Day 5,6,7 Part II

... with much help from the locals the tent went up.  We actually walked away from it a couple of times and  let them continue; as the medical clinic is for their benefit, and they're strong and unlike us, used to the heat!

The next project was to put-up the stuff in the chicken coop.  First we had to survey the situation, so I went out there with a bunch of kids in tow, and in creole we called each other chickens and clucked like crazy people.

I guess we were making too much noise so the pastor's wife had to come and shoo us out of there. Anyway we were just having fun and I think the kids know that this coop is off-limits.  Rather than having all of their chickens running wild, they're going to have the kids round-em up and put the hens in the hen-house and the roasters next door.  Quite a simple sustainability project to ensure adaquate food supply for their community.  They certainly have no shortage of fruit.  You should see the massive fruit trees; lime, papaya, breadfruit, coconut, mango and some other citrus fruit I'd never heard of.

You'll also notice a small goat in the foreground of the mango tree, and a horse in the background.  Ladies and children will actually ride on donkeys or horses to fetch supplies, and they raise goats "kabrit" lambs "muton" and pigs "couchon" for other meat sources.  A neighbor raises fighting roosters, and let me tell you that they don't COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO only in the morning.  They do it all night long and all day long.  Dogs bark. crickets chirp, lambs bleat and those stupid roosters conspire to keep us "blancs" from getting much sleep.

Our facilities here were not quite as lavish as in Port Au Prince.  We stayed in a small bunk-house with 8 bunks, a rat and a bunch of ants.  It seems that the ants enjoyed the taste of electrolyte powder that Yvette had in her back-pack.  They also gave her home-made trail mix a hearty "two-antennae up!"  The rat was seen only a couple of times and didn't cause trouble.  We're letting Franz think his rat hunting success was the one from our bunk-house, but I'm pretty sure it was one of his younger cousins.

I'm sure this bunk-house has been around for 100 or more years.  There's no such thing as weather stripping, and I don't think levels had been invented when this hearty little structure was built.  The tin roof did magnify sound of rain-drops by about a zillion times though.

The toilet facilities left much to be desired.  This is seriously it.  The medical team of 14 people are all going to be sharing this along with whatever trees are around.  Jana and Yvette advised that the engineering of this particular facility was probably better suited to men, who pretty much pee wherever they want anyway.

Even though the facilities were more rustic there was one thing that made this visit extremely worth while:

Marcus & Mimi

We all had a great time wrestling or joking around with boys, conversing (to the best of our abilities) with them all, giving them candy, etc.  Two of the girls last night were standing there just stroking Jana's hair and marvelling at how smooth it was.  Yvette has done a good job of trying to converse with the kids, but these ones knew less french than the people in Port Au Prince, so she's being challenged to use creole.

On our way back to base camp today, we took a little detour to a beach.  We payed 50 gouds per person to get into the beach (about $1.25) and could have had a lobster lunch for 400 gouds, but it was early and that was over the budget for lunch anyway.  We only came across a handfull of other people (locals) It was nice to enjoy the beach even for an hour.  If anyone is interested in funding a resort out here so that we can give employment an start the ball rolling to improve their tourism, just take a look at this beach!!!  Great carribean beaches, creole food and much needed jobs?  Sounds like a winner to me.