Getting Settled In

Monday January 21, 2018

I’m sorry if my postings appear out of order.  Our Internet connection has been almost worthless except for email and WhatsApp. Ideas have been racing through my mind before I’ve had the chance to get them down in writing.

Our first 2 weeks here have been hectic but also a lot of fun. We’ve been buying and gathering things for our house in Baconnois and getting things set up. Teresa actually began giving English lessons to grade schoolers at Saint Paul’s School which she loved but it was also tiring.

We bought a new mattress (rolled up in a box), a bed frame (strapped to the roof of our car), a small propane stove, a rotating fan, and a junior-sized refrigerator (essential for cold beer). – all in Port Au Prince and hauled them out to hour home in Baconnois which took 2 trips. Port Au Prince (PaP) to Baconnois is about a 4 hour drive.

Despite these modern conveniences we have no running water. We get water for bathing, flushing the toilet, and washing dishes from a nearby river and more recently a pump station. We drink potable water from 5 gallon carboys that are from the company Culligan. We exchange these carboys in the town of Leogane which is about a 1 hour drive from where we live.

Our house is on the main road (National Highway #2) which goes from Port Au Prince along the northern edge of the southern peninsula. Traveling from Port Au Prince to Petit Rivier the road is paved.  But, from Petit Rivier to Baconnois, the road is rough – unbelievably rough. It’s been graded at one point in time but the road was never paved. The rough grading leaves a road of sandstone rocks and sandstone powder. Without the asphalt topcoat, though, the sandstone powder gets washed away leaving a road surface comprised of softball-sized rocks. Having come here for 10 years, Teresa is used to this. To the uninitiated, myself included, it’s shocking. You keep wondering how the car tires do not all pop at once. To show a car traveling this road would be a fantastic commercial for any tire company.

I got our solar panels, charge controller, inverter, and batteries installed successfully thanks to some very nice documentation from Grape Solar in the USA and from a site visit at a lovely beach-side hotel we’ve stayed at in Petit Goave. With this system we have enough electricity to run our refrigerator, our fan, a 10W LED lamp, and to charge our devices.  (I’ll do a “deep-dive” posting on this system at a later time.)

Our bathroom has the following: a small sink, a 55 gallon water drum, a toilet that flushes when a bucket of water is poured in it, and a shower stall/drain which is a rectangular area with a short concrete knee-wall.
In Haiti, used toilet paper is generally not flushed down the toilet. Instead it is carefully folded and placed in the trash to be burned along with other household trash in the yard later.  This is what everyone does. The “flush” as I said is accomplished by pouring a bucket of water in the toilet bowl. We are using Ajax powder and Clorox liberally in the post-flush cleanup.

Bathing/showering works as follows: We heat a tea kettle full of hot water and mix this together with quart of water from a 2 gallon bucket of room temperature water. Rinse, Lather, Rinse, Rinse, etc. until the hot water runs out. It’s totally adequate for a very nice bath/shower experience and it feels great to be cool and clean at the same time.

Cooking: So far Teresa and I have been cooking simple and very enjoyable dinners that consist of fresh local vegetables sautéed in olive oil with garlic, salt, and pepper and served with either rice (diri), corn grits (mayi), or beans (pwo). Haitians love Louisiana Hot Sauce which is found everywhere. Breakfasts have included oatmeal, peanut butter toast, and bananas.

For dessert we’ve had “Tablet” which is a praline made with peanuts instead of pecans and is fantastic.

We’ve managed to source some nice red wine (Argentinian) , the local beer – Prestige, and the national favorite Haitian Rhum – Barbancourt.

Our Bedroom: As I mentioned we bought a new mattress and bedframe in PaP. We sleep under a sheet and under a mosquito net at night and usually burn citronella candles to help keep the mosquitos at bay.

Our “Hood”: Behind our house are our 3 main neighbors –a “30 something” bachelor named “Pito”, a family of three (Ricardo, Madame Ricardo, and their 10 year old son James Lee whom we love, and a family of five (Louinor, Madame Marie Michelle, and their sons – Wilderson, Olvienson, and Wynn Kerry). The kids are all amazingly curious about us and what an oddity that we present to their community.

Life in the Haitian countryside takes place largely outside in your front yard along the roadway. As I’ve jogged and biked through the town, the greetings have been very warm. Again, it’s hard not to think that we’re providing some unusual entertainment for the neighborhood.

There’s an upcoming festival at Saint Paul’s Church and School which is consuming most of the community’s attention at present. My role as an afterschool math aid will kick-in after the festival. I’m enlisting the help of a 10^thgrade boy named Kinsley, and a 10^thgrade girl (who is at the top of the class) to help me break though the language barrier. I’m also hoping that the largely symbolic nature of math will help me be able to connect with kids struggling with their math homework.

I hope this provides a useful overview.

Thanks for reading our blog and feel free to message us through WhatsApp anytime.

All the best,

Dan