Hello blog readers and trip supporters!
We are now back in the USA. We still have Haiti on the brain and tomorrow we are going to the American University Memorial Service for the 2 year anniversary of the earthquake. I have been sharing my experience and the photos from the trip with family and friends. I've also been trying to be very conscientious about doing things that contribute to the goals I set for myself while in Haiti.
We'll be planning events and activities for the coming semester surrounding Haiti and Haitian current events so that we continue to learn together and take action on the things we feel committed to.
The time we spent in Haiti was thought-provoking, enlightening, and rejuvenating, and I know it forever changed the way I think about international aid and development and the developing world.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday Jan. 18
Wednesday was another rise and shine early morning. We headed off to the church to continue our service removing rubble of a fallen house. One of the sweetest things about arriving at church in the morning is the greeting exchanged with the work team members. The older women come prancing in with a smile saying bonjur (good day) to each person and we each exchange a little kiss on the cheek with them. With our creyol language skills we all ask each other how you you today and the response is good, great, not to bad or sometimes fatigue (tired) if we are moving slow that morning. We pound fists with the men or give high fives all around as we energize for another day on the bucket line. Passing heavy buckets down the hill can be difficult but it goes by quickly when we fill the time with conversations, songs, and other entertainment.
After lunch we had an exchange with the Haitians on the work team. It was a unique opportunity to share information about ourselves and learn about their lives as well.We all started by sharing our full name. We asked them questions about how the earthquake affected their lives. Some lost their businesses or their jobs in the earthquake. They explained how life is not the same anymore, but they manage with what they have. We asked what they are proud of and what they do when they are not with us. From us, they were eager to hear about our impressions of Haiti. We told them how we feel welcomed and how amazed we are with how gracious Haitians are.
In the late afternoon most of us went to an art cooperative called Apparent Project in Port Au Prince. (http://apparentproject.org/mission.html) The Haitian men and woman make beads and jewelry from recycled materials. They get paid 3x the minimum wage so they can support their families. The jewelry is also sold to designers and department stores in the U.S. It was a great example of a sustainable business practice and it felt good to support such a cause. We all bought some goodies to bring home. We also stopped at the painting street that is lined with beautiful, colorful Haitian paintings.
At night we continued to process the many things we are learning, seeing and thinking about while here in Haiti. Another great day here in Haiti.
After lunch we had an exchange with the Haitians on the work team. It was a unique opportunity to share information about ourselves and learn about their lives as well.We all started by sharing our full name. We asked them questions about how the earthquake affected their lives. Some lost their businesses or their jobs in the earthquake. They explained how life is not the same anymore, but they manage with what they have. We asked what they are proud of and what they do when they are not with us. From us, they were eager to hear about our impressions of Haiti. We told them how we feel welcomed and how amazed we are with how gracious Haitians are.
In the late afternoon most of us went to an art cooperative called Apparent Project in Port Au Prince. (http://apparentproject.org/mission.html) The Haitian men and woman make beads and jewelry from recycled materials. They get paid 3x the minimum wage so they can support their families. The jewelry is also sold to designers and department stores in the U.S. It was a great example of a sustainable business practice and it felt good to support such a cause. We all bought some goodies to bring home. We also stopped at the painting street that is lined with beautiful, colorful Haitian paintings.
At night we continued to process the many things we are learning, seeing and thinking about while here in Haiti. Another great day here in Haiti.
Tuesday the 17th- CONCERN
After breakfast, on Tuesday, we all quickly piled into the big white truck. Our typical 10-15 minute drive to the work site ended up being over an hour. It turned out that a truck had lost control of it's breaks, crashed into a bus, and that bus killed 29 people and injured over 65 others. We all couldn't believe that so many people could be killed and injured from a car accident but unfortunately in Haiti people line this main street so their were many targets for this bus to hit.
Since we hit a lot of traffic, we got a late start to work. Starting around 830-9ish we all worked hard bringing buckets of rubble up and down the hill. It's crazy to me that everyone on the team shows up everyday with a smile and so much enthusiasm to start working. Although it is hard to start work again after a stop for a bread, tea/coffee break, everyone finishes out right to the end!
After getting back to MCC, we all took showers and drove over to Amy's apartment. Amy is a coordinator for the Irish non-governmental organization CONCERN. While CONCERNS main goal is to work with the poorest of the poor in Haiti, Amy focuses on building local capacity for peace, training on peace, and peace-building. When we arrived at Amy's apartment I was astonished by how beautiful it was. The balcony of her apartment overlooked a large portion of the city as it stood on one of the highest areas of Port-au-Prince. The apartment was also lined with paintings by Jean Louis Maxan, a Haitian artist who actually talked with us at the apartment, who described himself as one of the top 50-100 artists in Haiti. I wasn't surprised to hear this as one of his paintings, depicting the earthquake, took up a whole wall and was filled with beautiful vibrant colors. After the artist spoke to us, we ate plantain chips and other local Haitian snacks and began to talk with Amy. Many of her initiatives focused on creating dialogue between gang members, private sector members, local community members, and the elite. Through introducing people, CONCERN hopes to break bridges to get all classes of different communities to work together to solve issues. I found Amy's work with gang members very intriguing. I kept questioning why any gang member would care to make peace with the rest of the community members or why they would want to be seen in public when the police want to arrest them. Through listening to Amy (and from our reflection later that night) I realized that gang members are just people who resort to violence because they feel they have no other way to provide money for education, food, and a home for their families. When gang members are involved in peace-building activities they can be willing to give up the violence if they find they have an equal place in society as everyone else. Amy ended with telling us some "Tips for a Young Peacemaker" which i and we all headed back home to MCC for dinner, reflection, and some good late night games.
**Take a look at Amy's blog: http://thegeographyofsoul.wordpress.com/
****Article on Death of over 29 people in Haiti on Tuesday
http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Canada%20-%20World/2012-01-17/article-2866965/Haiti-official-says-death-toll-in-truck-crash-climbs-to-29-dead-67-other-injured/1
Since we hit a lot of traffic, we got a late start to work. Starting around 830-9ish we all worked hard bringing buckets of rubble up and down the hill. It's crazy to me that everyone on the team shows up everyday with a smile and so much enthusiasm to start working. Although it is hard to start work again after a stop for a bread, tea/coffee break, everyone finishes out right to the end!
After getting back to MCC, we all took showers and drove over to Amy's apartment. Amy is a coordinator for the Irish non-governmental organization CONCERN. While CONCERNS main goal is to work with the poorest of the poor in Haiti, Amy focuses on building local capacity for peace, training on peace, and peace-building. When we arrived at Amy's apartment I was astonished by how beautiful it was. The balcony of her apartment overlooked a large portion of the city as it stood on one of the highest areas of Port-au-Prince. The apartment was also lined with paintings by Jean Louis Maxan, a Haitian artist who actually talked with us at the apartment, who described himself as one of the top 50-100 artists in Haiti. I wasn't surprised to hear this as one of his paintings, depicting the earthquake, took up a whole wall and was filled with beautiful vibrant colors. After the artist spoke to us, we ate plantain chips and other local Haitian snacks and began to talk with Amy. Many of her initiatives focused on creating dialogue between gang members, private sector members, local community members, and the elite. Through introducing people, CONCERN hopes to break bridges to get all classes of different communities to work together to solve issues. I found Amy's work with gang members very intriguing. I kept questioning why any gang member would care to make peace with the rest of the community members or why they would want to be seen in public when the police want to arrest them. Through listening to Amy (and from our reflection later that night) I realized that gang members are just people who resort to violence because they feel they have no other way to provide money for education, food, and a home for their families. When gang members are involved in peace-building activities they can be willing to give up the violence if they find they have an equal place in society as everyone else. Amy ended with telling us some "Tips for a Young Peacemaker" which i and we all headed back home to MCC for dinner, reflection, and some good late night games.
**Take a look at Amy's blog: http://thegeographyofsoul.wordpress.com/
****Article on Death of over 29 people in Haiti on Tuesday
http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Canada%20-%20World/2012-01-17/article-2866965/Haiti-official-says-death-toll-in-truck-crash-climbs-to-29-dead-67-other-injured/1
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Sunday and Monday Adventures
Hi guys we're still healthy, happy, and safe in Port-au-Prince! On Sunday we went on a hike in the mountains above Haiti and saw beautiful views of the mountains (Deye mon gen mon [Beyond mountains there are mountains]). The hike gave us the chance to get out of the city and into some fresh air (and near some cows!). We had a picnic of baby bananas and banana bread up there and we shared funny animal encounter stories. After the hike we came back to the guesthouse for lunch and then we heard from Ron, a man born in America who lives in Haiti now and has lived here for 25 years. He is accepted as a member of the community in which he lives and he has a lot of insight and experience to share about Haiti.
Ron spoke to us about Haitian development under some of the more recent political regimes. He echoed a lot of the things we have been hearing. He spoke about the internal conflict that he thinks Haitians have to solve: the conflict between pride for their country and history, and the inferiority complex that is ever-present. Ron is very knowledgeable so hearing from him was important for us and for our learning process.
On Monday we went to the work site to put in another couple hours of rubble removal. We ate lunch at the church after the work and then we rushed back to the MCC guesthouse to get cleaned up to go to RNDDH (National Network for Human Rights). We heard from Pierre, who has been working in Haitian human rights for a long time (and is a very high profile person in Haiti), and has been reporting on the human rights violations in Haiti. He spoke to us about his specific work in human rights - the trainings they do and the reports they write, as well as the sources of their information. He also shared some of his personal opinions about the current political situation and the new President, President Martelly.
Ron spoke to us about Haitian development under some of the more recent political regimes. He echoed a lot of the things we have been hearing. He spoke about the internal conflict that he thinks Haitians have to solve: the conflict between pride for their country and history, and the inferiority complex that is ever-present. Ron is very knowledgeable so hearing from him was important for us and for our learning process.
On Monday we went to the work site to put in another couple hours of rubble removal. We ate lunch at the church after the work and then we rushed back to the MCC guesthouse to get cleaned up to go to RNDDH (National Network for Human Rights). We heard from Pierre, who has been working in Haitian human rights for a long time (and is a very high profile person in Haiti), and has been reporting on the human rights violations in Haiti. He spoke to us about his specific work in human rights - the trainings they do and the reports they write, as well as the sources of their information. He also shared some of his personal opinions about the current political situation and the new President, President Martelly.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Our trip to Dezam
A common theme running through discourse on Haiti's reconstruction is the need for decentralization - shifting Haiti's population from densely populated Port-Au-Prince to less populated areas. Last weekend, we visited Dezam, one of the less populated areas, namely, to learn more about MCC's work in that region, the development taking place there and what could be done to promote migration to the rural areas of Haiti.
Our lesson on decentralization began before we even reached Dezam. There are two main routes from Port-Au-Prince to Dezam, and we traveled on the route that takes us through Mirebalais, the location of Partners In Health new teaching hospital in Haiti. We were kindly given a tour of the new hospital and it looks extremely beautiful and big. (It's still under construction but almost complete). The hospital has been designed with a special emphasis on maternal and child health; it has a special waiting and consultation area for women needing maternal health care . It also has an emergency room specifically for attending to patients with complications that may arise due to pregnancy. The belief that maternal health matters, is evident in almost all aspects of the hospital's design.
Through our discussions with the Hospital Project Coordinator, we really wanted to learn more about how the local community was reacting to the construction of the hospital, what the anticipated effects on the community would be as well as how the organizational and hospital set-up had taken into account the cultural and social contexts in which the hospital was being built. We learned (from the Hospital Project Coordinator) that generally, the community is quite pleased with the arrival of the hospital. The hospital should be able to provide local employment both directly and indirectly that would facilitate the community's economic growth. It also means a greater chance of better health outcomes for those living in the community.
Some of us though, left the visit a little worried about how the hospital's day-to-day functioning had taken into account the social norms of the local society. For instance, we were informed that parents would not be allowed to stay in the hospitals overnight with their children. What would this mean though, for parents traveling from far-away places to a rural area with little guest accommodation? Would parents feel comfortable leaving their children with nurses and doctors (who are more or less strangers)? We also thought about what the impact on local "midwives" would be once the hospital began to encourage hospital births. Despite some of our concerns, we were generally impressed with the hospital.
Once our tour at the Mirebalais Hospital was over, we continued our trip to Dezam. There we met Jean-Remy, a Haitian MCC employee who has worked for the organization for 25 years (ever since MCC began working in Dezam). Currently, MCC's work in Dezam focuses on reforestation and environmental education. Jean Remy began his discussion with a brief time line of deforestation in Haiti. Before the early 1980s, many Haitians living in the rural areas owned Haitian pigs (don't know a better technical term for the pigs but they were local, indigenous pigs). The pigs were cheap and easy to raise and were often considered as bank accounts for rural households; were a family ever in some dire economic situation, the pig could be sold to help remedy the family's situation. In 1983, the U.S. government supported the mass slaughter of all Haitian pigs because of the outbreak of a swine disease (we were not told exactly what disease). The loss of these pigs, a huge economic resource for families, provided a great impetus for families to begin to cut down trees to sell for firewood or to make coal. Trees took the place of pigs and became the new bank accounts for families. Today, only about 2% of Haiti's original forest remains.
MCC's partner's approach to reforestation is two-pronged. On one hand, the partners realize the economic value of trees to rural families, who are often overlooked by government and NGOs in the development process, and have designed a project that allows planters to plant trees that they can later cut down for sale. On the other hand though, these partners also realize the need for more long term reforestation of Haiti, and work on planting trees in protected regions where cutting them down is illegal.
After lunch, we visited a technical school being built by a local NGO called GASA. GASA believes that rural communities will develop through love for education and that education and community growth are achieved through patience and sacrifice. Love, Education, Patience and Sacrifice.This technical school trains its students in a variety of skills and jobs e.g. mechanics, plumbing, agriculture, computer technology etc. GASA believes that by training community members in these skills, community members can find employment that would help them improve their economic situation. It was easy to see that the school had been built with the community's growth and welfare in mind.
While we were at the technical school, we were reminded of how negative agricultural practices in the U.S. had crossed borders into Haiti. The school used feed with growth hormones to raise its chickens such that withing 47 days of a chick's birth it would be ready for sale and human consumption. We were further remind of how agricultural practices cross boundaries, when on Saturday morning, we had the opportunity to visit a local farm. We learned about the increased use of fertilizer among farmers and how very often, these fertilizers are used without proper education on their application or possible health hazards. There also seems to be a greater desire among farmers to use fertilizers in farming despite a lot of the information we have in the U.S. on the detrimental effects of the fertilizers.
At the farm, we also learned about land acquisition practices that make the poor poorer and the rich richer. Very often, in rural areas, if a man is in need of money, a wealthier man will lend him the money in exchange for the borrower's land. The lender will work the land and own all the crop that comes from it until the borrower returns the full amount of money loaned. While the man in need of money obtained a loan to help him through those rough times, he lost the land he used to farm on and generate money for himself and his family; it thereby becomes harder for him to raise the money needed to pay the lender back.
We ended our time in Dezam with a stimulating and insightful discussion with Josh and Marie-Lynne, a Canadian couple working for MCC. They spoke to us about their roles as aid workers and how very often their role in Haiti seemed comparable to the role of colonizers in Haiti - how no matter how much an aid worker tried, they would always carry a certain amount of privilege with them. This raised interesting questions among us, and seemed to echo a lot of the sentiments we had been hearing throughout our time here. What is our role as aid workers? How long should we be out here working as aid workers? Should we be here? If we are not here, what can we do to support international development?
After our Saturday lunch (and yes, I'm ending the discussion with Josh and Marie-Lynne with the above paragraph, because we really did leave with more questions that answers), we headed off to Obama beach. The beach was breath taking, the water was just the right temperature. We met a few members of the UN peace keeping force there.
Well that's a summary of our Friday and Sunday and believe me it really is the summary! We're having a great time - learning a lot and enjoying each others' company in the land that was and will again be the Pearl of the Antilles
Our lesson on decentralization began before we even reached Dezam. There are two main routes from Port-Au-Prince to Dezam, and we traveled on the route that takes us through Mirebalais, the location of Partners In Health new teaching hospital in Haiti. We were kindly given a tour of the new hospital and it looks extremely beautiful and big. (It's still under construction but almost complete). The hospital has been designed with a special emphasis on maternal and child health; it has a special waiting and consultation area for women needing maternal health care . It also has an emergency room specifically for attending to patients with complications that may arise due to pregnancy. The belief that maternal health matters, is evident in almost all aspects of the hospital's design.
Through our discussions with the Hospital Project Coordinator, we really wanted to learn more about how the local community was reacting to the construction of the hospital, what the anticipated effects on the community would be as well as how the organizational and hospital set-up had taken into account the cultural and social contexts in which the hospital was being built. We learned (from the Hospital Project Coordinator) that generally, the community is quite pleased with the arrival of the hospital. The hospital should be able to provide local employment both directly and indirectly that would facilitate the community's economic growth. It also means a greater chance of better health outcomes for those living in the community.
Some of us though, left the visit a little worried about how the hospital's day-to-day functioning had taken into account the social norms of the local society. For instance, we were informed that parents would not be allowed to stay in the hospitals overnight with their children. What would this mean though, for parents traveling from far-away places to a rural area with little guest accommodation? Would parents feel comfortable leaving their children with nurses and doctors (who are more or less strangers)? We also thought about what the impact on local "midwives" would be once the hospital began to encourage hospital births. Despite some of our concerns, we were generally impressed with the hospital.
Once our tour at the Mirebalais Hospital was over, we continued our trip to Dezam. There we met Jean-Remy, a Haitian MCC employee who has worked for the organization for 25 years (ever since MCC began working in Dezam). Currently, MCC's work in Dezam focuses on reforestation and environmental education. Jean Remy began his discussion with a brief time line of deforestation in Haiti. Before the early 1980s, many Haitians living in the rural areas owned Haitian pigs (don't know a better technical term for the pigs but they were local, indigenous pigs). The pigs were cheap and easy to raise and were often considered as bank accounts for rural households; were a family ever in some dire economic situation, the pig could be sold to help remedy the family's situation. In 1983, the U.S. government supported the mass slaughter of all Haitian pigs because of the outbreak of a swine disease (we were not told exactly what disease). The loss of these pigs, a huge economic resource for families, provided a great impetus for families to begin to cut down trees to sell for firewood or to make coal. Trees took the place of pigs and became the new bank accounts for families. Today, only about 2% of Haiti's original forest remains.
MCC's partner's approach to reforestation is two-pronged. On one hand, the partners realize the economic value of trees to rural families, who are often overlooked by government and NGOs in the development process, and have designed a project that allows planters to plant trees that they can later cut down for sale. On the other hand though, these partners also realize the need for more long term reforestation of Haiti, and work on planting trees in protected regions where cutting them down is illegal.
After lunch, we visited a technical school being built by a local NGO called GASA. GASA believes that rural communities will develop through love for education and that education and community growth are achieved through patience and sacrifice. Love, Education, Patience and Sacrifice.This technical school trains its students in a variety of skills and jobs e.g. mechanics, plumbing, agriculture, computer technology etc. GASA believes that by training community members in these skills, community members can find employment that would help them improve their economic situation. It was easy to see that the school had been built with the community's growth and welfare in mind.
While we were at the technical school, we were reminded of how negative agricultural practices in the U.S. had crossed borders into Haiti. The school used feed with growth hormones to raise its chickens such that withing 47 days of a chick's birth it would be ready for sale and human consumption. We were further remind of how agricultural practices cross boundaries, when on Saturday morning, we had the opportunity to visit a local farm. We learned about the increased use of fertilizer among farmers and how very often, these fertilizers are used without proper education on their application or possible health hazards. There also seems to be a greater desire among farmers to use fertilizers in farming despite a lot of the information we have in the U.S. on the detrimental effects of the fertilizers.
At the farm, we also learned about land acquisition practices that make the poor poorer and the rich richer. Very often, in rural areas, if a man is in need of money, a wealthier man will lend him the money in exchange for the borrower's land. The lender will work the land and own all the crop that comes from it until the borrower returns the full amount of money loaned. While the man in need of money obtained a loan to help him through those rough times, he lost the land he used to farm on and generate money for himself and his family; it thereby becomes harder for him to raise the money needed to pay the lender back.
We ended our time in Dezam with a stimulating and insightful discussion with Josh and Marie-Lynne, a Canadian couple working for MCC. They spoke to us about their roles as aid workers and how very often their role in Haiti seemed comparable to the role of colonizers in Haiti - how no matter how much an aid worker tried, they would always carry a certain amount of privilege with them. This raised interesting questions among us, and seemed to echo a lot of the sentiments we had been hearing throughout our time here. What is our role as aid workers? How long should we be out here working as aid workers? Should we be here? If we are not here, what can we do to support international development?
After our Saturday lunch (and yes, I'm ending the discussion with Josh and Marie-Lynne with the above paragraph, because we really did leave with more questions that answers), we headed off to Obama beach. The beach was breath taking, the water was just the right temperature. We met a few members of the UN peace keeping force there.
Well that's a summary of our Friday and Sunday and believe me it really is the summary! We're having a great time - learning a lot and enjoying each others' company in the land that was and will again be the Pearl of the Antilles
Saturday, January 14, 2012
January 12: 2 Years After the Quake
I remember when the earthquake hit Haiti two years ago. It was winter break 2010. I have a distinct memory of watching CNN news coverage of relief efforts while doing cardio exercise at the gym. You couldn't avoid the news from Haiti. I was in awe at the devastation and destruction. It drew to my attention the grave vulnerability of Haiti and the Haitian people. Never could I have predicted that two years later I would be in Haiti commemorating the anniversary of the quake.
On Thursday morning we dressed in our church clothes and went to services at the same church where we had been meeting for our service activities. When we arrived, the pastor welcomed us to the service noting that our presence symbolized an act of solidarity. The entire church community was significantly impacted by the earthquake. The church building fell in the quake and was reconstructed as a temporary tent with pews and a stage/podium. It is located directly next to one of the tent camps set up after the quake for people who lost their homes and belongings. The pastor lost his wife in the quake. At one point the pastor invited people to share their losses. Men, woman and children stood announcing with trembling voices how they lost a brother, grandparent, niece, friend, etc. I held back tears feeling the emotion welling up in my throat but not knowing whether it was appropriate to cry. As I watched everyone around me praying fervently, I felt a burning voice inside me calling that the loss experienced in Haiti was just unfair! Despite the sadness of the day, I sensed the people's resilience and gratitude trusting that God will provide.
In the afternoon we visited HELP--Haiti Education Leadership Program. HELP provides scholarships for exceptional students from all over Haiti to come to Port Au Prince for university. Higher education in Haiti is a privilege and often not even a possibility for rural students. HELP provides the students with housing in PAP and additional academic and student support services to excel. While students study in the university, HELP provides courses in English, computers and leadership. I was struck by the service component that HELP adds for the students because it reminds me so much of the Alternative Break service learning program that we are currently doing in Haiti. We all were extremely impressed with the mission, purpose and effectiveness of the organization. It was a great visit.
On Thursday morning we dressed in our church clothes and went to services at the same church where we had been meeting for our service activities. When we arrived, the pastor welcomed us to the service noting that our presence symbolized an act of solidarity. The entire church community was significantly impacted by the earthquake. The church building fell in the quake and was reconstructed as a temporary tent with pews and a stage/podium. It is located directly next to one of the tent camps set up after the quake for people who lost their homes and belongings. The pastor lost his wife in the quake. At one point the pastor invited people to share their losses. Men, woman and children stood announcing with trembling voices how they lost a brother, grandparent, niece, friend, etc. I held back tears feeling the emotion welling up in my throat but not knowing whether it was appropriate to cry. As I watched everyone around me praying fervently, I felt a burning voice inside me calling that the loss experienced in Haiti was just unfair! Despite the sadness of the day, I sensed the people's resilience and gratitude trusting that God will provide.
In the afternoon we visited HELP--Haiti Education Leadership Program. HELP provides scholarships for exceptional students from all over Haiti to come to Port Au Prince for university. Higher education in Haiti is a privilege and often not even a possibility for rural students. HELP provides the students with housing in PAP and additional academic and student support services to excel. While students study in the university, HELP provides courses in English, computers and leadership. I was struck by the service component that HELP adds for the students because it reminds me so much of the Alternative Break service learning program that we are currently doing in Haiti. We all were extremely impressed with the mission, purpose and effectiveness of the organization. It was a great visit.
From Dusty Rubble to Ripe Mango's; New Ways to See Haiti (Jan 11)
When the alarm went off this morning at 6 am this morning, I was craving another 4-6 hours of sleep. As a person who spent most of their winter break (before the Haiti trip) waking up at 12 in the afternoon and eating "breakfast" around 1 pm, the mornings in Haiti have been quite the adjustment. Having oatmeal with raisins and peanuts while chugging 3 cups of coffee didn't even seem to wake me up. But, as the day previous had shown me getting up early to our rubble clearing site was more valuable than any amount of sleep could be.
Getting to our rubble clearing site proved to be quick and efficient as we arrived at the church, gathered our tools, rounded up our Haitian and American rubble clearing team, said a prayer, and walked to the site. We all seemed to comment that we wished there was a more efficient way to clear the rubble but for now all we had were shovels, buckets, and an assembly line of people to move the rubble from the house down the hill to the truck. It astonished me (even after yesterday's 4 hour of rubble clearing) how truly motivated everyone on the team was. There were many barriers and challenges we all had to leap over. A few of the Haitian women were over 60 but they continued to move buckets of rubble all day long. Many of us couldn't speak Creole but we found ways to interact through body language, games, and short Creole phrases. Most importantly to me, no one gave up. We aren't all athletes and we don't all come from the same backgrounds but all 20 or so of us come together for 4 hours and don't give up. Going to the work site really does put "a face to the name" (per say) for me. The "post earthquake Haiti" that I read about in the newspaper isn't a land of the poor but a group of people who are fighting to make a living and working hard to better themselves and their country...just like you and me. Rubble isn't lining the roads and taking over the country but instead is seen in pockets, continuing to be removed day by day.
After coming back to our new home at MCC we took showers and had the opportunity to hear from Ari. Ari is a Haitian man who started the Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal (K.P.L.) which is an organization advocating to the Haitian people to eat locally produced Haitian food instead of imported food. He described that free trade and food drops (done by the United States and outside countries particularly after the earthquake) have stunted the local economy greatly because people have stopped eating locally grown Haitian food for less expensive imported food. I easily recognized how this is devastating to the local farmers whose crops are not wanted as much as less expensive imported and donated foods. After Ari spoke, I learned that not only of Haitians losing jobs, but also that "one sided communication" is being continued. Americans/outsiders are "communicating" to the Haitians that outside food is better and that Haitians are not able to produce all the food their people need to survive. Ari described that Haiti does/has the able to produce all of the food for its people and when people start to eat locally demand will create a greater supply (of Haitian grown food). With more jobs in agriculture and less reliance on outside influence, infrastructure is bound to change. I truly believe in the potential for Haiti, because (believe it or not) at one point 1/2 of all of the sugar produced in the world came from Haiti.
After dinner and a conversation about food sovereignty I couldn't help but wish that imported foods were not present in Haiti. Haitian people could be given a whole new sense of dignity that they come from a country with abundances of ripe mangos, fresh papaya, and other foods they are able to produce without any outside help.
Watch Ari's commercial about K.P.L with over 16,000 views on YouTube and local Haitian television by clicking on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSpyGCZkp-A
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