A day in the life......

I headed into St. Marc for a bit a shopping. I successfully found new school shoes for Marie-Phila and little super glue to try to repair the old ones. I also bought cigarettes for Camilla and Ya-ya to resell and a sack of little cookie so no one could say I didn't bring them anything.

Once home in Pierre Payen I went swimming with the little kids for the fourth straight day. They are now feeling more at home in the water so I am able to leave them to play in the shallows while I get a little exercise out in the deep. Tag is their favorite game whenever I come in from the deep I swim from the distance of a pool length underwater and try to take them by surprise. After that the kids scatter and all begin chanting "Jack pa ka kenbe'm." (Jack can't catch me!) Marie-Phila observes me swimming underwater and to escape from getting tagged, she also ducks underwater. However when she dunks her head under and starts thrashing wildly, she never makes it more than a few inches in any one direction. Undaunted she will surface, gulp some air and give it another go.

During one of the breaks from swimming I walked over to "Laki" where many of the employees of Clean Water for Haiti live. I was hoping to find my friend Evens to walk him through typing his resume. He had been telling me about taking occupational education classes on the weekends. He has already finished plumbing school and is now working on electrician school. He had told a couple of the other guys and they had started attending classes too. Since the filter project at Clean Water for Haiti is going rather slowly I was hoping AMURT could hire some of these young guys who are so eager to learn new skills. AMURT's current project will only last 5 months but it could be enough time to get start on some new crafts. So I spent an hour or two helping Evens polish his resume but only on condition he sits with the others and walks them through it the process too. There wasn't too much left of the day and I went to sleep soon after sundown.

Yesterday I had to say goodbye. I stopped by Marie-Phila's school but didn't stay long. I then began hitchhiking north. From Pont Sonde to Gonaives one of the Jaspora gave me a ride in his fancy jeep. Although he lives in Orlando, FL he was born near the poor remote area AMURT works in. He asked lots of questions and had some interesting stories about life the NW of Haiti. Even though he was headed right where I was going I promised to stop by my friend Roman's house so I jumped off in Gonaives. I can't say if it was lucky or unlucky but instead of spending the night at his house I met Roman as he was on his way out the door. I was able to get my motorcycle out but I was a little sad I didn't get a chance to see how he was doing. I rode back to Sources Chad and will start surveying and gathering a list of contacts for the salt production project. I may also spend some time looking into developing some cottage industries like hot sauce or mango chutney.