I am officially in love with Haitian food…well, that which I’ve eaten so far. Surret is an amazing cook, but from what I hear she cooks much like my mother does—a pinch of this and a dash of that, pinches and dashes only measurable with lots of experience. An amazing cooking style but one hard to teach. J For dinner last night there was beet salad (which, and this will surprise some, I actually really liked—traditionally I hate, no—abhor, beets), fried chicken, fried goat meat, fried plaintains, fried okra dough stuff (can’t remember what it was called), rice and beans, and picallys (a spicy cabbage dish). I tried and loved everything but the chicken—I have chicken all of the time in the States and wanted to eat anything but that which I have all the time. Goat is awesome—I loved it! Surret then gave us a banana bread/cake that she had made—also very delicious. Group discussion followed, then Bible study and sleep. I was asleep pretty quickly. Lack of sleep from the night before and the comforting sound of the generator knocked me out (I grew up with a generator running, so I like that sound). The dog that sounded like it kept getting stuck in a trap near the house, however, was not as comforting—apparently it barks by yelping. Oh well.
I know many people in MN who would be surprised at how much animals are a part of the daily life of Haitians.
It isn’t like our tendency to have a few pets and hide them in our abodes, being shocked at seeing a deer in town.
In Haiti there are goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, and cows running all over the place--every single one of which has an owner. Goats return to their homes at night, and there are quite severe penalties for goat/cattle theft.
There appears to be one kind of dog, a general mutt that runs around all over Port au Prince.
Oh, and the pigeons and MN state bird—the mosquito.
I hate mosquitoes. Oh, and bugs that look like leafs--those are pretty nifty -->
After breakfast, most of the vision team currently in Haiti went to the clinic where they were working yesterday. Fleura, the woman mentioned yesterday, was seen by the doctors—she appears to have made a miraculous recovery. Suspicion exists that her ailments are caused by dehydration. Next time you are a little thirsty, think about the Haitian people whose only water option is potentially filled with cholera bacteria. The choice is don’t drink and therefore die, or drink and risk getting an illness that may kill you anyways. What hard decisions have you made today?
A team of builders from “Engineers Without Borders”, a group from the University of Minnesota made up of civil engineers, arrived early this morning to build a bio-digester. From what I understand, they are going to spend the next week constructing a “concrete stomach” that human waste will go into (they are also constructing an outhouse) for the initial stages of decomposition. The waste, or "effluent" will then be moved into a cooker that will heat the material enough to make it release naturally occurring methane gas, gas which can then be harnessed to power the cookstoves in the Luly school. This is certainly a much better option for cooking food over charcoal. Don't get me wrong, charcoal cooks well, but the smoke from charcoal fires does horrendous things to peoples' lungs, and the coal is made from cut-down trees. Cutting down trees least to looser soil integrity, a definite problem in this country. Looser soil leads to aggravated soil erosion, less land that is available for farmers, and more devastating damage when those darned hurricanes and/or monsoon rains sweep through the area. But I digress....Once the methane from the effluent has been harnessed, the remaining material will be spread out of the cooker onto a concrete platform where it can dry. At that point, it is sterile due to having been heated, and can be used as fertilizer in a community garden. This is a sustainable project that has a very promising future!
Shortly after the engineers arrived, it was off to downtown Port au Prince to the World Wide Village warehouse. There was not enough room inside the cab of the pickup to hold all six of us (Peter, Pat, Ali, Dan, Bob, Nate, and I), so Dan, Bob, and I opted to ride in the bed of the pickup. Always one up for adventure, I loved the ride—though people were nervous the way I was bouncing around taking pictures. Yesterday I was really shy about taking pictures and was convinced the people would be offended by my action and it was culturally looked down upon…and I didn’t want to look like another dumb tourist. Pat assured me that if the people objected to their pictures being taken, they would indicate such and it is perfectly fine to take pictures of anything. Well, today I took over 250. J
It is a totally different experience riding in the back of a truck as opposed to being in the cab. The sounds of the city can really reach you. I mentioned this yesterday but will mention it again—traffic here is crazy! People walk across the street so close to cars you wouldn’t even have to reach out to shake hands. Cars are continually cutting people off. Traffic lights, what few exist, are a suggestion. Tap-taps, very brightly colored vehicles that serve as one form of public transportation, are everywhere. People are constantly shouting, and honking at other drivers (though I have been told that honking in Haiti has developed into a kind of language, where so many taps mean something, while a different number of taps means something else, while a blaring, obnoxious horn may mean the same thing as it means in the US). If a car breaks down in the middle of the road, people start working on it right then and there. We saw more than a few cars having their engines tweaked in the middle of the commotion or just plain being shoved out of the way. When stopped in traffic, it is common for street kids to come up, clean the car, and expect monetary compensation. Two such street kids came up and were wiping off our pickup—one team member handed them some granola bars.
Anyways, we made it to the warehouse, where Pat skillfully installed a phone and the engineers examined some kind of wall making materials that are being stored in the warehouse. Apparently it is just what they need in the size they need it, so that is good. They just need to get some tools from someone here they know and will be good to go! In fact, I can hear them discussing the plan of action with Randy right now. Then it was off to “the Haitian version of Home Depot”, which we were unable to see because it was closed. We picked up a rental car, kept an eye on one of our guests as he drove it (record: Bob drove a car through downtown Port au Prince on his first day here!) through the gnarled mess of traffic, and got back to our abode.
After we got back to the guesthouse, we had enough time to refill on water, go buy bread from the breadshop that is across from the Livesay’s house, and pack back into a car to head to Luly. Along the way Randy told us statistics. There were very few displaced Haitians before the earthquake—now 15% of the nation’s population is displaced and living in tent cities. We drove by hills where no tent city existed at this time last year—now the hillsides are peppered with thousands of tents. Wires are strung between tents and hold up very clean laundry (I am very impressed at how clean most of the clothing is here compared to how dusty and dirty everything seems to be).
Something like 300,000 people are living in thousands of tent cities scattered across the country side but mostly located around PaP. Slash and burn agriculture is still practiced (note: this does NOT help contain the soil erosion problem) and we saw several fields burning. Fire makes me nervous…especially when it causes a plume of smoke that goes across the road and is so thick that we cannot see through it to the other side. Haitians do not mind their side of the road at all times, so it was a little nerve wracking going through that plume, but Randy knows what he is doing and all was well.
Luly is a small mountain village on the edge of the ocean. Approximately 3,000 people live there, many of them young children. We parked the car and walked up to the school where Pastor Lyons officiates. Ali and I were very popular amongst the children and spent time with them while the engineers went with Randy to examine the land where the bio digester will go (don’t worry—they were only a few hundred yards away from us). Ali had some hair clips and other d0o-dads for the kids. One little boy broke my heart—he just seemed so sad. While the rest of the kids were energetic and excited, he was just standing there looking up at me with sad little eyes that would make a hardened criminal’s heart break. Of course I don’t speak Creole (though Peter was happy with the progress on a phrase I have made), and could not ask what was wrong. More frustrating for me, however, was that I could not even offer words of encouragement in his own language. AARGH!!
The kids got a huge kick out of seeing their pictures. I’m borrowing a camera from my friend Paula, and was taking pictures of the kids. They definitely understood what I was trying to do, and would cluster together, pulling each other in closer so that all of them might be photographed. After each photo was taken, I would lower the camera and put it in review mode so the kids could see themselves. They laughed with hilarity that displayed the hope in their eyes and the overwhelming strength of the Haitian people, and would poke each other and point when they saw their friend in a picture.
One little girl in a pink dress came over and leaned on my shoulder, eventually making her way to sitting in my lap. An adult who I think is one of the teachers at Luly school set another child right next to me, who also sat down in my lap. Kids are kids everywhere—they all like positive attention from an adult and the kids settled right in as if they had been sitting there their entire lives. When Randy came over and said it was time to go, I hesitated. These kids were adorable and seemed to be having a grand laugh at the American who was horribly mispronouncing their names. We had only been there for what seemed like just a few minutes…not nearly long enough.
I was, however, horrified by the signs of malnutrition evident all over some of these kids. Not only were all of them thin, some of them were frighteningly thin and had the little pouched bellies that indicate lack of proper nutrition. I just wanted to plant a garden right there, train the people in the neighborhood how to tend it, and watch these kids’ muscles fill in. Good news: there are plans to use the material produced from the biodigester as fertilizer for a community garden.
There was a starving man sitting on the side of the road today. I’ve only ever seen people that thin in pictures of Holocaust victims and anorexia patients—this man just simply did not have enough to eat and it was not by his choice. Talk about feeling guilty about every cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten. Yet guilt is not the answer here. Action is, but action that empowers the Haitian people to work for themselves. I’ve heard of the “gimme gimme gimme” mentality that is so prevalent in this country—largely resulting from the huge amount of foreign aid that has flooded the country, money that was just doled out in a way that did little more than to foster an overwhelming sense of dependency. Everywhere you hear "dollar, dollar". Yesterday, several boys were hollering at us "hey you, give me my money." They were only kids and thought they were being absolutely hilarious, but it really showed how dependent many people are on aid, and how entitled they feel to that aid. Good intentions and aid must be handled carefully in order to not worsen the problem. The people must be taught how to fish, so that they might fish for themselves and see the worth in their own work and brains.
My prayer for this trip is that every foreigner in Haiti right now, especially those here to “help”, have eyes that see as God sees, ears that hear as God hears, and hearts that love as God loves. The Haitian people have a rough life, there is no getting around this fact. Yet it is just as much of a fact that the Haitian people are the strongest people I have ever met—constitutionally and physically. I have been examining the faces of people we pass by and only one or two have seemed completely hopeless. Keeping in mind the trauma the country has experienced in the past year and the many people we have seen, this is a miracle. Difficulty exists, but so does hope. Devastation exists (there are still piles of rubble everywhere), but the people have not allowed that to cease their lives or their hope for the future. Can we as Americans truthfully say we are that resilient? I think not.
Among the things I saw today:
--culverts full of water with children bathing in them
--a tap-tap so full of people and things balanced on top of it that I was worried it might just tip over
--puppies
--men and women carrying HUGE loads of stuff on their heads (I’ve seen two women so far carrying full five-gallon buckets of water balanced on their noggins)
--police driving by with automatic weapons sticking out of their cars and gate guards with rifles
--a live goat hanging upside down by its feet from the back of a truck; after all, there is no point in buying a dead animal in Haiti, the more alive it is upon purchase the more fresh it is upon consumption
--people not blinking twice when the power goes out…it goes out all of the time
--people sitting in their living spaces on the side of a river that floods during rainy season
--one of the fields where mass graves for earthquake victims are located (just like the site at Wounded Knee, that area is painful to be near)
--chickens with their brood of chicks (DON’T LAUGH, I’ve never seen a mother chicken with her chicks before—it is always momma hen in one place and baby chicks/eggs in another)
--children in Luly wearing the dresses that Carol Harwood and her ladies sewed for them
--HOPE EVERYWHERE
