Driving into Dawn

Posted on 08/04/2012 by paulefallon

Pastor Akim, one of MoHI’s regular drivers, must like to get up early. He tells me we will leave at 5 am for my ten o’clock flight out of PAP.  I ask him to knock on my door in the morning, I have already returned my Haitian phone to Gama and do not have an alarm, but I’m not sure he understands me.  No matter.  I hear the car horn blast in the pitch dark and hustle out of bed to meet him.

 

I have a huge heavy bag on my return; I am bringing concrete samples from the BLB roof pour for SGH to test in their lab.  I will get a physical inspection at every security point; the massive cylinder in my bag looks ever so much like a bomb to an x-ray detector.  I lug the bag down the stairs and into the car.  We pull out of Mirlitone in the clear dark night with a breathtaking full moon lingering in the west.

 

I am really hungry.  Last I ate was yesterday lunch, when our hope of pouring concrete for MoHI’s main stairs seemed impossible.  But Lex found some cement and the crews found their flow and by ten o’clock last night we created a pair of impressive stairs that will last for decades, though in all the excitement I forgot to eat.  I have a sack with some bread, offer some to Pastor Akim and gnaw on a few pieces myself. When we hit paved Route Two I recline my passenger seat and shut my eyes.

 

Sleep and Haitian driving are not compatible.  Gravel swatches have been cut across the road at irregular intervals; we slow down to ford these patches and I can’t help but rouse to sneak a peek at the arcane delights of nighttime travel.  There is the nearly empty tap-tap with its sole passenger sitting astride the center bench, staring down the road like a king surveying his kingdom as it slips away.  The empty dump truck hugs the center of the road, its back wheels so wobbly they might come off any minute.  There must not be a Creole word for ‘alignment’.  As Pastor Akim passes the lumbering truck at our peril, a bicyclist pedals along the left shoulder with a huge bundle of sugar cane staked on his handlebars.  No light, no helmet, no way he can see where he’s going in the dark with our headlights glaring him down.

 

I must sleep some because the giant metal hulk of a former mill comes upon us much sooner than I expect; I always consider this ruin to be the portal into greater Port au Prince.  The sky is no longer dark.  Driving east, a pink band highlights the horizon’s silhouette; the flat line of the sea on my left rises gently across the highway, extends through the settlements on my right and into the distant mountains, like a graph of positive trending indicators. I pull my seat upright to watch the city grow before my eyes.  Traffic is still light, though steady.  The tap taps are full; people wait on the side of the road in the clean khakis of city workers. The new divided boulevard in Carrefour is impressive in the feeble light.  The tiny palm trees planted down the median are only a few feet high, but the shiny new light standards with their integral solar panels extend graceful double arms to welcome the new day.  Haiti is getting full of snazzy stuff.

 

We reach Port au Prince proper before the dust rises and coats the world in grit and grey.  The tap taps are shiny clean; a painting of Jesus with thorns on his head and blood glistening from his side is too graphic for my queasy stomach.   Driving in the city is more difficult; Pastor Akim passes on the right, the left, the right again.  MoHI drivers are as aggressive as any of their city cousins. We pass many, few pass us.  The sun makes its first appearance as a blistering white ball hovering above the metal roofs of the main market.  It is going to be a hot one.  The market is already packed, rows and rows of women crouch before bundles of greens.  How early do these mountain women rise in order to come and squat in this squalor all day?

 

Billboards are sprouting up in Port au Prince like dandelions, thick steel tubular bases telescoping above shacks and tents, capped by rectangles five times the size of the dwellings they cast in shadow.  Some of the ads are peculiarly Haitian. One billboard has two cheesy sketches; the first of two young children burdened by carrying water in buckets on their head, the second with the same children upright and proud because of the new black water tank drawn on top of their concrete house. Another is a beautiful woman smiling in front of a wall of rice sacks.  But closer to the airport, and the money, the billboards are more sophisticated; insurance companies, Air France, brokerage firms.  All this aid is making someone rich.

 

Pastor Akim drops me off at the airport. There is no line. I am through the first security check, ticketing, immigration, the second security check, the third security check and am in the waiting lounge before 7:30 am, two and a half hours before flight time.  Although I might have enjoyed sleeping later, I can understand why Pastor Akim likes to leave so early. The quicker he gets me into Port au Prince, the quicker he gets out.  He will be back in Grand Goave before I am even on the jetway.

 

 

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Haiti is for Lovers

Posted on 08/01/2012 by paulefallon

By and large the people who carve out a piece of their life to work in Haiti are interesting folk.  There are new missionaries every time I return to Mirlitone and, aside from the over-zealous, I enjoy them.  Occasionally someone’s spark is so bright I hope we can continue our connection beyond Haiti.  This trip, a delightful pair of young graduate students, David and Cassandra, has enhanced my time here while contributing to our construction at MoHI.

 

David and Cassandra each came to Mission of Hope after the earthquake.  Cassandra, from Alberta, Canada, came with a special contingent of World Racers doing emergency service, while David was a member of one of the many groups from Akron. At our first night’s dinner I get the impression that serendipity aligned their schedules for this trip, but as I observe them around the work site and in subsequent evenings it seems even to my clueless eyes that their rendezvous here is not pure chance.

 

One day we walk home together.  David is a PhD candidate at Duke, developing a fluorescence sensor that can detect changing levels of metals in living cells, research that could impact how we diagnose or treat Alzheimer’s, since many patients with the disease have disproportionately high levels of copper and iron in their brains. The geek in me is fascinated by how and why metals move among cells in our body; the humanist in me considers this a very odd conversation to have walking along Highway 2 on market day, where the flies buzzing around the dead fish pose a much more imminent health hazard than degenerative brain disease.

 

By the time we duck off the main road and into the jungly drainage channel, Cassandra talks about her graduate studies in social work, which leads us all to share our amazement at the Gengal’s unique and generous mode of expressing grief.  I learn that Cassandra studies at University of North Carolina, so I piece together that they travel in several overlapping circles.  Along our walk we discuss the relative merits of Obamacare, Canada’s single payer system, globalization, and the satisfaction of pure research versus focused application. Worthy dinner party conversation back in Cambridge, with the added perk that when we arrive at Mirlitone we all take a cool swim in the Bay of Gonave, which is much more soothing than any dip in the Charles River.  I eat dinner late, and as I watch the sun set a pair of silhouettes merges on the sand bar where the river meets the sea.

 

Today I want to know the scoop, so of course I ask Renee who explains that David and Cassandra are dating and that she chose UNC, in part, to be near him.  The news warms me; they are such a nice couple; yet it also makes me realize how properly evangelicals court.  David and Cassandra are so chaste in their romance only the auroreal glow raging beyond their control announces to the world these two are in love.

 

Tonight is their last dinner here, and as I come to the chaconne, last again, I hear shrieks of delight.  David proposed to Cassandra, on his knee, along the beach in front of Mirlitone, where they first met.

 

I wish the couple years of health and happiness, a hearty family and long and satisfying contributions to our world.  Anyone who ever doubts that good things can come out of Haiti need only meet these two lovely souls who came together over thousands of miles because they cared about faraway earthquake victims.  Haiti did a shake, rattle and roll, and so did their hearts.

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Building Stairs

Posted on 07/30/2012 by paulefallon

Yesterday we began building the main stairs at Mission of Hope, our first permanent concrete stairs.  Like all ‘first days’ of a new phase in the work, it goes very slow and the miscommunication is rampant.  It takes us about three hours to determine where the stairs will start and stop, which we determine by measuring along the beam at the first floor slab and then dangling a straight 2×4 to the transit mark at the ground floor slab.  Haitians seem to have a predisposition for taking measurements and suspending building elements, just as they determined the initial square of the building by floating a framing square.  It seems sturdier to me to measure things from ground up.  Perhaps they do not trust the solidity of the ground, or they like the challenge of establishing equilibrium and plumb in space, or maybe they just don’t like to crouch down.  In this case the method, however precarious, yields a result I consider exact enough.  We determine the total height of the stairs to be 10’-3 ¾”, only a quarter inch off our ‘drawn’ dimension of 10’-4”.

 

There are two factors that determine the comfort level of climbing a set of stairs.  The first is the relationship between the vertical face of each step, the riser, and the horizontal plane where we place our foot, the tread.  These must lie within a proportional range; the steeper the rise, the narrower the tread.  Monumental stairs have long treads, as much as 14”, but very shallow risers, as little as 4-1/2”.  Steep service stairs can have risers as tall as eight or nine inches, but the treads must be correspondingly narrow for any comfort.  The rule of thumb architects use is rise times tread equals 72+/-.

 

Seven in eleven are the most common stair dimensions in the United States.  I want to use 11” treads on the main stair at MoHI, narrower treads are not advisable for exterior stairs and we don’t have enough space to make them more grand.  Since I have to cover over ten feet of vertical distance, I could make 17 risers at a hair over 7-1/4” each or I could make 18 at 6-7/8” each.  The shorter rise will be both more comfortable and more appropriate for a school full of children.

 

The second factor in stair comfort is that all the risers be exactly the same height. The human gait can differentiate changes in riser height as little as 1/8”.  Uneven stairs force us to look down and concentrate on our feet, rather than allowing us to ascend stairs with grace and certainty. Stairs in Haiti are notoriously erratic, and if Renee has made one firm demand this project, it is that she wants perfect stairs.

 

I explain to the carpenters how I want us to create the ‘reverse’ formwork on the inside face of the stairs, where they meet the vertical wall.  This goes over easier than I expect and within a few minutes they have tacked bits of 11” x 6-7/8” plywood cascading diagonally along the block wall.  Now I have a problem.  There is nothing wrong with that they are doing, but the opportunity for small mistakes is great.  If each plywood rectangle is only 1/16” inch off, I will have a one inch discrepancy by the time I lay out the entire stair.  I fetch Renee, whom I rely on for the most subtle translations.  I tell the workers that what they have done is not wrong, but is more prone to cumulative error than cutting multiple stair teeth out of large pieces of plywood.  Words like ‘cumulative’ do not exist in Creole.  Finally we say that what they have done is good, but if we use larger pieces we will be ‘plus exactement.’  They seem to buy that idea.

 

Now I get a full sheet four foot by eight foot plywood sheet and score it in 6-7/8” increments along one line, not by measuring 6-7/8” over and over again, but by measuring from the same datum 6-7/8” and 1’-1-3/4”, then 1’ 8-5/8”, etc. and repeating with 11”, 22”, 33”… in the opposite direction.  Datum dimensions are more accurate in total than sequential dimensions.  I am not sure if the workers go along because they understand the benefit of what I explain or because they are humoring me, but we lay out the first stair with only four separate sections of saw-toothed plywood.  The second stair is even more accurate; we use only three pieces.  When both sets of opposing risers are outlined against the walls we verify level across the future landing between them.  Everything is quite square.  Other work goes on in the meantime, but these two lengths of formwork are the major accomplishment of six men over the better part of two days.  We may be getting better at our work; but we are not getting any faster.

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Short on Olympians, Long on Olympic Spirit

Posted on 07/28/2012 by paulefallon

Five athletes represent Haiti in the London 2012 Olympics, four are Haitian-American track and field athletes from the United States; Linous Desravine, judoka, is the sole Haitian native to compete in London.  The country has only five competitive tracks, three of which are still being used as tent cities.  The Olympic committee has a budget of $400,000, a tad shy of the United States $170 million.  Only one Haitian has ever won an individual medal.  Silvio Cator silvered the men’s long jump in Amsterdam in 1928, and the national stadium in Port au Prince is named for him as a result of his achievement.

 

But the fact that Haiti does not have an illustrative Olympic history does not diminish the sports zeal in this country. Like in most poor countries, football (soccer to Americans) is the games of choice. Young boys as little as three chase any size ball they can find all day long.  A flat field is rare in this hilly, rocky land, but they are very nimble working the ball up and around tough terrain.  There is a large open plain on the edge of the sea just beyond Mirlitone where young men play soccer every night.  It appears to be a rudimentary pick-up game where guys side off into ‘shirts’ versus ‘skins’ but the rosters are always full and there are many spectators.  Judging from the enthusiasm of the players and the cheers of the crowd, the play is exciting and the rooting intense.

 

Today I walked home from work and came upon the first official looking game I ever saw here.  Middle school boys blocked off a street, set up a pair of goals with sticks and a wire across the top, and a uniformed referee used his whistle liberally.  The constant stops the referee triggered made the game less graceful than the guys at the beach, but lent the proceedings more gravity.  Each team spent as much time lobbying the ref as they did maneuvering their players.  There was a large crowd and partisan opinion swelled with every play.

 

I doubt we will hear the Haitian anthem and watch its flag rise over London; that has never happened in Olympic history and would be remarkable during these games.  But if the spirit of the Olympics is to get people all over the world to appreciate and participate in sport, to play hard but to play fair, Haiti can hold its head with any other country parading into the stadium.

Football on a street in Grand Goave

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The Limits of Civilization

Posted on 07/22/2012 by paulefallon

I am on vacation in Colorado; the mountains are gorgeous, the cycling invigorating, the hot tub soothing, the family company comforting.  This is the sort of week that induces the awkward poser to post a bit of puff, about Colorado’s commitment to physical fitness or the ingenuity of the early mountaineers.  But despite the bucolic veneer of our vacation, the moment any one turns on the television the placid façade cracks.  The movie theater tragedy is everywhere.  Another seminal event, another Dallas, another Columbine, another cause to wring our hands and say ‘How can this happen?’

 

I have no better answer to how this happens than the next guy, I only know that it does, and with enough regularity and intensity that if we don’t accept these tragedies as fixtures of modern life, we are fools for deluding ourselves.  The death count, number injured, and venue choice for the Aurora, Colorado massacre of movie-goers at a midnight premier of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises are all tragic, but what elevates this bit of madness in my mind is the invasion-level amount of planning and armament involved.  The killer was meticulous in massacre.

 

As we sort through our grief, ponder the arbitrary nature of tragedy, tighten up security in yet another aspect of our daily lives and argue around the peripheral issues such as how easy it is to get ammunition on the Internet, we will likely not ask the harder question of whether we should have limits to gun ownership, and I doubt we will even entertain the more basic question.  Is man inherently violent, and if so, can that need ever be sated vicariously?

 

Violent behavior is a human trademark.  Steven Pinker argues in The Better Angels of our Natures: Why Violence Has Declined that we are living in the least violent times ever, yet we seem unable to get to that point where violence is erased from our everyday lives.  We still go to war, though in America we make sure our wars are far away and affect our daily consumption as little as possible.  We still live in fear of crime, despite the fact that it actually occurs less often; we couldn’t worry about crimes we never knew existed until they invaded our home on the six o’clock news.  We still resort to violence in our daily lives as a means for solving disputes; thus people still hit their spouses and their children. And we still suffer arbitrary, aberrant violence such as James Holmes perpetrated at that midnight screening.

 

“Batman stories almost always center on violence, madness, and single-minded discipline”, Douglas Wolk wrote prophetically in this week’s Time magazine, before the midnight movie massacre.  Batman is the twenty-first century anecdote for violence in a civilized society.  Like the gladiators of ancient Rome, the jousting matches of the Middle Ages, or the cock fights of Latin America, Batman is a surrogate for our violent tendencies, a two hour, $250 million relief valve to dissuade us from acting out our primal tendencies.  Sitting in the dark theater, each of us is the Dark Knight, we possess cunning and strength and grace, we battle evil and regardless how dire our straights, we emerge victorious.

We will never know why James Holmes could not have simply bought a ticket, sat in the audience, and assuaged his violent impulses watching Batman.  That cinemagraphic surrogate satisfies most of us, but James Holmes was compelled to act his violence out.  We cannot understand this because our reality is circumscribed by what we call ‘civilization’.  We use terms like ‘crazy’ and ‘delusional’ to describe the killer, but really ‘uncivilized’ does the trick.  He acted so far beyond the limits of anything we can tolerate; we have to disbar him from the most rudimentary definition of humanity.  The most civilized thing we can do now is band together, tend each other’s wounds, and guard against the next time; for as long as there are limits to what is acceptable in civilized society, there will always be someone who transgresses them in a free society.

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Tim Ferriss and Me

Posted on 07/14/2012 by paulefallon

You’ve seen him; the four hour guy.  “The Four Hour Work Week”, “The Four Hour Chef”, “The Four Hour Marriage” (oops, that one hasn’t come out yet).  Tim Ferriss stands in complete wrinkled splendor on this Sunday’s NY Times Travel Section with his closely cropped head (like me), chiseled chin, sinuous neck, and solid, studly stance (not quite like me).  The cover story, “How the Tough Get Going” is full of useful tidbits (i.e. things people need to buy) to make travel less cumbersome, faster, and incredibly cool. The caption under his photo reads ‘a specialist in streamlining life’s chores’ though it could just a easily read ‘a gorgeous metro sexual who appeals to straight women, gay men, and bromancers everywhere’ because, let’s face it, Tim Ferriss’ biggest achievement is that he created Tim Ferriss.

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Once you get past a few really atrocious suggestions (like, if you have to check a bag, pack a pistol and tell TSA it is there because they will keep a closer eye on your bag), the article pretty much incorporates all the things I have learned, and shared, in my experiences traveling cross country on a bike and in and out of Haiti.  Wheelies are out, duffels are in.  I’ve been doing that for years.  Netbooks take up less space than laptops.  Ditto.  Swimsuits are the lightest, most versatile form of workout short. Check.  Bring reading materials you can toss.  I have left enough magazines in Haiti to fill a dentist’s office.

On page 6 Stephanie Rosenbloom, the author, manages to peel herself away from Tim for a moment to show other Silicon Valley types in their travel savvy splendor.  You have to feel sorry for Chris Hutchins,15SILICON2-articleInline a product manager at Google, standing wide mouthed and holding a pair of microfiber underwear with his smiling wife.  I have been wearing quick dry underwear when traveling for years, but I’ve never shown them to anyone and don’t intend to start now.

Still, most to the article is about Tim, and about stuff.  The brand names are in bold, the prices in parenthesis.  And that is where Tim and I start to be different people.  The NY Times is not interested in touting my 30 year old nylon duffle bag, even though that fact that it is bright purple makes it impossible to lose, or my swimsuit, which I won on a cruise for participating in so many workout sessions, or my netbook, which is not the ‘supplementary’ computer they recommend but the actual machine I do all my work on.  When it comes to stuff, Tim is all NY Times and I am all garage sale.

Besides that, there is only one other small difference I can discern between us. He is front and center in the NY Times while I sit home reading about him on Saturday night, because despite the constant confusion, he is Tim Ferriss, and I am not.

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Celebrating the Occasion

Posted on 07/07/2012 by paulefallon

One hallmark of Haitian culture is gathering together to mark the start of an event.  A collective pause or prayer precedes daily meals, laborers gather before each work day; and we mark construction milestones with impromptu but elaborate ceremonies.  At the start of MoHI’s recent concrete pour dozens gathered on plywood stretched across the rebar to join  in prayer and to photograph the ceremonial dumping of the first bucket of concrete, as well as the second and third and fourth…

A little pomp goes a long way for me; guiding wobbly benefactresses across construction and watching them tipple aggregate tries my patience when I am itching to get into the real work.  But I understand the importance of a ritual beginning to dedicate energy to the task before us, and, in our social network frenzied world, to keep activities of needy organizations prominent in the public eye.

Over the past two days Be Like Brit poured 450 cubic yards of concrete, the largest concrete pour in Grand Goave by some margin.  We utilized a technology foreign to this region – ready-mix concrete. Ten cylinder trucks from Port au Prince traversed back and forth Route 2 for 39 hours straight delivering green concrete to a pump truck that sent the mix thirty feet over the top of the building and deposited it on the roof by means of a giant hose.  Ironically, the pour took the same length of time as the wheelbarrow-based pour the previous week at MoHI, but that was entirely due to the inability of the trucks to get to site more quickly.  The crews, accustomed to placing concrete by bucket and wheelbarrow, were amazed at how easy it is to have concrete powered on to the roof and then simply trowel it in place.  Pumped concrete is less strenuous to pour and many a mason caught a nap waiting for the next truck to arrive.

Capping off the orphanage with this ‘new’ concrete technology warranted not one, but two occasions.

On the afternoon before the pour Gama gathered all the workers. Len made a speech, outlining the history of the project, describing Brit’s journey to Haiti and her death at the Hotel Montana, finding the site almost two years ago, and eighteen months of active construction.  I had the misfortune of following Len (never a good slot on the roster) and tried to explain to the crew what was going to occur.  They had never seen a concrete truck, let alone a pumper, they could not fathom pouring seven yards of concrete in ten minutes.  I framed it as an opportunity for them to learn how concrete is placed in the rest of the world, how we hoped to increase their construction skills with this experience. Then Gama delivered the details of schedule and logistics, which might have been dry except that the men would receive premium pay for night work, so they listened carefully.

The real occasion happened the following night at 9 pm, just before the first truck arrived.  Len, his son Bernie, Lex, Renee and I stood on the roof surrounded by the crew, illuminated by a magnificent full moon.  I expected a reiteration of yesterday’s words but was pleased when Len turned the focus to the workers who stood before us in their rubber boots and discarded tee shirts holding their trusty shovels and trowels while the giant pump truck hung above them like a tentacled alien.  Most of them had worked seven days straight; this was their third all-nighter; yet they listened in attentive good cheer, eager to discover this new way of working.  Len told the crew how much we appreciated them and how important they were to making Brit’s dream come true.  I don’t know if his words meant as much to them as receiving premium pay, but I was glad to hear their contribution affirmed.

Lex’s invocation also took a different turn, describing the project in the larger context of Grand Goave.  He moved beyond the usual recitation that the project would bring jobs and house children and provide clinical services in a safe building – all true but all said many times before. Instead, like all great politicians and preachers, he staked the broader view.  He described the project as setting a new standard to Grand Goave, for all of Haiti.  Then, after a resonant pause, he ended by saying, “Future generations will remember what we do here tonight.”

I doubt that a concrete pour deserves the same gravity as Normandy on D-Day, but it made for a heck of a memorable event.  The moon lifted higher in the sky, the first truck arrived, and the concrete fell from the sky.

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Malaria

Posted on 07/04/2012 by paulefallon

The rainy season is dwindling, which means mosquitos are on the wane, yet malaria continues to circle all around us.  During my last trip Nathan, Gama’s three year old son, contracted malaria; seeing his tiny curly headed body shivering under blankets on a 95 degree day testified to the potency of the disease.  He recovered fully while I was away, but in the interim Gama came down with it, as well as Becca, a missionary from Ohio, and Angie, a long time missionary with a nursing newborn.

This sequence of events prompts me to investigate how malaria epidemics flow.  Since a person can only contract malaria when bitten by a mosquito carrying the virus, that implies malaria will peak and ebb in parallel to the population of carrier mosquitos.  However, one way a mosquito becomes a carrier is by biting a human with the disease, which makes a malaria epidemic a dance between humans and mosquitos; the more they feed on us the more frenzied they transmit the disease.  Once Nathan was infected, any mosquito that bit him could carry the boy’s diseased blood to others, including his father, who contracted malaria a few weeks after his son (the incubation period is fifteen days).

Malaria is not an equal opportunity disease, it occurs disproportionately around the world in tropical climates where poverty flourishes.  Over 650,000 people die from malaria every year, 89% of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where it kills more people than any infectious disease except HIV/AIDS.  Haiti, in keeping with its pattern of being more aligned with Africa than the rest of the Caribbean, is the only country in the Western hemisphere where malaria is prevalent throughout (CDC Interactive Malaria Map Application).

The shame of malaria wreaking havoc on so many poor people is that it can be virtually eradicated through public health measures and, if contracted, is easy to treat.  However, a person with malaria must be treated in a short period of time or the flu-like symptoms, fevers, and stomach pains can escalate quickly.  Left untreated, malaria victims can die within weeks of contracting the disease.

Malaria has roots over 4,000 years old.  In the second century BCE the Chinese used the Qinghao plant to treat the disease, though its active ingredient, artemisinin, was not isolated until 1971.  Another effective natural remedy, Quinine, was discovered in Peru in the early 17th century.  Today, most Americans use, chloroquine, which was developed around World War II, as the malaria treatment of choice.

Travelers to malaria prone regions, like me, have to decide whether to treat themselves prophylactically, which the CDC recommends for travelers to Haiti, or treat the disease only after contracted.  I started in the first camp, taking chloroquine once a week for two weeks before and four weeks after every visit.  The math is not hard to figure – I was taking chloroquine continuously.  I did not like ingesting such a potent drug on a regular basis, but considered it preferable to contracting malaria until three people here on the chloroquine regimen contracted it anyway.  People taking the medicine in advance get a milder version of malaria, but having a milder case can make malaria more difficult to diagnose.  One volunteer was sick almost a week before they confirmed the disease.

Two months ago I changed my strategy.  No prophylactic chloroquine; instead I carry a full regimen of the drug in case I contract malaria.  Though mosquitos have never swarmed to my bony body, I take precautions to reduce my exposure to bites.  They love the ankles, so I wear long pants and full high socks, as well as collared shirts and a shaded hat.  In the past two months I have taken no medicine and have had virtually no bites; a good track record but as they say in the brokerage business, past success is no indication of future performance. I could get malaria any day and carry my pills between Haiti and the United States in case I need them.

I am happy to report that Gama is fully recovered from his bout of malaria.  Unfortunately, Nathan has contracted the disease a second time, a few weeks after his father had it.  Nathan and his mother flew home to the United States and will stay remain there for the rest of the summer.  Nathan’s chances of contracting malaria in Massachusetts are nearly impossible.

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Thank You to all my Readers

Posted on 07/02/2012 by paulefallon

Yesterday, July 1, marked the mid-point in my yearlong commitment to Haiti.  In a happy coincidence the same day marked The Awkward Pose’s highest daily readership and the blog surpassed 10,000 hits.

 

Thanks to all of you who are regular and occasional readers.  I appreciate your comments and support.  Writing is my vehicle to process what occurs within and around me.  It both satisfies and directs me.  To know that others find value in my words enhances my gratification.

Thank you all very much.

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Conversion

Posted on 07/02/2012 by paulefallon

Every moment we breathe in, every moment we breathe out.  Every breath seems the same, yet currents of opportunity whisper through our subconscious until all at once, we realize the wind has changed and we are sailing in a different direction.

I left the construction shanty at 5:30 yesterday, early considering our recent workload, but since we were working on Sunday I decided to knock off and take a long walk home.  The breeze was fresh, the air invigorating and in that moment it hit me.  Ninety degrees on a late summer afternoon no longer feels oppressive to me.

True, my housemate Paul noticed months ago that I put on a sweater when the thermostat drops below 70; I never used to get cold.

True, I eat rice and beans in the States more than I eat beef, and I never order a filet of anything anymore.

True, the occasional Creole phrase slips into my dreams.

True, I no longer say I visit Haiti, I say I live here half time.

Today marks the mid-point in my yearlong commitment to Haiti, and I am well along in my conversion. To what I am not exactly sure, but so far it’s been a great journey and I am all in for the rest of the ride.

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