I'm involved in a longish project right now -- building a school for orphans at a site about 30 minutes away from our base here in Leogane. There's a nice beach just a few minutes away, too! Since it's so far away, we've been staying at the work site with our crew of seven HODR volunteers. Last week we dug out the trenches around the school, affixed the rebar to the bottom of the trenches for structural support, and pre-fabricated the roof trusses. This coming week, we'll pour the concrete foundation (materials were delayed last week) and continue with pre-fab. We're working with a team of eight community volunteers as well. I was in charge of the pre-fab crew for a few days last week -- the language barrier wasn't much of a problem & I got to utilize my pathetically small Creole vocabulary as well.
It's much different staying out at the site. Here in Leogane, we come home from work at the end of the day to our base with ample food, showers, toilets, internet. At Bellevue, we stay in a large UNICEF tent on the school's property and are basically community members -- we work with the community, eat with the community, and play with the kids. Seems like much more of a "real" sampling of Haitian life than what we typically get at Hands On in Leogane.