Day Six

Kathryn Fuller
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

I think, after six days, we are starting to feel really comfortable here. Relationships with the people here and the landscape and the food and Gonaives seem real, this project seems real.

Today, we finished our bookcase! I guess it takes four (almost) engineers to build one. We got the thumbs up from Pastor Cournet, basically a golden seal of approval, maybe even synonymous with ISO 9000 quality. We’re pretty proud. We’ll put the finishing touches on tomorrow, clean up the room and add the books to the shelves (cross your fingers!). As much as I hate to say this, I’m terrible at hammering and sawing wood and using any sort of power tool. Thank God there are people who flourish in those skills more than I!!

Besides finishing the bibliotheque, we also took a trip into town with an American woman named Janis and her daughter Carleigh; both of whom dropped their lives in the States to come live at Eben Ezer mission for 5–10 years, teach at the school, and help coordinate projects with the community. Pretty amazing. Janis came up with the brilliant proposal to involve some of her university students in our solar project; they can learn with us as we design this system for the orphanage and then hopefully help us install it all a year from now. This is huge; we never wanted our project to be solely our group coming to Haiti, dropping in a couple solar panels and waving goodbye. It’s been vital from the start that the community is just as involved, that they have more of a stake in what’s happening than us, that they care about the future of the system and are enabled to go and implement similar solar systems or other aspects of community development as a result. This highlights a big disconnect in development work today: we have to change our perspective, in that foreign organizations and agencies and money are not the direct solution to the developing world’s issues. In order for things to change in the long run, the community itself must be the solution, they must believe in the work, have the skills to make things work, and the right opportunities to pursue.

“You can give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for the day, but if you teach a man to fish he’ll never go hungry.”

We finished off our day playing soccer with the kids, actually getting schooled by them. My four year old friend Fonaibi has better foot work than me, even in flip flops. The sun turned the sky a salmon pink and we played until the moon was halfway across the dark sky. It’s the happiest I’ve seen the kids all week.

Zanmi Limye

Student led group with a vision to enhance the quality of life in rural Haiti through solar power

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Kathryn Fuller

Written by

Zanmi Limye

Student led group with a vision to enhance the quality of life in rural Haiti through solar power

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