Many of our photos are in the slideshow below:
Friday, July 15, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Last chance
This morning Acliche expressed his frustration about the families’ lack of involvement in the latrines, and he was about to hire more people to help the mason we hired to finish the washrooms and latrines. As I mentioned previously, participation in the construction was a requirement for the families to receive these homes, and not many of them have taken us seriously. After our team left, only two people from the families helped Matt and Acliche finish the roofs.
I decided to take Acliche off the project from here on. The families are wasting his time with their apathy and lack of diligence. From here on, the families will be on their own. All the materials have been bought and are on the property in their houses. Acliche has given the mason’s salary to Matthew 25 House and the mason’s phone number to the families. Matthew 25 House has informed the families that they need to help the mason finish the construction if they want toilets and washrooms. If they don’t help with the construction, they will not have toilets or washrooms. The following is a picture of the washroom wall--this is where we're at with the construction of the latrines.
One of the biggest problems among the poor is the lack of education, and in Haiti it is no different. The NGOs that arrive in Haiti to build and give away numerous free houses deal with the homeless situation without addressing the underlying problems. Eric and I, as educators in academia, committed to teaching as our first priority in Haiti even if that meant impacting less lives and accomplishing fewer goals. With education as our primary goal, we opened the door to a whole new set of frustrations that we never would have encountered had we just handed out the houses for free.
I’m amazed by how essential some basic life lessons can be. We take it for granted that our parents taught us from a young age, and it became common sense to us. Not everyone in the world has been so lucky to have this wisdom from the beginning, and in Haiti we see people suffering because they lack this knowledge—
Money does not grow on trees (or in their case, money does not grow on foreigners); you have to work hard to earn it.
Outward beauty is not nearly as important as who you are, the things you do for your family or the things you do for a friend.
There were many things I had hoped to teach the two families, none of which could be taught in a classroom. Our team from the US joined them in the construction so that we could be role models for them. Every single one of us on the team, including Acliche, left an easier job behind to pick up a shovel and work in the dirt with them. My point to them was not the fact that all of them had to become construction workers and love it. I hope that somewhere along the way, they saw the importance of not just having faith in God for their needs, but bringing themselves to action (James 2:14). What the families may not have understood was that none of us were accustomed to this type of work. Brant and Matt, who lead the construction, were used to supervising construction, not doing it—picking up the phone, placing an order for cement and telling the truck where to dump it.
I spent the afternoon with a friend yesterday who said she never imagined that I was the type to do construction. And that is exactly what I hoped the Haitians saw when they met me—that you don’t have to be the construction type to help your family put a roof over your heads. You don't have to be big and strong. You don't need any experience to follow Matt and Brant's instructions. When it comes to dire circumstances, you have to do what you need to in order to survive. Stop counting on someone else to do the work for you! And trying to prove my point, there I found myself in Haiti—in the middle of nowhere in Croix-des-Bouquets, a goat on one side of the property and a cow on the other—leaning hard on the hammer drill with all my might—all 120 lbs of me—trying to get that drill through the cement.
I'm grateful that my parents raised me to believe I can accomplish whatever I set my heart on. It’s my hope that the Haitian families we worked with will begin to believe that for themselves too.
I decided to take Acliche off the project from here on. The families are wasting his time with their apathy and lack of diligence. From here on, the families will be on their own. All the materials have been bought and are on the property in their houses. Acliche has given the mason’s salary to Matthew 25 House and the mason’s phone number to the families. Matthew 25 House has informed the families that they need to help the mason finish the construction if they want toilets and washrooms. If they don’t help with the construction, they will not have toilets or washrooms. The following is a picture of the washroom wall--this is where we're at with the construction of the latrines.
One of the biggest problems among the poor is the lack of education, and in Haiti it is no different. The NGOs that arrive in Haiti to build and give away numerous free houses deal with the homeless situation without addressing the underlying problems. Eric and I, as educators in academia, committed to teaching as our first priority in Haiti even if that meant impacting less lives and accomplishing fewer goals. With education as our primary goal, we opened the door to a whole new set of frustrations that we never would have encountered had we just handed out the houses for free.
I’m amazed by how essential some basic life lessons can be. We take it for granted that our parents taught us from a young age, and it became common sense to us. Not everyone in the world has been so lucky to have this wisdom from the beginning, and in Haiti we see people suffering because they lack this knowledge—
Money does not grow on trees (or in their case, money does not grow on foreigners); you have to work hard to earn it.
Outward beauty is not nearly as important as who you are, the things you do for your family or the things you do for a friend.
There were many things I had hoped to teach the two families, none of which could be taught in a classroom. Our team from the US joined them in the construction so that we could be role models for them. Every single one of us on the team, including Acliche, left an easier job behind to pick up a shovel and work in the dirt with them. My point to them was not the fact that all of them had to become construction workers and love it. I hope that somewhere along the way, they saw the importance of not just having faith in God for their needs, but bringing themselves to action (James 2:14). What the families may not have understood was that none of us were accustomed to this type of work. Brant and Matt, who lead the construction, were used to supervising construction, not doing it—picking up the phone, placing an order for cement and telling the truck where to dump it.
I spent the afternoon with a friend yesterday who said she never imagined that I was the type to do construction. And that is exactly what I hoped the Haitians saw when they met me—that you don’t have to be the construction type to help your family put a roof over your heads. You don't have to be big and strong. You don't need any experience to follow Matt and Brant's instructions. When it comes to dire circumstances, you have to do what you need to in order to survive. Stop counting on someone else to do the work for you! And trying to prove my point, there I found myself in Haiti—in the middle of nowhere in Croix-des-Bouquets, a goat on one side of the property and a cow on the other—leaning hard on the hammer drill with all my might—all 120 lbs of me—trying to get that drill through the cement.
I'm grateful that my parents raised me to believe I can accomplish whatever I set my heart on. It’s my hope that the Haitian families we worked with will begin to believe that for themselves too.
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