This morning I went out to draw well water samples. HODR has partnered with Oxfam to help them with their well development projects. Oxfam has been putting in wells and treating the water here in Gonaives since the hurricane. As such HODR is drawing the water samples and bringing it back to the lab for testing. The neighborhood was poor, like everything else here. I hope to have some photos to post to the blog in the next couple of days. We are not allowed to take cameras to the job site, but HODR has assigns one person each morning to go to the various job sites to take photos. I need to get on the "family" computer to get them downloaded. Anyhow, the water sampling was quite fun. We wandered around one neighborhood, like all of Haiti, impoverished. The houses are close together and mud is piled in the streets (both from where the storm deposited the mud). Of course, the group (4 of us) "blancs" draws quite a crowd. We had a crowd following us immediately, mostly the children. Most of these kids that we were with today did not go to school. School here costs money and of course there is not much of that in this country. After we finished trying to find the wells, quite the adventure we dropped the samples off at the well. We will probably find out the results tomorrow. It guess most of the samples have come back healthy so that is good.
After lunch I went out in the mud on a "local team". A local team walks to their site. We always get mobbed by the children. They seem to really enjoy us. Aaron, our team leader for today for this project, is quite popular here. Today we did a bucket line at that last project. After the we finished the project we walked to find the next site. We thought we were at the right house, confirmed it about 15 times with the woman at the house, but when we got back tonight we figured out it was not the right house. We were tempted to put the mud back...just kidding.
Wednesday nights are spa nights. We soak our feet in buckets (go figure) and one of the folks here has scrubs that we can use. It felt great. My feet, and hands, are so soft. Hope I don't get any blisters tomorrow.
I have decided to go out with team "testosterone" tomorrow. One of the team leaders is hoping to test me. Evidently since I am a friend of Nate's he thinks I have that same drive! We shall see. Nate said something about it being the Midwestern work ethic!
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4 comments:
Why no cameras?
You go girl! Show those boys what you are made of! It sounds like you are having an amazing cultural experience! Can't wait to see pictures!
I'm sure your midwestern work ethic will hold up just fine!
Unfortunately there were 3 cameras stolen job sites in a certain neighborhood so HODR instituted a no camera policy. They allow one volunteer to go out a couple times a week to take photos of the job sites. Sad.
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