September 8, 2004

Dear Everybody:

I'm currently enjoying my vacation in Canada but I’m taking some time to write an overdue update letter. The biggest news is that Tal made his last trip to work with me at Clean Water for Haiti, and I will miss him very much. On my trip last week to Vernon, I met with the Clean Water for Haiti board for the first time and we talked about Tal’s new work with CAWST in Calgary and the exciting developments which have come up in the last few months. I will talk about our most important development first.

The owners of the property on which the mission is located have decided to sell the property. We have decided to pursue the purchase of the property for Clean Water for Haiti and find out if it can be done. We were pleased to hear the property assessed at $140,000 USD instead of the $200,000 or so we had originally estimated. Another piece of good news is that the mission recently received a $20,000 donation which we have reserved as the down payment. Purchasing the property will require a somewhat higher level of income provided by our donors. However, the greatest hurdle to overcome will be financing.

There are no institutions willing to finance purchase of property in a country as volatile as Haiti. Our great hope is that somebody who cares about the work we do in Haiti will agree to provide private financing.

If you read this and feel that you are called to support the mission that way, please contact me or Tal Woolsey. We would also like to hear about any financing options we haven’t considered. Owning the property will give us the opportunity to improve our facilities over time, but if we aren’t able to purchase the property soon we could actually be forced to move. In addition to the inconvenience that would entail, we would also lose the improvements we have made to the property which the seller was kind enough not to include in the assessed price.

Our filter program is undergoing some good changes. We have given many filter technician training classes in the past two years and now there are around 75 technicians trained in Haiti and 50 molds for the technicians to use. We now feel it is best that we focus on supporting the technicians who are already trained rather than training more technicians. It may be a year or more before we give another training session. Nikki Forfar is a woman who has agreed to work exclusively on our filter program through November before she returns to university. She is doing an excellent job, mainly focusing on working with the various Non-governmental organizations that have sent technicians to be trained with us. CAWST (the Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology) is making her job easier by coming to Haiti October 12-22 to give a secondary training for organizations and their technicians in how to start a good filter program. It remains to be seen whether Tal will be part of any of the CAWST teams that come to Haiti because his job description has him working primarily in Africa.

The well drilling program is going through hard times. I suspended drilling for the time being. We are anxious to start drilling again, but I have decided we need to wait until the right person comes along to be in charge of the drilling. In a previous newsletter I mentioned that need for a volunteer as well as other volunteer needs. The volunteer wanted postings can be found on via the main webpage.

Other recent changes at the mission include new satellite internet service. In addition to giving us greatly needed internet service for communication, we are also able to use internet telephone service to contact people in Canada and the States. We have come a long way, because when we first moved to the Pierre Payen property we had to throw a bucket down our well just to get water.

Most of you don’t just want to hear about mission business, you want to hear about the people involved, too. There have been a number of people coming to Haiti recently to work with us short term. I already mentioned Nikki Forfar who is a University of Waterloo student from B.C. and studies Kinesiology, whatever that is. She assures me it has nothing to do with reading minds. Right now Eugene and Rachelle Unruh from are watching over the mission while I am back on vacation. They are from Vanderhoof B.C. and Eugene drove logging trucks before coming to Haiti. They have decided to remain in Haiti for the foreseeable future, but they will be working with mission Lifeline after I return. When they first arrived, the Unruh’s needed a vehicle but a business owner from Port au Prince gave them one to meet the need. It had been badly damaged in the lootings earlier this year when President Aristide was forced to leave. The back of the truck is black from smoke and the tail lights are melted out. Somehow, Eugene and I managed to get it started and make it function well enough to drive it to Pierre Payen. We had three flat tires and various other adventures on the way back.

In the past week, I have heard disturbing news from Haiti. Apparently some members of the former military took over the police station in Petit-Goave and demanded that the military be brought back into existence. For those of you who don’t know, Haiti’s military was disbanded after Aristide’s reinstatement to power in 1994, and many of the former members are still upset about it. The United Nations is still in Haiti, led by Brazilian forces, but it remains to be seen if they will step in and put a stop to the power struggles which are currently taking place. I have heard that groups of people have once again started to block roads with flaming barricades to protest whatever issue they are upset about. I’m really saddened by the news, because my past several months in Haiti were really nice without the worry of flaming barricades and manifestations. I desperately want Haiti to gain some degree of security so that the country can begin to develop in some way, and so that a few long-term volunteers will feel comfortable coming down to help out Clean Water for Haiti.

Also, it’s hurricane season and while we are in a relatively safe part of the Caribbean, the mission is right on the ocean. A hurricane could do a lot of damage, so please pray for good weather along with prayers for security and long term volunteers.

Thanks,

Chris Rolling