Everyone knows the difficulty involved in working on an island in terms of material supplies, in terms of feasible industrial alternatives and in terms of possible collaborators to carry out a work. In Haiti, some other conditions could be added, which aggravated the situation, such as the low level of schooling of a large part of the population, an extremely oligarchic economic system and serious lack of basic infrastructure for a country, such as an unreliable electricity supply network, lack of a general supply of drinking water and a road network in a precarious state. So many years of oligarchy had not allowed the country to evolve and the consequences of the January 2010 earthquake were still clearly visible.

Little by little, we found people with some knowledge of leatherwork, formwork and other trades with whom we began to build work teams. Firstly, it was necessary to carry out the initial implementation, building the construction sheds, changing rooms, warehouses, light and water installations and other basic equipment to carry out the work. Of companies that rent prefabricated houses, no trace.

In the meantime, we discovered a small, seemingly invisible world of companies and people looking for a life that came from where you didn’t expect it. The economy is always there, but you need patience to discover it. Soon we were able to reach an agreement with small owners of machinery to do the lowering and refilling of the land, for example. But it was necessary to start tying up vital issues such as the first purchases and important supplies of the work. Concrete and corrugated steel were first on the list.

To get corrugated steel was not too difficult: there was only one option in the country and you had to understand it: the company was Acerie d’Haiti based in Port-au-Prince. They were the only importers of steel in the country and they simply supplied the bars to the site. As for the templates for the specs, as well as the cutting and making of the armor, it was already our business. It was incredible to see how the Haitian workers worked and made the reinforcements planned in the plans, with bars up to diameters equivalent to the f25 and f32 common here only in the civil works.

About half an hour from Gonaïves, we had seen a concrete plant of a company of the Dominican group, Estrella. By land, sea and air, we tried to contact them to reach some sort of agreement for the supply of concrete, but they did not respond to a single message. We had no alternative but to import a concrete plant and assemble it with a local Haitian supplier, who guaranteed us the supply and quality of the material, but at almost three times the price that we had planned in the initial cost study the work We didn’t start very well.

To lower its cost, we made arrangements to buy the cement on the other side of the island, in the Dominican Republic. The first truck they sent us, did not do more than 30 km on Haitian land. A group of 4 or 5 people attacked the truck and burned it. The driver was miraculously saved. We understood the situation perfectly: the cement supplier for our concrete would be CINA, the only cement importer in the country, until the end of the work.

Sixth part

Fifth part

Fourth part

Third part

Second part

First part