Night Sounds

Cange, Haiti

I am with the chief of the medical staff of Anmed (our big county hospital), a pharmacist, and two other engineers and their wives. We are a little grass roots effort to re-engineer a water system for a mountain town. There are about 8,000 people living here and the dam here is near failure. None of us are doing our ‘normal’ things in life. The doc is doing hydraulic engineering. The pharmacist is doing computer engineering. I am doing sound engineering. One of the others is doing civil engineering on the dam and lift stations. I think the others are working in the craft center. The hospitals and clinics are doing just fine without us at present. We obtained completed field surveys yesterday and hope to order several miles of high pressure pipe from Mexico and have it here by year’s end. Our goal is to have the dam, pump stations, waterlines, mains, and waste treatment on line in eighteen months.

We are about fifty miles to the east from the La Promesse church school that just collapsed. Sadly, the school had a partial collapse eight years ago and was poorly rebuilt. I don't think people here understand that concrete has infinite compression strength and zero tensile strength, excepting for the re-bar put in it. People living down from the school abandoned their properties years ago for fear of a complete collapse, which came to pass yesterday. At least 75 have been pulled out dead. There were perhaps 500 children and teachers in the building. The building is very much like the three story cement school a hundred feet from where I sit. We can only hope there are not any structural monsters lurking in our buildings here.

There is a category 4 hurricane due west of here that is expected to slam Cuba later today. We had some mild rain bands last night but don’t expect to get anything else here, if it stays on its current projected path. Four nasty hurricanes are more than a fair share for one place to have to endure. A number of towns here are cut off because of major bridge washouts. On Thursday we only made it to an engineering firm after hiring dug out canoes to cross the river and then getting a pickup on the other side. The washouts added nearly a day’s time to our task lists.

I have now had four recording sessions with three different choirs. I think singing is the national sport here. It is simply amazing how large and enthusiastic these choirs are. People here in Haiti consider it a great honor to be admitted to a choir. It is amazing that more than fifty adolescents would show up in a church at 6 AM on Saturday to rehearsal and record for several hours. The last two nights I had recording sessions with an adult chorale consisting of about 55 mixed voices. In the mornings I have worked with a 23 member men’s chorus. These guys are really good! As I write this, there are dozens of adolescents in the church singing lush melodies to fine instrumental accompaniment.

My project for this week and next is to successfully record six choral groups and create a CD for each group. My little portable studio seems to work fine. The whole thing easily fits under an airplane seat. Telling these groups they will have their own CD had the same effect as if I had told them they just won the Powerball lottery. After breakfast with Marion, I went off to do photo work to create artwork for the five 5 CD covers while she went off to do surgery. When I get back state side I will explore the mysteries of cleaning audio wav files - eliminating coughs, barking dogs, thunder claps, torrential rain cement mixers, tropical night bugs, and all the things that show up when recording in live environments with sensitive microphones. I can hardly ask for the compound to shut down so I can record. Recording night bugs may actually be an interesting aspect of this work. I might even try to record some tropical frogs.

I expect a hundred kids this afternoon for three hours of work. I can’t imagine a hundred kids at home wanting to sing on a Saturday afternoon. It is a different world here. A little seven-year old boy just showed up and told me to appear an hour early so that more work can be done. At least that is what I think he told me.

A couple of very high profile rock stars are supposed to be here in the compound tonight for a big party. A Boston physician, who has done development work for decades, is bringing them here as part of an effort to garner millions in donations. The physician will probably be nominated for the Nobel Peace prize before this is all done. He was instrumental in developing the hospitals and clinics here.

We are told the archbishop of Canterbury is showing up next week. This compound is not on the way to anywhere but this remote outpost is like a United Nations gathering place. It is a privilege to be part of such an effort. Perhaps the work here will be my focus for the foreseeable future. It is a good thing I have accumulated a lot of frequent flyer miles.

I may need to make language a priority. I can’t even ask where the bathroom is - knowing no French or Creole. I guess between Habitat houses, play productions, and CDs I need to learn how to talk to other people. Spanish and German are of no help here.