Gone to Haiti to Volunteer

I was recently on Operation Reckless Cobra when I got a call from my friend Sybille who has been living and working in Haiti with a NGO called Inveneo. They install internet and computers in rural schools across Haiti. They also manage a rather large backbone network across Haiti and were one of the first organizations to install communication after the 2010 earthquake.

Ok, some of you don’t know Operation Reckless Cobra. I took this one month trip after a recent birthday to an island south of Florida where I was not really supposed to be, as well as Panama and a side trip to Mexico and called it Operation Reckless Cobra.

My 1956 Chevy during ORC

So while on ORC I was asked to come to Haiti and help out installing computers and internet and of course I said “Yes”. I came home from ORC, unpacked, repacked, and off I flew to Port-au-Prince to volunteer for 2 months.

My job at Inveneo is a volunteer Systems Engineer, getting back to my roots of playing/installing some of the coolest equipment in the world. Not that I got far from it over the years, but now I’m again playing with sniffers, routers, dishes, wireless communications, making cables, and having some great fun.

Yesterday, we went into a school that has no power, in a matter of hours a team installed 3 solar panels (130w each), batteries and an inverter creating a 600w power station. We installed a wireless dish to a tower several kilometers away that has internet. We also installed a server with 6 clients running Windows 7 and Office 2010 along with a wireless printer and router. All this running on the solar power system and completed in about 6 hours, amazing for a rural location in Haiti.

Before the installation

The solar panels

The dish to the tower

 

Happy students using internet all powered by Solar

In Port-au-Prince, I live in a house with 3 others as we are all working to put these networks together. I’m currently in the basement room, next to all the equipment. For the geeky people, now like me, my location is N 18deg 31.270’ and W 072deg 17.912’.

The house from the front

The basement and storage

My room, yes a bunkbed, but makes hanging the bug net easier and doubles as my dresser and hanging rack.

 We have two trucks we drive for work, one is a Mitsubishi Montero the other is a pickup. Driving here is another whole subject matter, as right of way, stop signs, speed limits mean nothing. Honking is the method of communication, for “hey, it’s my turn” to “thank you” to I’m driving 60 mph through a small rural town filled with people warning them to get out of the way and they do. We carry UN portlable radios with us, this allows us communications with other NGO’s and the UN in case something may happen.

The trucks -- both diesel

One of our UN Radios

The money is Haiti is generally straight forward, until you go shopping, that is when it's complicated. You can use the US Dollar or the Goud/HGT to buy stuff, the exchange rate is 40 Goud to the US Dollar. Now, when you go shopping at the grocery, everything is priced in Haitian Dollars, a kind of imaginary currency that somehow is still used. One Haitian Dollar equals 5 Gouds. So if I go to the grocery and want to buy something, I get the amount in Haitian Dollars and there is some algebraic conversion to tell me how much in US Dollars or Gouds.

Tomorrow is Easter, my goal is to get to Jacmel, which is on the southern coast, to have lobster or lambi for dinner.