A typical Saturday at the base

Yesterday afternoon I took a break from plastering to see what people were up to on the base. Saturdays are open ended project days at Grassroots- a day off from the 'business' side of Grassroots, in which creative building projects spontaneously. That's how the chicken coop was built last time I was here, but there are tons of changes since then- a huge roof over the tool shop.

Yesterday's trip around the site amazed me- you'll see what I mean by the photos.


Container home: Delphine & Corinne are building a home on top of a shipping container.

Aaron has dug out a cave underneath the basketball court, which he is in the process of shoring up to create his new home. I helped him install chicken wire on the ceiling- he's going to plaster the walls. 

Chad (at the other end of the piece of furniture) is moving into the recently finished earthship. He worked on building furniture yesterday with some help from volunteers. 

These guys made this awesome trellis from bamboo & branches. It's atop the main GRU building, and there plans underfoot to plant climbing edibles up the trellis.

Good to home...in my other home!

Without any disappointment, the roosters indeed started crowing from midnight onward. I slept surprisingly well, and woke up early to the 5 or 6am rooster. Today's breakfast is the spaghetti/salt fish/hot dog day- great one to come back to!

Ah, my first breakfast back: pasta with salt fish & chopped hot dogs. Comforts of home! Someone just collected money for lunch- fresh salad with grated beets & home made dressing- I don't think I ever had salad last time I was here. Looking forward to it!

Jean Louis was quite proud to show me the changes in the building yesterday- the plastered walls, the shutter that he made himself, the start of the galeri. He said regardless of the money, he is way more excited and proud about the fact that he has helped build the house. I look forward to working with him again!

 I think we're putting up posts, and doing some plastering today. Onward for the Ti Kay Pay! 

On the way back to Haiti!!!!

 The ‘Let’s Get Rid of Tina and send her back to Haiti’ potluck last night was a blast- we laughed so hard for so long I think we were all crying. Curry, chili, fruit, raw veggies, homemade pumpkin pie, and a specially made & decorated Bon Voyage layer cake. I truly to have an amazing bunch of people in my life. Leslie & Karen were particularly troopers in their efforts to stay up with me until the wee hours of the morning so I wouldn’t miss my taxi. I’m pretty darned tired right now-I woke up yesterday morning at 4:30am, so I’ve been awake now for 29 hours. Boy, it’s going to be a loooonnnnnnnggggg day. I think when I arrive in PAP, a quick trip to the Hole in the Wall is in order, tent erection, and then a nice long sleep…and yes, I know, my sleep will be interrupted all night with the roosters- I’m almost looking forward to that!

First two legs of journey were with United Airways….and after spending about 20 minute lined up in the wrong line, I got to the proper line. They wanted me to pay $25 for the first bag I was checking, and $35 for the second- I exclaimed excitedly- what?! You’re going to charge for Haiti- all other airlines have waived the fees. She was defensive, and not particularly friendly, so I changed tactics and calmed down my tone, and asked if we could call her supervisor. She did, and of course, they waived the fees. Whew, another $60 would have been ridiculous. Some of the 'cheaper' airlines have these add-on fees that you might not expect. 

First leg of the journey complete- check

Shuttle pick up at 3am, flight at 6:45 from Toronto to Philadelphia, stopover until 9:55am and no internet. No internet at an airport in 2011? What is that?

This airport is like a gigantic shopping mall- glistening floors, sparkling overpriced shops of things I’m not even interested in looking at. I do a pretty good job of avoiding malls in my current life, seeking out used book & clothing stores instead.

Folks I meet in line or at shared meals are soooo interested in Haiti, in knowing how things really are there, and they always tell me to be safe. It continues to kindle my belief in humanity, hearing the good wishes of strangers. They thank me for what I am doing, which really blows me away, as it doesn’t really feel like I’m doing much, especially compared with volunteers who have been in Haiti for months and months.

One couple in the line-up at the Toronto airport mentioned that they are celebrating their 25^th anniversary, and are on their way to Hawaii. I said, ‘Oh, the ‘other’ H country. Needless to say, our experiences in our respective H countries are going to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Going to see if it’s time to board yet; next stop-over: Fort Lauderdale. Never been there before.

Whew! Made it, but just barely. Almost missed the connection in Fort Lauderdale, but rushed on last minute. Next time, I'll plan on a direct flight, or maybe just only one connection- three connections, followed by a middle of the night taxi ride, was just tooooo long.

Made it to PAP in good time, and get this- not only was all of my luggage intact, it was in the baggage claims area before I got there. Last time I had to wait an hour in the heat, with all kinds of people pushing & shoving.

Andy, Jean Louis and Samuel, our new crew member, met me at the airport, beer in hand, and we took a tap tap taxi home.

When walking down our street back to the base, we saw a truck go by laden with beets and two beautiful women sitting there amongst them (would have been an awesome photo, but hey, my camera was buried at that point!). Andy ran over & promptly bought 10 of these beauts- and there are mangoes sitting here on the table too. Mmmm, fruit & veggies!

The straw house looks FABULOUS! Can’t wait to tuck into some plaster with the boys. In the meantime, we’re enjoying some scotch here back in our office. I have had a warm welcome from everyone here at GRU- as good as the goodbye hugs I got at the other end. Have I mentioned that I feel really fortunate in my life?!

It’s now 7:34pm…so I’ve been awake for 39 hours or so…time to steal a sleeping spot in a vacant tent (because of course I went directly to the Hole in the Wall rather than obeying the rule about setting up your tent before dark!), have a cold bucket shower (I quite look forward to it- it’s only about 86 or 90º F here right now! Might try to make it an early night so I’m refreshed for a day of work tomorrow!

Things to be thankful for

The 'storm of the year' is over, and it wasn't as bad as they predicted, although the snow was quite deep when I shovelled my way to the barn in the afternoon. The sun is shining on this very cold winter morning, but weather won't impede travel, which means the flights are on time- yipee. I got an e-mail from Andy yesterday mentioning that there were going to be more election announcements, which could have meant more riots (my flight was delayed two times in December due to the riots & airport closure). After an initial groan, I steadfastly proclaimed that I wasn't going to have a delayed flight again (like I really have a choice!), and decided that I'd just accept whatever news came my way. Today's online news tells me that Celestin has been withdrawn from the election- which hopefully means a peaceful time in Haiti, with flights on time.

I'm really looking forward to the 'Get rid of Tina and send her back to Haiti' potluck party with friends tonight (I coined the name- didn't want them to come up with a better name!). I'll hang out with some good folks, have some cider or wine, and then they'll pack me into a middle of the night taxi bound for the airport in Toronto to get me on my 6:45 am flight tomorrow morning.

Friends and family continue to be super supportive, both financially and emotionally, as I prepare for this trip. I'm particularly excited by the excitement of donations of hand and power tools, and musical instruments for the schools in the Deslandes area. (http://www.strawhomes.ca/Haiti.htm). Social networking is a wonderful tool for spreading news, and I really appreciate everyone who is helping pass the word along, and of course, appreciate donations from people.

I'm quite looking forward to seeing the compressed earth block school, and to helping plaster it. It will be really interesting to help develop a curriculum that will help participants build more sustainably in an earthquake zone. I get to pull out my teacher skills, builder skills, and if I'm lucky, we'll manage to play some music while I'm there as well.

Ian Thomson, friend, fire fighter, and owner/builder of a beautifully timber framed straw house, is going to join me in the Deslandes area in March. We are going to build a facility for composting toilets, hopefully out of light clay/straw and recycled pallets, maybe with a thatched sugar cane roof. The community is quite excited by this project, and we both look forward to working with them.

My list of contacting media, friends, etc. is almost complete; tools & tent are packed, and piles of clothes are on bed waiting to go into pack. Hmmmm, why do I feel almost relaxed? The snow day yesterday was quite helpful in keeping me here to get business done, but I think I'm really relaxed because I've got such amazing people in my life, looking out for me, picking up the pieces after I leave, and passing on the torch.

Onward! And thank you, all of you, who are helping in this venture!

Countdown is on!

Friday morning's flight is quickly approaching. Hard to imagine I'll be in 30º++ humid weather in just a couple of days, given the snowstorm that is raging around outdoors today here at home. I have a loooonnnnnnnggg list of things to do, so I'll sit here and get the computer portion of the day done sitting by the warmth of the stove, sipping my Haitian Rebo coffee. The storm isn't quite as bad as they had predicted, but the blowing snow does impede visibility. However, oddly, I heard some loud booming when I got up this morning- thunder during a snowstorm?! Glad I don't have to drive anywhere!

The wintry scene looking out at my river from my warm & lazy perch inside

Things seem to be firming up for my arrival in Haiti. I'll work with Andy on the Builders without Borders Ti Kay Pay project, hopefully with some plastering & eventually the earthen floor, before heading out with Ospri to Deslandes & Verrettes, to do some plastering on the compressed earth block school. I hope to spend a lot of time within these communities being immersed in the culture, and planning the curriculum for their building school. My friend Ian is planning on joining me in March sometime, at which point in time we'll build an outdoor composting toilet facility, hopefully working in conjunction with the humanure experts I met at Grassroots.

If I find myself with nothing to do, I can either volunteer with Grassroots, or spend some time in one of the village schools teaching. Apparently there is a guitar in the house in the Deslandes area, so I hope to be able to play music while there. I didn't see any live music, or hear much spontaneous music last time, apart from a couple of days when Annio or Jean-Louis would sing traditional songs.

I have had a generous offer of the loan of a digital mini camcorder, from my former colleague and owner of Power House Digital Video, but need to really look at my luggage (oh yes, should pack- hmmm, work clothes, tent, tool belt, rain gear, first aid kit, meds, trowels, tools...yikes, not sure I'll have room) to see if I can squeeze it in. It sure would be fabulous to be able to get some video footage of the natural builds, in addition to some interviews with the folks I'll be staying with.

I feel pretty fortunate in terms of the connections I have in the natural building world in Haiti- from BWB (Martin Hammer & Andy Mueller) to EBNetwork (Bruce King and Tim Owen-Kennedy), Kleiworks (Kevin Rowell & Valerie), and the Natural Building Engineers Group (Anthony Spick, Kenny Cryer, Tim Krahn).  There is a lot to be learned and shared about building with locally available materials, such as clay, straw, bamboo, plastic bottles and rubble. I hope that collectively, we can work with the Haitian people to enable them to build more sustainable, durable and affordable dwellings. The plywood & vinyl clad buildings being built with imported materials won't be accessible to the Haitian population once the international financial aid is done, given the high cost of imported lumber ($33USD for a sheet of plywood...for the unemployed, or someone who only makes a couple of dollars an hour, this isn't really feasible!), but if the tools can be passed on for building properly reinforced buildings with available materials, this could be more sustainable.

I ordered a creole phrase & grammar book which I've been reading at night before sleep, which is really well organised and helpful for the stage I'm at with my creole. I really look forward to putting it into practise! I'm hoping to learn some songs while I'm there.

In the meantime I do have a long list of correspendence and business to attend to before flying away, tweet tweet.  I generally have a hard time asking for help, but this trip has allowed me to open up in that way and to allow others to help me- for which I am truly thankful. Karen Soltan (from the Peterborough area) has been hugely helpful in offerring to spearhead sending out press releases and aid in the collection of musical instruments and donations of tools for these communities in the Artibonite Valley, and Ainslie Kennedy has also generously offerred to help with collection closer to the Ottawa area. I have had offers of personal financial support from friends and family, which will really help me during the time I am in Haiti. I have started a page on Facebook (Instruments for Change for Haiti) which I will update to include information on how people can donate instruments or tools.

I am learning that by sharing the load, first of all, it is way easier on oneself, but also, it's so much easier to have something grow quickly. In the past, I have tried to do everything on my own, which works, but in a much more insular and isolated way. I've had really helpful suggestions for where to send press releases, and I'm honoured that so many people seem excited about the idea of spreading the word. Music has always been an integral part of my life, so being able to have other people as enthused as me about contributing instruments (or money for instruments) for a music school in Haiti is truly exciting. The arts are such an important expressive vehicle for humans, and I know that the lives of both the children and the adults in these communities will be forever enriched by the musical experiences they will have.

I feel really fortunate to be able to return to Haiti and be able to combine my love of natural building, music, teaching, and learning a language, all in one go. This will surely be an enriching experience for me, one which I hope will be symbiotic for the communites I will be involved with. I am also thankful to Janet for putting Ospri & I in touch with one another- Ospri, with the vision who has been working hard in these communities in the Artinbonite Valley for several years now, who has been assembling the right 'team' of people to help fulfill these tangible dreams.

And so, from the comfort of my most beautiful hundred ++ year old home, off I go to attack my list of things to do with gusto. I'm safe, warm, and quite content. Am feeling quite blessed, actually!

Return trip

And so, after several weeks of silence, I have finally booked a return trip to Haiti. Part of the silence was due to a really challenging indoor/outdoor winter plastering job here at home once I got back- not exactly a relaxing way to start the 'winter holidays. The plastering job went reasonably well, though, and it was followed by a ten day dogsitting stint in one of my favourite villages anywhere, Wakefield, Quebec.

I have been playing with return dates to Haiti in my head for quite awhile now (probably since I left at the end of December!), and finally actually booked my return trip this afternoon. I'll be heading back to Haiti February 4, and count on staying for 2 months. I will do some finish plastering with the Builders without Borders (BWB) project with Andy, but will also head out into the countryside to work with a community that has been building with compressed earth blocks now for a couple of years. I am quite enthused about meeting the people of this community, of living with them, becoming immersed in the language, and the culture. I feel like we will all have so much to share with one another.

I will help design a curriculum for their natural building school, and quite suppor their model of teaching, which will entail the participants returning to their own communities and building one more building (with supervision from the school) before receiving a certificate- I think there's a lot of value in having students go and practise what they have learned, and in doing so, sharing their knowledge with their communities.

I really look forward to getting back to old friends and new at Grassroots, and to working once again with Andy. The hole in the wall beckons, I can just see it now!

I'm still posting...

I wasn't sure whether or not I would continue writing upon my return, but have decided that I may, at least for the time being, write periodic entries.

I have had the warmest welcome back home- it's really touching! And while I'm happy to be here, and have enjoyed seeing friends (family to come soon, I hope!), my heart and head are still partially in Haiti. The longer I'm away, and the more I read and think about Haiti, the bigger the problems seem to be. Since I've been back, people have asked all kinds of questions, such as, 'Are you in culture shock'? 'Will straw bale work in Haiti?' 'Can you really make a difference in Haiti'?. When I was in Haiti, I was being asked questions more like: When will you come back?

The poverty level in Haiti was already at an extremely high level prior to the earthquake. One of the most impoverished countries in the world, the majority of Haitians have had to make do with very little for a long time. The question of where to begin, in the rebuilding of a nation that was already crumbling behind the scenes before the physical signs of the earthquake, is a difficult one. Haiti is now faced with even more poverty, a lack of adequate, safe housing, a large number of people who have been displaced (internally displaced persons), even more orphans, and still, the continuing problem of safe drinking water, and food security. As people move from the urban tent communities to the country, life in the rural settings becomes more challenging with more people to feed, more competition in terms of selling wares, and more crowded living conditions as rural families become hosts to displaced persons.

As an outsider, who spent a mere three weeks in Haiti, and for many other outside volunteers in Haiti, it is difficult to fully understand the best way to help; if you don't understand the culture, if you aren't immersed, it's difficult to know what Haitians want in terms of rebuilding the country. In my short jaunts outside of Port au Prince, as I looked at some of the reconstruction efforts, I remember poo-pooing the idea of plywood houses & vinyl clad shelters, but if you talk to someone who has been living in a tent for 10 months, I would guess that moving into a solid buiding that is more spacious (not in North American terms, by any stretch of the imagination) and private in comparison. So, is straw bale construction viable in Haiti? Honestly, I'm not sure. Given that there is such a long rainy season in Haiti, which coincides with the hurricane season, harvesting straw is more limited, so perhaps straw bale building is a seasonal method of building, as it is here in Canada. More important is the question of how straw bales will fare in a tropical climate. There are a lot of moisture meters in the walls of the Ti Kay Pay that I worked on in Haiti, which will be important to monitor. Certainly, plaster is another question. We waited 6 weeks, without seeing lime plaster (we had chosen lime for the exterior plaster, for more protection on the walls), but if it's imported, it's not sustainable. If they reopen lime kilns in Haiti, there is the fear that people will harvest wood to fire the kilns, wood of which there is not much in Haiti. So, if straw bale is viable, it will have to be with more natural plasters, and possibly natural protective additives to add water repellency to the plaster. I would like to spend more time exploring the countryside speaking to the elders of communities to see what might have been done in the past for earthen plasters, as wattle & daub are quite common.

                         I was excited to see this fellow cycling along with his accordion; I didn't
                                    have the pleasure of seeing any live music while in Haiti.

Mere shelter is a bit of an issue in Haiti, as many of the tent communites have cropped up on privately owned land, land which some owners are now reclaiming, yet again bumping the displaced people to yet another new temporary shelter. Some NGOs are working with government agencies to purchase land for IDP's, and when housing is built on these plots of land, the new inhabitants receive ownership papers for the home. This could indeed be a step forward; it is the first time some people have ever owned a house!

To answer the question of whether or not you can make a difference in Haiti, you can easily make a difference in the short term to small numbers of people as an individual, depending on what services/skills you have to offer, and this can never be underplayed. Until the rubble piles are completely cleared away, and food security is given back to people, in addition to safer shelter, not much will change in the grand scheme of things, but if you can make a difference merely by sponsoring one family to have enough to eat for a year, or to allow their children to go to school, then of course you are making a difference. You can't go into a country like Haiti and expect everything to change overnight. It will be decades (if they get the right political leadership and direction, both within the country and from the international community) before Haiti ever recovers from the earthquake.

And so, here I sit in my rocker by the woodstove, ignoring the dead mouse in the trap over by the stove (sorry, can't co-habitate with them when they leave messes on my counters!), look out at the snow softly falling outside the window, and contemplate my next steps. While my trip to Haiti may not have been as life altering as some might have expected, I can't help but think about water each and every time I turn on the tap; despite having a (wee) cold and not feeling like cooking, and despite having been away for about a month from home, my pantry still holds enough food to make many many meals. I own a warm, spacious, comfortable home in a safe, quiet hamlet on a small, clean river, close to good friends. I have a lot to be thankful for!

                                         New Year's Eve gig, accompanied by my friend Maddy.