(Editorial Comment: We are now up to the week of March 24th, and closing in on the present….)

When roofing beneficiary homes, we must ultimately decide the order of homes on which to work. As a reminder, our scope (and capacity) is re-roofing, but, the number of demolished homes, or those damaged to the point where re-roofing is functionally unsafe, (both for the people working on the roof and additional load created by the new roof) is astounding. But, we assess each beneficiary individually, thoroughly, trying in every way possible to qualify a home to be safely re-roofed. Our Israeli architect, Amit, is flat-out amazing – finding solutions for homes in utter shambles, (to say nothing of his incredible capacity to drive in reverse.) It is critical to explain at this point that we ALWAYS ensure our beneficiary home-owners know that we cannot promise them a hurricane safe result. And that they must seek appropriate safe shelter in the event of a storm.

Surveying homes can be very disheartening. Currently, in LaPlaine we have FOUR homes out of 31 beneficiaries which can be re-roofed. The damaged homes are simply not sufficiently stable enough to take a roof. Talk about feeling useless! Enter the next lesson learned – “Always chase old white guys walking down the street in a rural village, because they are likely to be construction volunteers.”

Our Israeli engineers thought I had totally lost what little sanity they believe me to have arrived possessing, when I started calling after the aforementioned group of men. It only got worse when I discovered that they were from Tennessee, volunteering from the Tulip Grove Baptist Church, outside of Nashville. Homies no less! Turns out that the Southern Baptist convention in the US has selected LaPlaine as a beneficiary community and they are sending regular volunteer working delegations, in coordination with the local Dominica Baptist community, headed by an American missionary, Pastor Mike.

Specifically, they have the home building capacity we lack. And so a partnership is born! It gives us a real sense of hope when we are working against such tight timelines to find additional options to get people sheltered before this upcoming hurricane season. Pastor Mike will always have a special place in my heart for handing me two (count them!) boxes of Town House Crackers when we visited his Mission House – but, alas, while close, it is not quite sufficient, for me to consider joining the church.

Enter our next dilemma. Power tools, specialized attachments, and safety equipment. Let me be clear: We have been the recipients of very, very generous donations, particularly from the UNDP. It arrives by cargo container, and IsraAID gets a huge allocation each shipment. Without it, our work would not be possible. PERIOD. We have all types of wood, roofing materials, (known here as CGI), and much, much more.

However, (you knew there would be a but…), despite the amazing generosity, we have huge gaps that must be filled to actually build a roof. We need all types of specialized screws, wood screws, concrete screws, screws for the CGIs, you get the idea. And then of course, Hurricane straps – which are more precious than gold around here. We source many of these requirements locally, at great expense, but, now we come to stuff (a technical construction term) that is completely ungettable on the Island.

We prioritize several things above all else. First – safety, second – quality work. And safety equipment simply doesn’t exist on the Island. And the power tools required to do quality work cost more than an east-coast Bar Mitzvah, even assuming you can actually find them to purchase. (Have I told you how much I miss Costco? And we aren’t even talking about the samples!)

Enter Amazon Prime. I put 8 DeWalt power/hammer drills, 16 bits, 6 chargers, 12 extra batteries, 4 Galvanized cutters, extra cutter blades, 45 helmets, 18 harnesses, 72 pairs of work gloves, and 12 power strips in my cart. There is a service called Aeropost. that allows you to ship to a “PO box” in Miami, which uses a forwarding agent to handle the freight forwarding to Dominica. When I sat with the forwarding agent in the Roseau to price out the shipment she shook her head kindly, (with a knowing look that said, “You are insane”), and flatly said, “Can’t be done by air, has to go by water – which will take a month.”

We didn’t and don’t have a month. I needed them in two days – we had contractors beginning to build. Exit Amazon. Enter small private plane. Long story on how we connected up to the plane and pilot, but, the net of it is that there is an incredibly compassionate and generous group of individual humanitarians who flew supplies into Dominica from Guadalupe after the Hurricane, and one of the pilots agreed to fly me to Guadalupe to shop, and then return same day. It should have been that easy – but, of course it wasn’t. Guadalupe is French speaking, and advance phone calls to several stores were worse than useless. Once again, it was show-up.

These amazing humanitarians arranged for Julien, who is a pilot himself and lives in Guadalupe, to meet me when we landed at the Guadalupe air-strip, (we are NOT talking an airport on EITHER side of the trip), and Julien, who speaks both English and French drove me all over Guadalupe in frantic search of the items on my shopping list. We had exactly 5 hours before we had to depart Guadalupe, so we could fly back to Dominica before 4 p.m. when Customs started charging overtime. Ultimately, we got almost everything – at least we spent $7,000 USD in the process, (holding our collective breaths every time we swiped the Credit Card). We packed everything into the car so tightly both of us were sitting on top of and under boxes. Julien is nothing short of a guardian angel – what a special young man!

When we pulled into the Guadalupe airstrip with no time to spare, (no bathroom breaks or even a stop at any of the glorious French bakeries for which Guadalupe is known – that being a true hardship!), the Pilot took one look at our haul and declared, “no way will it all fit”. We started loading, pushing and shoving boxes into every available space in his small plane. I offered to have him fly back, and that I would follow the next day via ferry. In the end, we unboxed the 45 helmets and crammed them into every available open space and everything fit. Once in flight, he commented, “wow, I can feel we’re flying heavy”, and I just took a deep breath and tightened my life vest…..

We landed in Dominica at 3:54 p.m. – just ahead of the 4 p.m. deadline. We unloaded everything and that brings us back to my last post and you know the happy ending. The Customs Official released the goods to me based on good faith that we would return and sort it all out, even though I had no paperwork or way to sort through the duties which might be due. The very next day, our Beneficiary workers were all outfitted with proper safety gear and quality tooling. A major victory!

If you’re wondering whether these posts are going to get any shorter, the answer is probably no…. but, for now, I’ll end here. Next post is going to be almost totally wordless, and when I get to the city this next Wednesday, I am going to create a post with almost all photos, (good news, huh?)

Photos of homes before we roofed them, homes with new roofs, and alas, homes that are simply impossible for us to roof.

Until then, I miss all of you, and cannot tell you how much I appreciate your support!

(Editorial Comment: This post continues the coverage of my Dominican adventures during the week of March 17th. Still, I promise to catch you up to current at some point, both because hearing about our Passover Seder on March 30th is something you truly don’t want to miss, and I am also planning to share photographic evidence of our first day off in a month, (Saturday, March 31st), via a picture of my feet relaxing on a lounge chair overlooking a pool and sweeping sea vista, whilst pretending to be on a tropical island vacation.

But, first back to mid-March. As I mentioned in my last post, we learned critical lessons this week about the need to show up in person and the power it contributes to building vital community relationships. In the first instance it introduced us to an amazing contractor, and in the second, we may have found a solution to working with beneficiaries whose homes are destroyed – which up to now has been totally negating our offer of roofing to those beneficiaries.

The LaPlaine Police station in rural Dominica may be the only law enforcement office in the world to where one comes to meet and source construction contractors, nonetheless it is a compelling lesson on the power of being on the ground and building local relationships. Here on the rural eastside, the LaPlaine Police Station is the single place within 50 miles that has Wi-Fi. As such, it’s a gathering place for the community, (with the requisite sign posted outside the station admonishing Wi-Fi surfers to be considerate and avoid downloading YouTube videos during times of peak internet usage).

I am a frequent flyer – and the police staff regularly and graciously offers me precious space in their janitorial closet, (which doubles as the IT center,) to both power my PC and send critical (and usually late – sorry IsraAID) reports. Sending attachments is completely dicey, but, it is a godsend regardless. When our Israeli engineers come to collect me, they joke with the Sergeant on duty that they’ve come to post my bail. (But, hey, with its access to Wi-Fi and electricity, it’s a safe bet I’d request to just be left there…..).

Mid-week, and thoroughly frustrated that we had no usable leads on a local General Contractor, I looked around and then just approached a man and asked him if he knew any builders. In fact, he did! The introduction took place 10 minutes later – and now we’ve got a well-connected Community Mobilizer, (the gentleman who made the contractor introduction), plus a local builder. And roofing in the community of LaPlaine starts on Monday, March 23rd!

Which brings me to the next step in our re-roofing process, surveying our beneficiary home owners. But, as in everything we do here in Dominica, surveying our beneficiaries comes with time consuming complexities. First – the Beneficiary list. It comes to us from the Primary Schools – and lists each family with a primary school child, using the Mother’s name. Easy, right? Ha! Not. Rural Dominica has NO addresses, and while I have always been a fan of finding my way using landmarks (being famously, directionally clueless), the unpaved roads, dead-ends, lanes with sheer drop-offs on which the families reside, and over which we must navigate, even presuming we could find our way there, (which we cannot without constant local assistance), is beyond daunting.

Oh, and back to that list. Two more complexities: First, it goes by the Mother’s given name – which in Dominica often bears no similarity to the name by which she is known. Famous for “pet” names, even several for the same person, Dominica’s naming culture creates chaos and confusion for us as we try to locate a family.

Secord, we are obligated to cross check our beneficiary list with other relief organizations and local government councils – all to ensure we are not duplicating benefits. This is probably the most frustrating process of all – since our lists are exclusively in the mothers’ names, while other lists may use husbands/boyfriends/partners instead, and matching the lists requires extensive consultation with the local community, who often even disagree amongst themselves. (That is one interesting conversation to try and follow!)

And finally – we have been told, (and given our experience have no reason to doubt!), that there are ultimately only 10-12 distinct families on the entire island, and so everyone is both related and share a handful of surnames. When you add that to the mix, the process of locating a beneficiary family, (assuming they are residing in the same location after the hurricane – which they are often not!), risks taking as long as re-roofing a home.

And so, I once again return to the importance of building community partnerships, without which we would simply drive around in circles. But, no description of finding our beneficiary families would be complete without a graphic description of the amount of time we spend “backing up”, or as our expert Israeli driver calls it: “reversing”. Homes are nearly always on long narrow roads that end abruptly, turn down, (or up), steep dirt tracks at 90-degree angles, and when there are roads, a deep drainage ditch on both sides is a standard hazard, which in my Microsoft days we would call a “feature”. I stand in awe of the expertise which delivers us to each home and then safely back to the main road where we exchange our reversing for dodging the ubiquitous downed power lines and power poles.

Of course, this post has gone on far too long, so I will close. In my next post, I will cover a wonderful partnership opportunity we’re developing to help beneficiaries whose homes must be repaired before they are suitable for re-roofing. It also details the saga of my flight to Guadalupe and back to purchase power tools and safety equipment for our Beneficiary workforce. In the spirit of continuing spoiler alerts, the next installment reveals that springing Relief Supplies from Dominican Airport Customs required the offer of my First Born, who, (I assured the stony-faced official), could not cook, but, could deliver babies. (Sorry, Hannah, I *know* you can cook, but, I was afraid if he knew that, he might expect me to hand you over….)

Editorial comment: This post was duly written two weeks back – March 17th, but, with no time and less Wi-Fi, I am only now posting. So, turn back the calendar and here’s the scoop.)

I know I promised to write this next post about the amazing, but sadly destroyed, Rosalie Bay Resort where I am staying on the east side, in rural Dominica. However, I am going to preempt that post and instead tell you about my week, the week of March 17th. However, not to keep you unfairly in suspense, here are a few post-Hurricane Maria photos of Rosalie Bay Resort, since it will now be several posts before I do justice to this once exquisite, (and with definite plans to become a future, amazing) place!

To recap, my part of the IsraAID (israaid.co.il/) mission here is to re-roof the homes of school children in 6 rural Dominican communities, all of which are isolated, badly damaged, and completely without power. (And that is on a good day). In fact, nearly 75% of the entire Island area, (not population) is without power. I don’t have the population estimates without power, but, the hardship is real and as is always the case, falls most heavily on those most vulnerable. A bit out of sequence, but, I must tell you how eerie it is to have night fall in these communities and then watch the countryside descend into total darkness as we drive back to our Base smelling heavily of the wood-smoke from the cooking fires being used to prepare evening meals.

On our daily drives to these communities, (road hazards aside – it’s a bit scary to realize how nonchalant one can become about dodging downed power poles and hanging power lines), we experience the exquisite beauty of the island, its coastline cliffs, and unspoiled beaches.

This is jarringly juxtaposed with acres and acres of palm trees stripped bare by the hurricane winds, leaving behind seriously damaged hillsides scarred by the resulting landslides, (just one more omni-present road hazard.)

This next reference is going to inexorably date me – but, “Let your fingers do the walking” was a very popular telephone yellow pages campaign while I was growing up. That construct has never made it here. If you need to make anything happen, you gotta’ show-up in person. Period. Cell phone service is currently an exercise in futility, exacerbated by the bizarre fact that there are two different carriers here, which operate in totally separate universes. While you *can* call between the carriers you must pay per minute, which sucks your phone plan dry. Many people carry a Smart phone for their primary carrier, and a “stupid” phone (local terminology not mine), for the alternate carrier. Even then the bizarre billing plans which we have yet to figure out, consume our credit at a prodigious pace, and are constantly demanding to be topped up.

Either way, huge swathes of the Island have zero cell coverage, awaiting repair, and when you add that to no power or Wi-Fi, you have a lot of very frustrated people venting barely repeatable opinions on the local radio stations. This has given rise to the phenomenon of Dominica being known as the WhatsApp nation. The domestic use of WhatsApp in Dominica is universal – it crosses both networks and typically works on even the most limited cell connection. I am a total fan.

Despite our best efforts to the contrary, we spent this week circumnavigating the island with 2+ hour drives between communities. Logistics are complicated here, and everything takes way more time than feels reasonable. Early in the week we traded in our prior ride for a heavy-duty pick-up, clearly an upgrade. But, equally important, we left behind the two, (I swear standard rental-car issued), CDs – which forced us to alternate between Japanese Jazz and Bob Marley. The Israeli Engineers preferred the Japanese Jazz… go figure.

Since this post has already gotten (too) long, I will end here and continue it later.
Just to summarize, despite our hopes to accomplish much (much) more, it has been a good week, with some important progress on our 3 major tasks, which I will detail in my next post:
1. Finding construction contractors and local beneficiary workers who will re-roof homes for our beneficiary families
2. Surveying our beneficiary home owners to assess the damage and prioritize their vulnerability
3. Acquiring desperately needed materials and tooling needed to re-roof.

Spoiler alert – much of the next post has already been written, and I am going to post it separately in a few days. This will help me do a better job of staying in touch regularly, especially critical since I have heard from some of you that you have no idea if I am still alive, (yes, Mom and Sue, I am – please put WhatsApp on your phone and I will be easier to track down), and eating, (more on that later).

More to come.

 

It’s been almost six months since Hurricane Maria ripped through Dominica as a Category 5 storm. By many measures, this country could have been bombed to just this side of the apocalypse with equal or less damage.

We drive on roads that I would not even hike on. Besides pot holes and landslides, (we are discouraged to drive in the rain), frequently the pavement just disappears as we are driving.

And those are the good roads on the west side! On the east where we are based, there is no pretense of repairing the roads, and instead huge hazards warning signs, with dire predictions of road washout and pavement collapse are posted. <Hi Mom!  Just kidding, the roads are well-paved, dry, and safe.>

Pile on (no pun intended) the fact that you have two-way traffic on little more than a one-way road, (with both directions trying to avoid the road hazards), we easily spend 3 hours a day white knuckled. Thank heavens for our 2 IsraAID Israeli engineers. They get us to our beneficiary sites safely, though we all hold our breath over the bridges.

So, what am I doing day-to-day? There is so much to tell you that I am struggling to organize my thoughts.  But, since I have only a few hours of electricity and Wi-Fi, (it’s a toss up whether I’d more easily kill for Wi-Fi or Dairy Queen right now), I will just start.

I split my time between the capital city of Roseau, on the west side, where I participate in government and NGO planning meetings, (total irony that I retired from Microsoft and still find myself in meetings that approximate those I tried to escape. Karmic justice, no doubt), and the rural countryside where we work with beneficiaries, doing site surveys of their homes to assess and prioritize them for re-roofing.

 

 

The NGOs and aid groups building (or funding our building), here on the island beside us (IsraAID) include the International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations (UNDP), Red Cross, Engineers without Borders, ChinaAid, (it’s tough to look a gift generator in the mouth), Samaritans Purse, All Hands All Hearts, and others I am sure I am overlooking.  These aid groups are flat out amazing – and do so much with so little. The amount of goodwill and cooperation between the groups should put any dysfunctional corporation (you know who you are) to shame.  It’s a small price to grit my teeth during meetings that get lost in the weeds. As for the island politics which serve to either support or impede the recovery process, I go on record as saying that I am here as an honored guest of the Dominican government, and will leave it at that.  Okay – fine, not quite.  Those of you to whom I write personally have been treated to some uncensored rants.

I am living in the rural eastside at Rosalie Bay. I promise my next blog will be totally devoted to the Rosalie Bay Resort, (spoiler alert, I am living in the Honeymoon Suite!), and our distance from the city  gives rise to the aforementioned road-trips back to Roseau, for my meetings.   Most days, working in the field, our engineers do the physical/structural house assessment and I do the beneficiary vulnerability assessment. Nothing is good. We have either bad or worse. It is most heartbreaking when the house has been blown away or flattened, since rebuilding is beyond our scope. The despair is palpable.  And our frustration is constant.

 

 

Even with these obstacles we are making real progress. We are already re-roofing, and we’ve completed 5 houses as of last week, with many more ahead of us! My role is to  create order, establish processes, source materials,  design metrics to track our progress, and support our ability to scale. We are better supplied than I feared, but, we still need so much to equip our local workers.  Going to the local hardware stores is an exercise in futility.  I’ll devote a future post to how one sources materials around here.  Let’s just say, it hasn’t come to anyone needing to post bail for me…. yet.

Marine Reach, which operates supply ships, is an amazing relief organization! They are helping us source and purchase 5 generators from Panama, which we didn’t think we could do, because we don’t have anyone in Panama to create the documentation required to move the goods. They are doing all of that for us and donating cargo space on their relief ship.

These generators will power the tools our workers need for roofing. There is no electricity anywhere we are working. And estimates give us 12+ months before many of the local communities come back on the grid.  Which, while terribly sad, is more than a bit reassuring, since one of the more frequent road hazards, which show no sign of clearing is downed power poles and power lines.

Finding workers qualified to do the work is crazy hard. Many people left Dominica and may never return. The remaining workers are in huge demand, and skilled supervision is totally non-existent. We are always talking with the community looking for leads, and they do pay off. We may have sourced a general contractor who splits his time between here and Guadalupe.  We are also hiring an Engineer to join our project, it’s a contract position.  If you know anyone who is interested, please share it with them:   Job Description for Construction Engineer on Dominica They won’t get the Honeymoon Suite at the Rosalie Bay Resort, since I already have it, but, they will have a chance to do amazing work they will always remember.

We’ve decided to offer non cash incentives to maximize our workers’ working conditions. I just sourced a woman who had been a school cook until the school closed due to damage and she lost her livelihood, like many (most?) in this beautiful country. She will begin catering lunches to our workers starting Monday. It’s one more small way to put money back in the community. Small victories. They do count.

“It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”
– Chinese proverb

It is totally insane that while I have been here only 4 days, it feels like a lifetime of battles.  I have incredible pictures and will provide more of them in future posts.  For those of you keeping track, I owe posts on the Rosalie Bay Resort, Sourcing Materials – or how one gets Amazon to ship you things they have no intention of shipping, and photos, lots of them.

Now, no Debra blog post would be complete without a certification that I *am* eating.  While I reserve the right to withhold exact details, and notwithstanding that today’s fish lunch acquired in the city, turned out to be chicken, the cook at Rosalie Bay does the best with what she has.  Dinner is kept warm for us on a propane stove, when we return way past dark. Our makeshift kitchen was once a beautiful guest bathroom. And when we can scrounge a fish, Serraphine feeds us magnificently. Sorta reminds me of the Hunger Games except we are all on the same team.

Pray for Wi-Fi, feel free to send me solar panels, and as they say here:  “Have a blessed day!”.

 

Before answering the question about snakes – and because most of you know I was leaving on Friday, March 2nd, I am happy to report I have arrived on Dominica. My travel went smoothly despite the number of individual legs in the journey.

I landed in Guadalupe late on Saturday afternoon, and checked into my AirBnb just ahead of a huge rainstorm. By this time I was starved, so I ventured out in the deluge looking for a restaurant.

 

 

The streets were totally empty, and everything was shut tight – and that plus the deluge left a distinct impression of a city (Pointe a Pitre) a bit ragged around the edges. Oh – but, there *was* a KFC, and it was open, but, I refused to be that desperate. Closer inspection yielded the information that restaurants reopened at 7 p.m. – but, hunger and exhaustion ruled that out. I found a small market and purchased the equivalent of Kraft cheese singles, and made do with cheese and crackers.

This morning, Sunday, the brilliant sun had wiped away all evidence of the rainstorm, and that plus a trip to a local (and did I mention French!) bakery, redeemed my impression of Pointe a Pitre.

My final leg of the journey, a 2 hour ferry ride to Dominica, distinctly reminded me of riding the Victoria Clipper. I haven’t verified this – so don’t hold me to it, but, this boat was built in Australia, and isn’t that where the Clipper boats come from? It was immediately apparent that people were bringing desperately needed supplies on the ferry with them. Large packages were wrapped and marked: “fragile/window glass”, people had grocery bags filled with toilet paper and laundry detergent and coolers were packed with food. Entering Dominica was a completely different experience than entering Guadalupe the day prior.

• Entering Guadalupe: land/hand passport over to be stamped/pick up suitcase/smile and nod as you walk out.

• Entering Dominica: fill out extensive customs forms/dock/line up for extended questioning at immigration – I was sorta’ stumped by the “where are you staying during your visit?”/line back up to have your suitcases searched (and I mean thoroughly) at customs. And given that most people were traveling with LOTS of baggage, this was quite the process. Just about the time I got to the head of the line, an official came out to join the search party and approached me – asking for my declaration. He reviewed it, and when he saw I had declared no food, or basically anything, just clothing, he said, “Are you certain?” And I pulled out the remaining half-sleeve of ritz crackers and the dregs of my trail mix. At which point he waved me to the exit and told me to go. Trust me – I didn’t look back.

Exiting the ferry, which landed in Roseau, (the Capitol, on the Island’s west side), I was met by 5 of the IsraAID team, who had been enjoying their free Sunday. Introductions all around – and I’ll be lucky to match names and faces by mid-week. Full disclosure here – not withstanding that all of them are highly skilled, consummate disaster relief professionals, I could easily be their mother.

I’m spending tonight in Roseau, in a small apartment building that seems to house relief workers from a variety of NGO’s. The aid community here is very interconnected, sharing expertise and information. We hung out on the porch and the Deet I brought and the Girl Scout cookies I carried, (dang, forgot to declare them!) were met with equal measures of delight.

As we lost the light, I snapped a photo of the gorgeous sunset – and it wasn’t until I looked at it, prepping it to add to this blog post that I realized the photo shows the extent of the homes with blue tarps for roofs.

 

 

Tomorrow I start. There is so much work to be done. I’ll leave Roseau and the apartment behind, (the only deprivation tonight was that there’s an empty roll of toilet paper in the bathroom), and head to the much more rural Rosalie Bay where they confirmed we still lack electricity and rely on generators for a few hours in the evening.

So now, the answer to the earlier snake question (and more):

Dominica has no poisonous spiders or snakes. Boa constrictors and small garter snakes are on the island but are not venomous. Shark sightings are not frequent and have not been reported to be a problem.

Dominica: Family Travel – TripAdvisor

Oh – and before I close, one final thing. In addition to believing Dominica was the same as the Dominican Republic, (which you know it’s not, because after I found that out, I shared it with you), I have also been completely mispronouncing the Island’s name. It is not Doh-MIN-i-cuh. It is Doh-mi-NEE-cuh. I’ll leave you to untangle that pronunciation while I head to sleep.

More to follow.