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Earthquake Update from Hope House
the following are daily emails from Debbie Berquist, VOH Director for the week of Jan 31-Feb 6, 2010
Feb 6, 6:30 pm Good evening one and all:
I got Jim off at 6:15 to the airport with Marie and her crew and then rousted the Hamilton TV guys out of bed at 7:45. In between time I welcomed Wilner...yeehaw! and we had a little visit. He got the bus at 3:00 AM in Deschapelles and was at our door by 6:30.......the driver must have flown. Wilner knew nothing of it as he slept all of the way.
By 8:30 having fed all the men we were on the road to Agape. Naturally this time I left extra early (last week I was late) and traffic was not as bad and we arrived early. Not to waste time we went to the grocery store, changed money and got a few more provisions.
Agape was PACKED with donated goods...medical supplies, tinned food, water, baby food and more. We who were working could hardly move. Once the folks started coming to get their mail what a zoo!!! I tell you we all worked up a good sweat. I was in the peanut butter, soup, water and hygiene corner. Wilner had one foot in that area but another in flashlight, batteries, candles, books etc corner. We had to keep unpacking boxes and making sure those taking the donations, remembered to leave some for folks coming after them. There was still plenty left we when closed up shop at 12:00 or so. People will be able to help themselves next week..for those who didn't make it this week. It is a godsend for so many people run orphanges, help their neighbourhood people etc. I managed to get some more articles to give to the staff in Feb.
Epi Dor was open so I grabbed us each a hamburger and a coke while Wilner watched over the car which was loaded to the hilt. We ate our lunch on the steps of the Agape office. Then we proceeded down Delmas as Wilner wanted to see (but at the same time didn't want to) some of the damage caused by the earthquake. It sure made it all that more real to him and I know it was not an easy drive for him. We went by the school where Darline and Phailande, our two university students studying nursing, had been attending. I am attaching two pictures for you to see. You will see that indeed the Lord was looking over them to allow them to leave that building in good health. I learned the Director Mme Bruyn whom I had met, survived and is now in the US recovering from injuries she sustained.
  Still heading toward home we detoured into the Visa Lodge to see how it fared after passing by Jack Walls Guest house a landmark for many visitors. It is now a flattened pancake. The hotel and restaurant was hopping..not a space to be had in the parking lot. I jumped out quickly to run in to give my greetings to the staff that I know well...having been there with so many team members over the past year and also while I was at HAS. Happily all of their staff survived but again like everyone..they lost family members and property. That reminds me several folks have asked about the Historic Park Canne a Sucre restaurant across from the Embassy. I haven't been inside but I see from the road that the water wheel was severely damaged and the stage area was also ruined. I noticed they had workers in there taking down the rubble and cleaning up. The family that owns that also owns the big furniture store next door and it suffered pretty heavy damages..although didn't collapse so they may have been able to save a lot of their stock.
Two more stops for money changing and a fill up and then we were home and unloading the car. Once that was done Wilner had a little siesta and I caught up on some bookwork.
I will leave you now as I promised myself I would not get trapped into a lot of correspondence and instead would spend some "quality" time with Wilner....I am sure you will all understand this desire.
Have a good weekend all......continue to thank everyone for their prayers and messages of concern.
Debbie
Feb 5, 6:30 pm Hello all: ...another Friday is here...where did the week go! Caught up on some more paper work this AM and then went out do some errands. First stop the MSPP office in Croix des Bouquets. I was happy to learn that our new Dr and the nurse Miss Jeanne that I have worked with both survived the earthquake. Both were out in the field somewhere so I didn't get to see them but spoke with the security guard. Their office secretary was not fortunate. The office is still standing with minimal damage. After that I went and checked out several of the iron worker shops that I have frequented. For the most part they are okay, just suffering from lack of business...so they will be happy to see our visitors that is for sure!
As I was going by the high school in Croix des Bouquets the school yard was packed with people all lined up in an orderly fashion. They were all there to recieve a food distribution that was taking place. There was a big armoured vehicle and several soldiers out at the front gate. I was totally amazed at the order inside and that people were not clamoring at the fences and gate to get in. For sure there were folks looking on but it wasn't the madhouse one would have expected. I just heard on the radio, a report from WFP (World Food Program) that they have thus far distributed food to over 722,000 people in the last 6 days and distribution continues.
Stopped at my friendly propane dealers and changed a bit of money and also got 5 gallons of paint......yes one stop shopping in Haiti...where else would you expect to be able to buy paint but at a propane shop.
My apartment is still as is. My Dominican neighbours are having to purchase a tanker of water to come and fill the outside holding tank as they are still unable to get water pumped up from the well and the reserve tank is just about empty. I felt a bit guilty using some of the water for my plants and must admit I gave them a reduced "drink" than normal. I'm thinking I may just bring them down here for the interim...but it does give me a good excuse to go and check on things inside.....all okay..just getting dustier!
I was a bit concerned for Gladys at Little Children of Jesus as she seemed quite down the last time I saw her, so I stopped by to check in on her. All of the stories she is hearing are having its affect on her warm tender heart. I was glad I stopped as she will head to Canada tomorrow to visit with her children for a couple of weeks. She doesn't want to be gone too long but just felt she needed to get away for a few days. We got a few projects lined up for the team arriving at the end of the month who will be helping out there some of the days they will be here.
I completed my rounds at Marie's as I had a call from Jim stating she was not feeling very well. She was relaxing in her new bedroom (under a tin roof instead of a concrete one) and was feeling okay...just suffering from a good bout of indigestion. We had a little chat and shared a few laughs during the little time I spent with her. I left her getting her nose into a book I had just happened to bring along from my apt for her. It was probably good for her to have some "time out" at any rate.
Last night I didn't sleep too well so I took a little time out myself this afternoon and had a bit of a siesta. On top of other reasons for the restlessness a large plane took off at 2:45 AM and for some reason the noise of it woke me and scared the heck out of me.....for my few disoriented minutes I thought the generator was blowing up (it wasn't even running) and that there was a fire by the guest rooms (that was the security light by the outside tables). Once I "came too" I realized it was the plane engines I was hearing and everything was okay but it took a while for my heart to stop pounding. That's what I get for having too much of a vivid imagination.
Now Jim and I await the return of the TV guys and to hear the report of their day's adventure. Jim has his bags packed as he will start his journey back to the US tomorrow. He has a seat booked on a plane to the DR and will figure out the next step once he gets that far.
Tomorrow is going to be a GREAT day....as Wilner is coming to visit. It has been over a month since we saw each other and the first time since the earthquake. I know he will be touched when he sees the damage around PAP. He will come and help me with Agape duty ...they have more relief articles available and I am trying to collect things to be able to make another bag of a sort for everyone when they get their Feb pay.
I hear parts of the States are getting hit by big snowstorms. For all of you thus involved...stay warm. Marni already promised that MAYBE she would go out an make a snow angel in my honour tomorrow.
She did! click here Bon nwi
Debbie
Feb 4, 8:30 pm Once again, greetings from Haiti. This is going to be a relatively short report because something really unusual happened today....I actually got to sit in the office for a WHOLE day or at least until about 4:00 when I headed to the airport..more on that in a minute. I can't even remember the last time I had such a day.....it was a real treat! I don't need to bore you with details of paper work, email correspondence, payroll spread sheets etc....you can get the picture. Instead I will share some of the experiences of the gentlemen that I picked up at the airport and that are guests at Hope House at least for tonight and possibly a couple more. Nick Dixon, newscaster and John Tuk camera man are from CHCH TV in my hometown of Hamilton. They are here doing various stories because there are so many folks from Hamilton involved in Haiti one way or the other. They arrived in PAP on a military helicopter coming from the HMCS Halifax which is stationed in Jacmel. It has been there I think they said since Sunday or Monday. The boat came via Jamaica and before landing in Jacmel they dropped a bunch of soldiers and supplies off in Leogane, where there is a Canadian contigency working. They said that before the ship arrived their had been very little aid getting into Jacmel aside from what the local NGO's could provide. Part of the town stood up pretty well but another did not. One of the days they visited a displaced person camp set up for about 8,000. A great service the fellows and boad have brought is providing water for the towns people via big huge water bladders they can fill up from water they can treat through reverse osmosis. Pretty amazing! With the little they saw of PAP as we drove from the airport their impression were that things were worse of here. For anyone interested in more details you can check out Nick's blog at www.nickdixon.ca
I hope you all don't go into withdrawal symptoms from getting such a short report but that is really it for today. I didn't even hear much on the radio .....concentrating more on my work I guess.
a demain,
Debbie
Feb 3, 9:30 pm Good Evening: I am getting a late start to my day's report and hope it is not inconveniencing anyone. I rolled in from the school at 6:30 and then spent the next half hour looking for the key to the food cupboard as that is where the clam chowder we were having for dinner was hidden away. After retracing my steps about 3 times, I finally found it......another proof that I have a lot going on in my head at one time....I seem to start one thing and then go off in two other directions as I remember various things I have to do. My biggest boo boo so far was turning the generator on but forgetting to change the breaker over so it was really firing up the batteries.....at least it wasn't a total waste as I got several loads of laundry done...good thing Joel and Fleury are at my side to help keep me on track. The early morning was spent with paper work and the computer. At 9:00 I headed out to Little Children of Jesus to pick up the person that was taking me to the orphange where Whitney and Philip were moved to. I was following up on them for a couple in the US who is in the process of trying to get their adoption on the move. For those who don't know the two young children were found in the streets of Gonaive after the hurricanes. There were taken in by Food for the Poor and until two months ago or so had been at the Little Children of Jesus orphange for handicapped children. They have since been moved to La Maison d'Amour (house of love) orphange also run by FFTP for children who are not handicapped. It has been a good move for the two of them. I noticed they were much more lively and interacted with the other children, laughing and smiling away. One of the Sister's was telling me how much Philip enjoys soccer. Luckily the orphanage suffered only minor damage as they currently house 117 children (and are expecting more). As expected they could not give me any further information about the two children without some formal notification from the head office in PAP.
|   Once back at Hope House I got Jean organized to go out and get the empty jerry cans filled with diesel...I am keeping on top of this ...yesterday Clovis told me he had a hard time getting fuel. Today though I filled up my car with no problem but it can change from day to day, so I want to keep things as full as possible. In between these errands he is working on fixing up our second vehicle. Tomorrow we will chase down some propane gas as I found a place that has some.
By then it was time to head to the grocery store to buy plastic bags in order to prepare the food for distribution on Wed and finally to the school to meet Clovis and the engineer. They were late...not surprising, but I filled the time by preparing some of the small bags of vitamins we will give each child next week.
The engineer did a pretty thorough job..we were even up on the roof...me too ( I was glad I had worn my culotte skirt). He found lots of things we had missed. We now have a list of repairs to make but bottom line was that he felt we could go ahead and use the school while we made the various repairs. I felt he really knew what he was doing and am comfortable with his recommendations. He was even pointing out other aspects of the building which we should attend to to make it safer. Before leaving, we learned from KPS that the inspector from the Ministry of Ed'n and their engineer had been by to look over the property. KPS showed them around and pointed out various things he had noticed. We don't have any idea of the results of their visit but Clovis will follow up.
Did I mention that things are changing constantly?.....well Clovis informed me that BND has cancelled the food distribution for next week...so much for the 500 plastic bags I already purchased. It seems most likely that school will be scheduled to start at the beginning of March and they felt we should keep our stock of food to be able to feed the kids when they get back to school. We only have about a month and a bit worth of food and it is unclear what WFP (world food program) will have for BND and their school canteen program. On the positive side of things BND is going to give us 700 or so kits to hand out to the kids and the leftovers we can give to the staff. They will deliver the kits on Tues and we will hand them out Wed. We still plan to ask the University students to help with that. ...as long as things don't change again between now and then.
Chatter on the radio:
. a call to NGO partners to attend meetings called at the various city halls around town in order to coordinate the food distribution....some areas are getting 2 or 3 distributions per day and others are getting none......the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing....not surprising when so many hands are in the pie. I think it is slowly getting better, although true that some areas still need help. Sad to say everyone is getting on the bandwagon and even those who are not in real need are chasing after the aid....some then turn around and sell what they get...at escalated prices. Gladys told me that a tarp on the black market was going for $100.00 US.!!! This is not a phenomen for Haiti only....I have seen that happening in Somalia and Burundi as well and think it even happens at home.
. asking that those sending AID do so keeping in mind the dignity of the Haitian people and even in crisis treat them with respect.....do not send "junk" to Haiti with the thought that "well someone could use it" . Sad to say this happens.
.health discussions re: waste management, use of clean water, hand washing, sexual violence, care for People living with AIDS.
. discussions about post traumatic stress syndrome, how to relieve stress etc
. the possibility of another big earthquake hitting Haiti.....many people are panicked about this. Clovis told me today that a team of people from Perdue Universtiy had come to Haiti and from their evaluation people are understanding their will be another big earthquake in the not too distanct future. I don't know how much is truth or fiction.
I think I have filled you full of enough information for today. Until tomorrow
Debbie
Feb 2, 9:00 pm Three weeks post earthquake.......it seems like an instant ago and yet it also feels like it was years ago.....I guess because the days have been so packed since then. As usual I started the day sipping my coffee and getting to the first few email messages of the day....ones I wake up in the night thinking..oops I forgot about writing to so and so. Then I was on the road heading to the school as today was tour day of staff member's houses. I couldn't believe it when I got to Karfou Marasa and there was no traffic jam. I breezed right on through. I was thanking my lucky stars because just a bit further down the road here comes this LONG convoy guarded by US military vehicles, heading into PAP.
At the school I took another walk around to check again for cracks or problems since seeing the ones in the chapel. I noticed two more in the dining area....I may have missed them the first time around or they have appeared since. Clovis has arranged for a gov't certified engineer to come and inspect tomorrow....this will be unofficial as we have to wait for the Scholastic engineers to come but I am glad to have a second opinion. This fellow is going around checking gov't income tax offices (DGI) and since he was in our area agreed to help Clovis. We will meet him at 3:00 PM.
Then I was off with LouLou, Dor and Sylvern to see the staff houses. First stop though was to give my condolences to Maxi Charles president of the school parents committee. He lost a huge house in PAP, his mother in law and a granddaughter. I also passed on the prayers and the concern of the Board members to him.
My visits to the staff houses and surrounding neighbourhoods was quite interesting. I have wanted to get to some of the local communities since starting at VOH but was also caught up doing other things. The conditions I saw were like so many areas in rural Haiti and up in the mountains. Houses are still made with sticks and mud and with thatched rooves. Electricity is rare, wells great distances from the houses, very few latrines. Seeing these areas, where so many of the VOH students comes from, makes one appreciate all that much more what opportunities the VOH school and support bring to them. For sure there are other little school dotted here and there in the various areas, but very few if any, offer the same benefits that VOH does. It is no wonder that so many people line up in Sept to try to get their child registered at the school.
I am attaching two pictures taken from Mme Beauge. They are pretty typical views of the houses in the areas I visited and of the houses that a lot of our school kids live in. There are some concrete block houses with tin rooves but not a lot. I saw a number of the school kids as I drove around and they were all out playing around.
  As I visited the various family clusters of house, the thought did go through my head that I would have to verify that what I was being shown really belonged to that particular staff member and not to maybe a different member of his /her family. People are so desparate for aid and help that they often go to any lengths to get it.....including telling little white lies...a sad but true reality. Walking in their shoes though, I may have been guilty of doing the same thing. It makes assisting people a little more challenging but it is worth it when so many are in such great need.
I went from terrain that was green and lush with big banana plants and other vegetation growing to areas where I half expected to see a giraffe sticking its head up from the thorn trees, it so reminded me of the dry scrubby lands of thorn trees and cactus I have visited in parts of Africa.
On the way back we stopped to visit Wadson (one of the university students) who is still recovering from injuries to his leg following the earthquake. He was running down some stairs from a 3rd floor balcony when some debris fell on him and trapped him in the building. Fortunately the fellow student who had been with him escaped unharmed and came back to look for Wadson. After about an hour he was freed from the debris, but only after someone took a hammer to the large block of concrete that was trapping his foot. No wonder his leg was swollen for some days afterward. He seemed to be doing okay and was getting ready to head out for a follow up visit at the clinic in Fond Parisien.
My last exploration was driving up a rocky road to Galette Chambon which is the area up behind the school. I recieved an email from a Pastor who is involved with a Baptist church in the area and he hadn't had any word so I told him I would see what I could find out. Again it was good to see as a number of our kids are also from this area. I found a church but since I had very little information to go on am not 100% it is the right one...although the fellow in charge assured me it was......he and several others were so hopeful that I would be bringing them something. The fellows including Pastor Claude (another member of the parents committee) who had joined us for this part of the trip, assured them I was just checking it out for someone else.
I made a quick visit to Marie's on my way back to see the progress being made on taking the church /orphanage down. I will include a picture of it....you won't recognize it from the pictures I first took...and think of the effort it took to take it down...all of it was done by fellow wielding large sledgehammers and regular hammers....a mighty feat for sure!
 The day ended with a meeting with Clovis who had good news...BND has agreed for us to distribute the food in the depot to the students from K1 to grade 9. That is the policy for BND. We will start dividing up the food on Friday/Saturday and will do the distribution on Wed. We plan to get several police officers for security and will have plenty of people to help. The University students had called earlier in the day wondering it I had any projects for them....so now they are set to come and help bag the food and distribute it. Clovis is looking after all of the details and I will go and help as I can. Other good news is that we are 99% sure that we will get some relief kits from BND that we can give to the staff. I got that tip while listening into a conversation at Agape on Sat and called Clovis and asked him to check into it while he was asking about the school food.
I will also prepare a month or two of vitamins for each child to take home too.
The last bit of news was that the Ministry of Ed'n has decided that children at least in the West and Southwest depts when they will go back to school will be sitting in tents instead of the standing schools....even if they are checked out as being okay. The Ministry is to provide tents for the schools. No date is set for the beginning of school for us. Part of the reason for the use of tents is for psychological reasons. People are pretty panicked here about the possibilities of another huge earthquake....
and those folks are the highlights for today.
Debbie
As planned I made it to the university students housing today with 3 of them tagging along with us and three others arrived via tap tap as they were too late to get to us. I was expecting to see a lot more damage in the area as first reports said all of the surrounding houses collapsed, when actually most of them are standing...although with what damage inside who knows.
They have pretty much cleared out their personal belongings. I left with a few items that we had there such as the small fridge, the propane burners and tank, several chairs and some dirty dishes. The smell in the kitchen which I attended to was pretty "high" ...food was still sitting on the dishes from the 12th. The cockroaches...(YUCH!) were having a field day. I will have to go another day to get the bunk beds and mattresses. The house was locked up quite well and I think they will be okay there for a little while longer. We would really need to take the big truck but with people camping in the streets it is difficult reconnoitering with a pick up let alone a big truck. Octere showed me where he and several of the other students had been studying in the house when the earthquake started. They were actually up on the roof balcony. Two of the others told me of their run from the Internet service they were at which was located quite close to the main Cathedral. None of them are sleeping too well and often wake up from bad dreams. Despite all of that there are signs of some good spirit as I heard them joking and laughing as we drove to the house.
Fighting traffic all the way, we then headed to Petionville so I could get to Access Haiti to cancel the Internet service at my apt and also for the one we had at the student's house. It was my first time up and over that way and got to see first hand the destruction in that area. Some places just slid off the side of the mountains....to be truthful I was expecting to see more houses down than were....it's a miracle really considering how they are built so helter skelter on the sides of the hills.
The public park across from the Kinam Hotel is now turned into a campsite of a sorts and that is how it is in any of the public squares and parks.
 campsite across from the Kinam Hotel at Place St Pierre in Petionville One of them that is down by the airport which last week was like a shanty town with all of the stick and sheet shelters is now organized into a nice orderly camp with big white tents furnished by the Taiwanese....or at least that is my presumption seeing the flag flying in the middle of the camp....  upgraded campsite thanks to the Taiwanese I imagine that we will see more of these types of camps as the IDP (internally displaced persons) camps get established. People are busy taking down their ruined houses..with hammers, sledgehammers and their own brute strenght. It is tiring just watching them go at those big chunks of cement to break them up. Bulldozers and dump trucks are also busy with the clean up. Each time I see all of this I just keep shaking my head in disbelief....all of this as a result of 35 seconds of shaking!!! I just can't imagine what the sound of all that concrete crashing to the ground must have sounded like.
On the way home, we started the process of changing some money again and I also stopped to purchase some high blood pressure pills I neeed for several of our staff members.
other tidbits from the day:
Schools will reopen Monday in 8 out of the 10 departments (states/provinces)..the one's in the West and Southwest dept will remain closed. That will include VOH as we are in the West dept....which is the largest one of them all.
Gov't workers are scheduled to return back to work in two weeks.......I was going to say gov't offices will open in two weeks but that is difficult to say with so many of them destroyed
There is a lot of chatter on the radio about the rebuilding of Haiti......particularly looking at more decentralization of services, schools etc to other areas of the country. It will be interesting to see how things move along over the coming months and over the next year or two to come.
Digicel the big cell phone company here is giving away free phones and new numbers to all of those who lost their phones.....you can well imagine the lineup outside each of the Digicel offices...they are just about as long as the ones at the banks.
Shawn headed back to the States today. Jim dropped him at the airport and he was assured that yes he could get out today on one of the planes carrying AID in....he didn't know when he would leave or where he would end up but he got a ride out of Haiti....just had to show his American passport. Somone mentioned to Jim they are really trying to get organized so that the commercial flights can start again.
wow...it is already 6:30.....I must go and fire up the generator to boost up the invertor batteries and get our leftover pumpkin soup heated up for Jim and I.
until tomorrow.......we keep you in our prayers with thanks for all of your concern and efforts on our behalf.
Debbie
Jan 31 , 9:00 pm Hello all: Here I am back again..feeling somewhat refreshed from a little catnap I was able to take this afternoon, since my night "off" was not as restful as I had hoped. I have dinner in the oven cooking and have just cleaned up a big spill of sugar.....as if I needed to add that to my list of tasks......and now have a few minutes to send off my missive for the day. I owe you for yesterday so lets start there. I headed out to Agape in what I thought was plenty of time but ended up arriving 1/2 hour late because the traffic was so horrendous..there were bottlenecks everywhere. The main bridge at Croix des Missions (right near us) is opened again and I would have thought it would help but no luck. I took a chance on heading up a back road I know and luckily there was little damage in that area so the road was relatively clear and I bypassed a big long line up on Delmas
It was good so see so many familiar faces at the office and to know so many survived...however like everywhere else, staff members or their families perished and many lost buildings or had a lot of damage. There were boxes of canned goods and other items that folks in the US had donated and we were each allowed to take a few items for our missions...I stocked up on Vienna sausage and a few other items. For all who mailed birthday wishes..thanks for the beautiful cards.
From there I proceeded to CARITAS which is a Catholic NGO. A friend, Katja, that I worked with at HAS came from Germany to work with them. She is residing at Delmas 65 and going out to Leogane (southwest of PAP ) each day. She said that the town is about 80% destroyed. There are a number of AID agencies setting up medical services.....MSF, CARITAS another German organization and a Cdn one. She thinks soon they will be tripping over each other. We had a short but nice visit and then I dropped off mail for some other friends and headed home. As I drove along I was thinking about a life worth living as a result of a comment my sister in law made. It was reassuring to see signs of life going on in Haiti and that for many it still is a life worth living. I passed a car that was getting loaded up with a bride in all her fine bridal regalia and her "marin" /maid of honour making sure the gown didn't touch the dirty ground. Another fellow I took note of was strolling along with his dry cleaning slung over his shoulder, heading for home. The streets are busy with vendors selling their everyday whares.......Katja's comment was if you didn't see all of the crushed buildings you would not get the impression that anything happened. For sure there are and will be many challenges to face but seeing these signs of "life" keeps one from throwing their hands up in total despair but instead urges you to keep on fighting the good fight.
Today as planned we headed out to church with Dumas, Jorel and Elysee...our discussion being whether to have church in the chapel or under the trees since people are encouraged not to meet in buildings. After some careful thought we decided to use the chapel but sat in the last pews where the flooring was over solid ground, instead of at the front where it was over two other classrooms. Everyone felt comfortable with this....we adults were more concerned than the kids. I am attaching a picture of one of the girls who got up and sang...at the point in the service where anyone who wishes to sing can. Her comment before singing was that she had no riches or "things" to offer to the Lord but that she could offer up her voice by singing a song of praise and adoration for Him. I was quite touched by her comments.
 Following the church service I met with the University students whom I hadn't seen since the earthquake although I have talked to several on the phone. It was good to see them but I also came away with a heavy heart feeling so badly for them. Here are a bunch of shining young people who had so much going for them and a bright future ahead of them...now the rug has literally been pulled from under them. I think you can imagine how discouraged and disheartened they are feeling....not only are the dealing with the trauma suffered during the earthquake but also dealing with the realities of a very different future than they had envisioned. Post secondary schooling has been pretty much wiped out as the majority of it was based in PAP. There are a few in Cap Haitian and in the south at Les Cayes....but nothing that would be able to cope with setting up a whole new post secondary education system. Many of the school owners, directors, deans etc were killed in their buildings. So the ramifications are immense and one wonders how many months/years it will take to get things going again. It was hard to try to give them words of support and encouragement when I can understand perfecty their concerns.
The only student not to attend was Wadson who is still having problems with his injured foot, suffered as he was running to get out of this classroom. I am going to try to go by his house on Tues when I am out in Ganthier.
Afterward while talking to Jorel and Elysee I noticed a crack in the wall of the chapel and then they pointed out a second one in the same area on the other side. They have appeared since after the earthquake because they weren't there when I first checked. There is a crack in the floor but it has been there for awhile but we all think it looks a bit bigger than it was. It doesn't appear that it is major damage but will definately keep an eye on it.. I remembered that one of our high school teachers is an engineer so I am going to ask Clovis to ask him to come for a first "official" inspection....hopefully sometime during the week.
I passed by my house today and found that my Dominican neighbours had returned. Their generator is a blessing for them since there is not other source of electricity. For now they are getting water from the reserve tank in the yard.......no electricity..no motor to run the well pump to get water into our rooftop holding tanks. They were happy to see me and had even watered my plants for me. They said 5 out of 6 of the industrial buildings where they work are still standing, only the one collapsed and very few lost their lives there. The work is starting up again which is a great thing for so many who count on the pay envelopes from those jobs.....let alone all of the street vendors that also "live" off of them.
Now the day is done and another week about to start. I already have a number of chores lined up so know it will also be a busy one.
take care.....until tomorrow
Debbie
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