StephenByxbe.com

Tonight’s blog is going to be a work in progress. I will type some now, but will have to come back and add later. So many things happened today.

To start.. Bill Fudge is here for the month. He loves Marconelle, almost as much as I do, so when he is here… he wants to use Marconelle. I am nice, so I let him. Therefore I have to find someone else. I have been trying to go to the cheaper route. I have been using a motorcycle. It is awesome.

First problem. Little old man stealing rebar from the job site – at his house. We finished.. there were 10… we came to get them.. there were 5. Not sure what happened.

Second. Rented a bobcat today. They decided I didn’t pay for transportation so they drove the bobcat all the way across town to Repatriote. They used all the fuel so we had to get them more. Then the driver pretty much just played in the mud.

Third. The police stormed one of the job sites at Ibo Beach claiming that the land we are building 4 houses on is not ours to build on. Funny thing is they have no right to say that… that is the Mayor’s problem. But besides that, we have the papers for the land. Ugghh… they told everyone to stop. I told them to keep working.

Forth. We are building a roof in Cite Soleil. I look over the wall and his backyard (private blocked in area) is full of my block and rebar… wasn’t quite sure what to think other than take it all back. As I start taking it I realize there is a huge pile hidden under some old block. I was pretty upset… I broke a few things.. but it all worked out

We worked on the roof until almost 6pm in Cite Soleil. 5am – 6pm is a long day.

Pastor Leon is back in town now. So glad to have him back.. it’s just not the same without him.

That’s it for now.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Working on the depot for 12 hours straight, with no real breaks, probably wasn’t the best idea. This morning I woke up and I think everything was sore and everything popped. To say I struggled out of bed is an understatement, but I was up at 5am getting ready to go.

This week has been very difficult with supplies. We are working 30-40 mins away from Terre Noir, 1 hour away from the block manufacturer and we only have 1 big truck to bring supplies to 8 houses. My phone has been constantly ringing with people saying we don’t have this.. we don’t have that.. I have been gong crazy. On top of that, Ronic’s truck broke down twice this week so we were left with absolutely nothing. It has been very stressful, but somehow productive at the same time.

I went and checked on all of the job sites this morning. They are all going very well. We spent 4 hours this morning checking out the sites and getting cement. I finally made it back to the compound and snuck in a small nap. Afterwards it was off to the bank and town for some errands. I took up the rest of the day driving around town with BMB.

Tonight has been fairly relaxing. Just taking some time to sit down and think. That hasn’t happened in a while!

Maybe I will make it to bed early tomorrow!

Looking forward to seeing everyone soon!! Hope everyone is doing well.

Always with Love,

Stephen

I don’t know if it really is possible to melt… but I think today was pretty close. I started sweating the moment I got out of bed and continued to sweat until 9pm tonight. I lost at least 10 lbs today in sweat. I got up this morning with intentions to go to Ibo Beach and look at the construction. There wasn’t really a reason for me to go to Ibo today, but I was going anyways. However, I didn’t end up going. I decided there were a lot of things I needed to do today.

I gave Ronic everything he needed and then I started working here. I have been building a “depot” or storage shed over the past week or two. We have so many supplies coming that I needed a place to put everything out of the weather. I had two sections already built.. about 32′x16′. We went ahead and put all the boards in that came the other day. So this morning I moved a huge pile of rocks out of the way, which were in a gigantic ant pile. We lit the ant pile on fire after this. It was a lot of fun. We spent a few hours moving rocks and broken blocks. After we had cleared it all out we put gravel all on the ground to make a nice floor for everything.

Once we finished cleaning up, I built the next section to the depot. It is 11′X16″. It was about lunch time when we got the first 2 rafters up. We stopped after the first 2 and ate lunch. After lunch we finished with the rafters, lats and with the gravel under the new portion. I didn’t have any roofing nails so I couldn’t finish with the tin. I took a break and waited for the nails and the generator. As soon as that arrived I was back at work finishing the metal and starting the next section of the depot. It is the corner piece. I got half of the rafters finished and then called it a night around 6:30pm.

It was a productive, sweaty day. I liked it.

Now it’s time for some much deserved sleep.

Always with love,

Stephen

P.S. – the internet was down at the Insurance and Tag office today so we couldn’t do anything. Also, the alternator was bad so they had to get it fixed.

That is the question.

The goal today is: Go to the office of the “Haitian Papers” aka the ID office and take 3 hrs to get an ID that takes Haitians 1+ months to get.

Next – drive to St. Marc, work out the price, pay, drive home and get ice cream.

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Now on to what actually happened.

I went to bed around midnight last night. Not good, but O well. I woke up this morning around 4am to my phone ringing. Ronic is calling. If you don’t remember, he drives the big tap tap that carries all the supplies to the job site. I figure, if he is calling at 4am.. we have a problem. I answer.. he does not sound good. He tells me he has been at the hospital all night. His wife has been really sick with fever and really bad symptoms, but what makes it worse is that she is pregnant and due very soon. I tell him to let me know if I need to do anything and I told him I would cancel work for today. I hang up with him and start texting all the bosses. The word starts spreading fast. I called Ronic back to ask what his kids were doing. He said that they were at home with someone. Autumn was going to watch the kids if he needed her to, but he said he needed help at the hospital so she went over there.

After all the workers finally figured out we weren’t working today I headed to Cite Soleil with the American team. They were starting a new roof so I wanted to look at it with them. Also, we are roofing the caretakers house at the C/S compound so we had some specific guidelines to follow. I took are of all that and then it became truck time.

Our first meeting was with Marconelle’s brother (9:45am). He works for the government in the “Haitian Paper” department. We showed up at his office, bypassed the gigantic line, sat down at a desk, wrote our info on a piece of paper, paid our money and finished. Marconelle’s brother hopped on a motorcycle to go have it processed and said he would meet us at lunch (12). We headed over to Visa Lodge to sit and wait. He showed up at 1pm and handed us our papers. How easy was that. Three hours to do what normally takes at least a month (or so they say). We start looking at everything and realized Bill Fudge’s name is spelled – Billy Steven Fedge – not Fudge. Big problem. They could have messed up on mine for now and it not be a problem, but his was the one we really needed. He says no problem. We will just run back over to the office and fix it. Next we realize that the birthdate on mine is 1955 and Bill’s is 1985… that probably isn’t going to fly either.

We get in the car and head back to the office. Long story short, we couldn’t manage to get it fixed today because the director who needed to sign it had stepped out, but it will be ready first thing in the morning.

We could have been finished with the truck if it had not been for the stupid “E”. Goodness… what were they thinking haha. I want to see the faces on the guys at the port when the realize how fast we got out papers.

Anyways, we called it a day around 3 and headed home. We are trying again tomorrow.

It’s going to be a good day.

Thanks for everything.

Always with love,

Stephen

I know I know.. I didn’t write a blog yesterday. Just shoot me now… I probably ruined someone’s night because I didn’t post. Sorry.. really.. I mean it. I can’t say it won’t happen again, because it will.

Anyways.. nothing fun happened yesterday that I can remember. So on with today. I woke up a little late, but we had planned to go to Cite Soleil Church, so it was ok. However, we all had our own “English Church service” so we didn’t end up going to C/S at all.

The new group arrived around 9am or so. They got settled in, I talked with them, explained the work for the day and moved on. I was supposed to have a meeting with the bosses but I moved it to 5pm. I remembered that I needed to go to Cite Soleil to pick up some money for a door, so I hopped in the truck with Marconelle and rolled out.

I needed to leave for the mountain around 11:30am but I was waiting on Cola to arrive. He finally showed up around 11:45am and we started on our journey. I didn’t want to use a tap tap today because it was so hot so I rode with Cola on his motorcycle. It was a great time weaving through traffic, not getting stuck in traffic jams. I think I need to get Marconelle a motorcycle and just let him drive me around on that. Bad news though. When we got to Petionville we had a flat tire. I hopped off and waited about 30-45 mins while they fixed the tire. I arrived at my friends house around 1:30 – just in time for lunch. Lunch was amazing by the way. I was stuffed. Over lunch we talked about everything that is going on, what the government is doing/isn’t doing, other things we could do to help, how they could get involved with helping and lots of other things. After lunch we hopped in the car and drove up the mountain a little further to look at a piece of land that he owns. He wanted my opinion on it for an idea that he had. It is beautiful land on the side of the mountain. It was a fun drive getting back there to it as well.

I left my friends around 4:15pm and headed home. I made it home just in time for my meeting at 5pm. I worked everything out with the bosses and then joined everyone for dinner.

After dinner I rode with Pastor Luc to his house because I need to use his truck really early tomorrow morning. It was nice to ride out to his house. After we dropped him off, me and Byambison stopped at a fast food place and got a snack.

It was a relaxing day. This is going to be a busy week. The group here is ready to work. The goal is to build 8 roofs this week. I’ll keep you updated.

Gotta get some sleep now. Headed to St Marc in the morning.

Always with Love,

Stephen

The alarm clock sounded – 5:15am…. snooze. Again at 5:20am… snooze. Again… no snooze.. just turned it off. Finally I got up and ate breakfast.. I didn’t get to finish breakfast. I had to go out to the gate and make sure all the workers were here and ready to go. When I got up I had a pretty bad headache, so I had decided I wasn’t going to the job site in the morning. They didn’t need me there anyways. I had worked out the majority of the problems yesterday.

So.. I returned to my room and finished with breakfast. I went back to sleep for a little while.  I didn’t get to sleep too much longer because we were shipping the group out for some touring of PAP. I sent the group off and headed to the depot… aka the soccer field. At the depot the guys were starting to put together groups of 1/4 rebar. They are tying it 20 pieces at a time to use for the foundations. They are also moving stuff around so we can build the storage shed for all of the supplies.

I then headed to Cite Soleil to check on the work that is going on. We are building 1 house and 2 roofs. The houses are starting to look really good. I was happy to get to see the workers in Cite Soleil. It has been awhile since I have seen them.

After C/S I took a nap to try to reduce my headache. It didn’t work very well. After the nap I went to the welder’s house and picked up some doors for the houses we are building. I brought them to the “depot.”

After lunch I sat down and started working on the numbers for the houses. I am trying to squeeze the budget a little bit to be able to offer a couple different things. I spent a good hour or two working on the numbers. I ended up going to Cite Soleil again to look at the work and saw one of the home owner’s. He was so happy. He is planning on bringing me some creole chicken when we are finished. These families are so nice. I love them all.

The day ended pretty nice. Some of the loudest thunder and craziest lightning I have ever seen. It was a fun time. I will admit I jumped a few times. The devotion was fun tonight. Talked about hope… hope for the Haitian people.

Tomorrow the team leaves. Always sad when a group leaves, but good news – BILL FUDGE is coming. FOR A MONTH! Bill Fudge is one of my favorites.

Anyways, thats it for today. Nothing crazy. Just a regular day in the life of an American-Haitian

Always with Love,

Stephen

Today I am writing to you very early… it is 6:30pm. I have just finished dinner and I am starting my blog because tonight I know I will be asleep soon.

Today was an interesting experience. This morning started out at 5:30am, standing out front of the compound with 30 haitian workers… waiting on the truck. I keep trying to call Ronic (the driver) but Haitian cell phone service doesn’t really work until 6 am. Finally I reach him. His starter is messed up. He makes it to the compound around 5:50am. We load up 112 pieces of rebar, 30+ workers and hit the road. We made it to the job sites are 7:30 – 1 1/2 hrs late. I got everyone started and explained the new houses to them. With every set of houses there is always one person who is amazing. There is one lady we are building a house for who is so sweet. She made juice for the workers today, she bought water for me and she hugs and kisses me every time I show up at the job site.

After I finished getting everyone started I went to the cement place. This is THE cement manufacture for all of Haiti. I learned that I could get a really good price on cement so I decided to check it out. Yesterday I stopped by and learned that they do not take cash. I had to go to the bank and do a transfer to make it possible. So, now I have my transfer receipt in hand and I am ready to work. I show up at the gate. They take all of my information again. We stand around and wait… They take my picture and create a temporary badge for me. After 30 minutes of preparation we are ready – but wait – it can’t be that easy. I am the only one that is allowed to go. Praise the Lord I speak a little creole. They will not let anyone else go.. oh and get this. You have to walk the half a mile road from the guard shack to the admin building. They won’t let you drive back there until you have a receipt for pickup. This is the most secure place I have ever been in my entire life… the sad thing is it’s all about cement. So… I make it to the admin building after walking down this huge hill (that I will have to walk back up). When I reach the building I meet a group of Haitians that are waiting on their turn. I sit down and join them. I think I sat there for an hour. It was a long time. Also, no cell phones work once you enter the main gate. It is like they have a signal blocker. Finally I met with the lady, who does not speak English. I explain that I paid for 1000 bags of cement but I only want to take 200 today but I want them 100 at a time. She says no problem. It takes about 30 mins for her to create my account and print out the bagillion receipts I had to have. We joke for a few minutes and then I start my hike back out to the main gate. Once I get to the gate, everybody gets in the truck thinking it is just easy to go get everything… Nope. Everyone has to show their ID’s & Ronic cannot enter because he is wearing shorts. This place has some crazy rules. This took another 15 mins to work out. Now that we have wasted all morning, we are on our way. We drive through this huge compound (that is right on the coast with their own personal port), make it through the scales and more security and start loading cement. This place probably bags 200,000+ bags of cement a day and sells every single one of them. There were 50 flat bed semi trucks waiting in the parking lot ready to load up. When one left another showed up. Each truck carries a minimum of 1000 bags of cement. They open at 6am and close at 6pm. They are doing some serious business. Anyways, I made it out alive. We drove to the job sites and unloaded the 10,000 lbs of cement we just picked up and then did the whole thing again (minus the admin part). So today we moved 20,000lb of cement. It was very tiring and I was incredibly dirty. The really sweet lady I was talking about earlier kept trying to clean my face and arms. I was so dirty it wasn’t working very well, but I appreciated the effort.

I spent all day at Ibo and made it back to the compound at 3:30pm. I got a shower and then did some work here. Time flies here. It was 6 o’clock before I knew it.

Today was a lot of fun. I enjoy busy days. The mosquitoes are really bad right now so tonight will not be fun.

It is almost time for devotion. Thanks for everything.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Once a runner… always a runner. If I go for a long period without running, my body begins to hate me. I crave long runs. Today was one of those days. I am not a big fan of running in the area where I live. It stinks, it’s really rocky and uneven and even though I have lived here for something like 5 months or so… I still get lost. Today, I didn’t care. I had to go. So this morning, I put on the shoes and headed out. I think I ran at least 4 or 5 miles. It was a great time to de-stress and unload. I have been planning my trip back to the states and preparing for that time, which includes raising support. I am not a big fan of raising support but it is the only way I am able to be here. So that has been stressing me out a little.

After my run I did a good workout. I lifted some concrete blocks and did curls. It was a lot of fun using my make shift gym. I created a schedule for running and working out and drew it on my wall so I could see it everyday.

This was the last weekend for Ella, Gracie, Lucy and William so we all tried to have some bonding time. It was a lot of fun. More of a relaxed day. I am really going to miss this group. They have been great. We really feel like a family here. I wish everyone could stay.

We have a team coming in tomorrow, so it will be back to work this week. I feel like we haven’t had a team in forever, but that isn’t the truth. We have just been enjoying our time off.

It is getting late, so I am heading to bed.

Always with Love,

Stephen

Finally.. it will let me write. I think my blog wanted me to take the night off last night. However, I stayed up late trying to make it work. No worries. I didn’t disappear… I am still here.

So let’s see. What happened yesterday. OOoooo some randomness on the job site. One of my workers (Fredo) stops by the compound before work. He has a headache, but is telling me something about gang members trying to steal from him or from the workers and shooting at him or someone else. It didn’t really make much since, even after Byambison came out there. But, this alerted me that something was going on. After Fredo left, Ronic came by to give me an update on everything. He told me there had been some confrontation at one of the sites resulting in him only being able to take what they could use in one day. Where we are working now there are a lot of problems with things “sprouting legs” and walking off. There also seems to be a problem with people forcefully taking items… What I don’t understand is why someone would pull a gun on a worker for a bag of cement. Really… are they going to pull a gun… hoist a 100lb bag of cement onto their shoulder and expect not to get hit with a shovel as they “run away” with a bag of cement. This is just me thinking.. this has not happened.. so please don’t worry.

Anyways, I am pretty good about rambling on and on about all kinds of things. I wish I could stay on topic, but I think the blog would probably be boring then. Ok. So, yesterday. I am on foot in Cite Soleil all morning checking out job sites. At first I was with Ronic and then I saw Marconelle walking around so he joined. We scoped everything out, fixed a few problems, heard the real story about the “stealer,” and talked with some friends. The real story about the stealer was – a guy robbed the grocery store next to one of the job sites. The whole community started chasing the guy and he got scared so he pointed the gun behind him and shot, kinda up into the air. If it had not been up in the air it would have hit Rigo or Fredo. That was what Fredo was trying to tell me. I wasn’t as concerned after I heard this. I thought someone came up to them stealing from them.

After this, I had no transportation, so Marconelle and I took a nice walk back to Blanchard. It was kind of relaxing. We had a good talk. I love Marconelle, he is awesome. His new title is “Driver and Body Guard.”

After lunch, I hopped on the bicycle and peddled around Terre Noir checking on the roofing projects. It started to rain while I was riding around which made it kind of nice. I stopped by a friends house and said hello. I hadn’t seen him in awhile. By the time I made it back on my bike it was time to call it quits for the day. I ended up having to run some late errands with Ronic so I made it back to the compound around 8:30pm.

Now on to today. I think 75% of the staff woke up today with a headache and other sickly feelings. We all took a little longer to get going today than usual. Long story short… today was a little more of slow day. However, we finished framing one house and finished with the metal on 1 other. I had to make a bank run and then when I got back everyone, including me crashed. I was out until 6pm. Not sure what happened, but I hope everyone is better tomorrow.

This next week is going to be sad. We lose Ella on Tuesday & Lucy, Gracie and William on Wednesday. Half of our American staff gone in one week… It is going to be a hard time adjusting to life without them.

Well.. look at the time. 11:15pm – only an hour and 15 mins past my bed time. This 10pm thing is hard. Maybe tomorrow…

Goodnight for now.

Stephen

After this weekend I am recharged and ready to go. This week we were blessed to have 4 teams that were amazing. They were all eager to help… and help… and continue helping. It was an inspiration. One group put on the retreat for the churches. They had over 200 Haitians from the 4 churches together in Cite Soleil for the week doing all kinds of things. The medical group provided health care to the people at the retreat. The construction group built more roofs and other projects than I can count right now.Needless to say – we had a great week.

One of the teams booked a trip to the beach on Friday and Saturday and invited me along. I was SOOO thankful. I haven’t been away from the compound for a real break in a long time – and now that I think of it, I haven’t ever really been away for a break. We are able to go to the beach with teams a good bit, but that is traveling there and back, translating everything, keeping up with everyone, spending time with them – so it’s really not a break. Going to the beach with a team almost makes me more tired than if I were to just stay at the compound. But being able to go for 2 full days was a great treat. I was able to kick back and relax. I went snorkeling this time at the reef. It was beautiful.

We all made it back to the compound at about 6:30pm tonight. There was an awful wreck on the way home. One of the crazy and incredibly dangerous buses collided with a sedan head on. It crushed the little car. There was so much traffic backed up. I think the driver was killed and the passenger broke both legs. That is just what I heard, but when we drove by it looked pretty accurate.

When we arrived home I saw Ronic and Daudier both waiting on me… to get paid. I snuck out of the tap tap so they wouldn’t see me. It was really funny. When I made it up to my room I noticed a water cooler that was out of place. I opened it and saw that it was full of water balloons. I quickly figured that there was something that was supposed to have already gone down. I was correct. Nathan and some of the other staff were going to bomb the people in the last two tap taps. Anyways, I found them and started throwing them across the compound to where they were eating dinner. They couldn’t believe I found them. They quickly came running. We had a nice water fight.The teams enjoyed it as well.

Today was great. I really needed a day or two to myself.

Also, I am ready for the staff retreat on Monday. It should be a very fun time. I’ll let you know.

Always with Love,

Stephen