by Dr. Katie Wolf

I just spent a couple of weeks back in the US attending meetings and taking care of lots of business.  Cherlie kept the construction crew on target and they accomplished several important things while I was away.

The sidewalk between the main clinic building and the pharmacy/lab/xray building was poured and framing was started for the roof over the sidewalk.  The roof just got poured on Friday, and once the framing is removed we’ll be able to walk from one building to the other.

Progress was made on the stairwell that will go up to the second floor residence quarters, with the floor of the stairwell poured and block walls going up.

One of the frustrating things about construction here in Haiti is the lack of attention to clean up.  Workmen, for the most part, don’t like to assemble pieces of blocks and wood that they’ve used in building a structure, so these objects tend to lay around the yard for weeks and months on end.  The area around the outdoor latrine was especially “messy” with wood scraps lying on top of rocks that had been stacked up in the latrine excavation.  We arranged with a group of young men to clean up the area and smooth down the rocks around the latrine.  Here are some before and after photos:

Good progress has been made on construction of the second floor residence quarters.  The iron workers are in the process of placing rebar to form beams at the top of the walls.  These beams will be poured later this week, after which framing will begin for the roof.

Thanks again for all your prayers that make such progress possible!