A Trip to Haiti: the Logistics

I'm glad to finally share with all of you that haven't heard about my trip to Haiti this past fall. I have so much to say that I decided to separate this blog into two different posts: Logistics and Observations/Impact. This first post will focus on the logistics of our trip, focusing on the task we had for the week. Next post I will share what impact we had on the community, and what impact the trip had on me personally.

Logistics:

On October 21st, two men from my church and I flew out of LAX for a week long trip to Haiti. After a short overnight stay in Florida, we arrived on Saturday, October 22 in Port au Prince, Haiti and traveled 18 miles west to the town of Grassier, our destination for the week. Before I get further into the week, let me introduce you to our team.

 Steve Smeltzer (left), myself, and David Zozaya (right) made up our team for the week. Directly after the earthquake, Steve connected with our pastor and both men agreed they wanted to get our church involved in helping Haiti. Steve organized the first trip in May 2010, and has lead two trips since then (including ours). David, twenty-six years old, has been on all three trips. It was a great blessing to travel and work with both of these men. Though are team was really small it gave us the opportunity to easily connect over the week.


During the week of construction on the church, we had two Haitians and one Colombian missionary help us construct the roof. The guy on the far left in the picture is Conception. He's 35 (his birthday was during the week we were there) and is from the town of Leogane, a small village about 5 miles from where we stayed. Directly to the right of Conception is Josie, the other local that helped us for the week. The little that I got to learn of Josie's life during the week absolutely blew me away. I think it was brought home a little more because we are the same age. At the age of twenty-five he is responsible for feeding his mother, his two nephews and his adopted son, along with sending his nephews and son to school. He looks for work 6 days/week if he does not have anything previously lined up. By Friday I noticed he wore flip flops to work everyday, and I asked him why. He told me he does this because he does not have enough money to buy proper shoes. I was struck by the fact that he was willing to adopt and care for another child while he did not have enough money to care for himself. This is just a small example of the situation many Haitians find themselves in - living in serious need. The last member of our team was Mario who is a Colombian missionary who has lived in Haiti for two years. He works full time with the organization we joined (Touch Global). He is the man in the very center of the picture. All of these men were a great joy to work with, and really fun. We had to communicate in Spanish, French, Creole, and English (all in bits and pieces), and learned the incredible efficiency of body language. We got the job done, and it was really fun to do it together.

On our first afternoon in the country we were introduced to our project for the week. The pastor in the picture above (far left) had lost his church (the new one shown in the background) in the earthquake, and the church currently met underneath a tarp stretched between some trees. Previous teams had built walls and trusses, and our job was to place the trusses on the walls with beams between them for the roofing support. At a later date, another group would place the tin roof after the money was raised. When we first saw the project, I was a little overwhelmed. Each truss was 35' long and weighed about 300 pounds, and at that time I didn't know about the help we'd get. I only new our team consisted of Steve, David and I. We spent the next couple days brainstorming ideas to begin implementing on Monday when we started construction. We ended up using some scaffolding to assist in lifting the truss above the walls, and with a lot of brute strength we got the trusses in place. Whenever construction techniques got a little sketch at best we'd just say "Well, when in Haiti?" I specifically remember Mario jumping from truss to truss 12 ft off the ground - at least some of us had hard hats on to keep the risk down slightly.

By Wednesday we had finished placing all of the trusses, and simply needed to anchor the ends securely to the wall to avoid up lift or sliding. Since we had made so much progress, we took the time to travel back into Port-au-Prince and do some construction. Absalom's school (the name of the place we went) had lost it's building in the earthquake and currently rents a building that is too small for it. As a result of needing space, they built a temporary roof outside and put tarp walls up for the classrooms. We had the opportunity to build plywood walls for the school and give them a more permanent structure. It was a long day of work, but we finished the project and the school principal, Absalom was very thankful for the help.

On Friday morning we finished the church structure, and visited an orphanage in the afternoon. Greg and Julie's Orphanage was nothing like I had imagined. For orphanages I had always pictured something like Orphan Annie with a large brick building and very dirty living conditions. On the contrary, the orphanage we visited, though very primitive, had a great environment established for the children. They basically functioned as a very large family, with what seemed like a great environment for the children to live in compared to living on the streets.

However, again I witnessed the need from Haiti. Greg shared that children will sometimes be simply left at there gate because the parents can't or won't keep them. Though these children are blessed to live in a place where they're fed, are taught, hear the gospel, and experience a family atmosphere, they still have so much they need including the specific attention of a personal family. We had a really fun time playing with the children, and even did a bit of gymnastics on the black top.