Our first work day

Today was Monday, our first real work day.  The hard part seems to be getting to and from the work site.  That is a genuine adventure, with plenty of human tragedy to witness along the way.  The street conditions truly are awful, with enormous potholes everywhere.  Horns are blasting, to move people out of the way and to announce our arrival at blind curves.  The scenes along the roadside remain astounding.  Even though we have seen plenty of it, the magnitude of visible destruction and the abject poverty in which these millions of people live continues to astound me.  I see it with my own eyes, but I still can’t imagine it.

Our work today consisted of moving a lot of rubble from along the sides of the pastors future home to a pile in the street in front of it.  Evidently, eventually some young men will be paid to load it onto a truck for removal.  We’ve been told that the vast tons of rubble are being piled along the shore somewhere, perhaps to make a causeway, wave break, or just to expand the shoreline.  We moved a lot of rock and broken concrete, some small pieces of wood, and several items of buried and now worthless clothing. The stories behind the clothing we’ll never know.  Haitian workers did concrete work inside the house while we cleaned up around them.  Then we took 60 large cinderblocks off a truck and piled them neatly inside the house.  We carried a few 94 lb bags of cement, too.  But, like I said, getting to and from the site is a real journey.  So, we arrived at about 9:15 and left at about 2:15.  It doesn’t sound like much, but we were thoroughly soaked in our own sweat and ready for a break. 

Tomorrow, we will have a medical clinic.  We’ll set up at the Methodist church in Thor.  I have no idea how many people will come and whether or not we’ll be able to actually be of any benefit to them.  But, I know we’ll try.  The pastor has informed the entire community, so turn-out should be good.