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That’s pretty much it… I have a stand beside my bed that was built by the guy who lived here before me. It holds my books and my mini-pharmacy.

That bucket on my desk there is a water purifier. Sitting inside of it is a clay pot that the water seeps through into the bottom. On the bottom the type of tap you would find on those old school coffee dispensers you would find at PTA meetings.

On the right are two doors – One that leads into the rest of the hut and then my door to the outside, which is locked from the exterior with a padlock. The lack of ceilings and shared tin roof makes it very much a shared living space acoustically (read into that what you will). The walls are built by stacking tree branches and then layering on mud, which hardens into a sort of stucco.

The chair (you’ll see this exact same design/construction everywhere in Pignon) is a little Van Gogh-esque, no?

Like nearly every other country in the world right now, Haiti has got World Cup fever. Even in a town without electricity 90% of the time, you can always find a place to watch the game. Here I am watching in the local night club (more on that in another post) on televisions powered by a gas generator. The satellite feed they picked up was from the Dominican so they turned off the sound and had radios blasting play-by-play in Creole from the local radio stations, which they eventually gave up on after the crowd expressed irritation with the 10 second delay on the call.

It was 10 Goudes to enter (about 25 cents US) and there was no shortage of cold beer available (often difficult to obtain in Pignon – not beer, but cold beer). The night club is outside (definitely the best option in a town where air conditioning does not exist) with two large tents with a couple televisions under each. In case you’re wondering, Haitians tend to support Brazil (Brazilian flags everywhere).

UPDATE: There is also a strong contingency of Argentina supporters here. I would guess the split is 70/30 Brazil. I have not come across a single local who is cheering for a team outside of those two.

You build a better goat.

In order to keep the goats out of buildings and gardens, Haitians have taken to attaching this three stick structure to goats (and the occasional pig) to keep them from passing through entrance ways.

When designing systems, at what point do decide to modify the users or their behaviour rather than to continue working on the system mechanics or dynamics surrounding them?