Spidey

My nephew, John (the one that recently asked Janice to marry him but has not shared any details of the plans as of yet - small dig) asked me what was with Spidey being in some of the pictures of our adventures and suggested that I do a post to explain his story.

Several years ago, Michel and I took a vacation to Baja, Mexico to do some kayaking.  On one of our first nights, we went for a bit of a romantic walk down the beach.  On our way back to camp, we came upon Spidey, fighting for his life.  It seems he had been out for a swim in the ocean when he was attacked by a giant squid. 

Spidey, although familiar with fighting Dr. Octopus, had never come across a squid before and so was at a disadvantage of how to best fight this dreaded new foe.

Although he bested the squid, it came at a cost. Poor Spidey lost a leg in the encounter.  It was a horrible sight but Michel put his EMT skills to use and flew into action. Afterwards, we nursed him back to health and even helped him acquire some prosthetic devices (see below) but in the end, it seems Spidey prefers to work with just his natural abilities.

During his recovery, Spidey became attached to us, and we to him, so we invited him to live with us in Calgary (we were so happy when he agreed) and we have such a good time with him, we general ask him to travel with us as well.

He can be quite independant when we travel as a threesome so this is why he only shows up in some of our pictures.

Spidey ran into Orville, a distant cousin, during our kayak trip
on the Rideau Canal last September.  They had a great time
catching up and were up until the wee hours of the night!

Spidey had a drinking problem for a short
period after the accident but he worked through
it and is better now.

As you can see, he is not letting being
one-legged keep him from enjoying life.

Spidey originally decided that he didn't want to come to Haiti with us and instead went to New York to visit with his Aunt May.  However, yesterday he emailed to say he is feeling a little restless and after talking with All Hands, they have agreed to let him join us and help volunteer as well.  He will be taking a flight on Wednesday to join us so you should him in some pictures of Haiti shortly.

Tit for Tat

Yesterday, my wonderful sister emailed me to say she enjoyed hearing about what we were doing and that made her think that Michel and I might like to hear about what is going on in her life.  HOW RIGHT SHE WAS!!!!!!!

We are missing everyone and now that we have no ability to phone anyone to touch base, we would love to get e-mails every once in a while to hear what is going on.

I have had lots of people in the past say "There is nothing new, it's just the same old, same old".  To which I respond, "Although life's big events are the exciting bits, it is the sharing of the day to day grind that acts as the glue of friendship."

That being said, I was never one of those kids in elementary school that would eat Elmer's Glue, but I am dying to have some glue!!!!!!

As an enticement, I will guarantee that I will respond to anyone who e-mails me and will share a tidbit our our daily grind that does not make it into the blog!  A bit of inside information although there is no market for the trading of these kind of secrets.

This Week in Haiti

This week has seen us rendering at School 12 and 13.  These schools are located right beside each other and have been plagued with problems with the cement skin not adhereing to the cement core of the walls.  So, Charilus (the boss), has been knocking the skin off in areas and we have been reapplying it.  We finally got to the point yesterday where it was re-skinned on the outside and we had started to paint and then someone went inside several of the classrooms and started ripping off parts of the interior skin (without the boss' permisson)!  It is the job that never ends, it goes on and on my friends, someone starting ripping at it not knowing when to stop so we'll go on skinning it just because it is the job that never ends.................

One of the perks of School 12/13 is Antoine, a little boy who lives just behind the schools in the tent camp and he comes to help us everyday!  He is the most adorable little boy and if you ask him what his name is in English, he replies "I'm the boss."

You can also see him in the video below helping sift sand.  We are all under the tent because it had started to rain and we needed to keep the sand dry to sift it.  We have actually run out of sand at the schools and are waiting for more to come so we can fix the parts on the interior.

This is what we do on our lunch hours.
After taking this picture, I layed down beside the green
bucket and had a snooze.  I didn't even care when all
the kids came out for break and stood around
looking at us - I was just too tired and hot.

And while we were napping on the ground, Meg managed
to find a way to get comfortable in the wheel-barrow. Meg is
number 2 on the team and supervises and works so she is
extra tired. 

I got very excited yesterday morning as I realized I must be aclimitizing to the weather as during the night, I actually had to put my sleeping sack over me as I was ever so slightly chilled.  I have yet to actually sleep inside the sack - have I mentioned how freaking hot it is here.

Tonight was a graduation party for a dozen of the local Haitian volunteers.  In the local volunteer program, the volunteers are assigned to a certain project (be it school building, health education, etc.) and then get training while they donate their time (think on-the-job training without getting paid).  You could tell the volunteers were very proud of what they had accomplished and I was very happy for them.  I got to help out with the party - I had to sort through the rice for dinner (before it was washed and cooked) to pick out any bad pieces of rice.  Michel got to help grate coconut and then help to make banana pouse (deep fried plantains - yummy!).  I do have to say that the speechs were plentiful and there were several interesting performances but the people who talked through the ceremony made me mad as I felt it took away from the pomp and ceremony. 

I have come to the conclusion that anything I wear to do construction work in will be garbaged at the end of the trip.  Everything I have worn is horribly stained with either red sand, concrete or paint.  I will also have to trash my runners as they have been wet at least 4 out of the 14 days I have been here and the baby ants love to swarm then during the night.  This requires me to thump my runners against the floor to get them off and then stomp on them - baby killer yet again - and not feeling bad about it!

We have been quite daring and bought some street food and survived to tell the tale!  At the construction site there is a Sapibon dealer (think freezies but in a square bag that fills your hand) and when you are working up a sweat, it is pure heaven on earth - red is my favorite so far).  I also had a street version of pate (a dough ball filled with meat and spicy pickled cabbage - known as picklies).

Haiti Photo Montage

And now some visuals from Haiti:

Tante Mary and Veve in the back of the Tap Tap at the airport.

I am in the bunk area taking this picture.  What you see is the
"common area" - a place for us to relax after our hard day's work.

Wow, this picture does not make the kitchen look
nearly as scary as it is when you walk in it. 
Maybe cause you can't smell it.

Like the kitchen, this does not look as frightening
as it is in real life - smelly!

Bunk area

This is our room at Tante Mary's - freak'n
lap of luxury compared to base.

My hot husband in his man-capris! Michel's bunk
is the top one with the white mosquito net.

These two lovely ladies wanted their picture taken.  They will be
attending Schools 16 & 17 once they are built.

This is Marc and this is how everyone feels by lunch.  I was
very envious that he could sleep.  He eventually fell over and
stayed asleep!!!!! 

This is Wilbur.  He supervises some of our work at
Schools 16 & 17.

 

Genevieve, Gary, Gaeton and Michel
at dinner after the art fair.

Some of the art from the fair.

These are gourds that have been carved and
are lamp shades.

These tableaus are made from mostly buttons.

Nifty metal furniture

 

OK, this isn't in Haiti.  This is Jac and Antoine a couple of
nights before we left Montreal.  We had such a great time
with them.

More adventures in Haiti

Day 3 was good. Kim (one of the other volunteers) and I got to "clean house". Every day, two volunteers get housekeeping duty in the morning. This includes lovely things like cleaning the bathroom (6 toilets for 60 people - just let your imagination run wild), burning trash, including the toilet paper that everyone uses as we can not flush any paper down the toilet. And let us not forget cleaning the kitchen, including finding 2 cockroaches in the sink (both dead thank god) and sprinkling roach killer on the baby roachs - I am a baby killer!!!!!! Please don't think less of me.

Then in the afternoon, we joined the team that was working on School 12 (this is where Michel was). School 12 was actually finished a while ago but some problems started manifesting in the concrete skin so we were fixing that.

After work, it was off to PAP (Port au Prince) in a lovely air conditioned car to go to Tante Mary's for the weekend. It was a wonderful respite as she has running water, a working shower and a king size bed for us. ASIDE: Michel and I are sleeping in separate bunks at the base and I miss having intimate (get your mind out of the gutter!) moments just spooning and talking freely about things.

This past weekend was a large artisan's fair (200 artisans) in PAP and both Tante Mary and her son, Garry, were in it. We spent 6 hours looking at art and hanging with family. Garry, Genevieve (his wife) and Gaeton (his son) took us out to dinner at a nice restaurant where I had deep fried Acra for the first time and Lambe (conch). The food was very good and the company was even better!

Today, we relaxed quite a bit and then went to say goodbye to the family at the fair and are now back on base - definitely missing the amenities!

Haiti - Day 2

If I thought it was hot yesterday, I was sorely mistaken. Of course, today we were out building 2 schools so we were doing hard physical labour in the blazing sun.

Veve got the first signs of heat exhaustion (he stopped perspiring and got nauseous)and had to come back to base early.

And I was mistaken, we were not putting up chain link fence, we put chain link onto the frames of the schools. It is used like lath in lath and plaster and apparently helps keep the structure from crumbling in an earthquake. It is also a wooden building so it is more flexible.

I got filthy. Bringing white workshirts was definitely not a good idea!

Well, it is a 7:30pm and I am ready for bed! I have to wash my sneakers first (told you I got filthy!) and then it is off to bed for me.

Haiti - Day 1

Orientation in the morning - all the dos and don'ts. Apparently sex is ok, just make sure you don't do it in the bunks cause there is no such thing as privacy. All the other rules are pretty standard.

In the afternoon, I got to work with some of the locals building Biosand Filters which were designed in Calgary - it's a small world! My job was to wash pebbles and small rocks over and over again until they reached the right degree of cleanliness. I think I was lucky because I got to work up to my elbows in water all day which made the heat not quite so oppressing cause let me tell you.........it is freaking hot and humid here! However, my hands are a little beat up and sore.

Veve got to help clean up the workshop, repaired tools and organized nails by size (apparently for the past six months, some of the volunteers have not been good at this).

Tomorrow we are on the same work detail putting up chain link fence around a school!

The Eagle Has Landed

We are safe and sound at the Leogane All Hands compound. We ended up having to wait for several hours at the airport for some of the other volunteers to arrive and then what was suppose to be a 20 minute drive turned into a 1.5 hour drive.

I have already seen my first bug - the dreaded cockroach - my foe from childhood - used to have nightmares of 10 foot tall cockroaches! Thankfully, it was dead!

Aunty Marie met us at the airport and we had a nice visit. She wouldn't leave until she knew we were underway so it ended up being a bit of a long visit for her.

It is already 9:30pm so I am going to go wash my face before the lights go out at 10pm.

Love everyone and will blog more tomorrow!

We Are Off to the Races!!!!!!

Tomorrow is the big day!  Flying to Haiti!  I am very excited but a little trepidatious.

We will be landing at 2:25pm (12:25pm Calgary time) in Port-au-Prince, waiting for another volunteer to land at 3pm and then it is off to Leogane (in the map below, it is just west of Port-au-Prince) where we will be doing good deeds and making friends, I hope.

We are currently scheduled to be in Leogane until November 12 and hope to extend our stay with All Hands but will know better after working with them for a while.

We have been advised that internet is available but that using Skype is kinda not cool as it sucks up so much bandwidth so I am afraid that if anyone wants to chat, it will have to mostly be via e-mail (which I am happy to do)!

I will try to post tomorrow night after we arrive but it may get a bit crazy because we have to go through orientation and safety training.

We miss everyone very much and have hankerings for home but we must persevere!


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Another Year Older!

Sharon, the best sister anyone could ask for, turns another year older today!  I usually just call her and sing the traditional happy birthday song to her but she is out of town and not answering her cel phone (good on ya girl!) so instead.......Sharon, these are for you!

I thought you might like something a little less traditional so we have:

Middle East peguins OR The Arrogant Worms

Montreal Montage

On my September 26, 2011 post, I had a little accident and hit "Publish Post" before I had a chance to put photos and videos in so here they are - plus more......

This actually happened very early in our visit.  Veve's cousin,
 Manushka was visiting from the States. We are at Mona's house.
Manushka, Veve, Mona and Zita.

Marc Andre, Mona's husband, is not only sexy in
an apron but is also a damn fine cook!!

We went to the Biodome one day so Spidey could have
some quality swing time!

We took Zita to see the Tall Ships one day.
Whenever I see this photo, I can't help thinking
that Veve is a chip off his mother's block.  That,
and the theme song from the Soprano's plays in my
head. Don't screw with the Roy Mafia family.

And then there were the Tall Ships

Spidey learns how to stear a Tall Ship!

And now, Spidey wants his own Tall Ship!
Being able to climb walls and shoot webbing
is no longer enough for him.

O!, Captain, my Captain!

Not sure what this had to do with Tall Ships,
but this performer was there!



Getting a smithing demonstration at
La Forge Cauchon

So the downstairs of La Forge Cauchon was a forge, but upstairs was a workworking shop that I think my Dad would love....check this out...

Our fine accommodations at La Balcon Vert

The intertidal zone where I almost lost my life....but thanks
to the quick actions of my husband, I only got dirty feet.

The windmill on Isle aux Coudres

So, along with the windwill, which wasn't functional, there was a water wheel driven mill that did work.  For those that ever wanted to see one in action, I give you.......

Oh, yah, I forgot we spent a day in Quebec City.
This is the Governor's Walk and that is the
Chateau Frontenac in the distance.

Spidey made some special friends in Montreal!

There's Gonna Be a Wedding!

I am so happy!!!!!

John, my nephew, asked Janice to marry him!!!  They announced it on Facebook yesterday.

However, they have given us no details other than Janice has changed her Facebook profile picture to this:

 I will bug them to see if I can get any more details.

I hope they are having a wedding that family and friends will be invited to!! I haven't been to a wedding in a very long time!

Congratulations to John and Janice!