From July 31, 2018

This photo came from the first brochure we created to explain the mission of Santa Chiara. It was released in November 2015. It features the first five kids we served. They are all sisters from two families. On the left is Sara. Her two sisters, Lisa and Laura, on the right side, with Laura sitting on Lisa’s lap. The remaining two sisters are Sabine and Adele, who lived in an unfinished building next door to us. None of the girls live with us any longer. Lisa, however, works at Santa Chiara on the weekends.

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From July 30, 2018

Greetings from Ft. Pierce, Florida. I left Santa Chiara at 2:45pm. I was scheduled to be picked up by the guy who dismantled the bus. He showed up in a dilapidated old pickup truck. He said his SUV had mechanical problems. Billy always comes with me to the airport. But there was no room for him and my two pieces of carry-on luggage. He said he would ride in the bed of the pickup, but it was so dirty I said I would be fine. On the way to the main road to the airport, the guy took a very narrow back street that was jammed with pedestrians. Of course, he stuck behind a big water truck. I could have walked faster. I was relieved that the water truck had not stopped to deliver water, because we would have had to just stop and wait at least 20 minutes. When we arrived at the road leading into the airport, the traffic was at a standstill.

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From July 29, 2018

For many months Billy has been hounding me about the need to buy bunk beds for the girls. Many girls sleep on the floor, which actually bothers both of us. We had a bunk bed picked out a month ago, but they had none in stock. Last week we were in the another branch of the store and we saw the bed again. It has a wider mattress the most bunk beds, which means we can fit two smaller kids on the lower and upper mattresses. The bed and the mattresses cost $495. Billy said we need 12 bunk beds. I bought the first one last week with the idea that each month I would get another one. Most of our kids never had a bed of their own.

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From July 28, 2018

Earlier in the week I mentioned that among a long list of things Santa Chiara needs was the urgent need of 16 new batteries to store energy generated by our solar panels. I said each battery cost $175, which comes to $2,800 for all 16. A Journal reader from Ohio sent a message saying to get the batteries because the check was in the mail. Yesterday, we purchased the batteries. After losing power overnight for three nights in a row, that problem will go away once the batteries are installed. A larger diesel generator would know when the inverter is running low on battery power and the generator would automatically turn on to prevent a power loss. This feature is not on our smaller, less expensive generator.

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From July 27, 2018

Lunch begins with Rolland lining up all the kids…then one by one he squirts a little liquid soap into the hands, followed by splash of water.

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From July 21, 2018

Enjoy these pictures!

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From July 25, 2018

On Monday evening around 6:45pm, we lost power. The house went dark. No internet. No computer. Refrigerators off. The air conditioner was still working, because it is powered by the diesel generator. Normally, as of late, if we lose power the guys get it restored within minutes. But not last night. We have been losing power a lot lately. We have a solar system and a diesel generator…so how can we lose power, even briefly? Michelle says that the culprit could be the batteries. Sixteen of our twenty-four batteries were purchased shortly after we moved into our second home in Peguyville, which means they are about three years old.

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From July 24, 2018

Shortly after I got back to Santa Chiara, Billy and I headed up the mountainside to the Caribbean Market. I elected to take Bency with us. On the way home, there would be no room for her in the back seat as both sides of the seat would be folded down to accommodate all the boxes. She would have to sit on the console between me and Billy. She loves this. She was eager to go the bakery before shopping. She had an orange juice and cupcake.  She brought home a small cupcake for Naïve, Jenette, and Elena. The kids always share what they have.

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From July 23, 2018

Back in early December 2017, two people donated a total of $11,000 to create a medical clinic at Santa Chiara. Here in Haiti, we’ve kept track of everything we’ve spent towards the medical treatment of the children…and also the staff and even the mothers of the kids living with us. We record everything we spend on medication and medical supplies, such as examining gloves. Our clinic accounting also includes the cost of hospitalizing kids for a period of time, as well as the expense of lab tests. We spent over $3,000 on basic medical equipment. A few months ago, we began to include the salaries of our two part-time nurses in the clinic accounting. Since early December we’ve spent a total of $13,278 to operate the Sean O’Flynn Medical Equipment. This includes the cost of the c-section delivery of baby Chiara and the recent emergency surgery for Emilia. Here are some photographs of Nurse Rose in action during a typical day last week.

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From July 22, 2018

A number of people responded very positively to Friday and Saturday’s Journals which featured lots of B&W photographs. I love B&W photography. When I first began photographing global poverty in India back in 2000, I shot actual B&W white film. Those were the days before digital photography changed forever the art of photography. I lugged thousands of rolls of B&E film all around the globe, carrying them in leaded pouches to protect them from harmful airport xray equipment. I always asked to have the films hand inspected. It wasn’t until I was forced to switch to a digital camera, that I began shooting in color. If I felt an image would be more powerful in B&W, I simply removed the color. The result looked good…but I knew it wasn’t as good as B&W film.

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