This week I went up to Morne Michel for what could be the final time. We carried up two car batteries, 250 feet of ten gauge wire, two solar panels, and a variety of other materials and equipment to install lights in the school. I think that last hike up the mountain was one of the hardest treks I've ever done just due to the shear weight of my pack.
It took two days to install and a month to plan but it works! See pictures below:
Here, Colon (our foreman) and I are making the connection from the solar panels to the room where we have the charge controller and batteries. I don't have a lot of electrical experience so this was a great time to learn (shout out to Devan Vaughn for schooling me on basic circuitry work). I'm squinting because I was standing on the roof of the school in the middle of the day and it was sweltering.
One of the reasons that this project took so long to implement was that we had to fabricate the burgundy solar panel mounts you see above. The panels are locked so they can't get stolen and tilted at a 15.2 degree angle to the south in order to maximize sunlight.
The kids were watching us the whole time during the installation. Here, you can see me sitting with the students at the school underneath one of their new lightbulbs powered by the sun. I don't know who was more impressed: the Haitians by the complexity of the wiring or me by the fact that it actually worked.
On the final day of installation, we started our descent a little later than we wanted as we tried to finish everything. When we left, we saw the storm (seen above) in the distance. As it turned out, the grey stuff between the ground and the clouds was not just mist but rather one of the most violent storms I've ever been exposed to.
The hail and rain on our way down from the mountain was incredible. We were getting pelted from every direction and pretty soon we were completely saturated. Through Boy Scouts, I know what it is like to hike in the rain and hail but we were much too high to be safe. The Haitians wanted to take cover but I told them we had to get to lower ground. It was treacherous climbing down all the rocks in the rain and hail but it was better than being struck by lightening. We passed one smoking tree on the way down and another lightning strike made my ears ring.
You can imagine this was not a pleasant way for me to finish my final project. As we slowly climbed down, amidst marble-sized hail and deafening thunder, I turned to Colon and the other Haitians with us and yelled over the din, "It's over. This was my last project. I can't believe it."
They laughed and looked up at the one of the worst storms I've ever seen and said, "God is giving you a benediction. He must think you did good work."
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