24489: Clean Water For Haiti Update (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: CLean Water For Haiti <chrisrolling@chrisrolling.com>

Dear Everybody:
Things went well for the water project in Haiti this month. Unlike recent
months, there were no security issues to contend with in February and I
have begun to relax and enjoy the beach house again.
We have had a lot of visitors since January and this is the first week
without visitors since then. It is good for the mission to have so many
people involved but it has been hard in some ways because we weren’t able
to get certain kinds of work done. This week, for example, I was able to
fix our small generator, our portable welder and our drill press. It
turns out none of them had major problems but I wasn’t able to put the
time in before to find out what the problems were.
The next group of visitors is a team of 13 coming in from Christ the King
church in Bellingham, WA in less than a week. It promises to be a busy
time as we have only had a group that size come in once before.
On Tuesday I finally had time to go and do a little project out in
Beaufort where we drilled a Cup of Cold Water well several months ago.
The water in Beaufort, instead of needing to be pumped up, comes out on
its own so we decided to install a simple tap in place of the unnecessary
pump. www.cleanwaterforhaiti.org/newsletter-watertap.jpg Unfortunately,
in typical Haitian fashion, members of Aristide’s old gang chose Tuesday
to block up the national highway with rocks and trucks so we weren’t able
to go through. Finally yesterday we went through and we were able to go
in there and do the project. What you see in the picture is the tap just
before we started encasing the plastic in concrete. We had to run an
electric pump just to keep the spring from pouring all over where we were
working.
The project in Gonaives still continues. I had no intention of this
project ever continuing past march, but several factors have made the
project able to continue further. First, the project manager, Tony, has
managed to cut costs and improve quality to a degree I never thought
possible. The money we received for filters is stretching much further
than we originally thought. Also, Crossroads/ 100 Huntley street has
decided to contribute another $4000 which will keep the project going
longer still.
Three months after a disaster has happened, relief projects are supposed
to end and development projects should continue. We are violating this
principle in Gonaives and that bothers me. Clean Water for Haiti needs to
promote the biosand filters in a sustainable fashion or risk the
long-term effectiveness of the project being compromised. In Gonaives, to
at least draw attention to the fact that relief time is over, we have
started charging $20 Haitian Dollars (about $3 US) for the filters. We
found no decrease in demand with this new condition and there is the
added benefit that we are able to build even more filters with the money
that is coming in. The current status of the project contrasts distinctly
from the project’s beginning when Roman and I had to make many trips up
there to solve problems that arose. There have been no problems with the
project for some time.
On April 11 and 12 we are giving a class for existing technicians to come
and learn how to build the small filters. I am very excited about it.
There has been a lot of interest in the small filters and I anticipate a
high demand for the molds after they become available for sale when the
class is over. I have no doubt but that the small filters are a large
part of the reason why the Gonaives project is so successful. Over the
next year, we intend to focus on existing filter technicians. We would
like to see the techs become better supported by organizations that want
to start filter projects in their particular zones of Haiti.
My good friend Joel Amundson came for his second annual visit. For two
years now, he’s taken his two weeks vacation and spent it in Haiti having
fun and fixing things. We repaired about a dozen mechanical issues on the
new KIA truck which now works a lot better than it did. We also took time
to explore Haiti a bit though and have some fun. Possibly the most
interesting place we went was into a ravine in the desert-like area north
of us along the coastline. Half way up the ravine we stumbled upon a cave
which turned out to be full of bats. It was fun to hang out in the cool
cave for a while and let the bats fly around overhead. On another hike,
we found a graceful tree snake that might have been 4 feet long but very,
very skinny. At no point was it wider around than a nickel and it wound
around branches and clung on to leaves with seemingly no effort at all.
In other news, my cat is pregnant. I had a communication problem with the
veterinarian. I tried to ask him to make the cat so it can’t have babies,
but instead he gave it a rabies shot. I don’t care so much if the thing
can get rabies or not, I just didn’t want kittens running around all over
the place. There are enough distractions around here as it is (grumble,
grumble).
Our volunteer of the month is Barb Jonusaitis.
www.cleanwaterforhaiti.org/newsletter-barbjabez.jpg Barb recently came
out with three others from the Dupage Vineyard Church in Illinois. She
doesn’t normally look so forlorn – I had just dumped Jabez in her lap so
that I could take this picture. Barb and her husband Paul have supported
the mission in numerous ways over the past couple years. Barb is the
mission grant coordinator but she also does lots of other things. For
example, she managed to track down thousands of feet of polyethylene
tubing at the last moment and cram it into her team’s luggage to bring
out here. I’m thankful for Barb because without her a lot of things would
never get done. She also has an amazing capacity to enlist the help of
others.
The last of the pictures is of a sign that says “The association of
fishermen of the lake, Bois Neuf”.
www.cleanwaterforhaiti.org/newsletter-fishermensign.jpg
The “lake” is in the background. When I first arrived in Haiti, this was
still a lake of sorts. It went dry for the first time during the dry
season of 2004 and now it is a dustbowl. It is a sad testimony to the
ruin caused by the deforestation in Haiti.
As of yet, I haven’t had anybody make a long-term commitment to Clean
Water for Haiti. However, next month there are a few people coming out to
see if Haiti and CWH is where God is calling them to ministry. I hope so,
because there is so much work left to do!
-Chris
------------------
Chris Rolling
Executive Director
Clean Water for Haiti
B: 547-3210
C: 417-5893


Last month’s update that a lot of people missed:

Dear Everybody:
The last update letter was only received by 1 in 5 intended recipients
due to technical troubles so some of you haven’t heard from me since
November. I have also been reluctant to write another update until
recently because we were having some security issues that I wanted to
resolve first.
Here is the story of the past few months. In early December, prowlers
came into the house at night through an upstairs window and stole some
money out of my bag, in addition to a few other items. It was a
disturbing discovery. We installed steel bars over the upstairs windows.
A few weeks later, two thieves with covered faces showed up after dark
and one of them pointed a toy gun at me. I called out for Roman and the
thieves ran. At this point I came to the realization that we have been
sloppy with security for too long. We installed an alarm and started
keeping security guards.
Sometime in mid January I put information together and figured out who
one of the thieves was – Jean-Paul who used to drill wells for the
mission before I was forced to fire him. A few days later, Jean Paul came
by the mission with another ex-worker to tell me I needed to give him his
old job back (?) but instead of that I told him to leave and never come
back. Upon their refusal to leave, I hit our new alarm and the thieves
ran. I made a full report to the police this time and provided pictures
and such. The local Justice of the Peace visited Jean Paul and made it
known that he would be arrested if we had any more problems. I was very
relieved to have the source of our problems exposed.
I have also hired a guardian named Moliere. He is 71 years old and he
just watches over the mission property and sees who comes by and why. In
addition to being a retired French teacher, he has decided to learn
English and he is learning new words every day.
We currently have a group here from Chicago that is doing some specialty
work. Their greatest contribution is a proper alarm to replace my hastily
strung up contraption made from a truck air-horn. It runs on 110vac with
a battery backup and comes with 3 remote actuators that can go in
people’s pockets. Another visitor is bringing in a safe on Monday, too.
We are no longer an attractive target for theivous young men in the
community.
On Friday my brother left from his 10 day visit to Haiti after shooting
lots of film to use for putting together a promotional video for Clean
Water for Haiti. If you are at all interested in what is going on here,
you should read his blog: http://dev.incitedmedia.com/ben/haiti. I really
enjoyed reading it because he saw Haiti with fresh eyes. I’ve been in
Haiti for three years now and I tend to forget how a lot of the things we
do here can be interesting for people. In fact, you will probably find it
more interesting than this letter. My narrative skills for describing
Haiti seem to be decreasing as I spend more time here and become used to
the weirdness.
There is more good news. We purchased a second truck and two little motor
scooters which will be used by project BRAVO for until its completion
later this year, at which point they will become available for mission
use. The truck is a bit smaller than the Daihatsu, but it has four wheel
drive. It’s a KIA so I have already had to do quite a bit of mechanical
work on this truck. I anticipate I will become much more familiar with
the mechanicals of this truck than I really want to. Hopefully God will
send us more volunteers by the middle of this year so we will be able to
put the new vehicles to good use.
The Gonaives project is successful and popular beyond what I could have
imagined. Tonie continues to produce 36 filters most days. Filters have
been delivered to over 1100 homes, and there will probably be about 1700
filters installed by project’s end. The beginning of this project was
very rocky, but my last visit there was very positive. You can read more
about Gonaives at http://dev.incitedmedia.com/ben/haiti, which I have
mentioned already. There are also some great pics included at that link.

-Chris