We see in Haiti the workshop of rebirth. So we go to Haiti.
Bruce King, founder of EBNet and structural engineer, went to Haiti for 8 days at the end of January, 2011. Here is his report...
Friday, January 28, 2011 -- Greetings, sports fans. Your beloved Ecological 
Building Network reporter emerges from the hinterlands of Hispaniola to report live from Port au Prince -- to report on a country that is all at once stunningly destitute and stunningly dignified, to report on a people who look really different but are pretty much like you and me. A report from a California Yankee in Queen Haiti's court.
After two nights in the mountaintop oasis of Fondwa, we hopped in yet another pickup truck to travel south over the pass (about 3000 foot elevation) and down to the coast at Jacmel. "We" being myself and Tim Owen-Kennedy: friend, master 
builder and, because his french/creole is way better than mine, official trip translator. We examined dozens of buildings, from rural shacks to collapsed concrete and concrete block offices. We have talked to builders, survivors, chidren and grandmas. We have seen the stunning effects of poor soil management and deforestation on steep mountains over hundreds of years. We have seen some of the first bamboo-framed buildings and the plantations to support a bamboo industry. We have seen new homes going up the same old way (unsafe), simply because they don't know anybetter -- just as back home we see people building homes the same old way even though the planet is roasting and that carpet smell ain't good for you -- they just don't know any better. As Mark Twain said, "Ignorance isn't always not knowin' -- it's usually knowin' what ain't so!"
I am probably the first structural engineer that most of these people have met, and
though I try not to charge into situations with a patronizing know-it-all attitude, there are always a few simple things I can offer in each conversation that could save lives. Things obvious to any senior year engineering student, such as bending and lapping rebar like so, or using less water and cement for the mortar. Things that cost less, and yield more -- safely. They are eager to learn, for they can see what they did before didn't work: the ground shook, and thousands died. It doesn't have to be that way.
Perhaps it goes without saying that Tim and I get back much more than we offer: simple but divine meals of rice, peas, omlettes and strong Haitian coffee, or impromptu voudou music, or the sound of a chidren's choir at dawn on the mountaintop. The dogs are always sweet and friendly, and I guess I'm the first one to ever scratch their ears. The simple things that make a trip.
Tonight I give a public talk on natural building, hosted by Architecture for Humanity. I hope and expect to meet a lot of like-minded folks, both locals and other NGO's trying to pitch in here. Should be fun, I'll let you know. It's a different game here in Haiti, but as Yogi Berra said, "Ninety percent of this game is half mental!"
the monk asked: "How is it when leaves fall, and the trees wither?"
Yunmen replied: "Body exposed to the Golden Wind"
Sunday, January 23, 2011 I will be traveling to Port-au-Prince and from there will spend most of the time in a rural area, Fondwa, developing programs with Haitians and other NGO's back in PaP.
Following natural disasters like the earthquake that devastated Haiti a year ago, the world rushes in with ideas and technologies born and suited to here, but complete misfits over there. Instant houses and prefab kits of wood and steel can look really appealing in a brochure, but over and over again find no takers when delivered. Even desperate people reject shelter that is not suited to their own culture and climate. A hungry man does not so much need a fish but a fishing pole,and though that ancient folk wisdom gets endlessly repeated, the world keeps sending fish. Hundreds of aid agencies are already at work rebuilding, but almost all of them are using imported materials poorly suited and unaffordable to ordinary Haitians -- they are sending fish.
We have a better idea: rebuilding with the people and materials at hand -- the "natural" solution, in which we craft ways to build that can continue long after the aid money stops flowing. The Haitian government seems to agree, and named us as winners in the international BBBC competition for new housing ideas.
Haiti has a lot of things like concrete rubble, clay, straw, bamboo and plastic lying around. But only in the last few decades have engineers, or rather a very few of us, studied the means of building with those things that nature provides or society throws away.
EBNet has knowledge of how to build with these things, and more: knowledge that never existed before this moment in history.
In collaboration with Green MicroFinance, Architecture for Humanity, Kleiwerks, Builders Without Borders and other great NGO's, EBNet enters Haiti to see if we might help Haitians help themselves, and thus show us all, in return, how it's done.
In this first trip to Haiti we expect to:
- See, survey and study the local terrain, soils, vegetation, climate, architecture and resources.
- Cultivate relationships with Haitians and their communities, and with other NGO's already at work in those communities specific locations.
- Discuss and introduce natural building methods to each place, and begin to craft them means for disseminating effective building in the culture. To the extent possible, design and engineer specific buildings that can begin construction after we're gone.
- Record all of this on video and still photography, and with our partners, begin to tell the story of natural building in Haiti, and how that is part of the larger narrative around water, soils, agronomy, energy and commerce/industry/community. Around the larger narrative of the whole world.
We plant seeds and spread the knowledge that grows. Follow us on Twitter (@EBNetwork) or Bruce King on Facebook if you want to see how the story unfolds.
The adventures of EBNET. Right here on Earth.
