Improving Health, Changing Lives
We are oh-so-close to having a rainproof storage area, and we are optimistic that the roof of the Storage Depot will be poured later this week. Here are some photos from the past week, during which the construction crew built wooden & bamboo formwork for the upper beams and roof of the depot.
Storage Depot - 12/6
Storage Depot - 12/8
Storage Depot - 12/10
Building Formwork for Beams
Building Formwork for Roof
Ready to Pour the Roof!
This week was another that saw considerable progress on construction of both the storage depot and the clinic buildings, even as the head honchos of FHH – Dr. Wolf and Cherlie – were away on a brief trip to the U.S. 2 workers continued to make concrete blocks that will be used in the depot and clinic, the masons laid blocks for the depot walls, and others poured concrete for the pad footings of columns in the clinic. A few photos from the week:
Here are some photos of construction on the storage depot and clinic from the past week:
Last week was an eventful week of construction, which was very exciting for me. [By the way, this is Nick. I will be the author of most of the construction updates on the blog. My apologies if my writing is too engineer-y.] Significant progress was made on the warehouse building, and the foundation is now finished. Once completed, the warehouse building will be very useful for storage of construction materials for the clinic, so we are eager to have it finished. In addition to the foundation, about 500 blocks were made last week for use in the walls of the warehouse building. Here are a few pics of the action:
Ipancia Belace, a middle-aged woman, sat in the chair next to my desk as I was taking a history from her. She had been a patient in our clinic for several years and made regular visits to us for mild high blood pressure and various aches and pains. She took a small pill bottle out of her purse and handed it to me. “My daughter sent me this medication, but I haven’t taken it because I wanted to check with you first. One can’t just take any medication without checking with their doctor, you know”, she said with an air of confidence. I looked at the bottle and it contained generic acetaminophen. In fact, I recognized the bottle as one that came from the dollar stores in the US. “This is a good medication”, I said. “We prescribe this all the time – it’s the same as the medication that comes in the blue package (our acetaminophen is packed in a blue blister pack).” I handed the bottle back to her, but, instead of putting it back in her purse, she took off the cap and handed it back to me. I could tell she wasn’t convinced that I knew what was in the bottle, so I said, “I know this medication well and it’s very good. It’s a long white pill and it’s good for pain”. I noticed that the seal was unbroken, so I handed the bottle back to her. I got up and examined her heart and lungs, had her lie down on the examination table to feel her abdomen, then we both sat down and I started to write on her chart. Out came the bottle again. This time she had broken the seal and poured out some of the acetaminophen caplets into her hand. “You see”, I said, “just what I told you. This is a good medication and it’s fine for you to take it.” I turned back to my writing and she sat there looking at the bottle. Finally, with an attitude that said she had made her final decision, she put the cap back on the bottle and stuffed it in her purse. “I want you to sell me your medication”, she said. “I trust it more.”
Trust – difficult to obtain and easy to lose. This is what we’ve been building for the past four years in our little tin-roofed clinic. TRUST.
Construction of the clinic and warehouse buildings is moving along steadily, and there is visible progress with each passing day (except for days when the rain intrudes). Last week, the foundations of both buildings were dug, 3 tons of iron rebar were delivered to the site for use in the concrete footings, and all of the rebar cages for the columns in the storage building were formed by the iron workers. Rain has put a halt to construction so far this week, but in the next few days, we expect to have cement, sand, gravel, and rock delivered to the site so that we can begin making concrete blocks for the walls.
Digging the Clinic Foundation
Clinic Foundation: dug
Rebar for the Foundation
We’re very excited that Milwaukee native and UW-Madison graduate Engineer Nick Matthews is now here in Haiti with us. He arrived about ten days ago and is already hard at work learning Creole and going over construction plans with his Haitian engineering counterpart, Paul Chèry. Nick expects to be here with us for a year and will be our construction Project Manager. He and his parents are members of Elmbrook Church in Waukesha, WI, one of the churches that is helping to support our ministry down here. Nick will play an important role in our partnership with Elmbrook Church and will help to direct several construction work teams being sent down from the church next winter and spring.
Here’s a photo of Nick up at the construction site last Thursday, September 22nd (please note that Nick is an avid Packers fan, so Cherlie and I knew from the start that we would like him!):
Nick Matthews
Nick and Paul worked for several days last week in staking out the foundations for the construction warehouse building, clinic and pharmacy buildings. Here are some photos from their work:
Nick standing where the warehouse will be built
Clinic building staked out
Here are some more photos from the developing construction site as of September 13, 2011. Enjoy!
Area where clinic will be built
Clinic building site cleared off
Looking over the valley from the future clinic
The engineers expect to mark off the corners of the buildings and begin to dig the foundation next week. We’ll keep you posted!
No, it’s not Christmas, but our clinic site is beginning to look a lot like a construction zone. We had to wait a few weeks for one of the Department of Transportation bulldozers to get repaired, but it is now busy at work preparing the site to lay the foundation for our construction warehouse and outpatient clinic. Here’s the latest photo from yesterday when we were up at the clinic:
Bulldozer used to prepare the road and building site for warehouse and clinic buildings 9/6/11
We are very grateful for the excellent leadership of Haitian engineer Paul Chèry who is responsible for road construction here in this part of Haiti. He has been able to make use of the Department of Transportation heavy equipment to build the bridge over the creek and help us prepare the site, moving earth in a manner that would be impossible with manual labor. Paul will also be helping us with the actual clinic construction and we appreciate his expertise and experience.
Our patients are very excited to see the progress we’ve been making, since they realize that, with a larger facility, we will be able to hire more staff and see more patients each day. As it is, most of them leave their homes before dawn in order to get to the clinic in time to get a number to be seen (we give out 35 numbers, plus we see follow-ups and emergencies, giving total numbers in the 40’s and 50’s).
Please pray with us as our construction advances!
The last week of June found the construction workers busy building retaining walls that extend out from the newly-constructed bridge upstream and downstream on both sides of the creek. Here are photos from June 30th:
Retaining wall next to bridge
Close-up of retaining walls
As you can see from the following photo, the creek water has now been diverted to flow under the bridge:
Creek water now flowing under new bridge
Once the retaining walls are completed, fill dirt will be put in behind them to build up and stabilize the creek banks. Stay tuned for more photos as the work progresses!
