Honey Bee Flies To Haiti, Part 4

 Here is Honey's final post about his trip to Haiti...

 

There were many things about our trip to Haiti that we enjoyed doing, but the reality is that we also had to do some work. We did not have a project planned when we arrived in Haiti so we ended up doing any work the mission had wanted done but never had the work force to do. Enter our church group! In the nearby town of Barbancourt, the mission sponsored an orphanage and the orphanage had a school that was relatively new. The school had been built in 2010 shortly before the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince. Thankfully, the building suffered no damage. Since the school was built, no one had taken the time to paint the school so we were assigned that task while we were there. We ended up painting two of the classrooms completely and we started to paint a third. This is what the rooms looked like:

 

Most of the people in our group had some experience painting but these walls were a different type of painting than we were used to. It took literally 3-4 coats to be able to tell that we had even painted the walls. The walls were rather rough so each coat of paint we put was quickly absorbed and we had to start all over. This picture shows the windows/air conditioning. There was not much air circulation in these rooms and they were incredibly hot. In these two pictures of the classroom, you can see the large blue barrels that some of us stood on to reach the ceiling. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the temperature at the ceiling was 15-20 degrees hotter than it was on the floor. Considering my height, I was one of the lucky ones to stand on a barrel to paint the ceiling. All four days that we painted, I completely soaked my shirt. I sweat here in the states but nothing like I did painting that ceiling.

This is me on the bus to one of the orphanages we went to. If I recall correctly, this was before I started working and you can see the amount of sweat already on my shirt.

This was me after about 20 minutes working outside helping some workers mix "mortar" at the orphanage. That particular day, I felt like I had never felt such a searing heat in my life. I felt like I was going to spontaneously combust at any moment.

I hoped you enjoyed reading about my trip to Haiti.  I was glad I had the oppurtunity to go.  If you would like more information on the mission that we went to in Haiti you can visit their website at http://www.childrenslifeline.com/.