Blog

November 11,2016 Medical trip Last Sunday Bob and I loaded up eight people from our village and Gros Morne. We had four people needing surgery, two women that had breast cancer going to get chemo, a young girl needing to see an eye doctor and her mother. The truck was pretty full. We did not know when the surgeries would take place and had I to be prepared to stay in Port Au Prince for the whole week. I was struck by how little the people going for surgery brought for a week away, or should I say how much […]

We just installed drip irrigation at the demonstration double dug garden beds in the Fr. Jim Agriculture Center. We have five beds that are four feet by twenty five feet. The middle bed is being used to start tomato and pepper plants. As you can see in the picture it is covered in leaves to provide shade.

November 4th 2016 Bob and I visited Kalabot last weekend. The drive up is always quite a trip but thankfully we had no problems. Gail an American volunteer and Sr. Pat came with us. We were delivering many things that had been shipped on the shipping container to be distributed to those areas of the mission. I also had been given a donation of beads so I encourage a youth group to make jewelry so they could make a little money. They were very excited and started right away. We will return on the 14th to discuss budgets for the

October 27th 2016 The second week The workshops that had been rescheduled because of Hurricane Mathew were to take place this week. The first one at the Center in Grepin was to be on Wednesday but it was pouring rain Wednesday morning and we had to cancel. Thursday we did hold the workshop at our Center. It was amazing how well it all came together. We had sixty participants and about twenty staff including our selves. The Haitian Agronomist and his technicians lead each of the three sessions. There were also members of our agricultural group that helped with the

This is a small sampling of the children receiving their gifts from the Shoe Box Program. This is at the school in Garcin where we live. There are 110 students attnding this year. In total we have more than 750 children in the five schools that we, (meaning all of us including you), help to support. The picture of the classroom shows the children patiently waiting to open the bag containing their gifts. The smiles on the faces in the other pictures tell the story! A big thank you from the children to all of you that makes this possible!

This is where we buy ice for our ice box. A truck delivers it from Gonaives. It\’s covered in rice hulls for insulation. The block she is cutting for us is about 24" x 10" x 10". It cost 100 gds, ($1.52), per hand span, or about 8". Our block cost $4.56. It will last 3 or 4 days. So, our "refrigerator" cost us about $35 to $40 a month to operate.

October 17th 2016 First visit to Second Harvest I flew into Haiti on the 9th of October. In seventeen years of traveling to Haiti, this was my first solo flight. I wanted to have little more time with our daughter and her first baby. Bob left on the first so he could head up a agricultural workshop with Bill from long island and Bob from Kentucky. Hurricane Matthew interfered with all of our plans. The workshop was postponed until this week and my flight was delayed by a couple of days. Our dear friend Jeanie from the Carmelite center had

We are hosting an agriculture workshop today. Three sessions. The first one is on plant propagation using modern greenhouse methods, minus the greenhouse. The second is solutions to an infestation of beetles in sweet potatoes. The third is proper disposal of insects and diseased plants. The fourth picture is the cooks using our new kitchen complete with two new rocket stove designs.

It is 5:30 AM and I am watching the sunrise in the east, listening to the surf off of the southern coast of Haiti. Yesterday we left the guest house in Port au Prince at 4:45 in search of our team members and the supplies they were adding to our truck of relief supplies. Our first stop was a few blocks away at ‘Parole and Action”, locally know as ‘P and A’. This is the organization that Elwood and his wife Anita currently work for. It still takes a lot of patience to be an American and living on “Haiti”