found the orfalena and rang the bell or knocked as it were on the gate.

We proceeded to have a very awkward exchange with a somewhat puzzled looking young man. He showed us around the place, which was immaculate and HUGE and nicer than any house I've ever lived in. The kids seemed really happy and well adjusted. There were bedrooms and verandas and a comfy couch and a television set. There was a brand new soccer ball. They clearly did not need anything. So we asked the guy if they were open to having more kids sent there. He said yes. We thanked him, took a few photos and split.

The car guy had left when he realized we didnt have enough money to pay him for the return trip. So we started walking. It was a very long walk. We passed a goat on the street who was giving birth and a bunch of other goats who were just milling about.
We passed many street vendors and heard many voices calling to us the standard "Hey You" and "Blanc" We got to the main road and tried to get on a tap tap but every single one that passed us was packed to the gills. So we walked some more. Bought a few sodas and walked some more. It was not raining anymore. It was fine. There were alot of paintings on display along this one particular part. One of the paintings was of a woman with an enormous behind. It seems to be a repeating motif.
Emma and part of Naftalie
We finally got on a tap tap, Naftalie and Emma got in the front of the pick up with the driver and I jumped in the crowded back. NYC subways have nothing on this public transportation. One woman kept saying something to me in creole that sounded like "cabella, cabella cabella" I think it meant "just stop" but all i did was repeat her and cause everyone in the tap tap to laugh and ogle me. It was awesome.

requisite upward facing shot, note out of focus toes

I dont really see other white people riding tap taps. I did see some pass by riding in the passenger seats of air conditioned SUV's.

Today we were quarantined to the base because of some sort of massive protest in port au prince and a country wide worker's strike. We were told it was too dangerous to go out. However, a couple of us did leave to go out and get some food. More orphanage visits were ruled out for the day. Brenda came back and we collaborated on a Memorandum of Understanding to use as a sort of contract with the orphanages stating the terms of conditions being solely for use as shelters for orphans and expressly not for profit or gain. There are other stipulations included covering all issues that may arise including whether a landowner might try to possess the domes and kick the people out of them, etc etc.

A solid partnership is forming between Grassroots United and Domes for Haiti. I am very excited by the potential for future projects between our two organizations.

D'Orea

2010-07-20T17:34:00.001-07:00

Today we visited and orphanage named D'Orea.
They dont need shelter urgently. The kids were adorable.

Our shipment is still in Customs We were able to get connected to the best customs broker in the country and we will be receiving the shipment tomorrow morning at Grassroots United base. It cost us about $760 in fees.

Kara has been working really hard doing physical labor while I am visiting orphanages and customs officials and generally getting my mind blown in every way possible seeing poverty at a level I have never seen in my entire life

Compost lesson at GRUB

Earthship construction at GRUB
Ladies layin concrete for the container house
This is the container building that Give Love Foundation is building at GRUB (grassroots united base)
this is the 60 foot geodesic dome at Grassroots United base which is going to be a warehouse for medical supplies and food distribution.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that our shipment arrives in the morning!
We need to get to work!!

2010-07-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

me

We have been in Haiti for three days. Already too much has happened to write about. I will try to write a little bit when I have caught up on my sleep. For now, some photos will have to suffice

I will say, that I have visited 2 orphanages and chosen my first site for a dome. A woman named Judy is creating a quiet revolution with the children in her orphanage. Her approach is imbued with a deep sense of meaning and commitment to the rights of children in Haiti.
The kids you see in these fotos are from her home. I didnt count how many kids she has in her care I did connect with her articulate and passionate love for them.

She is operating a food for school program as well out of her home.

The tents she has for the kids
ok well thats all folks the inverter is going off so I cant finish anything i was going to write

Grass Roots United

2010-07-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

We are in Port Au Prince!
Will write more about the gorgeously insane chaos that is the port au prince airport later
Started today at 5:45 am at the Grass Roots Base aka GRUB
This place is awesome, the staff is irreverent, funny, smart and on point.
There is a good mixture of Haitians and an International vibe, Americans,, French, Aussie and English........
They have a 60 ft dome! And a 20 ft. A composting outhouse and an earth ship
they are currently building a great container house with two containers that will be connected with a roof between.
The food is rather......... well never mind about that. The cook is a sweetheart. I am the only vegetarian staying here.
There is literally a hole in the cinder block wall in the back of the compound where you can buy beer, soda and cold water. It's sort of a mystery to me, I haven't bought anything from the hole yet. Kara came back with a 7-up last night, smiling saying there is a little girl on the other side.
Today we are taking a trip over to customs to suss it out.
Then I am going to the first orphanage to do a site survey. Kara is cutting rebar in the back with our awesome angle grinder. oh yea.

on personal note, I took my second malaria pill this morning on an empty stomach. Not a good idea. I almost lost my cookies. I hate when that happens. :)

I feel GREAT and totally excited and happy to be here I dont think I will ever come back to Brooklyn.

I'll try to write more this evening

peace out
brooklyn represent

thunder

2010-07-15T20:52:00.000-07:00

Arrived Miami today and made our way to the Amerijet warehouse. It was brutally hot outside and I ended up climbing over a chain link fence because the entrance was on the other side of it and this city is damn inhospitable to pedestrians!
But it is an amazingly diverse city culturally. Dominican, Cuban, Haitian were the most prevalent that I encountered today.

I tried to take some photos of the warehouse, but the security guard didnt take too kindly to it.

Note the dude in the fork lift behind him. He seemed particularly unpleased with the photo action. What's the big secret? Are they hiding alien airships in there?

We got the air bill and got out of there and entered back out into the inferno to take a city bus to Kara's friend's house.

It was like an oasis inside. Her friend Hugo is a total sweetheart.
I am currently Super Tired.
Fly to Port Au Prince in the morning. ................
Been feeling an increasing anxiety as we get closer to entering the country. Interesting to witness my own reaction to this stress. The prospect of entering a devastated country has brought up feelings of insecurity within myself, giving me an increasing awareness to all the material objects I have become accustomed to "needing" This surprises myself because I believe myself to be a person pretty comfortable living without alot of material comforts.
I can only imagine how much greater this would be with people who are accustomed to a more extravagant lifestyle. It's a matter of relativity, Einstein.
For example, right now I am kicking myself because I left my trusty canon rebel behind in favor of this little tiny canon elf to document the trip with. It's ridiculous and coming from such a privileged mentality. Yet there it is. My artistic self wants my beautiful digital SLR.
Good thing this is not the only trip i will be taking to Haiti.

There is a wicked thunder storm happening outside. I am enjoying the air conditioned room.