This has been a very hard week. The heat is so oppressive here and trying to do any construction work is a challenge to say the least. While it’s tough for me, there’s no escape for most of the people we’re helping as they’re living under tarps or run down tents with no running water, no food, no toilets, no anything… many are sick and malnourished. They seem to more used to the heat than we are but it’s still a constant factor making existence all the more difficult.
We’re been working hard at the construction site and in the clinic but after the first day, I haven’t been able to join the others at the site as Gail has had me working on a number of projects at the PID facility itself. Since the dorm is newly constructed, it still needed shelves to be hung in the various bedrooms, some repairs in the clinic and a new fence and a new overhang for the outside dining/meeting area.
Today in particular was very difficult in a different way… we went early in the morning to a “tent city” down the road that was set up on a pig farm. The difference is that these people, families, were displaced from Port-au-Prince after the earthquake hit and so were not used to living with nothing in the surrounding country. We went to give medicine to a father who’s wife and daughter were killed in the quake and is now taking care of 7 or 8 children on his own including a 7 year old son who has seizures constantly unless he’s on meds. Three of the other children had other medical issues like Ring Worm, leg infection, etc… After seeing this father doing his best to take care of his family, we went for an hour’s ride to go to church and then see a different side of Haiti at a beach “resort” of sorts. After seeing this father in the morning and then seeing people an hour away playing in the sun and ocean without a care except that their coconut shell cocktail was empty, was surreal and infuriating. I don’t know what to make of it still…
Tomorrow I need to finish up the various projects on my list and then we’ll start to think about coming back home. I hope all are well.
Bye for now,
