Haiti Trip, June 2011 - Day 3

Bonswa… 

Today was another productive day.  I was not able to get a flight out to Jeremie today so we used the day to scope out some potential property for a new village that we are looking into building.  We are targeting the Gressier area and hopefully have a new partnership forming with another ministry in the USA that will help with the construction of the main portions of the facility.  Please keep this all in your prayers. 

We had to check out the property in kind of a low profile way.  As I mentioned yesterday, when the owners see someone like me walk up to check out the property the cost triples.  Our strategy is to work with a local pastor who finds out what property is available and then we go look at it without indicating to anyone that we are actually planning on purchasing it.  If it looks like viable property then our Haitian team here will begin the process of finding out the price for the property.  I will not actually show up on the deal until after it is closed. 

Here are some example pictures of the different properties that we looked at.  Today was our hiking day.  By the way, the Gressier area is about 5 miles from Leoganne, which was the epicenter of the earthquake last year.  Over 90% of Leoganne was destroyed. 

For those of you that have been following my journeys here in Haiti for a while you will remember  that one of the problems that I have pointed out is the lack of infrastructure.  One of those is garbage service.  From what I understand the government is very random about picking up and removing garbage.  It is not that the Haitians don’t care about their surroundings, but it is that they are not being taken care of by those in political positions.

Below is a typical scene on the streets of Carrefour.  The mayor regularly comes out and share how much he is doing for the people and yet this is what it looks like.  Pastor Guercy was telling me that last week the residents decided to pile all of their garbage in the middle of the street, which forced the mayor to get it cleaned up.  And I complain under my breath about having to roll a full garbage can out to the street once a week. 

To end on a good note…Pastor Guercy was telling me today that he has children from the neighborhood in every other Saturday to do a children’s program with them.  He averages about 200 children.  When possible he schedules these activities to match up with visiting teams from the USA.  Here is a picture from one of his groups.  It is so good to work with people here in Haiti that have such a heart for their fellow Haitians. 

Tomorrow I head out to Jeremie to do more assessments out in that part of the country.  I am not sure if I will have Internet so if you do not receive a message I will send one when I get back here.