Tuesday, September 06, 2005

A Day in the Life . . . 2

The second in a series of "A Day in the Life . . . "

Today, the 5th of September, was a pretty typical day. Got up at the crack
of dawn (ok, Esther got up at the crack of dawn, and I crawled out a half
hour later), washed up a bit and headed down to the office, a 15 minute walk
(except that I had my motorbike, so I rode down.)

We had a meeting scheduled with ODD, a local development organization that
MCC (the organization we work for) supports. The meeting was for 8 - but we
all knew it wouldn't start then. We do make a point of showing up on time
for our meetings, if not just to encourage the Haitians we interact with to
consider perhaps showing up a bit earlier! At 9, there weren't enough
people for us to start the meeting - in fact, there were more MCCers (6)
than ODD members. So, we decided to cancel the meeting. I was rushing
trying to get out because I had a whole bunch of computer work to do. As we
were walking out the door, a bunch of ODD folks showed up, so we decided to
do the meeting anyway.

Meeting went well. Main purpose was to talk about their request for funds
from MCC to help them buy seeds to plant limes. Limes are a pretty popular
tree here, and there is good money to be made in them, so we've been
encouraging people to plant more of them. We wanted to discuss some
technical things with ODD, but mostly to help them see that they really need
to have some clearer plans in place before we can just give them money.
They want to plant 5000 trees, but have no real idea how many they planted
last year, how many were sold to the local population, etc. Andy they still
have a few thousand sitting there in their tree nursery. Blah blah blah,
lots of talking around each other, repeating each other's points, etc.
Meeting ended and I rushed back to the office to work on financial reports.

Had a backlog of financial reports to work on - for some reason I just never
got around to doing June and July reports. So, that came back to haunt me
today as I scrambled to find receipts, remember expenses from months ago,
etc. But it all worked out and, amazingly enough, balanced squarely too!

Made a quick run to the local Caisse Populaire (Credit Union) to deposit an
MCC cheque and get out some cash. Then went back to the office and sat in
on part of the seminar that Esther is leading on teaching teachers how to
facilitate MCCs environmental education curriculum. It's going great so far
- the teachers are really in to it! Got a free lunch out of the deal too!
It's pretty funny because the MCCers who are not involved in the seminar, me
included, tend to gravitate to the seminar area around lunch time, just on
the off chance there is food!!!!

Ran to the cybercafe after lunch to send off the financial reports, check up
on other email, and read the news. All this stuff happening in New Orleans
and environs is crazy. I just think it's so sad that in situations like
this, it brings out the worst in some people. I was reading about snipers,
and armed gangs, and looters, etc. I know they are the vast majority . . .
but it's still sad.

At 4 we had a meeting with another local organization, ODEPE, who is
interested in starting up a tree nursery. MCC would like to open a new one
this year too and so we've been meeting with them to see if it could work.
This was to be the 3rd in a series of meetings to help us make a decision,
and they were to have a minimum of 80 people present so that we could see
that the community was behind it. Unfortunately, when we started the meeting
at 4:45, there were only 27 people. So we couldn't proceed and had to set
another meeting. The ensuing discussion took the better part of an hour, so
it was a meeting, even though it wasn't really a meeting. Anyway, I hope it
works out - I'd really like to open a new tree nursery this year.

Came back to the office, picked up some firewood for the cooks for tomorrow,
grabbed some food from the fridge at the office (we don't have one at our
house) and walked up with Esther. I made dinner while she showered, and then
we ate. Soup. It was good. Along with cassav bread and wonderful avacados.
I bought 5 avacados yesterday for 20 gourdes, which is about 50 cents US.
Can you believe it!

Ok, off to bed. Tomorrow should be another exciting day!

Matt