Hello All,
We have officially bought the land on which we’ll be building homes and the foundation
structure and are starting to work out the details of the construction of our families’ housing.
There is a saying in Haiti that we have adopted as our current on the ground motto. In English it translates as, “If you are a small snake and want to be a big snake, hide under a rock.” This means don’t let anyone know about you until you have some power. In Haiti, people, jobs and your reputation are power. We are long on people and jobs. Once we have moved onto our land and started employing some locals, the government will have a hard time messing with us, but in the meantime we need to tread softly. We will not be showing up at the Mayor’s office announcing our good intentions or broadcasting our plans in any way. In fact, my goal is to meet zero government officials until our construction is done and our people are on our land. It is not that the government officials are all bad, but the odds of being impeded or extorted are far higher than the odds of being helped.
Our top on the ground contact, Reggie Turnier, an American born Haitian who has been
living in Jacmel for 15 years, has been instrumental in guiding us on how to walk the line
between doing things so illegally that we get in trouble and so by the book that we get
extorted. So far so good.
There are two permissions that we are supposed to get in order to build. Our plan is to
send some of our Haitian community members to get these permissions so that the
government does not see white skin or get the whiff of foreign money.
The construction is going to be done by the fathers of our families. Our message to our
families through this whole process has been that if we are going to do this with them, this is
going to have to be a two-way street. If they just want to take and not give back then it is
best we part ways. To date the only thing we have asked of our families is that they show
up for meetings. This is about to change. The fathers that go will have to endure some
uncomfortable nights early on and are going to get paid about half of their salary for the
construction in future rent credit. I will be going with them to do the construction and
sleeping in the same conditions. Tents are shockingly expensive and we certainly cannot
afford to pay a hotel or hostel, so we will be sleeping on a tarp with another tarp as our roof.
I’m sure some will not be thrilled about this, but if I can deal with it, so can they.
We are paying our fathers over half of their pay for construction in future rent salaries for
several reasons. We are cash strapped, we want them to prove that they are willing to give
back and this will eliminate one of their families biggest expenses (rent) for their first several
months in Haiti. This move has strained us financially, and we simply do not and will not
have enough money to pay these men cash for their day’s labor. Most will make about six
bucks a day, the going rate for low-level construction employees in Haiti. Some may say
this is too low and we should pay them above the area average. This seems like decent
logic on the surface but is actually a flawed way of operating. It sends the message that we
are weak as most of the men and families will see this as us getting exploited. It also
creates an expectation that what is fair for the rest of the area, is not fair for our people,
creating a sense of entitlement. Of this six dollars, one will be cash given to the father, two and a quarter will go to the family and the other two and three quarters will be towards future rent. We will provide the men with three meals a day as part of their pay. The last benefit of this system is that it eliminates one of the biggest expenses of our families households for the first 6-8 months, giving us time to create jobs for the men.
As always thank you all for your continued support. We and our families are truly grateful.
