When Joe Holley thinks about Haiti, there are some things that immediately fill his thoughts.

“Some of the situations hit you afterwards,” Holley said about the experiences he has seen during his nine trips to the country. “I saw a girl in a blue tarp with a baby, lying on a mat while it was raining. She just sat there. She didn’t even have a tent.”

Holley, a resident of Lexington, retired from retail management after working for Kroger and other stores for 40 years.

But instead of staying around his house, Holley said he wanted to do something different.

“I looked at Haiti before, but the earthquake really put it on my radar screen,” Holley said of why he chose to start making volunteer trips to Haiti. “When you see the magnitude of the need, you know. There’s also proximity. I can fly out of Nashville to Miami in two hours, then to Port-Au-Prince in another two.”

Holley said he does most of his volunteer work in cooperation with Healing Hands International, a relief and aid organization based out of Nashville, along with aid from East Colbert Church of Christ.

“Joe came and told us about his work in Haiti about six months ago,” said Joe Bogle, an elder at East Colbert Church of Christ, about how the church came to work with Holley. “Right now, we’re having a drive to buy Bibles for the Haiti mission. Last week, we got around $1,500 to $1,800. It may be more than that, more churches are also sending money to East Colbert to buy Bibles.”

Healing Hands International has provided Haiti with well drilling services, constructed schools and clinics, and even helped rebuild a nursing program when the building was destroyed and the staff killed during the earthquake, said Healing Hands International Vice President Chris Gingles.

Holley said a lot of work has been done to assist Haiti, including help from other countries, such as 3-by-3 outhouses for men and women provided by French aid and a school constructed by Japanese aid.

Holley said the work that remains is daunting.

“If a Haitian has a job, they make about $2 a day,” Holley said. “There’s a massive amount of people without hope.”

Now, with plans to go on his 10th trip to Haiti this month, Holley sees a nation still in need and a long way from recovery, but a nation that has seen improvements.

“The first time I was there, the toilet was just a hole in the ground,” Holley said. “No toilet paper. We put a blue tarp around it to give a semblance of protection.”

According to Bogle, when Holley approached them six months ago, East Colbert was already contributing to missions in other countries such as India, Burma, China and Mexico, but decided to help with Holley’s mission as well.

“What he tells us about Haiti is that it’s a very oppressed country,” Bogle said. “It’s one of the places we wanted to help, both materially and spiritually.”

Holley said he’s just a tinkerer, but Gingles said Holley has the skills that Haiti needs.

“There’s not anything that Joe can’t do,” Gingles said. “When it comes to small engines, to automobiles, he can fix it. When it comes to a place like Haiti where maintenance is an afterthought, Joe is the kind of guy we were looking for.”

On his upcoming trip, Holley said he will focus on coming up with plans to build a pavilion-styled church for what is known as the Lilavois children’s home, which houses around 95 children.

In addition to developing the plans, Holley said he’ll be buying and distributing food, helping unload and set up hospital equipment and help with maintenance of the children’s home.

“Things that are simple here are not simple there,” Holley said about doing activities that would be considered normal errands and chores in the United States. “You have to be totally flexible with it. Getting beans and rice (for distribution) will take a day because it’s all physical labor. There’s bad traffic, and driving can be pure chaos.”

One of the projects Holley has worked on was introducing solar powered ovens to Haitians and teaching the people how to use the ovens, but the differences in culture presented Holley with one problem.

“The solar ovens are difficult not (from) a workable aspect, but because of the culture,” Holley said. “Their cooking involves almost full-time work during the day, stirring pots. One of the most frequent questions I got was, ‘How can I stir it?’ It’s hard for them to grasp you can just leave it.”

Not only has Holley helped introduce the solar oven, but according to Gingles, he also helped design the ovens.

“In the beginning stages, we’re in the process of looking for a way to produce and distribute (the ovens),” Gingles said.

He said much of the vegetation has been cut for fuel and said it is the hope that solar ovens will help with the reforestation of Haiti.

The mass production of solar ovens also could lead to more jobs in Haiti to combat unemployment, something else that Holley said is a dire problem in the country.