First day on the jobsite, Port au Prince

Oh, but it's good to be here in Haiti. To my great surprise, there weren't any roosters screeching right near my head all night long- what a pleasure! However, there was the 4:30am broadcast church service, off-key singing included, which did disturb me for awhile, but with a pillow over my head, I was able to doze back off to sleep.

Life here at Grassroots involves some communal involvement with keeping the place clean and serviced, so this morning started with mandatory blitz duties. I opted to clean the kitchen, since that's the room I feel is the most important to keep pristine...well, that and the composting toilets, I guess.

I joined Andy, Jean-Louis, and Annio on the jobsite once again (a year and a bit since the last time we were all together!) to work on a project that Andy has funded and is trying out here in Haiti- a prototype wee house, made of some pre-fab plastic bottle walls, and a clay/straw wall. Jean-Louis, Annio & I spent most of the day doing a section of the clay/straw wall, and Andy was busy doing plaster stops, flashing, and figuring out placement of trusses.

It's so much fun to be back working alongside Jean-Louis & Annio. We get a kick out of one another- and I think it's quite something for them to see a woman on a jobsite- they're still surprised by what I try to do, for instance, today, we unloaded cement bags (40kg) from a vehicle, and I grabbed a bag, and they both said, "Oh, Tina, no, leave them- we'll do that!". Very cute. And quite fun!

 A couple of other guys, Chad and Jimmy, built trusses for the building. We'll likely get the trusses up tomorrow.

Here's a section of the clay straw wall we did, and on the left, a slightly different technique of clay/straw using chicken wire.

Grassroots United has had a name change, to Haiti Communitere. There are a lot of changes in personnel here, and there actually don't seem to be quite as many projects going on...yet there are lots of changes on the site all the same. The super adobe structure, which was built by many volunteer hands last year, had to be partially taken down due to some structural issues, but the resulting building is quite sweet looking- I love the roof (I love the fact that the roof will actually shed water from the structure, as opposed to the initial design which would have had rain land on the plastered roof. It was supposed to be a building for three toilets, but as these things go, it is going to be used for sleeping quarters- it's not nearly big enough for toilets.

Haiti Communitere (HC) has become somewhat of an experimental haven for natural building and other technologies using natural or reclaimed materials. There is even a new fibreglass 'igloo' on site.   I've mentioned this before- many of the new building ideas don't necessarily blend in very well with traditional Haitian architecture and desires. HC has certainly been welcoming to experimental prototypes for construction, but many of them are just that- prototypes, experiments, trials. I do believe that most people coming to volunteer, or even to do a paid gig to come to Haiti mean well, but may not always do as much research as needed prior to coming. 'We' as imports have to connect with Haitian communities first and foremost to find out what exactly the people in that community want, what they need help with, and whether or not what we are offering would be of service to them, or sustainable. By the by, the straw bale 'ti kay pay' that we built last year (well, I assisted here & there- Andy & Martin were much more involved than I!) has received very favourable reviews. It was designed and built based on Haitian architecture, and with earthquake & hurricane resistance.

Here is an super adobe structure- which is like earth bag construction, except built with longer bags- that are actually quite hard to stuff! This particular building had some structural issues, and was redone a couple of times before landing on this design, which has a roof that sheds water, and provides ample overhang, vs. the original design which would have had plastered earthbags as the roof- which could have eventually had issues with the plaster surviving during the rainy season here. 

In my short spurts of time here, in terms of building, I have seen a few failed building experiments, in addition to others that certainly aren't earthquake or hurricane resistant. This is problematic, in that we never want to promote building techniques that are going to fail in the same way as we saw in the 2010 earthquake.

The internet connection is too slow here tonight for me to post more photos- I'll try more tomorrow. So much to tell, so much to show!

But it's bedtime now. We'll put the roof on the building tomorrow- progress!