Today Leon Miller and his assistant from “Water for Life” came to install the water-pump. In this picture you see them testing how much water is being pumped up.

The pump is made of stainless steel and has a capacity of 20 gallons per minute. The left part of the pump is the engine, and on the right you see a couple of rings/filters through which the water will be pumped. The pump itself is quite heavy.

On the top of the pump a black tube will be attached through which the water will come up. Attached to the tube are the electrical cables that will connect the submersible pump with the electricity source above ground.

A special cord is attached to the pump in order to lower it into the well, and at any given time we can pull the pump back up this way again.

Very slowly the pump is lowered into the well.

Here you see clearly how long the tube is, 144 feet in total.

Now the top of the well is being sealed of completely, with a tap sitting on top of it for the water to come out.

Since we do not have electricity yet on Sacrifice, Leon came with a generator in order to be able to test the pump.

The first 10 minutes the water wasn’t clear yet, the well needed to be cleaned out first so to speak, but after that beautiful crystal clear water was coming out.

Leon Miller, who has been living in Haiti for about 20 years drilling wells, and his assistant both drank from the water to test the quality. According to their expertise this water is totally drinkable the way it is. Of-course I couldn’t resist myself and drank from the water as well, and surprisingly enough I have to say it tasted really good. We will of-course have this water tested in a lab before we let the kids of Kay Angel drink from it.

Our next step for the well is to build a huge water-reservoir underground that will be filled up with water from the well and from there distributed to our buildings. We are also planning to make a pipeline with a tap, sitting at our fence that we will open at set times for the people in our neighborhood, so they can come and fill up their buckets, rather than them having to walk with their buckets on their heads for miles to get water.

After a lot of preparation and planning we finally really started the work on our new land today.When I woke up at 6 AM this morning I could hardly believe it is finally all really happening. It was a very special feeling of joy, relieve and of-course anticipation as well, since the next 6 to 8 months will be very intense for me.

Our site manager Frantz Pierre Louis, who just finished up a beautiful project for Operation USA, Ecole Nationale Jacob Martin Henriquez, cleared our private access road to Sacrifice with the borrowed backhoe from Calvary Chapel so that the big trucks from “Water for Life” were able to drive directly on the land. Our project, as it happens, starts with drilling our own water-well so that we always will have water, “Water for Life”, “Dlo pou lavi”.

At the same time a team of locally hired workers started to clear our property lines from vegetation, so that we can prepare for placing our locally made fence. The philosophy of Kay Angel is to hire local wherever possible within our project to stimulate the local economy. Our future neighbors are very happy with us, since they found some work with us.

The big truck with the drill drives up Sacrifice. The chosen spot for our first attempt to find water is all the way at the top, so that we will save energy later with pumping the water into our system, gravity will do a lot of the work.

The 2nd truck with all the materials like the big PVC pipes that will go into the ground follows.

Drilling through a layer of white sand

In the distance we see a big rain approaching us. The view at Sacrifice is really breathtaking.

Drilling through a layer of very watery orange mud.

It was a beautiful sight to see this huge drill on our land. The drilling took up to several hours, but at a depth of 140 feet we already found water. And not just a little bit, we found 20 gallons per minute. That really exceeded all our expectations.

As if we were getting a blessing from above it started to pour the moment we found water. Everybody ran for cover in or under the trucks, except for Troy the driller, he continued to work, because in order to insure the quality of your well you always need to drill a little deeper after you find water.

After 20 minutes or so the rain had passed and the PVC pipes were lowered into the well.

For now the pipe will just sit likes this, covered with heavy tape. Now that we know how much water we found we can order the right pump for it. At a later time that pump will be installed.

Today was a beautiful day for me, a successful 1st attempt to find water resulted in a great 20 gallons a minute. The big rain was a beautiful omen to me that this land is truly blessed and that a beautiful future awaits the children of Kay Angel here.

Now that electricity is back on and the internet signal back in the air,I can send you all a sign of life from Jakmel, Haiti.

We have been extremely lucky that TOMAS changed it’s course and passed us much more to the west. At first the prediction was that he would come straight over Jakmel.

What we got was a lot, a lot of rain, a wall of water came over us, and quite some heavy winds, but of course it could have been much worse had it been the 80 miles/h winds closer to the eye of the hurricane.  Thursday morning we moved all the kids and all our belongings into next door Hotel Leviya, a lot of work, but luckily Dave Bird from Calvary Chapel with some volunteers came to help move the most heavy things for us. The rest we did ourselves. And just in time, because the rains started at around noon and did not let off until saturday morning. Saturday afternoon it was all over and the sun came back, but it wasn’t till sunday afternoon that we could move back into our campsite, since it needed quite some time to dry, especially the floors.

TOMAS did punch a hole in our monthly budget, because obviously we did have to pay to spend 3 nights in the hotel, but hey the kids were safe and dry, and they spend a fun time inside with great sleep.

The cholera epidemic is spreading rapidly. Two days ago a person from Lavoud, a little town not to far from Jakmel came to the local Hospital St Michel, and he tested positive for cholera. He is being kept in isolation. All of the hospitals in Port-au-Prince are overflowing with patients. People in towns and villages around Gonaïves, in the north, are burying victims in mass graves, according to aid workers and photographers, and suspected cases have been detected in the south and in the Dominican Republic, which shares this Caribbean island with Haiti. One hospital in Gonaïves has closed its doors completely to cholera patients, out of fear for infecting their other patients. People are being left in the streets, in front of hospitals and churches in hope that some one will take care of them, which does not always happen and so they die right there in the street. Very, very sad.

Of course we are taking all precautions to protect ourselves and follow very strict hygiene rules. Which is something we already always do since day 1 at Kay Angel. All staff and kids are washing their hands all the time with disinfecting soap. We bathe the kids with filtered water, we cook with filtered water, we do the dishes with filtered water with some bleach in it, and clean all our fruits and vegetables the same way.

The oral vaccine that exists is not recommended by the WHO, and is also not available to us. All of this does add stress to our already stressful existence since the earthquake. Soo much extra worrying. In Haiti you go from one problem to the next all the time, there is never any time to just relax ;-(

Sacrifice was owned by a very good friend of mine, Reginald Turnier, who “sacrificed” it to us for a very reasonable price.

Sacrifice’s location is east of Jakmel, 10 minutes by car, a little of the only paved main road in the South of Haiti, Route National 208, and nestled under the protection of a rock formation which forms the base of the mountain range Kap Wouj (Cap Rouge) On paper the land measured 47 centiemes when we purchased it, but after the official land measurement executed by Arpanteur. Jean Maxo Bazile it turned out that the land actually measures 48 centiemes.

In Haiti one measures land in Carreaux. 1 carreau equals 100 centiemes, 1 centieme equals 128 square meters. 1 Carreau equals 3.19 acres…

This system of land measurements stems from the French colonial times. In any event, the land is beautiful. The earth is made up of red clay which is very fertile. Great for our future vegetable garden.

Since the land is on a slight tilt we have a beautiful far view on Jakmel and the mountains across from the Bay of Jakmel. The sun rises behind us, and sets right across from us, so the future holds many many beautiful sunsets. Our surroundings are very green, in front of us lays an ocean of palm and coconut trees.

The land itself has several fruits trees already, like mango, lime, korosol, coconuts, grapefruit and sour oranges, which are great to marinate meat with.

Lots of children are living in this area and behind us we find many little trails  for our kids to explore in the future. A big healthy exciting difference from the dusty area where we live now in St Helene, Jacmel.

For weeks now the rainy season is in full gear. Lots of heavy rains, wind and too many problems for all of us who are living in tent camps. There is mud everywhere, the water with mud enters our Unicef tent every-time it rains.

The plastic roof that covers our daytime area does not hold up under the heavy rain etc etc.

To move the kids at night from the Unicef tent into the sleeping tents is very challenging and stressful under those heavy rains. So we had to come up with something better than our tent-site for now.

Obviously the construction of our new orphanage will take a few months before that will be finished. Dave Bird and his wife Darlys have moved to Jakmel post earthquake for a period of 3 years to help several projects, schools and orphanages to rebuild, be it temp shelter or permanent housing for the future.

Every 2 weeks they host and feed a group of volunteers and put them on local projects.

For 2 days and 2 nights we put our kids up in the basement of Leviya Hotel across the street from us, and worked from 7 AM till 7 PM to build this new temp house.

We took down our current camp site, and with the help of a bulldozer and many trucks of dirt mixed with rocks, we evened out our little piece of land and raised it quite a bit. After living on it for the past 3 months the whole ground had sacked, and it had never really been straight to begin with.

At first we had planned to build a strong corrugated roof over our campsite, but while building we saw many possibilities to make it more into a “real” home. Recycling materials we already had as well. What used to be our floors we now used for our new walls, and our former plastic sheet roof is now our new floor.

A week later we finished the details, like putting in  a screen to keep bugs out, but to let some air in so the house will not be too hot under the strong Haitian sun. A few truckloads with river stones to fill in our front yard and keep it mud free, and a little wall between us and the public road to keep out the muddy river that road turns into every time it rains.

The Unicef tent is now connected to this new house and is our sleeping area. The house houses our dining room, the school for Youseline, Melinda and Estania, the tv / play room, our little clinic with all medication for our kids. And this new home is so much cooler than the hot tents we had before.

We are all super happy with this new home, life has again become less stressful to us.

A big thanks to the volunteers who build this for free for us, and to all of you who have donated to us, so that we were able to buy the necessary materials!!

I am madly in Love……………………….

with our new car:  A great Toyota Granvia minivan, diesel, 4 cylinders, 3 liter engine, imported straight from Japan by a local car-dealer, year 1996, only 80,000 miles on it   This car makes such a difference in our life, makes life so much less stressful, gives us freedom and a little more normalcy in life again, even-though the orphanage still lives in tents.

Toyota Granvia minivan

The orphanage has never had enough funding to buy it’s own car, so I have always put my own personal car to work for us, from hospital visits in Jakmel and/or PaP, weekly grocery shopping, to and from school, and of-course fun outings for our kids.

During our last “fun outing” to the local play ground in the center of town with our 5 oldest kids, last January 12th my car got completely destroyed by the earthquake. Since then life has been very difficult and challenging, living in tents, while trying to continue our life as normal as possible.

Not having a car available to you makes all of that even harder, and you realize that it is a must to have a good car to manage an orphanage with 13 little kids, of which 2 handicapped. No car means no more fun trips to the beach or playground, high expenses for a “for American standards” unacceptable car that functions as a taxi here, even before the earthquake, for our many hospital visits. Walking our groceries shopping home with a wheelbarrow all the way from the center of town to where we live. Etc etc……

But thanks to  my dear friends Gosta and Patrick and their yoga center http://svahayoga.com/ in Amsterdam we were able to buy this great family-car for the orphanage. They have specifically fund raised to replace my car, and this new car is so much better than my old car ever was.

So thank you Gosta and Patrick and Svahayoga. JAI MA. The first trip with our new car was one afternoon to the beach in Jakmel, last Monday 26 April and after that, last Wednesday afternoon 28 April we had a great birthday party for Melinda’s 8th birthday on the beach of Raymond Les Bains. We spend the whole afternoon playing in the water, playing soccer on the beach and instead of the traditional birthday cake we had fresh grilled fish, with fried plantains and piklees and lots of soda’s. The kids loved it.

When we came home later that afternoon Melinda said to me that this was the best birthday she ever had, and that from now on she wants to celebrate this way every year.

And for all our other kids these 2 afternoons away from the tents and dusty street, playing in the water, running their little hearts out on the beach, just having fun as kids, worked a miracle on their moods, they had a great time and were just so happy!!!!!

Life is still challenging for us of course, but it is a whole lot less difficult with this great new car. Mesi anpil!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You would think that the flood of media images would have appropriately set my expectations, but they couldn’t suppress the visions of the suffering witnessed by buildings like these:

There are tents everywhere now.  On fields, by the side of the road, and even on median strips of major city streets.  Three feet and a thin sheet of Coleman Nylon is all that separates people’s “bedrooms” from honking, speeding, diesel-spewing, 24/7 traffic.

New too are the signs for help.  Some of them are simple, hand-scrawled signs saying HELP! and a phone number.  Those with more resources post more elaborate listings of their losses:

Although Jacmel wasn’t subjected to the same scope of descruction as Port-au-Prince, many landmarks are gone or shadows of their former selves:

The local Kindergarten is destroyed along with the house next to it shown above.

One of the four gas stations in and around town.

Hotel Florita, built in 1888.  Only one of the shutters remains of chambre trois, the room I stayed in during my last visit.

About 3,000 of the displaced found temporary shelter in a camp set up by the Venezualean army on a soccer field.

One of the homeless there is Tektek, a friend of Lia’s.  I happened to run into him in town and he took me to his new “village”.   His new “house” there is a 6 by 8 foot section of tent with a mud floor and a rip in the roof:

Our current digs consist of a 400 sqft. UNICEF tent and a few smaller tents arranged around a central play area, all wedged between a public road and a hotel.

While the kids are fairly healthy and content for now, as soon as the rains arrive in April and the hurricanes in August, life will become hard.  Keeping thirteen kid, many with major health issues, safe, happy, fed and educated in a tent is a major feat.  Hats off to Lia for managing the day-to-day

The staff is already stressed by the added strain

While I was there, we covered the area as best as we could with a huge tarp to keep the sun and rain out,

Relief to this situation was supposed to arrive while we were visiting.  This brings us to the major disappointment of the trip: the domes never arrived while we were visiting.  One delay after the next has kept them in a warehouse in Miami till now.

A huge positive development, though, is the fact that the orphanage secured the perfect piece of land for the orphanage:

It’s one and a half acres in a rural area just outside Jacmel, near the airport, nestled among small farms.  There is plenty of room for our dome, a house for Lia, a guest house for visiting volunteers, a garden, play area…

Here we are, celebrating the signing of the paperwork that makes the property ours (from left to right: ?, Frantz, Lia, Gala, Katherine of Bumi Sehat, Reginald, my mother Erika):

How are Rochel, Frantz and Ambroise, you ask?  Just fine, actually.  Here they are resting after a long day at work:

Our rescued dog Toutous is doing well also.  Despite her paralyzed back, she gets around and is very playful.

On Wednesday, we attended the grand opening of Bumi Sehat, a birthing clinic just down the street from us.  Reginald is the administrative director:

A part of their clinic is housed in the exact same dome that we are expecting.

This morning the team from Unicef came at 7 AM to set up the 42 square meter tent they had given us last saturday. It is quite a big structure and it took a whole team to set it up. They anchored it in the ground at several places to make it a safe  sturdy home.

We then created a ground cover with tarps and moved in our school, dining room, tv room and playroom / afternoon napping-time room. It feels so good to be “indoors” again.

Life will be a little less stressful for all of us.

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.

A big YES on my end ofcourse.  So today some students from the film-school came to visit us with Charlie Libin and Jim McCullagh from  Friends of Cine Institute with a huge generator, Honda ES6500. They also brought a whole bunch of electrical cords, and light bulbs.

At the same time  UNICEF gave us a 42 square meter tent  yesterday, that they will come and set up for us tomorrow, monday. That tent will function for the time being as our dining area, kids safer play ground, and our home school.

The days will be so much better for us and our kids when they are not out in the open all day long. So when the tent is set up tomorrow the crew will come back and install our electrical system for us. The generator is full with gas, and they also donated a 5 gallon container full of extra gas to us.

I will keep you all posted, and needless to say we had a great Sunday with all these gifts, we are very happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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.

So today we hired a Boss and asked some friends to come and help us take the roof of our laundry department behind the house down, (we cannot work in that area anymore, to risky if the house decides to fall down) and move it to the front-yard to create a better cover for the kitchen.

The structure is very heavy since it is wood covered with corrugated sheets, and getting it through the narrow pass-way next to the staircase was very tricky , but we made it to the front. The next step was to lift it high enough so it could sit on the side wall. This turned to be too impossible for us, to heavy, not enough people, but right at that moment 2 Canadian army trucks pulled up next to our camp to come and check on us. I asked the Canadians if they could please help us lift the roof, and it still was a lot of work to get it high enough and at the right place so it could sit on the sidewall, but it worked out.

Boss Frito then put all support poles in place, and when the structure was secure we pulled the tarp over  the whole area and we have a new kitchen. Our kitchen staff was happily surprised when they came in Monday morning!