June 2015, Day 2: Mike’s Tropical Computer Repair; visiting rural Haitian hospitals

Getting to know the John 3:15 Guest House and its immediate surround

After sleeping rather heavily and also doing a fair amount of sweating, even in the air conditioned room… I awoke and began to explore my base of operations for the week ahead – the guest house:

‘Guest house au soleil’ (prints available to interested parties)

The walled-in nature of the property renders it more of a compound, one which is surprisingly (and to my thinking, delightfully!) self-sufficient.  The city power grid, as mentioned in the preceding post here, is terribly unreliable – and so the compound features the below diesel backup generator (and behind it is a well, while in front of it is a water tank)…

Rainwater is collected next to the diesel backup generator within the guest house walled compound. The parking lot held all manner of bikes, trucks, and vans as the week went on.  The well is visible in the background; but we only used it for showering.  All water we drank had to be bottled, to avoid severe gastrointestinal problems!!

… and while I never got up on the roof to get photos, the guest house also features solar panels and a large series of car batteries, so it will at the very least have lights and electric fans 24/7 (the bedrooms’ AC uses more power than the current solar array can provide).  The exterior of the house is very neat and clean, but pales in comparison to the gorgeous interior of the building, with its fun use of bright colors and my personal favorite – wooden paneled ceiling tiles:

View from the front door of the living room and dining area within the guest house.  A gorgeous building, with 3 square meals per day at only $55 per night.

Walking upstairs from the dining/living room area on the first floor you will find the two main bedrooms and associated bathrooms, all of which can get PRETTY warm on even a nice day (as I mentioned in the first post, concrete architecture doesn’t lend itself to weeping heat or humidity):

View of the second floor balcony (two sets each of bedrooms and bathrooms); the opening in the center left of the frame is to the roofed porch

Temperature and humidity within the second floor bathrooms… was a bad match for me, but I survived

The kitchen features some new appliances but the core cooking implement used is very forward-thinking for a Haitian kitchen – a propane stove (off to the right in the below picture, not visible unfortunately) rather than a charcoal grill as is the national tendency.  More efficient, cooks faster, burns cleaner, it is the hope of our teams and our local partners to help encourage the expansion of propane use for cooking over time!

The kitchen!

The bedrooms are eerily reminiscent of those I encountered in Zambia back in 2008 (featuring some mosquito netting, bunk beds, and the camaraderie born of close quarters and shared sweat), and were yet another bit of evidence in my life that “electric fans are one of the best things ever invented”:

The guys room for the week, complete with some long-expired treated mosquito nets for that Genuine Malarial Flavoring!

The view from our back porch was of one of Haiti’s gorgeous mountains and then a mixture of some sort of feeding program warehouse (mid distance in the frame); agricultural fields (foreground of frame); and humidity (all of frame):

The mountain and some sort of feeding program warehouse, visible from the second floor porch at the back of the guesthouse. What a view.

The first of MANY skinny livestock we encountered while in Haiti

Stepping outside the large rolling gate of the compound and turning left towards the main road on which we drove into town, one gets a quick sense of the uniformity of concrete as building material; the roughness of many roads off the main road; and the creeping desertification of the island in the absence of sufficient tree cover:

Our side street was a VERY rough road (some hybrid of cobblestone and rough dirt). Ubiquitous walled compounds all the way down, so we were in a relatively well-off part of town.

Walls are always topped with the cheaper option (broken glass bottles and shards into dried cement) or the more expensive option (razor wire) for added protection… but sometimes, our walls can’t keep everyone out of the compound:

One of our scaly roommates, running away from our team across some of the razorwire atop the compound wall. Perhaps a cousin to Ike?

Pausing from the current week of work to consider potential future projects: a vocational and technical school

One of the first tasks of the day was to jump onto the back of a dirtbike driven by my brother to go down the road to an unfinished building site to get the following photos.  There is the future possibility that we will try and create a vocational school teaching something between 9 and 12 different trades on this very site (the abandoned foundation of the replacement church building – the original church was destroyed in the earthquake, and this site was abandoned in favor of moving closer to the main road to attract more visitors).  Haiti has something like an 80% unemployment rate (which is INSANE), and this is exacerbated greatly because the easiest and most important subsistence jobs (farming, and to a lesser degree, gardening) are looked down upon as being the lowest of the low (Haiti doesn’t have a caste system, but if they did, farmers would be something like the Untouchables of India).  This is so sad to me, as the environment here is perfectly suited to grow many sorts of foods very easily – but our job is not to change the culture as outsiders, but instead to work with local people to help them decide how they’d like to proceed in bettering themselves and their neighbors.

The front view of the unfinished foundation and walls to the replacement church building; our trusty dirt bike steed

Therefore, given that this building is partially done, and that offering a variety of skillsets will enable the graduating students of this eventual school will go on to hopefully get jobs in their local economy but more importantly be able to help themselves and their neighbors over the length of their life… this is FAR more important than the “weekend warrior” mentality of many groups of people who go abroad to try and help others.  Playing with orphans = very important in the short term for those kids.  That pales in comparison to building structures and programs which continue to help locals far after the team of volunteers depart… so it is Steven and my hope that this vocational school might one day become an exemplar of this sort of project in Haiti.

A typical Steven for scale of the current building height (Haitians are to scale)

Diving into my main project for the week: computer repairs at the local computer skills classroom, called the “Cinfora Ecole Informatique”

Back at the guest house, the team departed for their first shift working on the razor wire to be installed atop the new wall built by previous teams, around the orphanage in Beaudouin (pictures and full story of that project will be in a later blog post).  I, however, walked down the street to the Lutheran church compound, which includes a local computer school for teaching typing and Internet skills to all ages:

The radio station (trailer on right of frame) and associated computer school (situated on the second floor of the building to the left of frame). At present, this new radio station is only an internet radio station, until funding can be secured (it costs upwards of $800 per month to operate a radio station in Haiti)

Haiti, as my first post indicated, DOES have some extremely rich folks; what I didn’t mention is that there is also a swathe of people who are doing pretty OK, not starving but certainly not flourishing.  It is my understanding that that “middle class” (which is really not a good term, as most of those folks do not have permanent work) is the people who mostly attend the classes offered in Microsoft Word and Excel, and Internet skills.  And that might seem odd, to support that sort of project a few miles down the road from where people are starving… but only by offering programs and efforts to help all people in Haiti to improve themselves and therefore their quality of life can things grind their way to being better.  I have a lot of building and fixing skillsets, but computer work is something that not many people can easily dive into doing… so this computer classroom, with its virus-ridden machines, was to be the core project ahead of me personally for the week.

The process was an interesting one – I used English and French, to explain to a NON-technical person, who then used French and mostly Creole to explain my suggestions, intended tasks, and questions to Alex, the teacher of the classes.  The computer classroom is the second floor of the building in the photo above; as you can imagine, with no computers running it was *hot* in there.  With laptops running and my running audience of 5-15 onlookers… it was **HOT**.  Nevertheless, I dove into the project.  To put it mildly, Haitian culture doesn’t understand (or possibly doesn’t care, I suspect the former) the notion of software licenses and the costs involved.  It comes down to “well I have this program/file, my friend needs it, so I will share it.”  This means two important things: 1) people use the bricolage sort of mindset to make their machines work with whatever software is passed to them, even if it is an illegal copy… and 2) therefore, computer viruses are passed around like wildfire.  As with everything else down there, my job was not to judge, but to help – so the machines were reformatted and wiped clean in most cases, after which I ensured that the correct anti-virus software and the like was installed.  Most importantly (and requiring the most strenuous of my French speaking the week long), I made SURE that Alex understood two key points about making the computer classroom hardware last long (at the very least they needed to prop up the laptops to improve cooling underneath; I will be sending 15 cooling pads with the soon-to-depart team of people going down next week) and the software to stay virus-free (by creating user accounts for students which disallow them from installing ANY programs, intentionally or otherwise).

The delightful little computer classroom where I spent a good portion of my week in Haiti. Note the projector screen (importan to show the students what is being taught, a great innovation on behalf of any visual learners in the group).
As you might imagine – it was VERY hot in there WITHOUT the computers running. Then we also added in the body heat of all my fascinated onlookers… and it was *hot*

Traveling to and visiting a rural Haitian outpatient hospital

Later that afternoon, we departed to do a couple of hospital visits.  Our group steed was this really new Nissan mini-bus, with some AWESOME (in my humble but correct opinion) steel push bumpers on front and rear.  As a general point, Haitians seem to have a national talent for welding (more on this later).

Piling the team into the Nissan van which served as our steed for the week

The diesel stick shift bus ( ❤ ) didn’t quite fit all of us, so Steven again took the motto “Safety Second” to heart and traveled the Haitian way – on the back of a little bike across some ROUGH roads:

Steven modeling the unofficial Haitian motto “Safety Second” on the way to the rural hospital

As per ever, the trip itself was very interesting and again showcased aspects vital to Haitian culture, not least of all… talented local artwork…

Beautiful local artwork on a random set of walls

… but also gorgeous natural scenery featuring lush vegetation and mountains alike.

Mountains and wilderness to the left; a symbol of the very real patriotism across Haiti reflecting on the windshield of our van. Haiti is a beautiful country in its own way.

We even got a relatively rare glimpse of the beach (Jacmel is a town on the coast, but many properties on the beach have the typical high walls and therefore block our view of the ocean):

The ocean immediately to our right, not typically visible during our time in Jacmel but often making itself blessedly felt for the breeze it creates

Annoying that the photo came out a bit blurry, but Haitian vehicles consistently continue to explore new vehicular frontiers of what is denoted by “overloaded”

Arriving at this rural Haitian hospital, we soon learned that it was actually an outpatient hospital and therefore didn’t have many patients.  At the time, this made some members of the team feel disappointed as they wanted to visit and show those patients that we care for and about them.  Interestingly, the hospital visit we did the next day caused many of us to feel like some sort of sick tourists, as we wanted to wish well and chat but the language barrier prevented us from doing more than viewing the conditions and then departing the room.

The Team at the rural hospital

A beautiful flowering tree…

… and the gorgeous yellow-and-black birds therein, which I managed to capture with my telephoto lens.  I *love* my Pentax camera.

The very first room we saw was indicative of the remainder of the hospital visit – a small cubbyhole of a room with “Laboratoire” (Laboratory) handwritten above it, we walked in to find a neatly painted but far from sterile area with a small table and a meagre handful of supplies needed to do blood testing and the like.  As I have said before and will likely say again though: this is fully in line in doing the best they can with what they have.

The “laboratory” for blood tests, which was neither climate controlled nor sterile so far as I could tell. As per many of the comments I am making along the way on this blog, I am not judging, merely reporting aspects of my experience which fell short of being the best they could be. In short: doing the best they can with what they have

a Creole health poster advocating for covering your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing

Far more staccato in both its concerning but hope-giving elements was finding the below 1950’s era X-ray machine.  On the one hand, this means that broken bones and other diagnostic procedures are actually possible in an area where people don’t even have enough to eat… on the other hand, aside from the pair of protective lead vests in the corner, the room and door appears to feature zero (0) lead armor to protect the surrounding area from all the excess radiation given off in the process.  On the whole, a net medical gain for the patients here… and bad news for staff consistently working around the X-ray room.

The 1950’s era X-ray machine in the hospital (good) with some lead protective vests (great)… but the door to this room was normal and I couldn’t detect any lead shielding in the walls… so I worry about the health of those working adjacent to this room

The main surgery room was in really good shape, although one can definitely see a mosaic of different time periods from which the different donated equipment here was brought in.

The primary surgery (in French, “Chirurgie”) room at this outpatient hospital

Another one of the portions of the visit which was very depressing but “best that can be done given the circumstances” was the sterilization station for the surgical implements.  A hospital really ought to have and make consistent use of an autoclave, a tool which is able to quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly clean implements before they can (or ought to) be used on the next patient.  Below you see a manual cleaning station, which means that 1) implements stay in the open air and thus accumulate dirt and worse over time; 2) the cleaning by hand means it will be unevenly cleaned at best; and therefore 3) at least some of the people who come in for one surgical procedure… will end up coming back for the follow-up amputation required to purge infections from their body.

Attempted sterilization of tools (as this involves scrubbing by hand and then hanging to air-dry… the majority of these surgical implements are FAR from sterile)…

… and here is the sink with local water also used in an attempt to sterilize implements. This likely makes infection rates climb even higher, which is heartbreaking. After all: amputation is the #1 most common surgery in Haiti, required after a wound is badly infected.

Walking outside again we were an odd combination of impressed with what had been built in this backwater rural hospital; but also saddened that so many amputations and infections could be prevented if it were just possible to get the donated goods to the outlying areas of Haiti (see here: rampant corruption in the capital as primary blocking factor).

The Brothers Repas, outside the surgery wing of the hospital. That black bandolier camera strap I bought was worth every penny of $60, as it made carrying it at my side but swinging it up quickly and effortlessly to get a photo… was golden

Visiting a Cuban goodwill hospital (and its integral classroom for teaching Fidel’s Life Essentials™)

Our next trip took us to a Cuban goodwill hospital in the same relative area of Haiti.

An older-style Haitian license plate. Newer ones show a silhouette of the island and in French “La Perle des Antilles” (The Pearl of the Antilles)

Our security guard Peterson, about to demonstrate some Haitian fording as part of normal driving conditons

This Cuban (and apparently Venezuelan) hospital was very well-kept and meant to be welcoming, with artwork on the front and a Haitian flag featured prominently between the flags of those who pay for this service.

The artwork at the entrance to the Cuban goodwill hospital (featuring the flags of Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela)

The building may also be an outpatient hospital as there was NO ONE there aside from 2 seldom-seen Cuban staff members.  This meant we got to see very closely the sort of conditions available to local Haitians – and everything we saw seemed to be very clean and well-kept, albeit not especially new.

The back courtyard of the Cuban hospital, which featured a basketball hoop (NOT what I was expecting from a Cuban cultural outpost)

Obligatory diesel Toyota truck with a snorkel.  Need one of these, one day….

A *gorgeous* Toyota Land Cruiser with a snorkel, hot damn I need to get one of these diesel 4×4 stick shift monsters here at home… one day.
One day.

The top floor of the hospital building apparently moonlights as a cultural education center, with a classroom featuring all manner of educational/propaganda about the benefits of the Cuban way of doing things:

One of the informative Cuban propaganda pieces in the “Klasroom” as it was labeled…

… Steven entertained himself (and me) thoroughly by saying thank you and goodbye to the Cuban staff in his most AMURKAN possible cowboy accent

On the drive back, we saw a couple of the ultra-rich mansions on the side of the mountain, which really evoke a certain sort of “amidst the wilderness” that is lost in the hustle and bustle of typical Haitian town living.  But to be sure: between pockets of towns and handfuls of houses, Haiti definitely has some areas of untamed nature.

A VERY wealthy person’s mountain-affixed mansion

Of interesting note, especially at the tail end of a visit to a Cuban institution, was that I saw 2 openly-identified American institutional donations over the entirety of my time in Haiti – in both cases, including the below truck, I saw a reused USAID tarp.  I am curious as to whether this means more US donations were food or other immediate-use items, or if Jacmel doesn’t feature much US-origin assistance.

The very few indications of direct American aid I saw in Jacmel was reused USAID tarps (in this case for a truck bed; in other cases for a porch off a shanty)

Summarizing Day 2

As I commented on Facebook that day,

Day 2: my developing country Spidey senses are miscalibrated. “Wear a long sleeve collared shirt to really stay out of the sun, it is worth the extra bit of sweat” is genuinely valid advice in Zambia and the Middle East… turning out to be not as valid in 90%+ humidity Haiti.

Additionally, it is fun listening to Creole and picking up plenty of French or derivatives in between other incomprehensible words. Especially satisfying to speak some rusty French to folks here and watch their eyes go VERY wide at an American who can speak more than American English.

Looking back on that experience, I stand by that appraisal as my general summary for Day 2.  It was a real pleasure to get to use some rusty French and be able to start a week-long process of making a HUGE difference for that local computer school; I also really enjoyed the visits we did to the rural hospitals and getting to see some excellent indications of the weird way in which most formal intergovernmental aid flows into Haiti and is either corrupted to the point of not reaching end users; or is not implemented entirely rightly.  I don’t have a good enough handle on the general effect of individuals and groups providing aid into Haiti, but I believe our experience was a good case study (bolstered by my brother doing 4 back to back weeks): you need to know local Haitian people and work with them to create longer term programs to have anything succeed.  Just giving items out might be a necessary stopgap in some cases, but doesn’t do anything to create lasting local improvement over time.  In short, good intentions are FAR from sufficient to effect good outcomes.

That said: it was even more enjoyable to be a part of my brother’s efforts in Haiti, aimed at creating programs and classes for local folks over the long term.

It rained 3 times in the month my brother was in Jacmel; 2 of them happened during the week I was there. I am not sure what this means or signifies.