Schools and stuff

This week I have been working on School 6 (the sixth school that All Hands is building).  All Hands is working on rebuilding schools that were destroyed in the earthquake.  There is a pretty intense assessment process that is done before a school is started.  We need to make sure that the school actually existed before the earthquake (there are a lot of new schools being started and people are looking for funding for those, which is great, but isn't what All Hands does), then we need to make sure that  the school is registered with the Ministry of Education and that they have permission to be on the land on which the school will be built.  In addition, we need to know that they have the resources to run the school once it has been built (we don't provide salaries for teachers or school supplies) and students that will attend.  School 6 got through that process and we started the foundation on Monday.

We dug trenches for the foundation yesterday and today we graded the ground for the foundation and started putting up the forms.  Tomorrow the rest of the forms will go up and gravel will be added to the  foundation and leveled.  I will miss that step because I have housekeeping chores tomorrow (the volunteers clean the base and do the dishes after meals and I volunteered for housekeeping because no one else was). The project is on track to have concrete poured on Monday.


On a different note, we are hearing about some unrest in the northern part of the country, where Nepalese UN troops and their base were firebombed and attacked.  People are blaming the Nepalese for bringing cholera to Haiti.  So far, the unrest seems to be localized and the violence appears to be focused on the UN and not NGOs in general.  We haven't had any issues here in Leogane (even at the UN base). 

The cholera epidemic has spread and we have a number of confirmed cases in Leogane.  We are taking extreme precautions to prevent any cholera on base.  With our access to clean water, soap, hand sanitizer, and loads of bleach, we are extremely unlikely to have any issues with cholera at the base.  I have also stopped mudding because I started feeling unwell, so my exposure had been drastically reduced.  Muddng will likely end soon (probably this week), so the risk will lower even further, since most of the houses in the neighborhoods directly affected by the flooding are clean.  We have cleared mud and cleaned over 30 houses and have now distributed almost 300 kits to community members to properly clean and sanitize their houses after the flood.  It's been a great week!