Male Musings

It has been a while since I blogged, so an update on happenings over the last few weeks:

• Rumor Has It. Last Thursday afternoon, Whit and the kids stopped for a potty break at my office. As they were leaving, my boss stopped in and said that he was closing the office, due to some potential political march to celebrate women's rights (there was also some talk of demonstrations from other political groups), and sent everyone home for the day. Shortly after we left the office, he called and encouraged us to stop by the grocery store and stock up, as the President was going to make an announcement later that afternoon in which he would draw a line in the sand and quit if Parliament would not work with him (the two have obviously been playing nicely of late). Tensions have been high the last few weeks as the Prime Minister resigned because of investigations into his nationality, among other things. I imagined total chaos ensuing if the President walked and the country was without Prime Minister and President. A member of Parliament actually incited some chaos when he for-shadowed the announcement and spoke of a "kouri" - rioting and demonstrations in the streets. This was all much ado about nothing. Martelly did hold a press conference in which he had on hand his 8 most recent Haitian passports for members of the press and Parliament to see. He too has been under investigation with regard to his nationality (just a distraction, akin to attacks on President Obama's birth certificate). I have been following the GOP Primaries from a distance and feel that all the shenanigans there don't hold a candle to the potential political unrest here in Haiti. The day after all the rumors we were in the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince at a chop shop looking for used rims for our vehicle. A caravan of black SUV's with sirens wailing split the crowd. In unison everyone on the street looked up and raised their fist in the air as a sign of solidarity. It was a Presidential motorcade and it took some time for the locals to stop smiling after he passed. Regardless of all the games that are played, Martelly is the people's president. I don't believe Americans, as a whole, have that same passion for the President or politics. We get excited during campaign season and then just complain about all the failings the rest of the term.
• Haitian Time. In general, Haitians are pretty loose with their time. If you have an appointment to meet someone, you can expect them to be 30 minutes to an hour late. No need for anyone to be in a hurry unless they want/need something from you. The transition to daylight savings came and went without issue, as Haiti does not honor DST, due to their relative proximity to the equator. So this morning I was startled to hear a car horn on the road at 4:45am. My driver usually comes around 5:45am, so I figured it could not be him an hour early. Then the guard started shouting for me, at which time I knew it was my ride. I hopped out of bed and threw on some clothes. Whitney was kind enough to get up and help with my lunch. The clock in the car said it was 5:45. I figured he had set his clock wrong, but we couldn't communicate due to language barrier. My cell phone still said 4:45 and that HAD to be right. The streets were busy as usual, but the day starts early here. Once I got to work (I was the only one there), I looked on the internet and found that only last Wednesday did the President decide to do daylight savings time. I guess I was the only one who didn't get the message, but probably not, as we were on time for church on Sunday. So I figure that half of population is operating on one time and the other half on another time, but doesn't much matter, except that instead of being an hour late a meeting, one might be two hours late. Only in Haiti. Now I have to keep close tabs on the airline schedules to figure out what time our flight will leave in a few weeks, as original schedule did not account for transition to daylight savings time. I bet the President didn't consider my flight schedule when he decided to make this change a few days ago.
• Our work retrofitting damaged homes continues to progress. To date we have retrofit almost 600 homes and plan is to have another 400 to 500 retrofit by next month. At that time we will begin a new construction phase of 400 to 500 homes. It is great to know that we will have helped improve the living conditions of 1500 families, but there is still so much that can be done. We estimate that the NGO community has retrofit or rebuilt approximately 5000 homes. Homeowners, themselves, have completed 10 times that many, most without the training or knowledge on proper techniques, putting their homes at risk during future seismic events. It is hard to stay on top of things in such a densely populated area. I have trained several of our engineers on a retaining wall inventory program and we will begin retrofitting and repairing retaining walls in the next few weeks. No sense spending money fixing up a house if it sits on a potentially unstable retaining wall.