life in Haiti

Ok, so I have not updated this thing in two weeks. I apologize :] Things have been very busy here. Due to the limited amount of time I have this blog may be rather jumbled because it has been written at different times then pasted together. Let me start with yesterday to give you an idea of what I do over here. Yesterday I woke up at 4am to the not so lovely sound of Li Fet's rooster crowing just outside my window. He starts at 4 am then gives a good crow about every 45 seconds to make sure you don't drift off back to sleep. At about 5:30 I fell back asleep for a good thirty minutes, till I was awakened for the morning run, by Leah. We went for our normal run, it is only 3 miles but the hills get me every time. After that it was off to the morning shower then down to the teem house to meet with the engineers and see what their plans where for the day. Yesterday they where giving a presentation to summarize their findings on an irrigation/drainage project to the stakeholders. The presentation went fairly well, though I must be honest waking up at 4am made staying awake difficult. What engineers you ask?



We have had a teem of engineers here on and off evaluating a plain to see what needs to be done to restore the land to productive use.
After the presentation I drove the team down to the ocean to look at some water channels, the road was quite muddy from the previous days rain and we almost got stuck. We were in and range rover and despite the fact that it is falling apart like a piece of junk after only 7000km it did very well in the mud. I managed to lock the differential and get it into low range and back out of the ditch I got stuck in and made it on the second run. The engineers are all very knowledgeable and I try to keep my mouth shut and learn as much as possible. Driving on Haitian roads after a rain is more like boating than driving. The day before yesterday we had a meeting but the rain was fairly heavy and kept us from having to may in attendance.

We arrived home from the field at about 4pm and from there I headed to the soccer field. Soccer went well at first but quickly degenerated into rock throwing and name calling. So we had to put some discipline into action. Picking up a rock on the field in tpwias now automatically gets you suspended from the game for two weeks.As soon as you set rules the kids feel the need to test them so on of our regular players did... so sad am going to miss him... well overall the soccer games usually go pretty well. We have scrimmage jerseys which the kids don't care for to much but it really helps us Americans to who are not that good at telling haitians apart yet. tout blan samble, tout noua samble.... I am still in a quandry as to what to do for devotions after soccer. Getting the kids to calm down is becoming harder. I did have a chance to have a good talk with one of the little kids though and that was encouraging. Pray that I would see problems as opportunities to show Christ's love. The rain is always welcome here as it means more food on peoples tables. Today I spent half of the day tranlsating for a dental team that is doing work in the area.
It was pretty gnarly as most of the work done was extractions. The dentists were very good at what they do though. Many of the patients had less than half of their teeth left to begin with... The second half of today I spent learning how to put survey data into autocad. At the end of the day Leah and I had dinner with Rob and Anne-Marie and family. And now I sit writing on the porch to all of you. It is cool and the sky is mostly clear although with an occasional rain cloud blowing through. Two of the soccer boys stopped me in the road today to settle a dispute, I didn't resolve the dispute but they where soon distracted asking for me to take a picture of them that they forgot about their argument. Pray that we would show Christ's Love to these kids... (I am resuming writing after a few days break. Today we have soccer with the boys again.Please be praying that it would go better today and we would find a better way to organize the bible study with it. There are quite a few pictures at higher resolutions on my friend Leah's flickr page if you would like to check them out. I may sign up for a flickr account but since she is using a lot of my pics I will just send you to hers for now. The link is http://flickr.com/photos/7252990@N05/ That link may change to something nicer soon, so I will try to come back and edit the link when it does. If you cant get to it just let me know. At the end of this blog entry I will place a section that Leah wrote for you all describing the kind of things we do for fun around here. IE. what to do when you are the only american "kids" for miles :] Let me know anything you would like me to write about im my blog and I will do my best to put it in... Well I'm off to file my taxes then play some soccer... again please be praying for the soccer kids, thanks Dustin


Well I have tons of photos and I can't upload them all but I am going to stick a few right here rather ungracefully so please bear with the lack of aesthetic.