Day 3

So today I started helping out with Base Management duties. Which means half the time I'm here will be spent in an office. But I am happy to be helping out the HODR employees that were overwhelmed with work.

In the afternoon I helped take down a building that was half fallen, and clear rubble. What a good time! Wheel barrelin, shovelin, sawin, sledgehammerin...and a lot of the neighborhood kids were actively helping us. The whole neighborhood is relieved by our help. It is a great feeling to actually see the difference your making in the faces of the people watching you work. The lot we cleared today was what used to be a man's house, and we were able to salvage some of the materials. So with those, tomorrow we will build him a temporary shelter and he will no longer be homeless. Good deal.

We had four small aftershocks today. It's kind of cool actually...to think about the Earth settling under me. So me and the girl bunking across from me have a system...when a quake happens at night, if the stuff on our shelves falls, that is when we will know it's bad enough to get out of bed.

I also learned about Leptospirosis...which will be affecting the people of Haiti very soon...once the rain starts, the "poo rivers", as Patrick deemed them, will start flowing, and anyone who gets poo water into an open cut is susceptible. But it's actually from animal poo...I'm not worried about the volunteers at all, considering that we have awareness to stay away from water, and we have a living area thats not inherently muddy. I am worried about the camps of people. There is a camp of 60 families in our front yard that are directly next to the poo river on our street that's getting ready to overflow with 1 good day of rain....