Tuesday - Testing the Waters

Tuesday we had a new driver named Mario, who like Ronnie did not speak English.

With the driver, on my insistence as the self-appointed Chief Security Officer (CSO) for the trip, we hired an interpreter. His name is Mark, and he spent 19 of his 30 odd years in Miami where some of his family still live. He was an interesting person to talk to, and didn't sugarcoat things.

On the ride to Blanchard that morning we saw a Haitian Car Wash. A Haitian car wash is performed by street children with a towel as the car drives slowly through the congested traffic. The boy wipes the car when it stops and runs after it, or if it has a good bumper or anything he could stand on, he’ll jump on board and wait until it stops again before resuming the washing. The street scenes are always wild, wild with lots of people crammed into taps taps, backs of trucks, sometimes even jumping on trucks with or without the driver’s consent! Vendors everywhere, women walking with loads on their heads.

We got lost on the way to Blanchard because neither Mark or Mario had been there before. Ended up driving through all sorts of back alleys of Blanchard where are very few cars, even through a market street with fruit stands in the road so that there was barely room to pass through. Mario began asking people where “Pastor Leon’s” place. Finally an old man got in the car with us and directed us. The CSO was not happy about this!

At last we arrived at Blanchard. Progressing to the office I found the test culture from the deep well was still negative – it was still yellow - negative, by the way, is good when it comes to test results for germs. But the second culture was positive. I must now explain that the previous afternoon, one of the workers who helps out around the Blanchard site had led me to what I thought was the shallow well. This was a pit with cement lining partially covered by boards around the side of the school building next to the compound wall behind the kitchen. Later I was to learn that it was just a pit dug to get water for construction, but at the time I thought it was the shallow well that was hooked up to the portable pump, so I had to take a sample.


This morning – Tuesday – the water sample from the shallow well had already turned black and smelled foul. I had just created my very own weapon of mass destruction! At the Clean Water University they had cautioned us to make sure we disposed of such samples carefully. If it gets on your hands you may get very sick, even die. And nothing must be left of the little plastic bag where the culture is inculcated, lest a Third World child pick it thinking it may be useful for something.

I needed to get some Clorox and some gloves to dispose of the sample properly, so Pam and I walked over to the clinic. There were some Haitian men and women in the front room waiting to be seen, but we were taken back into the clinic hallway lined with store rooms, offices, and examination rooms where we met a nurse that speaks English. We also met a Doctor. But they had no gloves in the clinic, and of course no running water - not yet.

Meanwhile, Doug, Ed, and Greg had been working. The solar panels were re-oriented to face southwards at a 20 degree incline, and they were also working on repositioning one of the huge black 300 gallon tanks over the school room roof so that it would sit on top of a load bearing wall. I learned that there is still one big problem: no arrangements have been made yet to remove the hand pump from the well, obtain the proper hose and drop the submersible pump down the deep hole.

There was nothing we could do about removing the hand pump without Pastor Leon hiring some contractors, but he was busy on errands to different places. When he came back in the afternoon he said told that he had talked to some contractors but they said they were busy and hadn’t typed up an estimate yet.

We showed Pastor Leon the picture of the positive (black) bacteria culture from the shallow well, but he told us we had tested the wrong well. We couldn’t get to the well we were supposed to test, he said. Test the water in the tanks now which had been pumped from that well. I talked to Doug about this and he threw up his hands in confusion and asked “How much does it cost to test the water in the tank?” Nothing, obviously, so I started yet another test.

Back at Saint Joseph's after dinner, I talked to Darren Ell, a journalist from Canada. He has been interviewing political prisoners and people that have been brutalized. His campaign is against “impunity.” As I write this he is probably still in Haiti. He had posted some pictures when I looked at ww.darrenell.com, maybe when he returns there will be more info on the site about his trip.

Finally that evening we had another treat – a performance of Godspell by the boys of St Josephs. They were joined by KC, a young woman from Baltimore that had some significant roles in the play, as well as singing. It was a good performance but I enjoyed the previous evening’s resurrection dance theater more.

Saint Joseph’s is like a bed and breakfast where you have to share the bathrooms. One has to be strategic about getting to the shower when its not busy! And the shower itself…is a bit different. This may seem like a long blog to you, but believe it or not there’s plenty of detail I’m leaving out. For a detailed discussion of showers and Saint Joseph’s I refer to Roy’s blog post on “a cup of water” at http://web.mac.com/royhoward/iWeb/SayingGrace/Blog/840BF1A8-32B4-44E2-9755-A315FAB5F7E6.html.