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Three Weyburn men returned from a work trip to Haiti deeply impressed by the needs and poverty of that nation, even a couple years after an earthquake and a hurricane caused widespread devastation there.

Brian Hopfe, Brad Alexander and John Vatamaniuck, along with Mike Zorn, a co-worker of Hopfe's from Kipling, spent Nov. 5-16 in Haiti rebuilding a school in the flooded-out community of Gonaives, located north of the capital of Port-au-Prince.
The three Weyburn men were sent on behalf of the Weyburn Free Methodist Church, and were part of a Canadian team of 15, mostly made up of volunteers from Toronto, plus one from Mississippi, part of the Free Methodists' Help Haiti Heal charity.
"It's something I will never forget in all my life," said Hopfe of the experience, who works here as the executive director for Youth For Christ, which operates the Weyburn Youth Center.

Explaining the situation and geography of where they were went, Hopfe noted the town of Gonaives was not hit by the earthquake directly, but is a town where many residents of Port-au-Prince fled to in the wake of the earthquake - and they were hit by a hurricane in 2008 that left three-quarters of the city underwater.

Located about 150 km north of the capital, it took the team about four to five hours to reach it due to the condition of some of the roads, and the dense population, even in the country side.

Describing the traffic there as "crazy", Hopfe said, "The whole concept is, the biggest vehicle wins. There were just streams of traffic. On a street like we have in Weyburn, there are four to five lanes of traffic going in every direction, with motorcycles and scooters dodging in and out, plus thousands of pedestrians."

Most roads had huge potholes, some a foot and a half deep, added Hopfe, with their vehicle sometimes forced to drive into the ditch to avoid them.

"The poverty is everywhere; the stench from the garbage and the filth is absolutely everywhere," Hopfe commented, noting that piles of garbage were just left by the sides of the road everywhere, and sadly, there were people picking through them to find something to eat. "It's hard for us to comprehend."

"Once they get enough together, they push (the garbage) all together and burn it," he said, adding that due to the outbreak of cholera, Culligans sells water in little plastic bags to drink from, in addition to the supplies of bottled water they normally provided.

Vatamaniuck had vivid impressions of the traffic and the heat when they first arrived in Haiti. He joked that the motorcycle was the "average family vehicle" as he saw some carrying six or seven people on it.
Small pickups, called "tap-taps", would hold 20-25 people, and express buses would hold huge numbers of people and only knew one speed: fast. With horns blaring, the express bus would slow down for no one, and the choice was to get out of its way or get run over.

"It was pretty unbelievable," he added.

"The places where people live are not good at all; they are just scraps of wood. It was hard to see, even the nicer places was in rough shape. The streets were very dirty and it smelled quite bad," said Vatamaniuck.

For his part, Alexander said the trip north from Port-au-Prince to Gonaives took them past very scenic ocean views, and one thing that stood out was he didn't see very many boats on the ocean.

Asking about it later, he was told that the waters on that side of Haiti were badly over-fished so there's nothing left now.
"Haiti has been mismanaged in so many ways," Alexander commented.

At the school where the team worked, he believed the floor space of the building they were reconstructing was about 3,500 square feet in area, and the foundation which they started on was built up with stones, contained in a steel mesh.

"We carried on filling it with more rock so we could put a base down," said Hopfe, noting that in addition to the Canadian team of 15, they hired 12 Haitians to help, at the top rate of $6.25 a day.

"Our objective was to go in and help them build it. We wanted it to be their building, not ours. We basically did the grunt work," said Hopfe.

They had electricity at the site, and "a huge blessing" was a water pump hooked up to their own well, so they always had water available to them.

Once the foundation was done, they went to work putting in the concrete floor, using a small diesel-run cement mixer on site for all of the concrete. One Haitian was in charge of putting in the materials for the concrete himself, and Alexander estimated that in seven days, this one worker put through between 150,000 and 200,000 pounds of material.
Due to how the stone foundation was uneven, the floor on top of it varied from between three and 10 inches thick - but it was level, and it was the job of Canadian Phil Rabey, a contractor from Ontario who was part of the team, to make sure of it.
Alexander estimated they put out the equivalent of 40 cubic yards of concrete, which was the equivalent of four garage floors here in Canada, all of it mixed by hand.

The sand and gravel was bought locally, and Hopfe noted the price for these commodities are very close to what it would cost here in Canada - which makes it incredibly expensive in Haitian terms.
And the sand was obtained by mining a rock, and having workers with sledgehammers pummel it into the grain that was considered useful as sand.

The temperature in Gonaives ranged from 35 to 38 degrees Celsius, plus humidity, so it felt like 45 degrees, and in the evening the mercury never dipped much below 30 degrees.

They subsequently drank a lot of water, about eight large jugs of water from a water cooler every day, said Hopfe, and to get electricity, someone had to shimmy up the power pole and clip onto the main power line.

Since the power from this line was so hot, they ran the line through a bucket of water to be used as a resistor.
Hopfe noted they first arrived on a Saturday in Port-au-Prince, so they attended a church in the capital the next morning, crammed full with 1,500 people and another 600 standing outside wanting to get in. In spite of the heat and humidity, and the crowded seating conditions, the service lasted upwards of three hours.

They then travelled up to Gonaives and the nearby town of Mapou, where the house was located that the team stayed in, about a 20-minute drive from Gonaives. They were at the job site from Nov. 7-12, and returned to the capital city on Nov. 15, flying out early on the 16th.

Talking about how their money worked in comparison to Haitian currency, Hopfe explained, using a 100-goud bill he returned with to Canada. This bill is worth about $2.50 in Canadian dollars, or 40 goud is equivalent to one U.S. dollar.
To buy a 500-ml bottle of Coke cost the equivalent of 50 cents, or $3.50 if you didn't return the bottle for recycling. Gas cost about $6 a gallon and diesel was $5 a gallon.

The staple food in the Haitians' diet was rice and beans, and Hopfe said the average Haitian would eat the equivalent of one soup bowl of this per day.

"Somebody asked me, 'what can we do there to help them?' I believe it starts with sponsoring children; you get rid of the corrupt government when you sponsor, and you're helping the entire family when you help the child, including providing them an education so they can move on to become someone of status in society," said Hopfe, noting they met some of the children sponsored by team members and saw the difference that sponsorship makes to that child and his or her family.
The school the team worked on has another team working on it currently, and a third team will go down in February to finish the project off so the children currently going to school in the church next door will have a proper facility to go to school in.