Blog Update by Jay J

It is another beautiful sunny day, approx. 90 deg F. There was a nice breeze during the entire day that felt very good to everyone. We started the day with some breakfast. Bob made some scrambled eggs for those who were up early enough to catch him cooking on the stove. Bob got up very early so luckily I was one of the few.
After breakfast, we went to the girls orphanage to tie down the new roof so that it does not blow away during the hurricane season. The new roof (made only from tarp and wood) covers most of the orphans dining area and will now allow outdoor cooking and cleaning even during rainy days. Bill used his creativity skills to design a gutter system that will capture the rain water and allow anyone within the orphanage to route it to one of two different directions, either within the orphanage so that it can be used to clean dirty dishes, shower, store in a water tank, etc., or outside of the orphanage so that it does not cause any flooding. The person who does most of the cooking and cleaning for the orphans, whose name is Joceline, was extremely happy that we did this project because it will greatly improve her working conditions. She could not speak a word of English, but showed her appreciation by giving everyone a big smile and a hug when we were finished, which was about 9:00am.
The next activity on our agenda was to visit the clean water manufacturing facility and pick up the 497 bags of water that we had left over from last week, and distribute them to those living in ‘tent cities’. When we reached the manufacturing facility, the man in charge said he would not have any drivers until noon because they were distributing water and ice, so we decided to load 97 bags in our truck and give them to Marie. The remaining 400 bags stayed in the cold storage facility until we came back to pick them up. Each bag of water contained 60 pouches, each with approx 8 oz of water, so we had 24,000 pouches that we wanted to distribute in the tent city that Marie’s half sister lives.
To give you some background, Jim, Bob, and me (Jay) went to visit Marie’s half-sister on Saturday to discuss how we would distribute all the water to the ~2000 families living in tents. The living conditions in this tent city was probably the worse I have seen in my life. It happened to rain night before, so this place was completely muddy, hot, humid, and smelly, especially near the outdoor toilets (which were holes in the ground surrounded by flies). Each tent was only 2-3 feet from the next, and I could honestly say that I had never seen any worse living conditions in my entire life. Everything looked dirty and many people did not have shoes so their feet were completely covered in mud. I was not sure why Marie’s half sister was not staying with Marie in her relatively nice place. Nonetheless, we agreed to come back to give them the water on Monday, and she was going to have a few guys help us.
We loaded up the refrigerated truck and drove to tent city. Since it had not rained in a couple of days, the ground was completely dry. We setup an assembly line to drop off all 400 bags of water in the church tent so that they can distribute the bags to each family. See pics below.
After we finished dropping off the water, we walked around the area, and everyone was very nice to us. The kids were very excited to see us, so there must have been at least 25 kids trying to hold our hands/arms. The parents were very trusting and did not mind if their kids followed us throughout the camp. A very cute two-year old boy wanted to follow me around everywhere so I carried him with one arm while holding the hand of another two kids. All the other guys also had at least 2 or 3 kids with them. It is amazing how friendly these people were to us even though they lived in the worse conditions imaginable. Seeing the smiles on the kids faces made me want to do more for all the people living in the camp. Although we gave them clean water, they probably would have appreciated food more. I pray that these people won’t have to live in these conditions for too long, and that God will provide them the food that they desperately need.
When we got back to Marie’s place, we cleaned up and had dinner. Josh cooked delicious spaghetti for all of us, and we spent the rest of the evening enjoying each other’s company.