Declan’s Haven Haiti Diary 2015 -Day 5
Tuesday morning
The boat trip this morning is nice and cool, It is still 28 degrees at night in high humidity. Everyone is up early this morning and rearing to go. I pack some of the gifts that we brought and bring them along, we have crayons and chalkfor the kids at the school. Today we are putting a door into an opening to create a new office for the manager of the orphanage. My first job is to take some shelves off the wall, behind one of them there is a family of cockroaches living! These are not your average European types but big brown Caribbean flying roaches. My trusty assistant John Boyle uses his big Mayo boot and squashes them.
I’m in the stores getting some material this morning and I come across a local machete, this thing is lethal, the blade is heavy and sharp and you can see how it does so much damage. The nurse was showing me a guy that had slashed his own shin while cutting sugar cane and he was lucky to save his leg.
I get the door on which is pretty major as I haven’t hung a door in years but it passes the test! The rest of the team are making great progress, the planting team have almost 3,000 trees planted and on the way are seeing most of the island. The path team are doing major work, they are working on the side of a hill mixing concrete and transporting it with a wheelbarrow to where its being poured, everything is being done by hand and in this heat is just back breaking work.
The playground team are making really good progress and they are now starting to paint the playground area in bright colours. The kids are looking on in great anticipation. Up to now they had no toys and this will be something really unique for them. My buddy John Boyle is called away to get a Massey Ferguson 35 running. I don’t know how he does it but with little or nothing by way of parts or tools he gets it firing within a couple of hours!
Today we are joined by David Kane, my friend from Block Island in Rhode Island USA, he is helping me finish off the doors and hang some new doors on the shower block outside, we also get a chance to put a new roof on a gas store outside the kitchen. During this piece of work I disturb a nest of ants and they start running up my arm biting along the way. They are feckin sore and it takes me ages to get rid of them.
It looks all the time like there is going to be a thunder storm today and it’s a little darker due to being overcast but its still really warm and our water boy is saying that the group are now consuming over 10 litres of water a day.
After my evening swim we go back to the bar and the Haven girls have set up a pub quiz for us during which I get to sample some of the local Haitian rum. Its delicious with coke or ginger ale or lemonade for that matter! I will have no problem sleeping tonight!
We don’t do well in the quiz as my answers get a bit garbled after a while and my American teammates get three American general knowledge questions wrong!
I end up in bed somehow and its literally lights out, my room mate sets the alarm for the morning!