potatoes and carrots and bananas, oh my!

Sunday Lucho and I walked down to the market to buy some spices to make tea. When we got back we got to work on the proposal to install our sanitation system in a community called santo who's funding is predominantly coming from Bill Clinton and is going to mean private toilets for over 400 homes. A huge responsibility but also a huge development in the rehabilitation of communities and in sanitation in general here.

We stopped for a break around 12 and rigged up a system to dry a couple of the mangoes that Josephs Mum had sent me away with earlier in the week. It worked a treat! A mosquito net, some clothes pegs a rack from the toaster oven and 3 clothes hangers.

We continued on the proposal for the rest of the the day but come 8pm we were both getting to the point of being far less productive and decided to call it quits. Lucho wanted me to meet a few of his friends so we went out to a place called Ruelles Chavannes which is kind of like the cool neighborhood in Port-Au-Prince where a predominant radio station is and where a few well known Haitian musicians and DJs are from.

On the way we stopped for a Jus Blanc- a very typical nighttime drink made of:
potatoes
carrots
bananas
vanilla
salt
sugar
ice
condensed milk (we opted out)

surprisingly good but SO filling!

the best way to bring a community together? a toilet

On Saturday we visited 2 nearby farming communities that are about to take on the compost toilet system that Give Love uses. At the first place, in a Jerusalem Corail camp near Canaan, we were met by 2 men who were so keen to start that they had already cleared a lot for the community compost center and had started drying organic waste to use as a cover material for the piles.

Our visit was mainly to determine the design of the first toilets that would be installed in their community and the maintenance of the system. The two men excitedly suggested just about every possibility for the location of a toilet (there were already toilets at this site but they are all septic systems which are really awful to maintain)  and throughout the discussion other people form the community stopped by and suggested even more.

Our second stop was at a similar community in Croix de Bouquets. We were met by 2 more compost managers who also had septic systems but were a lot more new to the idea of compost toilets so we discussed the responsibilities of the community and the ins and out of the system with them. The results were clear; the system makes so much sense that both communities were finishing our sentences for us. With the compost toilet system the threat of waterborne disease is removed as their water source is isolated from other pollutants, they don't have to pay the hefty prices for an unreliable septic tank cleaner (who takes their waste to an already over flowing pile of raw sewage in Citie de Solei) and they have nutrient rich compost in 6 months!

Just as we were about to leave the site in Croix de Bouquets one of the guys just laughed and said "Donk, nou deja genyen tout bagay nou bezwen" -So, we already had everything we need.

yep!! there's no better compost available than that which contains human waste- the most nutrient rich manure on the market.

Beans and Rice

On Thursday morning Lucho and I went over some of the things that Give Love needed and I got ready to go into down town with my friend Joseph -who I met last time I was here at the Grassroots United base. Joseph came to the house and we took 2 taptaps which finally put us in Kafou Fey.  

There we bought some rice and beans from a street vendor and then went back to his place to eat. I met his neighbors and we watched them play casino (kind of like playing dice here). When it got late I bucket showered in their communal showers (shared with about 30 people) then we went out to visit some of his friends who were in the area where he used to live. Josephs home was completely destroyed in the earthquake and he had been living in a room that had been constructed our of tarps and corrugated iron which in total was about the size of a double bed up until last month.

His friends were really nice and along the way we had plenty of compliments as its not usual to see white people walking around especially at night -seems crazy not to as its the only bearable time to be outside and everyone was really friendly!!

The next day he brought me to his mums house, she lives just outside of PAP in Kafou usually but she sells imported goods in the market usually stays in Port-Au Prince Monday to Friday to be closer. The trip took about and hour and on the way I saw a man on the street who had fainted. It was pretty surreal, the people in the marketplace had dragged him from the street (his head still half in the street & hanging off the curb and arms spread open) they were pouring water over his limp body to try and wake him. Joseph said that it is a very poor area and he had likely fainted because he was so dehydrated.

His mothers house was up a very (very very) steep hill that was severely damaged by water, the view was incredible. She and her partner and 2 young children met us at the door of their single room house. Joseph showed me around their small garden (it looked more like a jungle with mangos, plantains, beans and corn) while his mother finished cooking the beans and rice on her small coal stove. It must have taken her about 3 hours to cook and she refused any help at all but I did manage to persuade her to let me help with the fresh ju de citron (tastes like lemonade but the fruit looks more like oranges). 

Josephs mum brought out two heaping plates of beans and rice, Joseph was just as excited as I was -apparently beans and rice is his favorite food (funny to hear because there's not much else on offer and he likely grew up eating it every day). His family disappeared inside to eat so I asked Joseph if they wanted to come join us (I'm still trying to work out what actually happened here...) His mum came out and took my spoon, she proceeded to eat two bites from my plate and then two from Josephs, letting out a big "mmmm!" and with a huge smile on her face she went back inside. 

I had to be back in Delmas 33 by 5 for a conference call with the directors of Give Love so we headed out around 3. On the way back a man on the bus talked about Martelly and the problems with school systems in Haiti. From what I understood there are vey few teachers in Haiti so most of them work between the national schools and private schools. The problem is if they are working at both schools (which most are) they will usually spend more of their time at the private schools to ensure that they keep their jobs there as they don't make enough money to live on at the national schools. A woman who boarded the next bus we took acted like a walking advertisement- she was selling beauty products and products that would protect against stds. As amusing as it was to be in a real life infomercial it was pretty concerning too as this was likely the predominant source of information about health to those on the bus and a great deal of it was hugely misinformed. 

None of the buses go near to the place I'm staying at so we took a moto (motorcycle taxi) instead. We still managed to get really lost but finally made it a few minuted before 5- turns out we passed it 3 times.  The conference call  (which ended up starting at 6 anyway) went really well & afterwards we started drafting the proposal for a grant. 

more to come!

Kisa sa ye? Sa samble ak yon moun...

After a restless night in Miami I arrived at the airport in Port-Au-Prince to find that there had been some noticeable improvements in the airport - specifically the baggage area.  What was once just a huge pile of bags from every incoming flight was now a bit more spread out  and seemingly organized they even had baggage carousels (which weren't running when I got there but looked like they'd been well used).

I was met by my friends Morgan, Kenley and Lucho who brought me back to the house in Delmas 33.  We caught up on all the news and had a big meeting about how were are going to approach some of the upcoming projects and what could be done about Madam Lucien  and Good Samaritan orphanage. The good news is that she has quite obviously lost interest in the orphanage  and will likely stop working there soon but the bad news is that there is a comity that is full of people lined up to take her place- all of which have similar motivation.

The street power was out all night so a good part of the meeting was done by the light of a kerosene lamp - it also  relieved us of any of the jobs that were dependent on internet or power.

Artibonite River

The next morning we woke up at 4:30 to get ready for a seminar day in Artibonite which is a region north of Port-Au-Prince that is predominantly farming communities.

We picked up a few people on the way: Harry Ha - from south Korea who is working for a group in Toronto that's developing Eco-Tourism in Haiti, Anjti Ouanechee a Native American from Canada who had been in Haiti for over 12 years working on Land preservation projects and Jean Baptiste who was our local contact there.

It took us a good 5 hours to get there and  the gas worked out to be about $4.50 USD per gallon. Once we got to the region our map showed that we should us to turn off before the real exit  so we ended up going along a very small road that was full of fallen rocks, up a huge hill then down into a valley. At the bottom was the Artibonite river (the same river where the Cholera outbreak originated). When the road became too dangerous we parked the car and gathered all our gear for the seminar. We made our way down to the river and took a small wooden boat across.

There were about 10 other people in the boat with us along with all their supplies from the market and 3 horses that swam long side us. From there we walked for another 2 hours along a small dirt road before finally reaching the small village called Deslandes. The CIG school we were doing the seminar at was nestled in amongst a small market community where people's only mode of transportation is by foot or horse.

Compost Toilet Structure

Old Toilets

Mr St Juste, greeted us enthusiastically at the entrance and gave us each a bottle of cold water.

The seminar went really well. It was well received and met with great enthusiasm. At the break we were given lunch which was all locally produced food- Artibonite rice, fried bread-fruit, beans and pickliz. SO Good!

After lunch we continued with the other material and Anjti presented his stove that uses dry organic materials that are easily found on the floor of the market and burns more cleanly than charcoal. Each of these stoves cost just $25 USD (a small fortune for a family there) but the investment could mean free fuel for all of their cooking.

It started raining quite heavily at about 5pm, so much so that we had to stop the presentation a few times because the noise from the rain on the tin roof was so loud. It became apparent that we would likely end up spending the night in the village as the Artibonite river frequently floods and there is no other way across.

We decided to give it a go but Mr St Juste insisted that we take one of his horses to transport our seminar materials and that I ride on one. I was terrified as the road was already in pretty terrible condition when we had walked on earlier but from the rain it now had huge parts missing and was either really slippery or full of very soft mud. Along the way we came across a young girl who was maybe about 9 or so. She came up to Pierre (one of our colleagues) and asked him what that thing was on the horse and said that it looked a lot like a person. Pierre laughed and said it was a person. Completely oblivious to what has just happened I passed by not even a minute later and said bonswa to her- eyes wide and mouth open. Needless to say we made it to the river after about 2 and a half hours.

We finally arrived back in PortAu-Prince at 10:00pm completely knackered.


I'm still exploring the options and am not sure if it's a real possibility at this time but if anyone has any ideas on how to go about improving the condition of the road for them it would be so beneficial for that community. Having a more easily accessible road would not only benefit them directly but also benefit of surrounding communities so that transporting the produce they grow could be the least of their worries.


So sorry for the delay more to come!
Love & Light

Prologue

Having now had nine months to mull it all over I've come to the conclusion that explaining my experiences in Haiti will likely always carry with it a trace of our very naive western doctrine. In light of this, I've decided that the only plausible solution is to try to educate myself on the real needs of people there and to learn what I can from the mistakes that have been made by other aid workers so as not to waste too much time or to draw on the already very limited resources.

Anyways, before I get back into the swing of things, I thought I'd just share with you some of my thoughts on the everyday challenges in Haiti along with some interesting article and blogs I've come across- trying to keep my personal bias to a minimum of course...


Corruption & Orphanages
Its a give-in that Good Samaritan Orphanage is not alone in its struggle for finding sustainable sources of water, shelter and food but maybe less obvious is the fact that, like Good Sam, many other orphanages are kept in poor conditions to bring in more funding from international groups and individuals. It is undoubtedly one of the most distressing and heart-breaking things to see and even harder still is trying to figure out a way to make it worth while to the owners of the orphanages to agree to make the changes that are necessary to better the conditions.

This blog has some pretty interesting articles on these issues & this one in particular sums up a very similar situation:
http://goodintents.org/orphanages/hug-an-orphan-vacations-3

(You may also notice that there is a link at the bottom of the page for a note titled "Showers for Good Sam"  in springbox - this is a project thats been started at the orphanage and has sadly come to a halt for the time being as we try to work out how to go about negotiating with the owner without having to do a payoff. I'll update on my blog if anything changes with this but for the time being we are still negotiating.)


The Impact of Aid Workers 
Another thing that has really been on my mind since returning from Haiti has been the effect that the help from the international community has had on Haiti's overall circumstances. Take for instance Cholera- there are serious implications of having foreign aid come into a country with limited infrastructure, especially in the case of sewage...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/8494066/Haiti-cholera-outbreak-linked-to-peacekeepers-UN-admits.html

Event though it hasn't made mainstream media in a while the outbreak in Haiti is still going strong and is said to have reached with second peak. The very nature of Cholera means that it will stay with Haiti forever and with rainy season now in full swing the numbers are once again rising quickly. Seeing things from that perspective makes it easy to understand why the UN is not particularly welcomed by most Haitians.

(Aljazeera has really great coverage of Haiti- this is the latest update from them)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/06/20116191451313846.html

There are also many concerns surrounding donations -a very sad but typical approach to it is often the "Well, its better than nothing" attitude. This article talks about our donation tendencies and offers quite a thought-provoking view on the drawbacks of our well-intentioned help: http://talesfromethehood.com/tag/swedow/

This is well worth reading too: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/02/haiti-election-open-letter-noam-chomsky

Feeling Helpless
I've been feeling pretty inspired lately by the overwhelming amount of goodwill that people show for one another and am convinced that if given the right set of circumstances and the resources to make it happen there are very few of us that would turn down an opportunity to help someone in need. I know myself that sometimes its hard to think that my skills or time could actually be helpful to someone that seems so far removed from my own life but there are so many people in Haiti and in every other corner of the world that could really benefit from the unique strengths we all have -even just a few minutes of our time could mean that donated money goes to the people that need it most as opposed to administrative costs.

These are just a couple examples of creative ways to contribute to Haiti but if anyone is interested in finding something more specific to their field or particular skills then I'd be happy to help you get the resources to do so.

         Half Hour for Haiti                                                            One Day's Wages
http://ijdh.org/archives/18462                                  http://www.onedayswages.org/

And above all else Staying Positive is Key -having that written down is probably more for my benefit than for your reading pleasure but its true. I remember when this really sank in -the last time I was in Haiti. Things had gone a bit sour one day at the orphanage and I welled-up with tears for the first (and only) time in-front of anyone Haiti- it happened to be while I was talking to Kenley (the 19year old boy who taught me how to speak Kreyol). He asked me to stop, and as he said it I saw the tears start to well-up in his eyes. He said that if I cry then he will cry and so will all the kids at the orphanage and all the people I want to help- if I loose hope then what hope does he have.

Yes, a good few tears were shed that day but that conversation was enough to stop me from getting discouraged for the rest of my time in Haiti and to this day reminds me of just how important it is to stay positive and empower those around you to do the same.

A huge thanks to everyone for their support and contributions, I'm really looking forward to sharing my experiences with all of you! (feedback is very welcome!)

sending lots of love & light from Miami
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