Se neg fe neg, Bondye ri.

What man does to man makes God laugh.

It has been an interesting few days here in Haiti. After a long day in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday purchasing solar panels for the school at Morne Michel, I came back to a small crisis.

I have not written much about the Marketplace project here in Cange because that project was assigned to James Goodwin, another Clemson engineer that is working here as well. In order to promote economic development in the village and move merchants off of the highway, we have been working with the people of Cange and the local government to construct a new marketplace. It is a major project but poor communication has led to long and frustrating delays.

As of yesterday, we still did not have a final design, budget, or scope of work. We were by no means ready to begin construction or move forward. As such, we made a deal with the government officials on June 2^nd that we would not clear the land before we had several official documents necessary for proceeding with the project. Despite this, the government brought in a bulldozer and parked it right next to the spot for the market on Wednesday night.

So I came back from Port-au-Prince to find this:

We immediately called our funding source and my bosses to see how we should proceed. It was agreed that if the government broke our June 2^nd agreement then we would cancel the project and yank all funding. This was communicated to the government last night.

Thursday morning I immediately went to the site of the potential market to see what was going to happen. I found the mayor of the area talking with several locals about what they were going to do. After a quick discussion, I quickly realized that with or without the official documentation, they were going to bulldoze the land.

From here, I did everything possible to prevent this; if the government proceeded then our funding source would pull funds and the entire project would fail. This involved standing in front of the bulldozer desperately pleading with the government officials while the locals were furiously yelling that I was standing between them and a new marketplace. I called James and he brought one of the members of our major funding committee to debate with them but to no avail. You can see us arguing with the Haitians below while I remain in my spot in front of the bulldozer.

As I write this, they are finishing clearing all the land and violating our agreement. It is not clear what the future of this project is but right now it looks pretty bleak. Our funding committee will debate how to handle this situation but I am confident that I will not see this marketplace built while I am here.