Wiebe's Quotes on Haiti

-I don’t want to be healed if I fall sick. Why do we want to stay here on this earth?

In Heaven with God there is no hunger, pain or sadness. Why do we fight to live here?

 I don’t understand that.

Question: " Ok but what about your family? Think of them!”

 Why? If they know I am in heaven and am just waiting for them to come join me, won’t they be happy? We need the eternal view! – Fre Junel ( a nice young healthy family man who looks “beyond”)

Keith Toews

Administrator- Confidence Health Center

Oriani, HAITI

Lasstic Update-- Feburary 2013 Update 3

Lastic Canyon Update #3                                02-12-13

Bon Dlo por Tout

Before I report on the technical stuff and on our work progress, I’d like to paint a word picture of the canyon we work in. The Mountains rising steeply above us are covered with a patchwork of farmed plots and some scrub brush, much of which defies the imagination that it could be farmed. Goat trails meander through the entire mountainside, and provide the transportation route to get to the farms, and to bring the produce back down. Prior to our work the Village of Lastic, a miserable collection of about a dozen mud huts, was about three miles from the nearest road that could be traversed by a 4X4 vehicle. In the early phases of the work the road was extended through the village and on another ¼ mile or so to our jobsite. Beyond our worksite the mountains rise in waves as far as can be seen, and climb from our jobsite elevation of 2400’ until they reach the top of Pik la Selle, about four miles to the South at 8800’. A large amount of traffic passes through our jobsite every day en route to the river for water, to do laundry, or simply passing to unknown villages in the distant hills. Sometimes cattle or goats are driven through on their way to market, and bags of mountain produced charcoal are “head carried” out to market. The rough road that we carved into the site, with steep hills, gravelly section where the trucks spin out, etc. has become the main commercial highway in the area!
We have a small fairly flat work area where we can turn a gravel truck around. In one corner is our container used for secure storage. In another corner is a tent we have erected for our foreman/night watchman, Leesyan. Nearby is the fire pit where the cook and her helper toil daily producing the noon meal for our entire labor force. Alongside the container a local entrepreneur has set up a little kitchen, and prepares little deep fried treats for sale to the workers. Across the turnaround area another enterprising soul or two have their little selection of goods arrayed on the ground, hoping for a sale to the cash rich workers. In a canyon with a barter economy, we are now paying about 130 workers cash wages of nearly $3000 a week, an amount I’d guess was only seen on an annual basis before.
The footwear of choice for the men seems to be big black rubber boots, especially those that are obviously oversized. Most of the men are sporting a new pair, we see other “new to them” clothes (the majority of the people in Haiti wear used clothing imported in bales from the US). A couple of days ago, our cook and her helper both showed up for work in new dresses! As in brand new, sewed especially for them, new dresses! The cook’s is a pleasant bright purple, and her helper’s was a tiny floral print. To the best of anybody’s knowledge, the cook has worn the same dress each and every day since we started four years ago. After one day of purple, we’re now back to the old one.
And the children! We have about 75 women on the payroll, and a large number of them have families. I would guess that most of their children from about 8 years old and down are also in the camp area, with the older ones sitting and holding those from about the age of three down to several that are only weeks old. They sit in ragged rows around the site with wide open eyes, and watch everything we do. They are remarkably well behaved, and seem to have endless patience. When it’s feeding time, the mother will break away from the rock haul, come take care of business, and be back to work in short order. Our daughter Kellie spends hours in that pack, playing with the infants, teaching English and learning Creole with the little kids, and doing a cross cultural immersion.
Many of these children are clearly suffering from malnourishment, many are actually sick because of the “hunger time” going on since the crops were destroyed by the hurricanes, and it very likely that what we have mistaken for patience is actually a lack of energy to run and play, or otherwise act like a normal kid. Our workers have supplied some of the ones without clothes with some small garments. If you want to see some proud little boy, imagine giving a four year old his first pair of pants, and watch him strut around and show them off to the entire world!
Every day we have an opening and closing ceremony as each worker turns in his time card, gets his shovel, wheelbarrow, or whatever tool he will use for the day, and is assigned to a crew with a specific task. In the evening the process is reversed, the tools are handed in, and every worker that is expected to return is given his employee card back again, which they guard very jealously. One day last week some of our crew observed the children playing “work”. They had little bits of paper, each one came up and handed them in, where given a stick “tool”, and then started carrying rocks around. Over on the side the little girls were busy playing cook. I didn’t see it, but they reported it was as much fun as a circus.
And speaking of the cook, I must tell you about the employee cafeteria. It is Haitian custom that an employer is responsible to feed his workers while they are on duty. In an urban environment this would usually mean that each worker would get a daily meal stipend in addition to their regular wage, and they could go out at lunch time and buy a meal. Since the noon meal is their big meal of the day, and there is obviously no other place nearby were even a small group could get lunch, we have hired the above mentioned cook and provided the tools and raw materials for her to work with.
If you take three rocks about the size of a pint jar and lay them in a triangle with about a 4” gap in between, a round bottomed 3 gallon pot called a “chodye” will sit comfortably on top of them. A small fire can be lighted with sticks poked in from all three ways, and the fire can be easily controlled by adjusting the sticks in and out to make a larger or smaller flame. Another pot for the meat or onion sauce can be added by placing another two rocks nearby and the next pot resting on them and leaning against the main rice pot. A small amount of the fire can be transferred, and now there are a couple more holes to feed the sticks in.
The menu doesn’t vary much. The base is rice in large quantities, with a small amount of beans or lentils mixed in. She also prepares a meat sauce from the canned chicken we buy for her, and a small amount of that is poured over the top for flavoring, and usually a few rings of raw onion laid over the top. Back at the start of the project we were advised to provide one chicken for every twenty workers twice a week. Don’t think of a plump 4 lb barn raised broiler with some fat; think a skinny 1.5 lb bantam that has never been feed anything in its life, and has been chased daily by dogs in hope of a meal, and you can see what even a little bit of canned chicken can do on a daily basis. Because of our larger than normal work force, she is cooking about 1 ½ 25KG bags of rice per day! That’s about 83 lb of rice per day, cooked to perfection over a fire in three large chodyes!
We also have a repair dept. Since we have tools and a welder on site, the locals bring little broken things to be fixed, and they have huge faith in our ability to take a pile of scarps and make it right again.
And then there is the sick ward. We’ve had two workers injured by dropping the rocks they were carrying, one on the hand and one on the foot. These are our first two “lost time accidents” in our hired crew in the four years we’ve been working. We take them down to the clinic in Fond Parisien about once a week to be seen by a nurse, but the rest of the time I change their dressings in the canyon every second day. While we are working at that it is not unusual for somebody else to show me a wound, an ulcerated sore, or some other problem caused by daily life in a Haitian canyon, and we do what we can with them.
Two weeks ago a girl of about 14 came walking out of the mountains and asked for help. Per her story, about three days earlier when gathering firewood, a branch she was trying to break off whiplashed and ripped her top lip off from one side to the other. It was hanging down the side of her mouth, and splinters of the wood were still embedded in it. My son Jalen ran her down the mountain in the Ranger to look for help. The first clinic they went to refused to stitch it because the wound was several days old, but the second place they tried agreed to help. They did a good job of cleaning it up and stitching it back together, and provided them with additional dressings and both pain pills and antibiotics. Every several days she came back out to our site to have her dressings changed, and finally a few days ago we took her back to the clinic for another doctor visit, and to have the stiches removed. She lives about a five hour walk across the mountains, so it’s unlikely we’ll see her again, but the repair to her face, and the chance for her to live a productive life instead of being a hideous outcast, made it a very rewarding experience.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch .  .  .
We have been doing a small amount of work amid the daily life that swirls around us. Last update we had just laid the base course of the new dam. That work progressed steadily, and the final of about 225 yards was placed on the 9th of February, well run through with six tons of steel. We then moved on to building a splash pad for the spill pipes, and to bank reinforcement, with an eye toward future erosion prevention. The one storm caused breach to the canal wall has been rebuilt. We breached the wall in one place to allow us to wheel barrow gravel and supplies through. Now that our dam concrete has been poured, that one should be repaired shortly. We’ve added some thrust blocking, and the fountain in the Village of Le Roche has been rebuilt higher up the bank in an area that’s somewhat protected by trees, which will hopefully protect it from future erosion pressure.
Next up will be a mix of repairs and strengthening projects. We are modifying the control gate locations for what we believe will be easier and better control of the water. We have also added significant protection the mouth of the canal so we can prevent the big storm driven rocks from entering, and have planned for a steel gate that can be dropped down to completely close off the canal. The materials for this gate are in the container, and we’ll start its construction as soon as we can get the goods through customs.
The nine km long pipeline that connects to the dam/canal/headworks we have built follows the riverbed most of its journey to the farming valley. We did one repair last summer to a spot exposed by a storm, and Hurricane Sandy exposed it in two more spots, which we will be encasing in concrete. With the huge amount of overburden removed from the riverbed by Hurricane Sandy, by my estimate as much as 250,000 yards per running mile, this might be a recurring problem. It is possible that someday the upper section will need to be re-laid or exposed and encased in place, but that’s another day  .  .  .
Our group of volunteers has been working hard and enjoying the project as well. Today the house has 17 in residence – Jalen left this morning and Carlin arrived this afternoon. He was the last one scheduled in, and most of us here now have one way tickets, so we’ll finish the project and make our way home. There has been a little GI disruption, and almost every day somebody stays home from the canyon to be nearer to the “facilities”. That combined with the usual insect bites, unexplained rashes, an a large swelling on the leg of yours truly the size of half a grapefruit keeps it all interesting.
While all of this has been going on, we’ve also been working with the Water Committee trying to move the administration along. In a meeting about 10 days ago we made some real headway on the budget and administration. We have rented an office, and hired a full time administrator for the proudly named “Pwoje Iragasion de Lastic/Fond Parisien”. He will have a full time assistant with some office duties and some field oversight. Next in line is the chief Sentinel (ditch tender) with his five assistants, and we’ve even got a janitor on staff for an hour a day! Up in the canyon our foreman and the Village of Lastic Chief is a man named Leesyan. He and his son have been hired for security of the dam and canal, and will be responsible for the operation of the gates, keeping the grates and sand traps clean, and minimizing “dezod”, or mischief. The entire operation, including 11 employees from administrator down to the janitor, office rent and supplies, transportation, the ever present miscellaneous account, and a monthly stipend for the three man Board of Directors, will be covered by our annual operating budget of $15,300 USD. In addition, we will be collecting about $15,000 USD for the capital improvements fund. As the funds in that account grow, we will start making improvements to the system, and possibly expand the system to additional farm ground that we cannot currently reach.
There is a farmer group in the area called the “Planters Group”. These men had thought that if the water ever came they would be in charge of it. When we held community meetings last year, and discussed the system upgrades and repairs that were to be done over the summer, they also expected to be in charge of the funds. As many have learned in this and similar cultures, such funds have a strange way of diminishing, and seldom last until the end of the project. After the attenders at last summer’s meeting approved the repairs, we went ahead and got them done. This effort was spearheaded by our animator Fre Bob, Sam Willhite, and our local minister Fre Brutus. We have completed some very necessary upgrades and storm damage repairs, and we completed it only 3% over the approved budget. This amount is a loan to the irrigation project, and will be the first thing to be repaid from the capital improvements fund. Our brother Brutus has agreed to be the treasurer for the district, since he has the respect and trust of the entire community.
After we had heard some rumblings in the community that the Planters Group was accusing us and the various locals involved of doing a power grab for the water, and other unpleasantries, we invited their leadership to a meeting at the district office. It was well attended by about 20 of them, including the three main agitators. In it we laid out our budget, plans for administering the water, the key employees, the maps, and every component that we could. There were some heated discussions, but when they heard that the repairs had been completed so close to budget, and when they heard the final amount that will be charged for the water, they started to listen much closer to what we had to say. We parted on good terms, with handshakes all around. Apparently they have had several meetings themselves since then to discuss the whole project, and today their leader came to the office and told our administrator that they had decided “to walk with us”. Their members have been advised to pay their water fees as soon as possible, and to be on board and support the canal workers. This is a huge answer to prayer, because a number of the group are influential community members, and to work without their continuing support would be very difficult.
There are a number of conversion factors involved, and translation of the costs will be a little difficult. Most business transaction here are handled with a monetary sum called a Haitian Dollar (HD), which does not exist in fact. They use a land measurement system called a Kawo, and often speak of a quarter of that as a Ka. All that being said, we will charge 275HD per Ka for annual access to all the needed water, which equates to roughly $41 US/acre. For a comparison, a few days ago I spoke with a local grower whose land is outside the district. He can get water from a well that is run by another aid group. He purchases as much fuel as he can afford, delivers it to the group, who pours the fuel into the tank of the diesel pump engine. They start the engine, and the water is his until the pump runs out of fuel. This costs him about 220HD per Ka for ONE IRRIGATION. When he found out what we would charge only a little more for a year’s water, he said “It is a gift! It is a gift!”.
A number of the locals had enough faith to plant their crops on schedule even though the system was not in operation. Those bean crops are just now coming into bloom, and are getting pretty dry. We were all prepared to run a little water into a clean out on the pipe so that the beans could be watered, and then both Saturday and Sunday nights we had good rains. This could herald an early end to the dry season, but since we are about completed in the canyon, I don’t think it will hinder our work.
There are interesting times ahead of us, and I’ll try to explain some of it next time, but if our current plan holds, we’ll start filling the dam next Monday. That will be a stressful day – 1st of all because it will be a “test by water pressure” of our design and construction, and because when we initially filled the dam in 2011 most of the water seeped away into cracks in the rock, and lots of heartache resulted from that problem. We won’t know if we learned the right lessons from those events until after we start filling the dam. Please pray for us on that day and for the filling of the dam.
Let there be good water for all!!

Quotes from Mother Teresa

Lately I have read a short biography on Mother Teresa. For some reason she has been a special icon in my mind, but mysteriously I have never really divelged into her life's history. The other day I bought two books of her quotes. I find her very inspiring. I especially find it touching how she started her program with nothing---just walking the streets helping needs as she saw them. Eventualy people seen she was motivated by love and others joined her fight to alleviate poverty as a labor of love. I believe by her death their was 800 missions that she was responsible for. Anyways you need to read that for yourself but Study some of these quotes and compare them with verses from the Love chapter 1 Corinthians 13. Then look at those around you and see how does all this apply to your everyday life.

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” 

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” 

“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.” 

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.” 

“Love to be real, it must cost—it must hurt—it must empty us of self.” 

“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.” 

“People are unrealistic, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.” 

“I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.” 

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” 

Oriani Clinic Haiti Feburary 2012 Update

As I scooped up a handful of beach pebbles the other day, I stopped and looked at them closely. All about the same size, and rubbed smooth. A red one, a yellow, brown ones, and white ones. Together creating a mosaic that from a distance looks like uniformity. Is this the way God wants his children to live? Each complimenting each other’s abilities and beauty. Races of people living blended together in unity.....

I need to thank some of you for your generous gifts to the clinic. We now have an ultrasound machine! (but waiting for more training). We have a suction machine that has already definitely saved the life of a newborn that was plugged up so badly with mucus. We thank you all so much! Our new clinic is almost complete. We have only some cabinets and some plumbing to finish and we are ready to move in. The clinic is beautiful! The Haitian “boss” we hired to do the construction did an amazing job. A big thanks to the CSI boys too for their expertise and help at different times. 150 locals collected and carried rocks on their heads for the project, 24 did mason work, 7 painted, 32 hammered big rocks into gravel, 12 dug cistern and toilet holes and also footings. It’s been a big help to have our older son Trevor back here in Haiti again, helping to finish up the clinic. Seems I am pulled away to a thousand other things each day, so much so that it makes it hard to get any big things done. So many needs, and people needing to talk, or show me their gardens... or damaged houses etc etc. But we are excited that our move in date and inauguration for the new clinic is Feb 15^th. It will be amazing to have all this extra space.

We have also been able to build some houses with money that some of you have sent in. The house recipients say a great big THANKS to Scott City, KS church for the houses we were able to build with their special donations. CAM too has been able to bless some people in this area like this. Another project that we have been involved with is a work for food project using CAM food boxes. We have had 9 teams of 20 men each working at building and repairing roads that were damaged in hurricanes this past year. This is amazing how much this kind of manual labor 180 men can do. This now enables trucks to get back into the more remote places and haul produce out to market. So much just rotted away earlier.

The clinic is running fine and being very effective. Heather patched up another 4 guys who got into a motorcycle wreck again. Lots of stitches. One of them has been in to be patched up and stitched so many times!!! We get upset at him, we bawl him out for driving so fast, we threaten him that next time we may not even help him, but each time he comes back with this crazy mischievous grin that we can’t resist. Each time he promises to quit being such a crazy driver. A women came to the clinic yesterday who looked about dead. Her blood sugar was basically zero. With quick action and IV meds she came back to consciousness and in a couple hours was ready to go home. Heather has done really well at delivering babies too. Two of them this week and one is only 4 lbs. No intensive care units here and no incubators. We pray that this little kid from a first-time-mom will make it. A week or so ago, a lady arrived carried on a motorcycle but as she got to the gate, she slumped off the moto and fell down dead. She likely died en route. A lowly poor person is taken out and buried quickly, but a pastor’s wife like this is often made a big deal of, and taken to a morgue in the city in preparation for a large funeral with all the trimmings. Our patient numbers keep creeping up. Last week Heather said she alone saw 325 patients that week. Each Wed. we have PG day where Heather is busy all day looking after the health of lots of pregnant ladies. Checkups, classes, and giving them their monthly vitamins, etc. She has close to 300 women on the program, and the results are obvious. We do NOT have the infant or mom death rate that there used to be in this area! Not even close. We aren’t even taking as many women down the mountain for the 3 hr. trip to Port for labor and delivery complications anymore. Thank you God for being able to make a difference in these women’s lives! Our new clinic has a room to specialise in maternity issues more so we are hiring a Haitian RN to work for us. Clinic operating costs will rise some, but her expertise and help is very much needed, so we trust God to provide. Other than that our staff will remain the same. Our Haitian nurse assistant has changed because our former one, Se Willy, had her baby, but we are super happy with our Haitian sister, Mirlin, who is now helping our nurse Heather Isaac (from Alberta). Mirlin is fluent in English as well.

Our household is a busy one. We have Mirlin, Heather, and Sallie, (our children’s teacher) all living with us. Sallie is a first time teacher but is doing a awesome job. We and the kids all love her happy face. We have had and are continuing to enjoy lots of visitors as well. We had a nice couple from Milwaukee, WS, spend a few days here. They want to come sometime and start a clinic in another zone called Gwo Cheval. We are excited for Jesse and Kirsten and their plans. Now we have Russ and Monica Giesbrecht and their 4 children here visiting. Russ has been a good help putting finishing touches on the new clinic. Russ and I went exploring some new far off country under peak La Salle (Haiti’s highest mountain). Next day we took a horse ride along some steep mountain trails and down into some valleys, and visited a bunch of our church members who live farthest away. We have been having forest fires here in the pine forest too. The hills were red with fire all night the other night.

We enjoyed revival meetings and communion with our church here and now there is another 20 in Bible doctrine classes. I am trying to help out there more this round. The class is being led and directed by our Haitian brethren though. It is such an encouragement to watch them do these classes. I am inspired by the soundness of faith and with the conviction with which our brethren here teach these classes. I am also inspired by the convictions of the ones taking the classes and their desire to learn. We have had more people recently who have started coming to church and express their desire to “mache ak ou” (Walk with you). Sunday had 308 people. Clinton, want to come build another church? J We had 2 devil worshippers recently who became born-again. They invited the church people over to assist them in burning their idols and symbols. So we walk down narrow mountain trails to their houses. It was touching to listen to their testimonies, pray with them, and watch them burn their stuff. Another faith booster I had recently is when our foster daughter Ketli was sick with the flu. She coughed bursts of 3 coughs together every 2-3 minutes all night long. We gave her all the meds we could give... but to no avail. I hardly slept at all and I had to get up and leave early that next morn. At 4 am, in desperation, I placed my hand on Ketli’s chest and prayed God to take the cough away and let her sleep. She stopped coughing immediately and went to sleep. Candace said she slept without a single cough for the next 5-6 hours! Thank you Jesus! How can people not believe in God?

Help us pray...

· For the poor people here, for their health both spiritually and physically.

· That the clinic workers can be blessed with wisdom to heal bodies and that we can show Jesus to the unsaved

· That we can live in the center of Gods will and that He can steer our lives.... and our future

Keith Toews

Administrator- Confidence Health Center

Oriani, Haiti

(011) 509-3783-9058

www.chcenter.wordpress.com

UNSHAKEN: Book about Haiti Earthquake by Dan Woolley

Find this book and read. 65 hours under Hotel Montana. Probably find it at Christian bookstores. I'll tell about it later.

FEB Lasstic Updates 2013

Dear Friends,

As I said in my last update, we had an advance crew in to set the HQ up, and prepare for our arrival. Neils & I arrived on January 14, followed quickly by several others. We ramped up to a household size of 17 and expect to be between 12 and 17 for the next number of weeks. My wife and youngest daughter arrived on the 25th. The household breaks down to 12 men working on the project and 5 wives and children looking after the household.
We started with getting a road into the canyon. We were told of the mass rearrangement of the landscape caused by the two hurricanes, but it is another thing to see it at first hand. The river bottom has deep canyons cut into the gravel, and it took a lot of work to cut a road that could be used by gravel trucks and general vehicles.
Even as the road was being built our young men hiked up the canyon with shovels, wheelbarrows, and misc. supplies. They got started on the canal repairs, and as soon as the road was ready, we started hauling in construction materials, we brought up a container for a storage and workshop area, and we concentrated on getting everything ready for a big concrete push. Our mechanic arrived from Vanderhoof, BC on Jan 21, and his 1st job was to get the rock drill going and up to the canyon. That went pretty good until the guys laid the drill over on its side while loading it on the truck. A few days later it was back on its tracks and in running condition again.
There was an oil leak in a hydraulic cylinder that worsened as we worked our way up the canyon. Some investigation told us that parts were not available in the country, and when the oil leak got to about 1 GPM we knew we couldn’t proceed. Sam flew to Miami while I got the parts ordered for next day delivery to the dealer there. Nothing every works that smooth, even in a supposedly civilized country, but he was back in about 72 hours. $350 worth of parts turned into quite a bit more than that in cost to the project. Can anybody say “$1000 O-ring”?
One of the effects of the storms is that in our work area in the canyon much of the gravel has been washed away, leaving boulders on bedrock. The drill is not really an all-terrain vehicle, being really made for more controlled conditions. At its best, it goes about 1 MPH, so it took the help of the excavator and a little patience to get it worked up to the dam so we could drill in the required anchor holes needed to attached the new construction to the bedrock.
The effort required to get it there was worth it. Even though our regular drill operator was unable to come this year, once we got it to the dam our crew was able to complete all the anchor drilling in one afternoon!
While we were waiting for the drill to come up, we spent the time in prep work. Two work areas were constructed by building retaining walls on both the upstream and downstream sides of the dam, and a level area created by hauling in dirt to fill them. We cut steel drums in half lengthwise and welding them together to form chutes, and these were anchored down the rock to the bottom of the new dam. We were able to clean the riverbed down to bedrock in most of the area under the dam. We placed large boulders in the middle of the stream, and with sheets of plywood and by plugging the leaks with dirt, we were able to divert the stream into about ½ of the channel. We poured about 10 yards of concrete into the newly exposed channel area, and from there fashioned a bridge from 1” rebar over the flowing water. We have poured about 1’ of concrete over the bridge, all of it bristling with rebar, bedrock anchors, and tie-in points. In our test runs while pouring the over mentioned concrete, we were able to mix and place about six yards per hour, which is close to double what we were able to produce in 2011 when we built the original dam.
Last year we were able to drive trucks right to the dam site when hauling sand. Since the dam was completed, we have built the canal and control structures, so we now have to move all out materials by wheelbarrow and bucket. Hurricanes Issac and Sandy damaged our project, and also damaged much of the local infrastructure and crops. This should be bean harvest time, but there are basically no crops to harvest, so many of the locals are desperate for income. We started hiring workers from the canyon just like normal, and every day when we arrive at work the crowd of potential workers is bigger. We have been using about 115 local workers on the materials haul, and the hopeful crowd is often 300+. Some of them have walked as much as four hours after hearing that there was employment in the area. Besides the locals whom we know from working with them over the years, we have concentrated on hiring those who are widows or have young children to provide for. It’s really heart breaking to see the disappointment in the faces of those not needed for work on any given day, and some will stay around all day just hoping that some work will come up. The work performance has been better than average as those with jobs realize that there are plenty of replacements if they get caught shirking.
Transportation is always a challenge here. The roads are rough enough that vehicles decline rapidly. Our 2011 DMax with about 20K miles is ready for its third set of tires, has some broken suspension parts, is leaking oil from the rear end, has a broken bed mount, a small amount of body damage, and most recently, the 4X4 system has quit working. This is why we pretty much need a full time mechanic on site. We have rented a Nissan Patrol that was used quite a bit when it was new, we have our recently rebuilt quad, and most exciting, we purchased a new Polaris Ranger Crew! Much as we like our other stuff, the Ranger has quickly captured the place as the favorite vehicle for canyon runs. It is smoother at 30MPH in the canyon than our DMax equipped with an off road suspension kit is at 10 MPH.
Looking ahead we expect to start building the lower section of the dam in earnest yet this week. We expect to have a side crew or two repairing fountains, installing the control gates, and similar miscellaneous works. The locals are anxious for water on their growing crops, so we hope to have at least some flow available to them by the middle of February.
We were also privileged to host Raymond & Vera at our compound over the weekend. They were in town getting the last supplies that they needed before heading out west to start construction on the bridge project. The last of their materials have cleared customs, and their construction crew has mostly arrived. We hope to be able to spend a weekend out there soon to see their progress.
And finally, our long awaited container is scheduled to dock yet this week, and our contact at CAM says they usually get them about a week later. To make due until then, we have purchased some items, rented and borrowed others, done some “doing without”, and generally progressed as best we could. It will be much more convenient when we have the good tools that we need here on hand. I think the crew is getting tired of hearing me say “well we have one of those in the container . . .”
Most of the locals wear used clothing from the US. There are many printed t-shirts with a wide variety of sayings, some gender or situation appropriate, many of them not. Since almost none of the mountain folks can read, what their shirts say is a non-issue for them. We compare notes about shirts we have seen, and how they fit or did not fit the situation. I think the best of the canyon shirts was worn by one of our workers, and on the back it read “If what you did yesterday still looks BIG to you, you haven’t done much TODAY. Go do something big!

Wiebe's Corner Quoting on Prayer

Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this - always obey such an impulse.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Lasstic Janurary 2013 Progress

From across the US & Canada our folks are starting to stream back to Haiti. Sam has been working there all summer, Jerome, Morgan, and Jalen arrived within the last week or so, and have been at work setting up the compound, and generally getting ready for this year’s work. The AC has been fixed on the DMax, new tires are ordered, the (new to us) quad has been rebuilt, and we’re mostly ready to go (more on that later).

In case there are those of you who haven’t been informed, water was turned into the project in February 2012. The system mostly worked during the year, with some startup pains, until the double blow of Hurricane Isaac & Hurricane Sandy that took us out of commission. Our task is to repair this damage, and strengthen for future threats.

We have rented the same house in Fond Parisien that we’ve had the last several years. This will be our first year without Raymond formally involved, although he was not on site last year because of his surgery. This year he plans to be off west building a bridge, and of course we wish him the very best at that. Quite a few volunteers from previous years will be there, and we’ll be welcoming new folks as well.

After initial setup, our first task will be to further assess the dam VS bedrock situation. A large amount of backfill prom previous years has washed away, and this gives us the chance to anchor all or most of the dam down to bedrock. With the help of the excavator, we’ll be probing to see how far we have to go. We anticipate about 175 yards of concrete will be poured to accomplish this, with about 5 tons of steel to be placed and tied. While this is going on, a second team will be repairing the limited damage to the canal, and we will also be revamping our gate/control layout to streamline that part of it.

A lot of time was spent during the summer and fall mapping and drafting the distribution area, and that project is complete. A total of 1419 gardens are being supplied with water, and each one has been mapped, drafted, calculated, and a “Sètifika Dlo” (water certificate) prepared. Each garden is cross referenced to our field notes, the district it resides in, and the map sheet & grid on which it is currently shown. As we continue to establish the local Water Committee and the operating budget, each landowner will receive his formal certificate as he pays his annual dues for water. In 2013 the fee will be about $35 USD per acre, or about $14 for the average size garden. It is our goal to have this completely set up and organized by the time water flows again, which we hope will be happening by the end of February.

Since we don’t have Raymond working with us this year, we also don’t have his tools and equipment. Last fall we made up an exhaustive list of what we needed to acquire for this year, as well as adding the routine consumables. This was all assembled in Pennsylvania near to CAM’s HQ, carefully packed into a container together with some items for Raymond and Keith Toews, and delivered to CAM. Due to circumstances seemingly beyond our control, they have delayed shipment several times, and it’s still sitting in their yard! Since it takes about 4 weeks to make the transit and clear customs, we will likely be half done by the time it arrives. We’re starting to take some alternate measures, but not everything has been resolved at this time. The current promise is to ship in two days (Wednesday), so we’ll see what happens.

Right now our funding is about 75% of our budget, so we’ve come a long ways, and our goal is almost in sight. As long as ya’ll keep supporting us in prayer, and with volunteers and funds, we’ll keep working.

Kevin Bronson

Are You A Prayer Warrior?

1 Thessalonians 5:17 pray without ceasing

I have been more and more impressed with the power of prayer. Why wouldn't you pray? We are such weak beggarly beings and yet we have a heavenly father and creator that is interested in our praise and requests. I have nothing to boast of but know that I am very needy. Alot of things I do not understand, but I do believe in prayer. When a plane is to make a tragic descent to the ground, its passengers resort to prayer if there is but any time to do so. There is so much to pray for. If you chronically complain about the way the country is run, and about the Media, your neighbors, or crime waves----it means you have a duty, yes a duty to pray to God about these things. No point being self righteous about it--you have power to pray about it. When you read a true story pray for the people. I remember reading a book of short stories. One left you hanging. One about about a poor Indian girl that was forced to prostitute to provide for her dying family. It touched my heart that I wanted to pray for her. In the next reprints they had to update the story to record that miracles had happened in her life. I believe readers were moved to prayer and it made a difference.
I love the people that I meet, but know that only the Holy Spirit can really make the difference in their lives. That means pray for them. As you drive away take off your hat and pray. When you pass out tracts pray. When you get out of bed-- Pray. Before you sleep-- pray. Any troubles---pray.
And then stop and think of how merciful God has been towards  you-- pray Thanks.
We do not need to recite prayers and think we will be heard for our ritual---We are here to put our hearts into it and make a difference. Christ is our intercessor and as we want to be more like Him it does us good to intercess for our family, neighbors, and national leaders. I have scratched my head and wondered if there is any Christian out there that has recieved the New Birth that has not been prayed for in some way.... JT

Ephesians 6:18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,

 

1 Timothy 2:1-2 First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

 

Post Hurricane Sandy---Lasstic Haiti Canal/Dam Project

A Little Overdue, but still Ongoing

November 2012

 

 

 

Several of us traveled to Haiti in mid October to review the damage caused by Hurricane Isaac that passed over Haiti in late August. In general, the whole country took a medium beating from the storm, with some roads washed out, crops ruined, houses damaged, etc. The roads leading to our project had some damage as well, although by the time we arrived the road department had repaired the main road. The side road that leads through several villages to our site had been repaired enough by locals that we were able to get through in low range 4X4 with a spotter guiding us through the rough parts.

What we found wasn't a surprise to us, because it had been described to us by several visitors just after the storm. The canal has some damage, with about 15' of the wall broken away in one point, and some erosion undercutting the floor. One of our control gates has broken away (parts of it were found about 3 1/2 miles downstream). We found large rocks, some as big as basketballs, that had washed over the control gates, and partially filled the canal beyond. We estimate that 50 yards of debris were washed over the top of the ±4' high gates - it's hard to imagine the turbulent water required to move that size of rocks over that high of a wall. The gates are pretty scarred, but still very usable. We expect the canal repairs can be done in a week or less, and in doing so, we will reinforce some areas for future storm resistance.

The erosion at the dam site is more spectacular. What we call the dam is really a retaining wall that crosses the river just downstream of the entrance to the canal. During construction we were able to locate bedrock on the river bank nearest the canal, and a knob about 2/3 of the way across the riverbed to anchor the dam to, but in between those two bedrock points we dug down about 12' with the excavator, and didn't hit anything solid. We decided that that 12' was about the maximum depth that we could open and dewater a hole for construction, so without bedrock in between we built a dam to span the river. It is 18' high, and when it was finished we backfilled it, which raised the level of the river bed and created a waterfall. The height of the dam is such that water runs around the end of it until the desired high water level in the canal, at which time excess water spills over the dam. To reduce erosion, we piled many tons of boulders at the base of the dam to form a splash pad. We moved in all the big rocks from the canyon below -everything we could dig up and move in with a Cat 320 excavator.

Based on the water mark evidence on the canal walls, it looks like the water came over the dam 4 ' to 5' deep. The entire boulder field was washed away, and not to be seen anywhere in the river bed downstream. It appears that once the erosion protection was gone, the falling water undercut the dam until the backfill from the upstream side started washing under the dam, and about 2/3 of the backfill placed in 2011 was gone. The stream ran just under the dam in two places, with about 2' of clearance in the deepest channel.

We spent a number of hours poking, prodding, measuring, debating, and calculating. By the end of three days, we had come up with a proposed soil stabilization method, a way to re-backfill the dam, and plans for repairing the canal and other miscellaneous damage, including to the two fountains we had placed in several nearby villages. We also spent some time in Port au Prince determining the availability and pricing of materials, we looked for another vehicle to purchase, and made general plans.

As we left the country October 24th, all eyes were starting to look south, where another hurricane was quickly forming. When Sandy crossed over Cuba as a Category 2 hurricane, the storm was big enough that is was raining all the way from Venezuela to Florida, and was certainly raining hard in most of Haiti. According to most of the people we have had contact with there, it was the worst rainfall event in many years. At our congregation in Oriani, it rained for 43 hours straight, during which time they received about 2.5' of water! Houses, crops, roads, bridges, and people's hopes were washed away all around the country. We all have heard about and seen the immense damage caused when Sandy hit New York - at which time it was "only" a Category 1 hurricane. Can anybody imagine the damage if it was a Cat 2 when it hit?

When our local inspectors finally were able to hike back into the canyon to inspect (much more road damage than before), they were all concerned that this storm might have been the water that broke the dam, but to their amazement they found the riverbed was scoured down to bedrock for some distance both upstream and downstream from the dam, I mean bridge. It is now "high and dry" with enough clearance underneath to drive heavy equipment through! The water was still rushing down the channel, but the opening down to bedrock is about 45' wide at the top, 25' wide at the bottom, and about 15' high.

We have enough data points from 500' upstream of the dam to about 3/4 of a mile below the dam to calculate the average change in river bottom to be about 18'. This means that in this 3/4 mile area, 18' deep X the average riverbed width, approximately 500,000 yards of material were washed away. And it didn't just was around the next corner - 3 1/2 miles downstream the river bed is down about 4', and along the way it widened the river about 75' through one village for about 1/2 mile, washing away to within about 3' of the nearest house, and made sundry other adjustments to the landscaping! This rock was deposited after the river slowed down as it widens out into the farming valley another mile or so downstream. Some of it washed an additional 2 - 2 1/2 miles and buried a few fields that were getting irrigation water from our system.

We don’t view the altered landscape at our dam site as a huge disaster, but rather it's really a blessing. We had debated the idea of excavating down until we found solid rock, but had ruled it out as to much overburden to move with the equipment, time, and space we had available With the bedrock exposed, we can construct under the dam/bridge down to it, and eliminate the problem of future erosion. We estimate it will take an additional 170 yards of concrete, and increase the height of the dam to 33'. I have been working with local engineering firm to come up with a plan to anchor this larger structure to the bedrock. Since we still have our rock drill there, we will drill anchor holes into the bedrock as part of that plan.

With our options narrowed down to just one feasible way to repair the damage, our plans have been advancing. Nobody involved thinks we should stop working now, so we plan to resume our work in mid January. Most of the same core team will return, and we expect construction to last somewhere from six to eight weeks. We have been assembling tools and supplies on the east coast, and that container should ship any day.

As most of you know, an old Haiti hand Raymond Withers has been helping us in the past. We have used a lot of his machinery, tools, vehicles, and expertise on this project. Last year he was laid up in Texas recovering from a surgery, but we had his dozer, pickup, quad, welder/generator, misc tools, and his hired man helping on our project! This year he plans to be building a bridge about five hrs drive to the west, and of course will be using all of his resources there. We are faced with ramping up our current transportation fleet of one pickup to at least one more vehicle, and at least one quad/ATV. We found and purchased a 1999 Arctic Cat quad; Sam has gone over it stem to stern, and almost $2000 worth of parts has shipped by air to rebuild it. That seems like a LOT of money to spend on a machine that is that old, but it has one major thing going for it - it's in the country with all the taxes paid! It is incredibly difficult and time consuming to import any motorized piece of equipment into Haiti, and we felt that this one was the most time, cost, and stress effective way to go. It's also the only utility/work quad I have ever seen for sale in Haiti - mostly we see sport type machines that the really rich people use for toys. The above mentioned container has a welder, cutting torch, shop tools, tires, and other stuff needed on board, as well as some supplies for some of the other mission efforts of the church in Haiti.

 

As mentioned above, some of our previous workers plan to return, but at this time we still have openings for mechanics, equipment operators, and concrete contractors, as well as general help. If you have an interest in putting in some time, contact Roger Jantz or Kevin Bronson for details on the openings and skills we're looking for.

In additional to the canal re-building project, we have also been forming a Water Committee to manager the distribution of water, and to maintain the canals in the valley. Slightly over 1200 farms receive water, and they have agreed to pay for the water to fund system maintenance and improvement, and asked us to provide that information. The agreed upon rates are based on the area of each farm, so we are mapping and calculating the area as part of this process. We have committed to having this mapping done, and issuing a "water rights certificate" for each farm when we return in early January. The CPS Unit in Haiti did the mapping field work in May of this year as one of their last major projects before the Unit closed. All that is left to do is the drafting & calculations, which have proven to be quite time consuming. If somebody with AutoCAD drafting experience has some time to volunteer for this project, it would be much appreciated. Please contact Kevin Bronson for details.