Haiti, Friday March 28: the Portland Pulley

After spending the morning at the hospital, we returned to the school grounds in time for lunch. Even though we were just about to go out to work in the hot Caribbean sun after lunch, we all had to shower as soon as we got back. The kids had pooped, peed, and sweated on us, and a good scrubbing was in order.

After lunch we headed out to work on our main project: improving a rooftop garden. This rooftop was on the top of the chapel building, 4 flights up. We started it on Thursday, and left off at the point where we had all the dirt at the base of 4 flights of stairs and were seriously facing the prospect of carrying the dirt up -- a bucketful at at time -- in 5 gallon buckets. When we had some idle time waiting for the planter bed walls to be built (brick & mortar), the 3 "liberal arts majors" in the group decided to devise a better (read: easier!) way to get the dirt up to the roof. Father Richard had the idea of creating a pulley, so the priest, the second grade teacher, and the project manager set out to do exactly that. (I know, it sounds like the the start of a bad joke...)

Three iterations later, we had a first-rate pulley that did the job of hauling several yards of dirt up to the rooftop garden. We went scrounging in the scrap depot and tool depot to find useful supplies for the project. The final design included an old wheelbarrow wheel that we cut the rubber tire off of. The resulting rim was a nice, strong, smooth channel for the pulley rope to run in. We found a pipe just the right size for the wheel to turn on, and used a vise grip to keep the wheel from moving off the end of the pipe. The top of the wall fortunately had some rebar sticking up and we were able to fasten the whole contraption there. Jack, the engineer in the group, consulted with us on overall design and also fashioned a first-rate hook from some scrap metal that we hung the buckets on as we pulled them up. (It was funny, everyone kept trying to give Jack credit for inventing the pulley...)

At one point we had 8 people working the pulley operation -- 2 to shovel dirt into buckets at the bottom, 1 to hook buckets on the pulley, 1 to work the pulley rope, 1 to unhook the buckets from the rope at top of pulley, and 3 to shuttle buckets up the last half-flight of stairs to the roof. This made quick work of moving the dirt pile. It took us the rest of Friday and much of Saturday to finish off the garden project.

All in all, I would say the pulley was a big success -- and far preferable to carrying individual buckets up to the roof. We dubbed our invention the "Portland Pulley."

Haiti, Friday March 28 - continued

After spending time with the babies, I moved onto the older children. That was lots of fun. These kids seemed to be between 3 or 4 and 10. All looked younger than they actually were -- apparantly the result of undernourishment. One little girl was 10 but looked maybe 6 or 7. She sat in my lap and didn't want to leave, and she was thoroughly enjoying counting with me from 1 to 100 in Creole. She was leading, and I was copying...like "1," "1," "2," 2," etc. Of course I don't know any Creole, but it is very similar to French (which I don't know either!). However, both of my sisters took French and I picked up a few words here and there, including numbers up to 10, and some higher numbers, enough that I could follow along with where this girl was leading and could tell that she was "helping" me count to 100. When we got there we did high-5's and she was sooo pleased with herself! And then did it again :)

Finally I managed to get her out of my lap and got the idea to sing some songs with the kids. When I arrived in that room, the hospital staff had been singing "Frere Jacques" and "Allouette, je te allouette" (spelling?), and so Jack and Father Richard and I sang along with them. When they stopped singing, I thought, what can we sing that would be fun for them, given that they don't understand English and I don't know any more French songs? So I put on my best preschool-parent hat and we engaged the kids in Ring Around the Rosy, Itsy Bisty Spider, the Hokey Pokey, and Mi Cuerpo (a Spanish song that Peter learned in preschool). Basically everything I could think of that involved body movements. And the kids loved it! They kept wanting more, more, more. (I was wishing I had asked Peter's teachers and/or my sister for some other song ideas.) It was really fun -- Jack (who is 80-something and reminds me of my grandfather) and I were totally engaged in having fun with these kids, who really need some joy in their lives. After we tired of singing, I started doing the "swinging game" and "dipping game" -- 2 things I invented with my kids, which basically involve alot of arm and back strenth to swing a 40 pound child between your legs, and a ton of fun and squeals for the kids. Some of these kids were much older than Peter, but none was any heavier, so it was manageable. However, after swinging a half-dozen kids with 3 or 4 turns each, and multiple swings each turn, I was pretty tired! At one point I also had one preschooler on my front and one on my back, and was walking around (no sling or Ergo, of course, just my arms which were getting tired!) Somewhere in the mix one of the little boys took my watch off my wrist (an old sports watch) and started playing with it, pushing all the buttons, etc. He was totally engrossed in it -- didn't seem like he'd seen one before, at least not up close. Later I saw him wearing it when they were having snack. I decided to leave the watch with him since he was getting so much joy of out it. Getting a new cheap watch is not a big deal -- but it was a bit challenging managing the rest of the trip without a watch, especially for someone who always likes to know what time it is.

Anyway, it was really fun to engage with these kids -- so far away, whose lives are so different from my own kids' lives -- and see how no matter how different they are in some respects, they are really very much the same. Kids are kids, and they need love and food and good health, and they thrive with attention!

How a Portland woman became a banker to the world

...that was the lead-in on today's radio story on KXL! They ran 2 different versions of the story, 40 seconds each. Give a listen and then click on over to Kiva to make a loan today! Looks like Tahmina in Tajikistan still needs $525 to fully fund her loan. By the way, Kiva has also been featured on Oprah.

Audio file 1
Audio file 2

[to listen, click each of the links above, then click "play" button]

Radio interview tomorow on 750 KXL

It seems that someone has been reading this blog! Today I was contacted by our local news radio station, 750 KXL, who read my post on kiva loans and were interested in doing a story on it. They said it was a local angle (me) on an international news story (microlending). I talked with them for about 15 minutes, mostly about Kiva, but also about my recent trip to Haiti. It will be interesting to see how they cover the story. If you are local to Portland, Oregon, tune in to 750AM tomorrow morning at 5:10, 6:10, 7:10, or 8:10. I will try to get a podcast to post here after the story runs.

Becoming an international financier

I wrote recently about my first Kiva loan. This week I made 4 more loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries! I got some money for my birthday (thank you, Poppy!) and decided to loan it out to others who can make great use of it. I loaned $25 each to: Elizabeth's group in the Dominican Republic, Heng Yath in Cambodia, a group of 11 women farmers in Samoa, and Tahmina Azizova in Tajikistan. And, I got a notice that Edina in Tanzania made her first loan payment. Once she pays it all back (3 more months) I will be able to loan the funds out to someone else. I just think Kiva is fantastic -- a really innovative use of technology that allows you and me to do good things in the world. Give it a try!

Haiti, Friday March 28

[Written from Haiti]

This morning we went to visit the Missionaries of Charity orphanage. It is run by Mother Theresa's people. We packed 13 people into a small truck (a truck made for maybe 8-9 people) and drove 1/2 hour, some of which was over very poor (bumpy) roads. It was very hot in the truck, and I had probably the worst seat. I was very glad when we finally got there.

The orphanage also has a hospital for malnourished and sick children, and this is where we spent our time. Apparantly the orphanage part was not open to visitors today. The first thing I did was feed some rice cereal to a little girl who was about Megan's age (17 months). She ate it very well, but passively. No reaching for the spoon, attempting to feed herself, smearing food in her hair, anything (very different from both of my babies!) I held her for a while until she started crying, and then her mother appeard from somewhere to take her. Apparantly the mothers (and some fathers) come to visit 2-4 times per week. I moved onto another child, who I thought was a girl, but discovered was a boy when I changed his diaper. This room had 25 babies in metal cribs, and many of them were extremely malnourished. At one point I held a little girl who was 18 months who couldn't have weighed more than 7 or 8 pounds. She was totally skin and bones. Her arms and legs were so thin that I could make a circle with my thumb and finger and fit them around with plenty of room to spare. Her torso was so thin that I could pick her up with 2 hands around her rib cage and have my fingers overlapping each other. And she was 18 months. I couldn't help but compare her to Megan, who is slightly younger but probably 3-4 times as heavy, and so strong, healthy, active, and engaged (and engaging). This little girl would, surprisingly, smile with some coaxing. When I tried to see if she could bear any weight on her legs, she just cried and went limp. Megan loved to bounce and stand my our laps when we got her at 4 months. What a difference food, love, and attention makes in the life and health of a child.

[Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any photos at the orphanage.]

[to be continued]

Haiti, Thursday March 27

[written from Haiti]

Today we got up around 5:30 to be at a 6am prayer service. The staff starts each day this way. After this it was back to the house for breakfast. I had brought some organic oatmeal, some high-protein granola bars, and a small can of V-8 juice -- so, a nice breakfast. By 7:00 or so we started our job for the day. We are working on improving the rooftop garden. Right now there are some vegetable plants up there that are growing inside old tires with very shallow dirt in them. We are building planter beds with cement blocks. The first job was to move the cement blocks from their pile to the rooftop. This meant hand-carrying them about 100 yards and then up 4 flights of stairs to the rooftop. Then back down to do it again. Once this was done, we had to move all the dirt from the very large pile it was in to another pile at the bottom of the 4 flights of stairs. I did alot of pushing the wheelbarrow back and forth to accomplish this. The dirt-moving project took up all morning and much of the afternoon. Now all the dirt sits at the base of the 4 flights of stairs -- we will see how we are to move it to the rooftop tomorrow. It sounds like we may carry it up, a bucketful at a time.

After the dirt-moving, 2 masons started constructing the wall. While they were building the wall in one section, some of us worked on chipping out the top surface of the existing concrete floor with a sledge hammer. I tried to alternate swinging the sledge with my right and left arms. I think I will be sore tomorrow.

In the late morning I was summoned to go visit with the head of the computer lab. He had heard that I was here and I worked for IBM and was very excited to meet me. I think he thought that I could actually *fix* their computers for them. Ha. I can't fix computers; that's why we have deskside support at work :)

Anyway, I got a good look at the lab and had a great conversation with Erick (who runs the lab). The lab theoretically has 15 computers, but a teacher was telling me that only 5 actually worked when she was trying to teach typing this week. The lab's server is an IBM Thinkpad that is visibly broken but still works. The other computers were a mix of IBM, Dell, Gateway 2000, and HP. Some appear to be quite old, and there is a mix of operating systems. It seems that they mostly teach typing, MS Word, and Excel. There is no internet access, and the computers are not robust enough to run anything like Encarta. Each student gets a 1/2 hour computer lab lesson each week.

Later this afternoon we were planning to take a walk in the neighborhood, but the security guard was not available to escort us, so that will have to wait for tomorrow. We fixed dinner, and I spent some time "blogging" (via pen and paper). Off to bed now (9:40pm). Tomorrow morning we are going to visit the Missionaries of Charity orphanage. I have been anticipating this for months. I don't really know what to expect, except that it may be a very difficult experience.

Haiti, Wednesday March 26

[Written from Haiti on Thursday -- too tired to write on Wednesday!]

Yesterday we got up at 3:45am in order to get to the airport for our 7:00am flight to Haiti. I detected some unexpected bleeding shortly before boarding the plane; I called the nurse helpline while in the boarding line to say, "I'm on the way to Haiti, I have this bleeding, should I be concerned?" She said it sounded ok based on my description. I at least felt better that I had developed this issue while still in the US; I hadn't picked up some weird Haiti bug. Still, this, on top of the pinkeye that had I developed the day before, wasn't exactly the best way to start off the trip.

We got to the airport in Port-au-Prince and realized that we had no idea what our group's bags looked like. We had carried on all of our personal belongings and had some old donated suitcases to load all of our checked luggage with supplies that had been donated for the school. So we had to read the baggage tags on nearly all of the suitcases until we finally found our 6 among the very last to be unloaded. We were met at the airport by the school security team, who loaded all of our stuff onto the back of one truck and the roof on another. We all packed into a truck and off we went. The ride to the school was about 20 minutes. We passed alot of roadside stands and little huts and saw some roadside pigs and cows. We crossed a dirty-looking river that some people apparently bathe in. It was hard to get a good look or a good feel for what the country is like from this short dirve. I did spot one Texaco on the drive (and another time I saw a Western Union); other than that I didn't see any signs of American culture or business on this short trip (except for Coke & Sprite ads everywhere).

When we got to the school we unloaded the suitcases that had all the donations. We were able to bring a ton of things that were very much appreciated -- soccer and basketballs, school supplies, a boom box, dissection kits, textbooks, art supplies, catechisms, sudoku books, shampoo, hair clips, printer ink, soccer uniforms, and all sort of small items/toys for student prizes. Then we moved our own stuff into the bunkrooms (one for women and one for men). The beds all have mosquito nets over them. The women's room had 8 people in maybe 150 square feet of space.

We were all really tired after the day-and-a-half of travel. We had some lunch and relaxed for a while, then went on a tour of the school. The school grounds are enclosed by a tall wall. The buildings are mostly painted a pale yellow. The classrooms don't have doors or windows. Each wooden desk seats two students -- these are the same type of desks, we were told, that seat 5 students at other schools. I can't imagine how 5 kids could possibly fit in those desks. We toured the library, which is small but well organized. The librarian proudly told me that they have Shakespeare and "Of Mice and Men" in the literature section. They have an old set of National Geographics that someone donated. The library also has a separate room with the computer lab -- more on that later.

After touring the school we sat in on part of a class. Most of the teachers here are Haitian, and they teach the main academic subjects. Some of the teachers are volunteers (mostly recent college grads) who are here for a year from the US. They teach English, religion, and computers.

After checking out a class, I went outside to find that the "Ti Ekol" students had arrived. Ti Ekol is the "Little School" -- a school for the neighborhood children that is run by the high school students. The Ti Ekol students are grade school age -- from as young as 4 or 5 up to 6th grade. They all mobbed me and kept saying "Miss! Miss!" and something in creole that clearly meant "take my picture!" They all crowded into the photos, and once I'd taken 10 or so they would crowd around me, clamoring to see the digital pictures. Then they wanted to do it all over again -- and again, and again, and again.

Then we came back to the house and got cleaned up for dinner. There is an indoor shower and an outdoor shower (both cold water). I chose the outdoor one, which was very nice. I could see palm trees and hear students singing as I scrubbed off all the day's grime. We had a yummy dinner of eggplant noodle casserole, played some cards, and went to bed early. I slept like a log.

High for today = Ti Ekol kids
Low for today = health issues

Back from Haiti

I returned from Haiti last Monday, safe and sound. Alas, spending time with the family, readjusting to life in a developed country, and getting ready for a business trip have prevented me from blogging about the trip yet. Thank you to those who have inquired about my safe return, and thanks for your patience.

The team left home on Tuesday, March 25. We spent all day flying to Miami, arriving late at night. I spent most of the flight reading Muhammud Yunus' new book, "Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism." Fantastic book; more on that in a future post.

I will post each day in a separate entry, starting with Wednesday March 26 in the next post.

Leaving for Haiti on Tuesday

I took my first malaria meds a few days ago. Today I got my last shot. Tuesday the team leaves for Haiti!

So - what do you want to know about Haiti? Is there anything you'd like me to try to ask, observe, or photograph? (I am told that photography outside the school grounds will be very limited due to security concerns.) I have received one request from a friend to keep an eye out for any microlending activity. I'm happy to look into other topics as well -- so leave a comment and let me know what interests you!

I am told that I most likely cannot get online to post any actual blog updates from Haiti, so I will be taking down blog updates the old-fashioned way (pen and paper - gasp :) and posting the entries upon return. Be sure to subscribe to get blog updates via email so you don't miss anything. See "subscribe" button on the right-hand side of this page.