Local builder produces homes for Haiti's homeless

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

When Simon Darke of Wellington returned to the United States this summer, he couldn't help noticing the remarks of Americans at the airport. Folks were complaining about the hassle of going through customs. They grumbled about delays in boarding.

Darke had just spent three months in Haiti, building transitional shelters for victims of the January earthquake. In that country, people were accustomed to waiting hours for fresh water and food.

If they needed to do business at a bank, they could count on spending an entire day in that pursuit, waiting in long lines just to get in the door. If they were unfortunate enough not to reach the front of the line before closing time, they had to start over the next day.

"Some of that patience would be good to learn in Western society," Darke commented. "We have a lot to be thankful for. They have very little, but still they're happy."

In fact, Darke said, he was "blown away" by the attitude of the Haitian people and their amazing resilience. Everyone lost someone dear to him or her in the massive Jan. 12 earthquake, and Darke described the scale of destruction as "incomprehensible." During the recent rainy season many got flooded out, but the next morning they were still smiling.

Darke went to Haiti with the intention of staying a short time as a technical advisor on the shelter project. He ended up signing a three-month contract with the United Nations Office for Project Services. Home in June for a two-week break, he headed back in early July for another three-month stint.

"It became apparent that I'm not done," he said. "Not only do I need to be there, but I want to be there."

Darke was recruited because of his expertise as a builder. A friend who worked for the UNOPS wanted to start a shelter project for homeless Haitians, and he began calling Darke with technical questions. His group eventually came up with a shelter design and e-mailed it to Darke, who took one look at it and saw numerous problems.

Brooding on the design dilemma, Darke finally got up in the middle of the night, went to his computer and redesigned the entire shelter. He sent it off to Haiti and got this response: "Wow, this is exactly what we need. Can you come out here?"

"It felt right to go," he commented. "These opportunities don't pop up every day."

Nonetheless, it was not easy to leave his wife, Tristen, and his business, Alpine Custom Carpentry, behind.

Training locals

In Haiti, Darke is in charge of the shelter production site as well as the training of carpenters and supervisors. The latter responsibility is especially rewarding, he said, since he has the chance to pass on some of his construction and organizational skills. While building shelters, Darke trains the Haitian workers in modern building techniques, the use of power tools, quality control and safety.

Training on the U.N. project should offer Haitians new opportunities. Several are already learning skills to be lead carpenters and supervisors.

"I think we've succeeded when we've trained people so we're not needed anymore," Darke said.

He added that most of the workers are from a downtrodden, violent section of Port-au-Prince, but they want to learn and to work. "We've seen them grow," Darke noted.

Workers at the production site make parts for the shelters and organize them into kits. Just recently, there were enough finished shelter kits that other crews could begin assembling them on the ground.

The dwellings measure 12-by-16-feet and are considered "transitional" shelters. However, Darke noted, most of them will likely become permanent homes for the Haitian families, so the crew builds them to be as sturdy as possible.

All shelters are erected on lots that the displaced families previously occupied. The beneficiaries are chosen in a process involving social workers, who identify and prioritize the families; and engineers, who assess properties where the families used to live to see if a new structure can safely be erected there.

Some shelters are attached to existing foundations; in other cases, when there is no foundation, the shelter is attached to the ground. "We don't want them to fly away in hurricane season," Darke stated.

The shelters are designed to be as wind-resistant as possible. As a byproduct of the Haiti project, engineers are learning more about designs that work in strong winds. By analyzing different types of shelters, the U.N. engineers will be able to assess what is best for other hurricane-prone places in the world.

Shelters going up

The small factory currently has about 30 carpenters and laborers; other carpenters are assembling shelters on the building sites. The plan, Darke said, is to train all of these workers in the shelter-building process, then have them train new teams of workers. Eventually, Darke and his fellow managers would like to have 16 teams of six carpenters each. More assembly teams will be required once production increases, and they will be trained by the same process.

The logistics of a large project in an underdeveloped country are complicated. Darke orders lumber from the United States. For the assembly crews, he makes sure they have the tools they need, all hardware necessary for the assembly, and food and water. He also arranges for rental trucks to supply the site crews with what they need.

U.N. projects such as the Haiti factory are dependent upon donor funding. Currently, there is enough funding for 500 shelters, but Darke and his colleagues have their sights set on something much bigger. They are hoping that additional donations from international aid organizations will come through, allowing them to build another 7,500 shelters. If that occurs, production could ramp up to 500 shelters per month.

Working in Haiti meshes with one of Darke's guiding principles, the idea that givers gain. "We're put here to help other people," he said.

The help he is providing to Haitians is likely to be like a pebble thrown into a pond, producing lots of positive ripple effects. That makes the local builder's adventure a rewarding, if exhausting, way to spend six months of his life.