For starters, we have four 1000 gallon drums, several 55 gallon drums, and a trailer with a rectangle steel container which holds 500 gallons. We started by loading the truck with ten drums and once we finished we attached the trailer so we could get a total of 1000 gallons. The plan was to only fill each of the 10 drums with 50 gallons of fuel instead of the full 55 so we would only get a total of 1000 gallons. We grabbed the fuel pump since we needed to have the 10 barrels filled from the boat and then we would transfer the 500 gallons into the steel container, then fill the 10 barrels a second time.
When I had heard that someone was going to take a boat to Port au Prince to get fuel and bring it back I was picturing a boat with several drums of fuel that we could purchase. I didn’t put much thought into the process we were about to go through. I didn’t know that this was going to be such a learning experience!
Once we arrived at the boat dock, it was explained to me that the boat which came in is too big to dock on the shore since the coral reefs make the water too shallow. This means that we weren’t going to just show up and offload some drums. What it meant was that we needed to take the 10 drums and load them into another smaller boat and row over to the larger ship. These little boats that we row over in are hand made boats and fairly small. They are not machine crafted boats by any means. Most of the boards of the boat are hand carved as well. Actually, today was all about how everything can be done by hand and without machines of any type.
In the US, we would take a fork lift, drive it off the dock onto the large boat then load up the drums and then drive them back to where they needed to go and you would pretty much be finished. The process is summed up in one sentence. No manual work at all. I wasn’t expecting it to be that easy, however I wasn’t expecting what was to come either. As I mentioned, we had to load the empty barrels into the smaller boat which was going to take them over to the larger ship. Once they were loaded onto the small boat along with the fuel pump, a few Haitians who came with us jumped aboard and they headed off. A few of us just waited at the dock for them to return.
About an hour later the owner of the boat came over to us and said that the pump wasn’t working. Well, it is run by 12 volts DC and after some discussion, we figured that they had switched the wires and instead of pumping fuel they were running the pump backward. Fortunately, our barrels were empty at the moment so we didn’t have anything to lose but our time. We decided to go over to the boat and show them how it works.
It only took a few minutes to get to the ship and we climbed aboard. The ship wasn’t too terribly big, however it had brought over quite a bit of pop and juice. When I say full of pop, I mean they had cases of plastic bottles all over the ship. During the hour that we were on the dock we had watched them row the little boats, holding 500 cases of pop each, over to the dock. I don’t know how these things didn’t sink. The pop was loaded incredibly high. Even more impressive was the fact that one guy alone stood in the boat and one by one tossed each case out to another guy who filled a wheel barrow. Once it was full the guy would take off and another guy would pull up and repeat the process which meant that the guy in the boat never really got a break. I can’t imagine how fit some of these people are.
So, once we climbed aboard the boat I found out what was going on. They weren’t transferring the fuel from barrels on the ship; they were using the pump to siphon the diesel fuel out of the boat’s fuel tank and down into the barrels on the small boat. I had been told that the boat would be picking up 5000 gallons in Port au Prince and that we might get 1000 gallons. I had thought that they were then going to sell the remaining 4000 gallons to local gas stations who couldn’t get fuel. I was completely wrong. It turns out that the ship holds 10,000 gallons of which they only had 5,000 and were selling 1000 to us. About an hour later we had filled all ten barrels. Before we could leave, we needed to disconnect the pump and take it with us since we needed to transfer the fuel from the barrels to the steel tank on our trailer. After shutting the pump off, we had to disconnect it from the pipe which lowered into the ship’s fuel tank. As I did this, fuel poured out and covered my hands. Fortunately, it didn’t irritate my skin. It obviously isn’t good for you, but it didn’t seem nearly as harmful as gasoline. The problem now was to try to climb off the ship and into the small boat without slipping with my gassed up hands. Once we all climbed aboard we headed back to the dock which is when the hard work began.
Once we were back at the dock, we had to figure out how we were going to lift these 50 gallon drums (over 400 lbs) up and over the side of the boat of which the top of the boat was flush with the dock. To do this we first tied up the boat and then four guys including myself would stand in the boat and a few guys would be on the dock pulling as we lifted the barrel. To make this even tougher, most of our hands were still covered in diesel fuel making it hard to grip of the barrel. One by one as we all shouted “En, De, TWA!” (One, Two, THREE!) you would hear shouting and grunting then cheering each time we got a barrel out of the boat.
Immediately those who were out of the boat started rolling the barrels up the dock and toward the street. In order to get them to the street, the dock runs inside a building which has a long narrow hallway that is not flat by any means. The barrels had to be rolled up a slight incline of uneven concrete (most likely poured by hand). To make this more complicated, the hallway (about 8 feet wide) had concrete walls on both sides, but the floor wasn’t completely flat across either. On the left side of the hallway as we were rolling the barrels is a channel about 6 feet deep and one foot and a half wide for drainage water. Fortunately, the channel wasn’t wide enough for the barrel to fit in, but a person could easily just slip to the left and fall in. That would make a nasty fall.
To add to the chaos, the busy dock has people running up and down this hallway with wheelbarrows full of pop and juice that had also been offloaded from the ship. So, once you get to the end of the long hallway, it opens up to the right as you pass a generator blasting hot air at you, where you then need to turn back left and roll the barrel over a pretty steep hump. This concrete ramp runs up about five feet and then back down at about a 30 degree angle. The challenge here is to roll the barrel up and then run around to the other side of the barrel to prevent it from crashing on the way back down since the end of the ramp’s decline is the gate to the street. Once we got the barrels outside, we began pumping the fuel out from the barrel to the trailer.
Back inside I went to get another barrel. When I got back to the dock I discovered a barrel that had a leaking cap so we couldn’t roll it. Two of the Haitians were trying to maneuver this thing, but as one tried to push the barrel backward toward a two-wheeler the one holding the cart was being shoved back from the weight of the barrel. For those of you who don’t know, most Haitians are fairly thin and don’t have weight on their side. After a few attempts I climbed out of the boat and tried to help as others were still working on getting the remaining barrels out. I along with two other guys finally managed to use the two-wheeler cart. I had to take it from a kid who was attempting to roll it. He was 15 and most likely didn’t weigh much more than 100lbs. Well, I was able to hold the weight, but it was much to heavy to push as you normally would do, so I had to turn it around slowly and pull it. It was even more difficult because I had to hold the cart really low so the barrel didn’t fall over the other direction or roll off to one side. As I was pulling the cart and thinking that I had about 7 more to go, a guy came running up and started to help by pushing it. This was a tremendous help and I kept pulling. About half way up the hallway, I had to stop and rest which was when the guy helping and I switched places. I was exhausted and glad to be pushing. As this guy was pulling the cart the rest of the way, I kept wondering how tired he was and also knowing that we still had that large ramp to go over. When we got to that point, he was about completely drained as was I but we managed to push and pull the cart up and over. I think at this point we had managed to bring only two or three out. Fortunately, the remaining barrels could be rolled so we all worked on getting them outside.
Back at the trailer, John was working on pumping the fuel out of the tanks and into the trailer which was taking quite some time. We were worrying about running out of daylight so he decided that we needed to get the empty barrels back to the small boat along with the pump so they could begin filling the second load of 10 barrels (our remaining 500 gallons). This meant that we didn’t have a pump left to get the remaining fuel out of the barrels since it was headed back to the ship. To finish the job we first tried to siphon the diesel out of the barrel and into a 5 gallon bucket. The plan was to get the fuel out of the barrels, then into a 5 gallon bucket which we would then pour through a funnel into the trailer. Though this was terribly inefficient, it did allow some guys to go back to the ship to start refilling the empty barrels.
As any of you might know, in order to siphon fuel out of a barrel, you need to get the air out of the hose and to create a suction. To do this, a guy put a hose into the barrel and with his mouth sucked the air out until fuel came splashing out and into his mouth. He did this a few times before he got the fuel to flow out and into the bucket. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Needless to say, he began coughing as we gave him water to flush his mouth. It was terrible and from then on out we just tipped the barrels and poured the fuel out. It was worth spilling it as we tipped the barrels so no one had to siphon the fuel with their mouth. It truly is amazing what people do here to get by. So much that you will see people do the craziest things without hesitation as if it is a normal part of life. This guy had just been standing around watching. We didn’t even ask him to help. He just grabbed the hose like he knew what he was doing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
After we got a rhythm of pouring the fuel into one bucket, dumping it into the trailer as the second bucket was being filled, the wind started picking up. I looked over and saw one of the kids who came to help us trying to pour the fuel out of the bucket and into the funnel. As he did so, the wind was blowing the fuel so much so that it was hardly making it into the funnel. To solve this, I grabbed a piece of cardboard and held it over the bucket to block the wind. Apparently I wasn’t blocking all the wind as I felt it being blown onto my hand and then I realized I had a stream of diesel fuel running down my arm, to my armpit and down my side until my shirt absorbed it. At this point, I didn’t think I could get much dirtier.
This process repeated several times until the container was completely full and the wheels on the trailer were almost flattened from trying to hold the weight of 500 gallons of fuel. After it was filled, we decided to take the trailer back while the empty barrels were refilled. However, before we could go back to Sonlight, we had to stop by the airport to pick up some luggage since a group had just flown in to help us for the week. Whenever a group flies in, the plane is too small to bring all the luggage, so it normally comes the second day. To make our trip efficient, we went to the airport and picked up about 12 checked bags and then headed back to Sonlight.
Once we got back, we refilled on water, snacks, and juice and went back for round two. This trip wasn’t so bad because we only needed to bring back the ten full barrels. We didn’t need to transfer the fuel a second time. However, we did need to get all ten (500 gallons) into the back of John’s truck, so back to the boat we went. This time we had a little experience on our side, but that was evened out by exhaustion. We had only gotten a few barrels out when we were attempting to shift another barrel to the side of the boat where we could lift it out. As it was being maneuvered over to the side someone lost their grip and it came crashing down on it’s side. Just when that happened the screw on cap popped out and several gallons of fuel came gushing out as we feverishly tried to lift it back up. One guy’s pants were completely covered and much went on my shoes.
About 15 minutes later and we had all the barrels out. Again, we rolled them up the hallway and over the ramp. It seemed like we were working a little faster since the sun was nearly down and it was beginning to cool off. Well, all was going well until we ran into the faulty barrel again which had the loose cap. We needed to use the two-wheeler again. This time we loaded the barrel but we didn’t get too far and the tire on the left began to disintegrate. The only choice was to roll it and try to hold the cap on. We managed to do alright, however we probably lost about a half gallon as it was spraying out the side. This was the last barrel to make it out to the street.
Once we got the barrels out to the street, we didn’t have a ramp to get them up and into the back of the truck. To do this, we parked the truck next to a raised concrete slab which was about two feet off the ground. We were able to get the barrels lifted up to the slab and then lifted again to the back of the truck. We were all drained by this point and not much more than 20 minutes later and we had them all loaded and we headed back to Sonlight.
Well, I wish it all ended here but there was more work to be done. When we got back, it was nice to have 1000 gallons of fuel, however we discovered that the generator was down. It turns out that several magnets inside the generator were getting beat up since a bearing was going out. We had to spend another hour sitting in the generator room cleaning this up and re-gluing magnets to the inner part of the generator.
I think after all of this, especially since all this work for 1000 gallons of diesel will only last about a week, I am going to focus my free time on figuring out a way we can wean ourselves off the diesel/generator dependency. I would most like to move toward solar and/or wind generated power since there is plenty of each here! All in all, I think I got a taste of how hard the work was years ago when Sonlight was first being established. I also got a taste of how hard the people of Haiti work just to get by each day. It truly is amazing how hard they work and the fact that every single thing they do is by hand!
1 comment:
What a great story to read. Thanks for sharing your blog with us!
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