Sunday 28 February 2010:
Last night my very good friend Andrew Bigosinski from Cine Institute called me to tell me that there is a whole crew made up of gaffers and grip that came in from New York with a container full of donated generators and other electrical equipment. They call themselves Friends of Cine Institute, and are donating and installing full electrical systems to those who are in need for that. Andou (his Haitian nickname) asked me if we could use one.
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Generator Donated by Friends of Cine Institute Jacmel Haiti
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Tuesday 23 February 2010:
This morning 2 engineers from the town of Jakmel came to inspect our house. They checked all the cracks and support poles of the house, and declared the house officially uninhabitable.
Something we already knew of course since the evening of 12 January 2010. ;-(
They also officially forbid us to enter the house.
The red circle with dot means uninhabitable, the number 110 signifies how many houses have been declared uninhabitable by them in our neighborhood up till the inspection of our house.
Officially declared uninhabitable
Saturday 20 February 2010:
Ever since the earthquake happened I have been wanting to talk about our staff, and show you all their damaged or totally destroyed houses as well. It took me until today to finally find a moment to write about them, and also collecting photo’s of their homes to show you.
Elmas Juselene, 1 of our cooks. Her roof had fallen down on her 1-story home
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Sunday 14 February 2010:
Happy Valentine’s day everybody.
We spend the day today working very hard to give our kitchen staff a better workplace. Since the earthquake made our home unsafe, we had moved our kitchen outside into the front-yard, and the area was covered with a big piece of tarp. But wind and rain really created many problems for our staff to cook the meals to feed our children and staff.
Friday 12 February 2010:
Today it is exactly 1 month ago that we had the 7.1 earthquake.
The government together with all churches has called for a 3-day “conge”. Conge means “day off” in Kreyol. This to remember all people that have died, but also all the people that survived but now live in very bad circumstances. For 3 days people will be praying everywhere, in churches, in groups in the street, in the peristile, (Voodoo tempel) Processions are taking the street, during the day but also as early as 3 AM in the morning Shops and banks are closed.
Sunday 7 February 2010:
Today we were visited by a group from TCAT. Through my friend Joe Duplan they had heard about us and donated 5 FilterPure clay water-filters with special silver lining baked into the clay to the orphanage.
Please check out their website at: http://www.filterpurefilters.org
We will now be able to filter any kind of water to drink. We will also start using the filtered water to bathe our children with, since they have compromised immunity systems due to their HIV + status. The air and ground is full of dust, germs and microbes.
Saturday 6 February 2010:
Over the last 2 days I received many calls from my Dutch friend Geert van der Kolk, via a satellite phone from a boat. He is a journalist, writer who lives in Washington DC. He is also a very good sailor, and has made many trips to Jakmel on his sailboat in the past.
He asked for my help, because he was on his way to Jakmel on a big sailboat / schooner with as captain Jared Talarski, and was unable to get in touch with any of his local contacts, or the mayor’s office to receive them.
They were coming in on saturday morning around 10 AM. They had left Miami 8 days ago and had sailed non-stop to reach Jakmel with all sorts of aid.
If you would like to follow their journey check out their blog http://www.libertyschooner.com
Thursday 4 February 2010:
The Canadian navy has visited us several times this week, to come and scout the need for toilets. We do need that very much, so they located a good spot across the street from us and marked the area. The next day a big bulldozer came by to dig the hole.
The day after, today they came back to install our new toilets. There is no room for it, so we will find a solution for that, because we do have a lot of rain these days. The hole is also not very deep, it is just a temporary solution they said. I think our kids will fill it up in no time 
By Martin Schmitt
This morning I drove to Port of Los Angeles to witness the delivery of a 44′ dome kit to Operation USA’s warehouse. Pacific Domes of Ashland, Oregon, had donated not just one, but three of these beautiful structures to Haitian causes. The folks at Penske were nice enough to donate the use of a truck for Greg and his crew’s 15-hour drive to L.A.
Thanks to some quick thinking by Teresa Langness, the founder of Full Circle Learning, and the diligent coordination by Deanne LaRue of the Meridian Foundation, one of those domes, a 1,500 square footer, is now earmarked for delivery to our orphanage!
Officially declared uninhabitable
Sunday, February 28, 2010
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