Day Six (Stacey)

Today was the first day since we arrived in Haiti that I actually felt helpful. In a country where I don’t speak the language I feel most useful doing manual labour… hopefully that will change once we start Kreyol lessons, but for now I am happy working in the field with the boys. Especially when it means that I get a machete. I know, dangerous thought for those who know me, but I made it through an entire day with all limbs in place.

We arrived at the property around 10:30 this morning to meet the judge and surveyor to resolve a land dispute with one of our neighbours. It's such a ridiculous story that I really didn’t think I would bother to type it out. But after thinking about it a little more I decided that it is a great way to illustrate some of the realities of building in a country with little infrastructure and limited development. And it might help explain why things don’t move as quickly as we would like…

Anyways, they (I’m assuming some government institution) left 4m of land between our property line and the neighbours for a public access road. This is marked with stakes in the corners of the property. When the neighbour developed his land and built his fence he ignored these markers. Now that he has land further up the mountain he wants the road built and figures that we should donate the 4m needed from the Heart for Home property.

Rather than coming to Ricot to discuss this, the gentleman brought Ricot to court several times. He came up with many excuses to try to argue the land from us. This of course took time and caused stress. In the process of fighting over the land they cut down our fence and brought a tractor in to level where he thought the road should be.

The latest argument was that he wanted a straight line between the properties. However, once the surveyor began drawing the line it was obvious that "his property" was almost entirely on the public access road and much of what he claimed for road was clearly on our side. So in the end we gained land and the straight line we needed to eventually build a security wall. Hooray!

That was our morning – drawing and discussing a straight line for 4 hours in the blistering sun (literally, blistering). Oh, and I picked lemons for a while when the discussions were happening. Unfortunately there was a nice breeze so I didn’t feel the sun burning my pasty white skin.

We spent the afternoon cutting branches for new fence posts and putting them in the ground. They use what is called "living wood". Basically it's braches from a certain type of tree that when cut and replanted will grow into a tree where ever you place them. It's amazing. I'll take more pictures soon of the tree, the branches, and a few branches that were planted 8 weeks ago and have CRAZY growth…

So that was one day in the life… I am loving the variety of our days so far.