09/26/08

I woke up this morning ready to put the engine back together but was a little slow in getting up. I showed up to the generator room around 8:00AM and found that the head of the engine was already placed on the block and saw Roger and Brice (the seventh grade teacher) working together to tighten the head bolts on the engine. I don’t want to get into too many details, but the amount of torque that is required on these bolts required two people to turn a long wrench in order to tighten them. To give you a perspective on how much tension these are under, the manufacturer tells you to never use the bolts again. Each time they are taken out during maintenance, you have to buy a brand new set. At this point, we have been out of power for a full week with the exception of a small generator which was just enough to power our refrigerators so I was very anxious to jump in and help out. Just as I showed up Roger looks at me and says, we have one more turn to make on each of these bolts, so why don’t you jump up here. Below is a picture of Roger and me tightening these bolts.



It wasn’t but a few hours later and we had everything back together. We tried to start it a few times but nothing happened. It was a bit frustrating because the only two parts that had broken were replaced with new parts. It happened to be around 1PM so we all took a break for lunch and returned about an hour later. We also put the battery on the charger so it was powered up and working great when we tried again. By the time I got back Roger was working with Grant, who is pictured on the left in the above photo, had a few things taken apart to figure out what was wrong. It turns out that the timing was off just a little so about two hours later they had adjusted it slightly. From their tone of voice it didn’t seem that they were too confident that it would make much of a difference but it was worth a try.

We tried to start it a few times and there was more smoke coming out of the exhaust than before which seemed promising. Each time Roger tried starting it, it sounded better and better. After about five or six tries it fired right up. This was a relief that we had all been waiting for. It was an incredible feeling of accomplishment and relief!

One it was started, Roger went outside to start reconfiguring the circuit breakers to redirect the power from the large generator and to disconnect the power from the small one. I went back to my house and told everyone to start connecting everything and without surprise everyone was incredibly happy to hear that the engine was working. I headed back to the generator room to see if there were any finishing touches to take care of and within about five minutes of getting back, we all heard a loud winding sound so Roger and Grant went running in to shut it down. The sound wasn’t good at all. Roger took off running as if the engine was going to explode.

Not but a few minutes passed and he tried it again. It fired back up and ran great. Turns out that whenever he switched the power on it put too much of a strain on the engine and the turbo charger, which is connected to the exhaust, was making a whining sound. We took it apart, and spent the rest of the evening working on it and at around 8:00PM we decided to reconnect the gasoline generator and go back to refrigerators only.

It was quite a disappointment. I was reminded to keep in mind that though I may have certain expectations, everything can be taken away in the instant in which it is received. I was also reminded that though we enjoy having electricity to power our water, fans, air conditioning, etc. we really don’t need them to get by. Like so many Haitians here, you can get by with taking a bucket shower. For those who haven’t done this, you keep a 5 gallon bucket of water next to the bath tub and after soaping up you then rinse off by pouring cup after cup over your head. It’s really not that bad, but a pain to have to go out back to the water reservoir to get water any time you want to do anything. Wash dishes, clothes, shower, flush the toilet, etc. Looking on the bright side, after washing my clothes by hand one day, I was finally able to get some of the oil out of my fingers that wouldn’t come out after washing them multiple times over with Gojo hand cleaner.