Travel with Ken: Rain, Thunder, and Lightning!

We are now in the rainy season here in Haiti. You can tell because each morning there is major debris in the streets, although it does get picked up quickly, it still leaves a bit of a mess. For the 1000’s who are still in tents two years after the quake, it must be miserable.

With the rainy season comes thunder, with thunder comes lightning, lightning strikes the highest points, towers with communication dishes are at the highest points. When this happens we have to replace equipment. To limit the damage, the towers are grounded and our equipment is connected through lightning arrestors. But arrestors typically stop the damage to the real sensitive and expensive equipment, not the dish, radio on the dish, the cable, and the arrestor. So you can imagine, I have been busy working with partners to replace radios, cables, arrestors, and in some case the expensive stuff. Additionally, some of these locations are very remote and require a massive 4x4 to climb the hill. Our local partner will rent a Nissan Petrol, same vehicle the UN drives. Our local partner had to go to another tower this week, BELVU, but the road was washed out, so they hired a donkey to carry the equipment to the tower.

Lightning causes problems to the equipment

Hauling gear up the hill in any way possible

Recently, our main tower called BOUTL had two segments down. BOUTL is located at the highest point around PAP and has great views. This is where the Internet connects to our backbone network, so outages here impact many more clients than other towers, so our response is very quick. Additionally, this is the tower that provides internet to Inveneo house, MY internet, and this was one of the downed segments. So off we head with a team of climbers, a bunch of equipment, more cable, and of course the lightning arrestors. A few days later we have it all up and working again, on to the next tower.

Control room at main site

Repacing a radio high up the tower

The support crew for the climbers

Speaking of bad roads, the one right outside of Inveneo house is quite the challenge, more so now that it’s rainy season. This is the only road to leave the house, so I go up and down the road a few times a day. First, it’s a pretty steep hill, and sometimes I have to use four wheel drive just to get up. Then add rain, it’s really tough. With the rain washing out big sections and creating massive potholes, it’s a weave around the potholes kinda drive. I’ll never again complain about the little six inch pothole down the street in Redmond, I’ll let some low clearance fancy car person call WA DOT.

The Road

A typical pothole

I live in Inveneo house, it’s our home, office and storage. I have recently been promoted from the basement to a real room, with a private bath. Well not really a promotion, two people have left and the room opened up. I’m the last technical person left so with this great power comes great responsibility, I get to manage the internal network. Since we sell and install wireless equipment I have access to some really cool stuff.

Saturday was play with the internal network day, I told others it was training. For me it was like Christmas. Access to all this stuff and I get to do what I want. We have dishes on the roof to two internet towers, I also have a 3G USB drive, can’t be without internet! We have two wireless networks connected with a wireless bridge, and the assortment of wireless printers, servers, smart phones, etc., great fun, what a meant was tough day of training. Found some neighbors have been using our internet connection, someone gave them our wireless passcode, that has been fixed, but I had some fun before the passcode was changed.

Behind our house has been an ongoing landslide, after heavy rain mountains of dirt appear in the driveway. The neighbors above built a retaining wall to help limit the debris, and to keep the house from sliding down the hill. With these changes the locals created a corn field. I’m amazed at the incredible resourceful people of Haiti as they find new and interesting opportunities.

The depris field with corn

Today, I’m writing some of this from the PAP Equestrian Center. The Project Manager for all the Haiti work, Sybille, rides horses, so her and a friend decided to go to the Equestrian Center today for a ride. I tagged along to kick back and enjoy the day.

Last blog I told you about a church/school we had installed a computer system, internet, and solar power. Someone had tried to break into school, but the nun had the keys around her neck. They also tried to steal the solar panels, but a dog barked and woke up the nuns and the thieves ran away. Last week I got a report from the school that the thieves had come back to the school for the solar panels, this time they were able to steal them. Stealing solar panels is tough enough, but the really sad part is these people (oh I could use so many other words other than people) poisoned the dog so it would not bark. The dog suffered all night before it died the next morning. This is still bothering me. Stealing is one thing, stealing solar panels from a church that is helping the kids in the community is another, killing the dog for some solar panels, words will never explain my anger. Typically, these people get caught when they try to sell the panels in the market in the next few weeks. I hope they understand what they have done.

I'll leave you with some great pictures.