Sacrifice in French or in English is the name of a beautiful piece of land that we were able to purchase with great financial help from our donors in The Netherlands. This is where we will rebuild our orphanage. The expectations are that it will take years before the clean up in Haiti is completed, and buildings will be rebuild. So it is really fantastic that we found this piece of land just outside the city of Jakmel to rebuild our orphanage.
Sacrifice was owned by a very good friend of mine, Reginald Turnier, who “sacrificed” it to us for a very reasonable price.
In 2 days, on Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 May 2010 we build a temp house with the help of Dave Bird from Calvary Chapel and his group of 12 volunteers.
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.
This is a preview of
Kay Angel Orphanage’s New Temporary Home – Jacmel, Haiti
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Read the full post (576 words, 36 images, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)
Thursday 29 April 2010:
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
As some of you may already know Martin, his mother, three volunteers and myself recently went to Haiti. The plan was to come down so that we could build some emergency shelter for our kids that had been donated by Pacific Domes. Unfortunately due to shipping complications we have not received the domes yet and none of us were able to complete the job that had originally brought us down. For some of us this trip would be much more then helping out at the orphanage and one of our neighboring organizations, it would be a trip where we got experience Haiti and how amazing this country is.
Visiting Haiti has never been easy. After a few trips, though, I had gotten used to the nation’s peculiar blend of chaos and charm. Post-earthquake, the recipe has changed. “Now with Extra Chaos!” is the unfortunate, new reality in Haiti.
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.
Tuesday 2 March 2010:
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.
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.
This is a preview of
Generator Donated by Friends of Cine Institute Jacmel Haiti
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Read the full post (264 words, 14 images, estimated 1:03 mins reading time)
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
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.
Officially declared uninhabitable
Jesula was born on April 11th, 2007. At about nine months old her mother passed away from AIDS and Jesula was left at an orphanage. The nuns prayed very hard for Jesula but against their prayers, she tested positive for HIV. 
Thursday, July 22, 2010
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