TIH
Among the guys working on the straw bale house, as well as the rest of the crew at GrassRoots United, we have a saying we use a lot. TIH. We use this whenever something goes extraordinarily wrong, or when something that should have been very simple turns into a major endeavor. "This Is Haiti" explains much of the why when these situations arise.
Today we had Alex, our driver, go to Petion Ville, about 45 min. south of PAP, where he was to pick up some bamboo for us to use for an interior wall. We'd bought bamboo from this source before so it should have been a relatively simple task. Alex was to pick up a few bundles of bamboo and then a quart of black latex paint. He got off to a late start doing some personal business and around noon he called me to say that he was having trouble finding the place. A few phone calls and about an hour later and I finally hooked him up with Marty in Ca. who got him straightened out. But once he got there they told him that they no longer sell the small diameter bamboo we needed. So I told him to forget the bamboo for today and bring us the paint. He called later to tell me he had the paint but had another flat tire (he's had several over the past few weeks) and would have to get it fixed before he could bring us the paint. Around quitting time he finally showed up at GRU with the paint. But it was oil based and useless for our needs. Still we needed to pay him for his time, probably $40 or so which is a small fortune during the waning days of this project and its budget.
All we could say was TIH.
I've mentioned before that things can change suddenly in Haiti. Another example of this occurred when we went to experience carnival up near Petion Ville. Every Sunday for several weeks prior to fat Tuesday there are celebrations all over Haiti (and many other parts of the world). Folks dress up in costume, sometimes drag, and march or dance through the streets. When we went there was a huge crowd of, who knows, 10,000? We were all jammed together into some sort of organic mass with music blaring form a huge Digicel (the local cell phone co.) float that was (slowly) chasing us down the crowded street. I was amazed at the mass of humanity and how much one has to let go in order to avoid freaking out over it all. I delighted over my ability to take part in and enjoy the scene.
Samuel and Jean Louis, our local Haitian workers who by now are also our good friends, shepherded us along. We had to be careful to avoid getting separated as it would be virtually impossible to find each other if we did (though some of us did have cell phones).
All was going swimmingly when I noticed that Andy was kneeling on the ground. I tried to find out from Sarah what was going on over the thunderous background noise. The first thing I heard was that his wallet had been stolen. This was something I had thought might happen in such a crowd and I would have voiced my concerns to the others as a warning if I had a voice large enough to be heard over the roar. But having his wallet stolen did not explain why he was kneeling on the ground. At first I thought perhaps the guy had slugged him in the stomach to get the wallet or maybe Andy was just very distraught over the loss. Then he started to throw up. I asked Sarah what THAT was all about and she just shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't know.
We finally put it together that Andy was sick and it was all quite unrelated to his wallet.
Given the preponderance of Cholera in Haiti (Marty had already come down with it and I may have just barely escaped an episode myself) we all realized that we needed to get Andy back to our base at GRU at a minimum, and perhaps to a clinic. But getting a "tap-tap" in this chaotic scene was not going to be easy. Fortunately Samuel stepped up to the plate and got er done. It was probably only 30 min. or so before we were on our way back "home".
Once there it seemed that Cholera was not too likely because Andy was not experiencing diarrhea which is one of the major symptoms. So he decided to stay the night at GRU. In the morning he was still having trouble keeping anything down, but diarrhea was still absent. He recovered that day and returned to work the next. Some Haitian bug got him or maybe it was a mild (easy for me to say) case of food poisoning (but we all ate the same food and nobody else got sick).
I'm sure we'll never know. TIH.
