Day 12

I woke up today and headed to breakfast about 8:00AM. The hotel normally provides spaghetti or hard boil eggs for breakfast. Today was a hard boiled egg day, so I just ate nuttela and bread. We left the hotel today about 8:30AM and headed to the bank. Dustin and Jenna had to withdraw money to pay the electricians and other members of the work crew working on the orphanage. The bank is located here in Hinche and is a short drive from the hotel. I haven't been in it but from what I hear it pretty basic. Anyway Dustin and Jenna come back out of the bank after sometime with $3,000.00 USD in ten dollar bills.


Why the bank gave it to them in ten dollar bills, I don’t know, but this is Haiti and one is just happy the bank actually had enough money to give out. A short while after Dustin and Jenna returned to the van and our money exchange guy shows up with his bag of money. When I say bag of money I mean a good size bag full of gourdes.



We pay all the workers in gourdes because it’s the countries main currency and if they had gotten paid in USD it would be easy for a money exchanger to give them a terrible exchange rate and rip them off. The exchange rate for USD here fluctuates, its best to give Haitians money in gourdes because many are not educated enough to understand the math involved in exchanging money. I’ll have to admit it has taken me a while to get use to the exchange rate and I frequently use a calculator to make sure I pay what I am suppose to when buying things. Back to the story our money exchanger shows up with his backpack full of Haitan gourdes and we exchange $3,000 USD for gourdes in the van. I needed to exchange some of my own personal money also so I have him $20.00 for 800 gourdes.

Once at the orphanage we checked the progress of the electricians and how far along they had gotten on installing the inverters for our generator. They were laying pipe to get electricity to the visitors quarters and administration buildings. After checking the progress of that they informed us that they need more supplies from town. After a while Dustin, Jenna, Wisney, the electrician Dudu, and I headed back in the van to go to town to run more errands.

First we headed to the the various stores the electrician needed to go to, to get his supplies. After that we headed to get water and ice, then headed to appliance store to look for a USB cable for the printer we had bought several days ago. The printer we purchased didn’t come with a USB cable and of course we couldn’t find any store in Hinche that sold USB cables so we will have to get one next time we go back to Port-au-Prince. After looking for the USB cable we went to several Internet cafes to try and get on the Internet. The first one we visited was closed, and when we arrived to the next one the men told us the Internet connection was slow today and that we should try back tomorrow. We explained to him that we only needed to send off one email and he said we could try. Well after about 20minutes Jenna and Dustin couldn’t even log into their email account to try and send the email so we left and headed back to the orphanage.


When we got back to the orphanage we dropped off all the electrical supplies we bought in town then headed back to the hotel. Today we didn’t really do any work on the orpahange just ran errands and paid workers.

When we got back to the hotel Dustin, Jenna and I deiced to walk to the supermarket to do some shopping. Everyone is starting to get low on snacks… I only have about 6 cans of tuna left that I had packed with me. So we walked through town to the supermarket. The walk wasn’t too bad. Few streets are paved here and live stock are more popular than cars. This leaves the streets smelling like animal feces because the animals defecate in the streets and rarely anyone cleans it up. That combined with the absences of sewers and drainage systems leaves green stagnate water on the sides of streets makes for what I like to call a: garbage truck juice shit mix smell. It’s the best way I can describe the smell… Its stronger in certain parts of the city and is rough enough to give you a stomach ace if you breath in enough of it.


Once we arrived at the supermarket I grabbed a basket and went to shopping. Going to the grocery store hungry and starving is a terrible idea. Its even worse in a country were everything is overpriced due to the fact that almost everything in the supermarket is imported from outside the country. But I shopped anyway, I got 2 cans of sour cream and onion pringles, a small loaf of bread, two Gatorade's, two cans of tuna, and three cans of corn. I wanted to try out two new different brands of tuna being that I will be out soon and will need to purchase more from the supermarket. The tuna I brought with me from the states cost about .58 cents from walmart while similar tuna here in Haiti costs $1.63. The pringles I bought are my favorite, the pringles combined with a tuna sandwich, and a coke is heaven here in Haiti. I’m not joking you appreciate simple things like this when you stay any extended period of time here… The Gatorade's were a big surprise to me, I found them in the back of the store laying on the ground, they were like many things at the supermarket extremely expensive and I don’t even want to share how much I paid for two small Gatorade's. The corn I was glad to get because I haven’t eaten any vegetables since I have been here in Haiti. The corn will be a good addition to my tunariceandbeansfriesketcup mix now making it an: tunariceandbeansfriesketcupcorn mix. I spent about 800 gourdes on my mini shopping spree, this is about $21.00USD. After we got done shopping we headed back to the hotel and got ready for diner.


To our surprise tonight diner was actually on time. As in we told the hotel staff we would like to eat at 4PM and we got our food at about 4:10PM. What a surprise!! The corn added to my usual diner was a big boost for my appetite. I have eaten the same thing for diner the past 11 days and adding something as small as corn really made a difference.


After diner we played a couple games of cards and then met up in James room to share movies. Dustin, James and I all brought our laptops on the trip. Dustin and Jenna had a pretty good size movie collection on their mac so James and I perused through their movies and pick out about eight movies. First we uploaded the movies from Dustins mac to my ipod, and then from my ipod to James’ mac. I can simply just plug my ipod into my laptop and watch the movies on my laptop from my ipod. Tonight I watched Invictus and it wasn’t too bad.

Tomorrow we get a bit of the day off. We have church service at 9:30 and have a lot more things to pass out the church congregation. After that we have the rest of the day to relax.

Day 11

Well the group got back to the hotel around 11PM last night and they didn’t have any domino's pizza… but they did get me a take out order from one of the best restaurants in the country. I have been there twice already and I get the Penne au Poulet every time. Anyway I got that last night and decided to eat it for lunch today. I woke up late around 7:45AM and had to hurry and get ready for our 8PM departure time. We arrived to the orphanage today around 8:30AM and got to work setting up all the things the group bought in Port-au-Prince yesterday. 8 twin size mattress for the volunteer quarters, batteries for the power inverters, and setting up the rest of the kitchen area and a few different things in the administration building.

I first started helping with the mattresses in the visitors quarters, Dena set up most of the beds with linen and organized towels and wash cloths. After finishing in the visitors quarters I headed down to the administration building to help set up things there. Dustin and Jenna were busy doing all the accounting work from yesterdays shopping spree so I took on the role of their office temp for the day. I set up the brand new printer they had brought and then after that set up the kitchen area. Coffee pot, plates, glasses, forks, knives, spoons, attaching handles on the refrigerator. Easy stuff.

After I was done with that work I headed back up to the visitors quarters to have lunch. For lunch I ate my Penne au Poulet I had saved from last night. After lunch their wasn’t much else to do so I took a nap while James, Gaston (construction manager) and the electricians went around planning all the electrical work. After my nap we cleaned floors then left back to the hotel.

Typical evening after working all day at the orphanage, shower, diner, leisure time playing cards, then heading back my hotel room. Even though its Friday night there really isn't anything special to do, but get sleep and get ready for work tomorrow.

Day 10

After last nights Bastille Day soriee waking up was a bit rough this morning. Today most of the group left at 5AM to drive to Port-au-Prince to do more shopping for the visitors quarters. I elected to stay here in Hinche and continue to work on the orphanage and help with construction. Shopping really isn’t my thing and neither is waking up at 5AM and driving to PaP so I was happy to stay here, and plus last time we went to Port to do shopping I spent most of the time sitting doing nothing or sleeping in the van. I will miss the fact that I won’t be able to eat at our usual lunch spot in Petionville though. I'll be missing out on the Penne au Poulet..


I rolled out of bed about 7:30 this morning and headed for breakfast. I had the usual spaghetti, along with nuttela spread on bread. After breakfast I headed to room to pack up for the day. Today is going to be my first day working with our construction crew at the orphanage. I was pretty excited to be able to do some outside work instead of being cooped up inside buildings working all day. Wisney our driver for the day picked Davidson and I up around eight and we picked up some water and headed to the orphanage. Wisney drove his car today being that the rest of the group drove the van to PaP. Wisneys car to my surprise was an automatic! The first automatic I have ever seen in Haiti. Most car’s are stick shifts and from what I know its difficult to find mechanics who know how to work on automatics. Anyway we arrived to the orphanage about 8:30 in the morning and got to work.

Working with the Haitian work crew is alright. It’s made up of a couple older men and the rest are local kids that working along for the summer. All the workers do basic manual labor jobs and some are masons. The kids do most of the tough work, shoveling rocks and pushing wheel barrels. The men do most of the masonry work and landscaping.

Today we broke up a huge concrete slab located in front of the orphanage gate. The slab that we broke up accumulated because of all the concrete work the crew does. They have to mix the concrete and after a while it builds up and they are left with a huge concrete slab of concrete that has dried and has no use. This is how it was explained to me, and it doesn’t make sense to me so if you are confused so am I… But anyway the older men use pick axes to break up the slab and the kids shovel it up into wheel barrels and transport it to a dump pile. I helped shovel and push wheel barrels today. It isn’t difficult work just tiring and its extremely hot out. I even helped break up the slab when the older men took breaks. I did this for about 3 hours and it was finally time for lunch.
Breaking up concrete is a blast!


After lunch I had to take care of some work in the visitors quarters and administration buildings. All the locks needed to be changed, the previous day we had put some new locks in the visitors quarters but after looking at them today some were put on backwards and wouldn't lock correctly so they needed to be redone. Davidson took care of fixing all the locks in the visitors quarters and he and I both installed new locks in the Administration building. All the previous locks needed to be replaced because some of the key sets had been lost. Around 3PM we finally finished all the inside lock work and called it a day.



Once we returned to the hotel it was about 3:30PM. We had placed our diner order this morning after lunch and set a diner time of 4PM… Wisney informed me after we got back that they had pushed our diner time back to 6PM… no surprise there… So I took a shower and a much need nap. Around 6 I headed to our diner area and of course the table handen't even been set. So I hang out there for a while and eventually someone comes over and I order a coke. Eventually about 7:30PM all the food arrives and its time to eat. We went from setting a 4PM diner time to eating at 7:30PM I asked Davidson if this is normally how all hotels in Haiti work and he told me no that this hotel just has terrible service. None the less I am just happy to have food and dug into my ususal tunariceandbeansfriesketcup plate. I have had the same thing for diner ten days in a row and to be honest I am so hungry here that it doesn’t bother me one bit.

After diner Davidson and I sit and talk for abit and I head back to my room after a bit. The group that went to Port-au-Prince this morning hasn’t arrived back yet… Someone said something about them bringing back domino's pizza so I’m hastily waiting for their arrival.

Day 9

Today's wake up time wasn’t that bad. 7:30AM!! I woke up and went straight to breakfast. I had bread and nuttlea along with pineapple for breakfast. After breakfast we set a 8:30AM departure time for work at the orphanage. Today at the orphanage Dena, Pascal, Davidson and I were responsible for cleaning the walls of the visitors quarters. James, Jenna and Dustin went into town with Winsley to handle some business. Washing walls is my least favorite cleaning activity, to be honest after having to work the past several days inside the visitors quarters and administration building I want to get outside and do something else than put together furniture or repeatedly clean rooms. I understand that getting the visitors quarters is necessary but I am yearning to get outside, instead of being cooped up all day inside buildings. After scrubbing walls for a couple hours I needed a break from all the inside work so I decided to assist the construction workers. I moved rocks to a location we were landscaping along the road to the orphanage. While an America work crew could have loaded an back hoe or gator full of rocks and transported them, we had to carry rocks from the rock pile all the way over to the rock line we created. After completing the rock work it was time to head on lunch break. After lunch break I helped finish washing walls and began to set up new locks with James in the visitors quarters. The security had lost or misplaced some of the keys from the previous locks so they needed changing out... All the locks.. After changing out my second lock it began to rain. When it rains in Haiti it rains quite a bit so we had to pack up for the day because the roads frequently become over flooded due to the torrential rain thus making them not cross able. We quickly piled into the van and headed to the hotel.

On the ride to the hotel you could see many Haitians heading home, like us, because of the rain. Storm drains began to over flow onto the street. Many streets in Haiti do not have sewage systems, therefore when it rains the streets just completely flood. Makes a nasty walking and living condition. Also when it rains you can see a good amount of the population gathering the rain water for many different purposes. Some collect the rain water in buckets because it is safe drinking water and some use the water running through overhead to shower in.

On they way back to the hotel we stopped at the market so I could pick up a few things. Today is Bastille Day so I deemed it fit to get a bottle of wine. Bastille day is a important holiday to me for several reasons, one being my French heritage and the second being the significance July 14, 1789 has in history. Bastille day is the celebration of the storming of the Bastille in Versailles, France July 14, 1789. It marks the beinging of the French Revolution. This year I got a bottle of Cavalier Blanc de Blancs and a baguette from the market. The Blanc de Blancs soft sparkling wine, the market doesn’t sell and descent wines just sparkling stuff… Diner was the same basic diner I have eaten for the past 8 days. Tunariceandbeansfriesketcup with a Bastille Day touch adding bread and wine.

Happy Bastille Day!

I haven’t been able to find a decent wine glass at any shops here in Hinche and I’m sure if I did it would be extremely overpriced so I made one out of a top of a water bottle. After diner we played cards for a bit more then headed to our rooms for the night.

Day 8

Thankfully today we set a 8:30AM departure time for our work for the orphanage. This means we had time to eat breakfast!! I actually woke up early enough to make breakfast. Eating one meal a day for the past couple of days has taken a toll and sleep is no longer more important than food. We had bananas. pineapple, spaghetti, and bread for breakfast. I brought my jar of nuttela that I thought I had forgotten to pack but found last night before going to sleep. Nutella oh nutella.. makes waking up early well worth it to be able to spread some nuttela on a slice of bread in the morning. After eating as much as I possibly could at breakfast I went back to my room and got all packed for todays work. Today we worked mainly in the visitors quarters putting together furniture. All together we put together about four chest of drawers and two night stands. We also once more cleaned out each room and washed doors in both the administration and visitors quarters. Once we finished with that we were about done for the day and packed up and headed back to the hotel.




It was a usual night here in Haiti, diner was just a hour late this time and we filled the time playing cards. Diner was the usual tunariceandbeansketcupspaghettifries plate for me. After diner we hung out and conversed for a bit then headed for our rooms. I usualy spend my nights reading, blogging, and organizing pictures I have taken during the day into specific folders. I have a TV in my hotel room but the cable cord wont reach far enough to also have the TV plugged into a power outlet. Yes I know it makes no sense for me to even have the TV in my room.. I don’t miss TV much. There is no public electricity in Hinche and the hotel runs off of an generator. During the day the hotel has no power but in the evening the generatior is turned on. We are gone most of the day so this isn’t a big problem.

Day 7

We decided yesterday (sunday) that we would wake up earlier and skip breakfast in order to work earlier to avoid the heat. That meant waking up at 6:30AM and loading into the van and working from 7:00AM to mid day. Skipping breakfast I didn’t really mind but the 6:30AM wake up was pretty rough. We started to work on putting together all the furniture we had bought in port au prince. We started with the beds for the visitors quarters and then moved to organizing the administration building. Its important that we get these two buildings finished as soon as possible so we can move out of the hotel and onto the orphanage property. This saves us money from the hotel fee and allows us to work more on the orphanage. We began work today by putting the beds together. I’m usually not fond of putting furniture together but putting together bed frames is easy. We put together about 6 bed frames and cleaned out the visitors quarters once more. We then moved to the administration building moving desks in place and situating the kitchen area. Thankfully all the furniture arrived in once piece on the truck ride from Port-au-Prince. After setting up the offices and kitchen area we once again cleaned out all the rooms. After doing all of this it was time to call it a day and head back to the hotel.

The past couple of days we truly have been living like Haitians. We eat maybe twice a day but today we only ate once. Diner is the usual rice and beans or spaghetti with a veggie tray, tray of fries and a tray of chicken. I stay away from the vegetables and chicken… I eat my usual tunariceandbeansfriesketchupandspaghetti plate. Its finally getting rough with the food situation, I have run out of granola bars and have a limited stock of cans of tuna. It doesn’t really make a difference what I eat as long as it is food. I’m pretty much starving buy the time they bring us our food so I’m happy for anything. I only have trouble when everyone in the group talks about all the food they miss back in the states… Chipotle, Ice cream, cool ranch doritios, Braums… We will even look at pictures of food we miss back home on cameras. It doesn’t bother me too much when we talk about all good food we miss after diner. The only thing that drives me crazy is when its about 3 in the afternoon and we have just worked a full day and I’m starving and we are driving back to the hotel and someone says something about a cheese burger and fries. I know its not a big deal but I don’t know. Diner is still the usual one to two hours late. We call it Haitian time. No matter what time we tell them we will eat diner its never at the time set. Tell the hotel staff we would like to eat at 4PM we will get the meal at about 5:30PM. Its expected and we usually show up to a planned 4PM diner at about 4:30PM and play cards till the food finally arrives. I taught Dustin, James and Jenna how to play the card game thirteen. I learned to play in middle school and we usually play thirteen or domino's in our down time. After diner tonight we hung out and played cards till it got late and we retired to our rooms.

Day 6

Wake up time was a bit later than normal today being that we had the day off. While we did have to day off I had to get things ready for some projects Davidson and I had planned for the kids. Today we were visiting the church group that Wisney leadeds. Wisney works for Center of Hope and is responsible for handling a lot of things on the Haitian side of business with Center of Hope. He has a church congregation that meets every Sunday on the Center of Hope property, Eglise Evangelique Baptiste de Morique (The Evangelical Baptist Church of Morique). I had 200 tooth brushes, a full duffel bag of children's clothes, and candy to pass out to the children of the congregation. Davidson and I also were going to do a small Haitian History lesson and talk with the children about education. So technically I had the day off but still I had a good amount of things to do.

I woke up about 9AM and started to get things ready for the day. I had 75 pictures of Toussaint L’Overture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Petion, and Henri Christohpe to pass out. Davidson was going to give a short lecture to the kids about who exactly these men are and how they helped make Haiti a independent nation. These men are kind of like Haiti’s four fathers and I feel it is important that kids who cant afford to got to school learn about the men who shaped their country.


I also had a duffel bag full of clothing items for the children and 200 toothbrushes to pass out. I crammed about 75pounds worth of donated items to bring to Haiti along with my own personal things. Bringing these items to the country is easy but deciding who needs it the most and passing out the items is difficult. I have decided that the items will be given to the church congregation that Wisney preaches to. After getting all of these items ready I met with the rest of the group and we headed off to church at the orphanage site.

Wisney holds church service next to the orphanage under a group of trees on the orphanage property. The congregation sits on wooden benches and handmade wooden chairs during the service which lasts more than 3 hours. Its amazing to see all the kids sit still and listen to the service in the heat under a tree…

During the service Wisney introduced all of in the group and we received a warm welcome from the church. After the service the hard part of unpacking items and passing them out took place.

Davidson and I first did our talk about Haitian history. We specifically talk about Toussiant L’Overture, Jean-Jacques Dessaline, Alexandre Petion, and Henri Christophe. Davidson did a great job accurately explaining what each of these men did to contribute to Haitian Independence and even quizzed the children on who did what. It was great to see the kids actively participating in learning about their history.

After the Haitian history talk I got the chance to talk to the children about education. In creole. I introduced my self, told them how old I was, what I like to study in school, and how I love education. I informed them about the Let pou Ayiti project and read aloud my letter. I hope the message sunk in, and the kids enjoyed the talk as much as I did. I will be passing out letters that my friends here in the states have wrote on an individual basis.



After the education talk I got the chance to explain to the church congregation the I love Haiti T-shirt project. It is really important for me to show the people of Haiti the project and let them see all the Americans who wear I love Haiti T-shirts. I placed all the picture on a table so the kids could go around and see for themselves all the support they have in the states. The I love Haiti T-shirts are very popular here in Haiti. I sold several shirts during the 2 hours I spent in baggage claim.. I also sold two while we went furniture shopping in Pap to a couple from South Africa. While I’m here in Haiti I also give out shirts to people who are helping to make a difference in the country. I give the shirts out free to Haitians I meet with here.



After the I love Haiti T-shirt explanation I let the kids view all the pictures. After viewing the pictures I we got the kids organized in a line and allowed them to select a picture with an I love Haiti T-shirt purchaser and take a picture with that donater. The pictures will be sent to the people who purchased the shirt so they can see the difference they have made. Most of these kids I visited will be able to go to school once Center of Hope Haiti’s orphanage school opens up. The school is still under construction but should soon be opening. The school will teach about 200 children. Summer purchasers of I love Haiti T-shirt’s have helped in educating these kids. This summer the I love Haiti T-shirt project raised $1,002 for education for Center of Hope Haiti’s education fund. This $1,002 will be spent on education materials for the kids!


Next came the passing out of the 200 tooth brushes, clothing items and pictures of Haiti’s four fathers. We first started with Dena passing out her friendship bracelets she had brought for the kids. The kids at her church in Salem, OH bought them and our wearing ones like the ones we passed out. Dena had Davidson explain that wearing the bracelet shows friendship between the kids in the states and the kids in Haiti.


Next we had to get to all the stuff I had brought along. Bring stuff into the country in this manner happens a lot. Driving around Haiti you see a variety of different shirts, American football jerseys, major league baseball jerseys, recreational jerseys and shirts, American church shirts, a bunch of different clothing items that you can tell were not made in Haiti but brought by foreigners and given away. All the clothes I brought with me were donated by my friends or bought at a local thrift store in Ada. I spent a total of $30USD at a couple different thrift stores in Ada, Oklahoma located on main street. With this $30USD I got over 20 pairs of sandals, and about 50lbs of clothing. Boy and girl baby clothing, some clothing for adolescents, several blouses for women, a couple different polo’s for men and 20 ties for the men in the church. Ties are pretty big time in Haiti and I got each tie for 50 cents here in the states. Passing the items out was easier than expected, church member's sat quietly and each member of my group just grabbed a handful of clothes and walked around until we found someone who fit that size and gave them the clothing item.


After we passed out all the clothes we got the kids in a line so they could get a piece of candy, I brought 72 pieces Air head candy with me. I’m not a big candy eater and I know its pretty shitty to pass out candy to little kids who probably will never see a dentist in their life but I knew they would like the candy rather than something healthy. Plus transporting the candy was easier.

This is the candy line!

Finally after passing out candy I was done for the day with the activities I had planned. After the church service and giving we headed back to the hotel.

Today is the World Cup championship game and we could tell driving back to the hotel. There are just a few restaurants and bars here in Hinche that have televisions. Infront of each you could see a huge crowd of people pushing to get a good look at the game. Thankfully Dustin and Jenna had the game on in their room. The TV in my room doesn’t work so I watched the game in their hotel room before diner.