Day 10 - Thursday - 26 June

Today is our last full day in Haiti. Sad to leave - glad to return.

Elaine Minch mentioned she though this place would be a lot like the Philippines (PI). On the first day, as we drove outside of Port de Paix, I mentioned to Bruce that I thought I had seen poverty in the PI, but this was much worse. He said, "This is the relatively well off section of town. It got worse. Eventually we saw areas of arid scrub where people lived, but I am not sure how.

Wednesday we finished the blackboards. The adults dropped out one by one as it became clear the younger ones were doing quite well at both problem solving and doing the work.

In the afternoon, we went to see an irrigation dam and a sedimentation dam on the Mosquito River. We had hiked almost half a mile through banana and corn fields, but to proceed we decided to follow a goat path up a near vertical escarpment and intercept Bruce and the Land Rover as they bounced by on the road. We drove and walked along the river further upstream to see the site of a planned 30-foot dam. Then we drove past the spring that feeds Passe Catabois "aqueduct" then into the hills where we hiked about 3/4 mile to the spring for the pipes that feed Mayette, and go nearly to the ocean. We passed cows, pigs, goats, and a bass and soprano sheep duet, all tethered in the shade along the river to forage.

We forded the Mosquito a couple of times on rocks and pushed through a small stand of thorns to get to the spring house that provides 160 gallons per minute to the many "fountains" below. The spring was putting abut 200 gpm out at the time we were there, and the overflow was led to the river via a small canal. The spring is evidently located on a fault, which allows the underlying aquifer to bubble up through a crack in the shale.

(My writing was interrupted here by my son, who insisted I accompany him to the nearest dam, to see some truly awesome views. There was a beautiful little box canyon, with the river snaking around the edge, and a dam in one corner. Then the kids tried to drag us a couple miles further and after some near-falls on the precipitous trails, we came back. They do not have switchbacks in Haiti, for the most part.)

The vista of mountain and valley were awesome. Kester described it as "surreal." What a beautiful world God has entrusted to us. Bruce described some aspects of the integrated water management plan to us. This is an encouragement, bringing rainfall, surface water, and underground resources into play with dams, wells, and drainage, together in concert to feed his sheep, while the men who are building also provide spiritual nourishment to the people.

It has been suggested to me that I do not provide such details of the dinners, lest people sign up just for the meals. I must say, though, it was again great and vanished before us.

We played Catch Phrase and Bananagram until 10 and retired for an early morning.

.....
This morning we are up early to go to the beach. We had a misunderstanding of the time, but we got underway and drove past the salt flats and fertile Mosquito River plain. We spent some time relaxing on the beach of Mosquito Bay. Christopher Columbus spent Christmas Day 1492 anchored here. He named it Conception Bay.

That is all for today - power is going.