Greetings from Haiti!

This post comes to you from Leogane, Haiti where I’ve been working for the past two weeks helping to clear the destruction from the earthquake that hit 6 months ago. The interwebs are a bit spotty out here but oddly I don’t miss my much beloved internet culture too much. I’ve been busy.

My morning starts roughly around 6:00AM when the Haitian sun peaks through my tent and it begins to heat up. There is no such thing as sleeping in here. Days can be as hot as 110F unless you find yourself in a sudden rainstorm complete with booming thunder and crisp bolts of lightening cutting up the sky. I put on some shorts, a sturdy sportsbra, and lace up into a pair of workboots that are caked with mud and normally filled with yesterday’s rocks. By 7:30 AM crews of roughly 15 people all pile into a truck, or as it is called out here a “tap-tap” and we sit on a railing that surrounds the truck bed. If you think that’s sketchy, it isn’t uncommon to see 5 people all piled onto the back of a motorcycle. Add the unpaved roads, the rubble, meandering goats, constant rain, and children in the streets and you have an interesting ride.

My job here is to clear out the rubble of demolished homes. In Haiti, it is often far too expensive to build with wood. The homes here were constructed out of cinderblock and concrete with a healthy dose of rebar. These are not materials that hold up during an earthquake well. Nearly every structure in my city here has been destroyed. People are living in tent camps, sometimes as many as 20 people in one tent. There isn’t room for human life amongst the rubble. This is why I head out everyday with wheelbarrows, shovels, pick axes, and most of all sledge hammers.

A roof made of concrete supported by pillars will often pancake down onto the foundation. It’s astounding to see 2-3 story buildings reduced to about 8 feet. One major task in clearing a rubble site is to sledge things into manageable pieces. This means the columns, the roof, and the walls. When I arrived, I wasn’t exactly handy with much of anything. At my first site there was no shade whatsoever and we were working in a heat wave. Things that would feel easy at 70-80F seem to be impossible at 105F. A thermometer on the ground indicated that the rubble itself clocked in at 125F. I drink, quite literally, at least a gallon of water everyday. So far heat exhaustion has been kept at bay. Eventually I adjusted. I can work long and strong and often times into our official team breaks. “Just five more blows with this sledge, just one more wheelbarrow, just this one piece of rebar…” I want to finish as much as a I can.

We work from 7:30-11:30AM when the midday heat is too much for anyone. After a brief siesta and some rice and beans we load up our tap-taps once again and work from 1:30-4:30PM. The afternoons are hot, but they are quick. There is always more smashing, more shoveling, more clipping rebar. The locals watch and sometimes they even join in to help. Children do their best as well. If there is one change I hope to bring here (among my many goals) it’s to demonstrate the fact that I went from struggling with an 8lb sledge to sucessfully wielding our 16lb sledge. I see girls and women watching me and I know that I’m breaking a cultural pattern not only for their land but also for mine. Without this trip I would never have learned anything about demolition work. Now it invigorates me.

I am sweaty, always. My work shirt clings tightly to my body and my lover and I steal away for kisses, groups, and love making in our tent. During one tremendous storm the lightening would electrify the sky filling it with bright light. We let the pounding rain and the thunder cover our noise, but I doubt it did much good. We shared a mango there holding it between our mouths for sweet kisses and on our bellies for sustenance. We grabbed at each other to fend away those feelings of sadness and despair. It is in that moment, as close to one as two people can be, that we scared death away from the door. There are tall trees making up a jungle skyline and Voudou is commonly practiced. Many of the dieties here recognize the power of passion. Even in poverty in the camps of tent and the lack of food, beautiful children are born here every day. I work to build them a new world and I learn from the preseverance.

By the end of the night I am as sore as I have ever been in my life. My arms burn, my legs shake a bit. I don’t really eat much here, due in part to the extreme heat that kills my apetite and from the monotony of the meals. Brown rice with scattered beans, pasta with a ketchup sauce, eggs, and goat grilled to a crisp piece of char. I do sample the street food which can be a fried egg sandwich, grilled corn, or sausage. There are dough balls filled with goat or vegetables and you can also pick up mangos or melons. Still, I dream of food. My mouth waters at the thought of cheese, steak, and ice cream. After that thought I feel guilty. I have the privelege to fondly remember these foods and to return to them soon. I fill my plate with rice and beans for now.

The streets are mainly composed of one destroyed building after another. Cracked, crumbling, and ackwardly leaning over you can see the semblance of what was a small economy. It was not only homes that were destroyed but also commerce. It is going to take so much more time, energy, and money to even get Haiti back to where it was before this disaster and even that was recognized as being the most impoverished nation in the world. But it still has its own beautiful beaches and its own stunning sunsets. The hourglass is running lower with each day and I don’t want to leave. I want to keep working, I want to bring more people over. I want to make this place the tropical paradise it was destined to be before it became the best nightmare on earth.

Stay tuned.