The Lear Brothers

     Here is a picture of John and Tim Lear, two brothers from Lebanon who have been coming to Bons Samaritains for over ten years.  There is nothing they can't fix, and if they don't quite understand it, they look it up on the internet and get the latest word.

     There are many days here in St.-Marc when the public electricity does not function. At all. Or perhaps it might be turned on for just a few hours.

     I was having longer and longer stretches of time with no electricity and didn't really understand much about it other than how uncomfortable that was.  After Tim and John  arrived, they told me that nine of our solar collectors had been stolen from the roof!  Mind you, it happened one night and I was laying in my bed thinking, I wish those people would quit banging around up there.  At first I had convinced myself it was cats, but after the noise got louder I realized it was definitely footsteps.  I mentioned it to Meritesse in the morning, but apparently nobody thought to go look until one of the teachers who lives within view of the roof came to school one day and said, did they know that the solar collectors had been stolen?  Either they told me and I did not understand them, or they decided it would be better for me not to worry- for one reason or another, I never knew it until they arrived to fix them. They walked in March 6, met the engineer who built the school on Saturday morning, reassembled the remaining 4 collectors, redid the inverter and had it all set up by Saturday night.  And we have had electricity pretty much nonstop since then!

     It seems the thieves cut the wires and left them lay touching the roof which shorted out the inverter. (I wondered why it was making those cranky beep! beep! noises all the time.) In fact, Tim was wondering if maybe the loose wires charged the roof and deterred them from coming back for the other four.  

     Lest you worry about me, I need to tell you that I lock two iron gates every night, before I go to bed. There is one to the stairs and one to the balcony. The building is made of concrete block, with all concrete and ceramic tile floors, so there is minimal danger of fire here (which is a good thing, considering all the open fires they have for cooking, and lighting the streets at night.) I do feel pretty safe, even knowing they were on the roof above me, doing that.  Tim and John were philosophical about it, and said they hoped that the thieves at least used the money to buy food for people or something like that.  And at the same time they were planning how they would secure a new set so that it would not happen again.  And I won't mention where the little array is, that they made out of the remaining four panels, just in case the crooks are into reading blogs about St.-Marc, Haiti.

     In addition to coming to Haiti on a busman's holiday for a week or two each year, they spend the year helping Dr. Mortel to collect supplies and donations for the school.  While they were here, a container that arrived at the port in Gonaives was unloaded, and they spent two of their days unloading everything and getting it here to the school.  And they had stored much of the stuff, and loaded the container up in Lebanon County over the winter.  

     They are incredible.  They say they just love working vacations, and helping people.  They went around on the slow days and repaired desks, made screens, and unstuck window cranks.  The kids all know them and look forward to their visits. 

     Thank you, guys! I can't say enough about how nice these two men are.  Plus they make very good coffee and brought chocolate chip cookies with them.