The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Good

Happy Students:

Patrick Maxime, a Sekond student (10^th grade), has recently started attending daily guitar club meetings led by Volunteers John DiTillo and Peter Ulrickson.  Maxime expressed that he is very happy to be back to relative normalcy at LCS, and is glad he stayed at the school throughout the months of para-curricular classes and into the official re-start of academic classes. While strumming his guitar Maxime said:

“Being able to talk and laugh with my friends here has helped me to not be afraid. I have a normal life now thanks to LCS. I can think about normal things and about my future. I want to study to become a surgeon, not for the money, but because I want to help.”

Completion of Audelia’s house:

We recently completed the final stage of repairs on Audelia’s house, our third housing project, and have begun work on a fourth. Audelia is one of our school cooks whose home was damaged in the earthquake and who lost her husband shortly thereafter due to an injury from the quake.

With the guidance of the Belfor engineering group that visited last month, we were able to identify important structural repairs that could be made to reinforce the integrity her house, which now has a bonding beam and several new support columns and a fully repaired porch section. She has now returned to her home with her young daughter and son to reestablish some normalcy in their lives there.

The Bad

Tim’s Arm:

The news was bad, but not as bad as it was first reported.  My son Tim (13) broke his arm at the end of clean-up on Monday. The first report was that he may need surgery. Fortunately, there is a great bone straighter in Haiti (he is an orthopedic surgeon as well) and Tim was able to just get a cast. We greatly appreciate Fr. Rick, Dr. Tim Flanigan and all those who helped on this.

On-Campus Repairs:

To recover from the damage that our buildings incurred during the earthquake, we will have to put at least $100,000 into materials and equipment to repair the two most damaged buildings and one set of walls in our largest building. We will have to hire a local engineer/architect group to supervise our work, as well as extra skilled and unskilled labor for the most intensive aspects. It should also be a good time to get a heavier duty truck for maintenance related activity.

We hope to raise some extra funds to augment those we have received for helping rebuild houses in the neighborhood—we can use our new skills and equipment for that as well! We are currently discussing a special campaign to raise $250,000 for the above purpose.

The Ugly

Sweltering Tents:

It turns out that Italian Mountain tents get a bit too warm in Haiti. We will have to replace the tents with temporary wood structures because we will need the replacement classrooms for at least a semester next year. Fortunately, thanks to your generous support, we have the recovery funds to cover the cost of the temporary classrooms. Later, we will recycle the building material into benches and hopefully a few roofs for new house builds when we are finished with the temporary classrooms, which will be constructed of plywood, 2X4, corrugated roofing--all reusable.

Peace,

Patrick