Lots to Talk About

Here are some of the daily things that have been going on:

The ice cream post that I made a few days ago encouraged a couple other people to allow us to buy ice cream, too. When we finally made it to the grocery store (we go less than once a month - or even less than once every two months), we found something better than ice cream: bread, smoked turkey, cheese, mayo, and some chips. We usually have a fairly limited selection of food consisting of bread & pizza that Tina makes, rice, beans, chicken legs and thighs (note: no breasts), eggs...and that's about it. This picnic-type lunch was so, so much better than ice cream - thank you all for contributing to this greatly-enjoyed lunch (Thank you Andrew for starting the whole thing)!


A shot of Naomi and Rebecca holding a cup of dead baby rats that their mother found in one their drawers (the story here):


A shot of the electrical switch box that I had to replace for the hospital's autoclave (note the burnt wires and melted plastic):


We have been using the four-wheeler and trailer to haul concrete. The mission is remodeling a building and taking out a concrete wall. We have to send the broken up chunks of concrete down a ramp built over stairs and then dump it into the trailer. After that we drive it a little ways and dump it in a dumping area. Carter has been helping out a bit with this.


Boring car stuff

We added another vehicle with mismatched doors. I don't know why I like this so much, I think that it is because it is a visual example of how living in Haiti requires you to do just about anything that works and that functionality cannot be determined by beauty (although beauty is in the eye of the beholder):



We switched the tires around on the two big trucks and, in the process, I took off all the lug nuts and used anti-seize on them because of the truck incident last week (I have a blister from that event that is still healing). This dump truck also had one of the two pivot pins (about an inch and a quarter of solid steel) for the dump disappear. We found a very similar piece and put it in - it's not the same quality metal, but this is Haiti after all. The trucks are in rough shape - they are circa 1985.