So here I am again, one month since my last post! So many things have happened since I have entered my last entry. Over the last month, we have had American, Brazilian, Haitian, and Dominican volunteers out working in Fond Parisien, Haiti. With each new group of volunteers we are able to offer more and more help in Camp Hope (ARC) and Love a Child. With the last few groups we have had nurses working in both camps helping with a variety of needs from wound care to skin rashes and even to emergency care to the community around the camps as well. Love a Child is now one of the largest field hospitals in Haiti and continues to need help. This Monday, Carrie Steele will be leading out another very small group of nurses to help out on the border which is very needed. I was told today that they currently have no nurses at the camp and they are very excited to have her team.
In Camp Hope so much has been happening! The rainy season has brought many different issues up to the surface, the largest of them has been the mud problem that the residents face. Deforestation has left Haiti a pretty dry and dusty place, and being that Camp Hope is in a valley, when it rains, it pours, and there is a serious mud and run off problem. With the help of some of the donations given to FFP, we purchased a few truck loads of stone and spread them through the camp in hopes that it would cut down on the mud and dust situation. On our last day, after spreading the stones for a week, we were so excited to arrive and find out that it had rained the night before and that the stone spreading had worked! There was barely any mud around the tents and all I saw were clean mud-less shoes!
We also have been hard at work building a school for the children in the camp as well as in the surrounding community! This has been a very exciting project for us to be involved with. Difficult at times, but exciting. The school is going to have 12 rooms and will accommodate approximately 350 students. This is the first time I have been involved in a project right from the beginning and have been given the opportunity to see the progress. The first week on the school was definitely an interesting one! We dug the foundation which turned out to be the scariest part of the whole ordeal yet because we kept digging in to what looked like the homes of small tarantulas. After I saw the first 3 spiders, my mind tricked itself in to believing that I had spiders on me all day long. I even ran away at one point slapping at my clothes because what I thought was a spider was really a fly.
We pushed through the spider nests however and moved on to tying rebar and pouring the footings and the foundation for the school a few weeks ago. This week involved all cement mixing and bucket lines (Woodside's favorite!) and the group that helped were pretty tough. It isn't the easiest thing to do! The cement piles were the biggest piles I have ever seen mixed on a work site here! It took about 3 days us Americans to actually understand the "technique" of mixing (every single person will show you the "right" way to mix cement), but once we got the hang out of we made some amazing progress.
With the last group members we finally are able to see some really impressive work. The walls have begun to go up and even though FFP groups are not currently there working, the work does continue with Pastor Brony and his four main workers along with a whole team of volunteers from Camp Hope residents. A little frustration in the fact that ARC keeps telling us they are going to pay the workers from the camp, and then they go back on their agreement. So, if you feel like donating to help the work continue on the school so the children can start school this year please do at Foundationforpeace.org and mention that it should be directed for the school laborers!
Miss you all very much and again I apologize for my delay! I can't wait to update again after this next group to tell you all about what adventures we had! Did I mention that we are sleeping in tents in Love A Child this time?? Pray for us!
