Febuary 10, 2005

Dear Everybody:

The Gonaives project is successful and popular beyond what I could have imagined. Tonie continues to produce 36 filters most days. Filters have been delivered to over 1100 homes to date, and there will probably be about 1700 total filters installed by project’s end. The beginning of this project was very rocky, but my last visit there was very positive. You can read more about Gonaives at the blog mentioned below. There are also some great photos included at that link.

On Friday my brother left from his 10 day visit to Haiti after shooting lots of film to use for putting together a promotional video for Clean Water for Haiti. If you are at all interested in what is going on here, you should read Ben's Blog. I really enjoyed reading it because he saw Haiti with fresh eyes. I’ve been in Haiti for three years now and I tend to forget how a lot of the things we do here can be interesting for people. In fact, you will probably find it more interesting than this letter. My narrative skills for describing Haiti seem to be decreasing as I spend more time here and become used to the weirdness.

There is more good news. We purchased a second truck and two little motor scooters which will be used by project BRAVO until its completion later this year, at which point they will become available for mission use. The truck is a bit smaller than the Daihatsu, but it has four wheel drive. It’s a KIA so I have already had to do quite a bit of mechanical work on this truck. I anticipate I will become much more familiar with the mechanicals of this truck than I really want to. Hopefully God will send us more volunteers by the middle of this year so we will be able to put the new vehicles to good use.

We currently have a group here from Chicago that is doing some specialty work. Their greatest contribution is a proper alarm to replace my hastily strung up contraption made from a truck air-horn. It runs on 110vac with a battery backup and comes with 3 remote actuators that can go in people’s pockets. Another visitor is bringing in a safe on Monday, too. Security at the base is improving greatly.

I have also hired a guardian named Moliere. He is 71 years old and he just watches over the mission property and sees who comes by and why. In addition to being a retired French teacher, he has decided to learn English and he is learning new words every day.

"bonswa",

-Chris