Haitian road trip

Last weekend, we hit the ole dusty trail with the trusty MCC truck to visit Bois-de-Laurence (Bwadlorens, for the Creole spellers among us), where MCC has funded a spring-capping project for the last several years. Our guesthouseguest, Leah, spent three years there as an MCC kid with her family and was eager to check out her old digs.

Bwadlorens is a long, arduous drive away, but Bryan and I agreed to go for two reasons:
1) It's always easier and more pleasant to travel in Haiti with someone who has connections.
2) As I've said, never say no to a change of scenery. Or a little adventure.

Bwadlorens is in the Central Plateau district in the northeast corner of the country, only a 2-hour hike from the Dominican border.

Did I mention it's in the middle of nowhere? It's easy for me to complain about Dezam being in the middle of nowhere, but I was amazed at our comparative population density. We actually managed to go whole minutes at a time without seeing anyone on this road.

We passed Lake Peligre, a construction byproduct of a the Peligre Dam/ hydroelectricity generator. It's gorgeous if you don't think of all the people displaced by its formation. Paul Farmer's hospital, Zanmi Lasante, was created partially to address the health care needs of this population.


Ah, electricity! I felt like a local yokel taking this picture, but power lines are not something you see in Dezam:


...along with tree-covered hillsides, although Dezam is getting there:


Leah made arrangements for us to stay with this lovely family. Niniz was one of Leah's childcare providers as a kid, and had the photo album to prove it.

Despite the fact that we were only in Bwadlorens for about 9 hours of daylight, we packed in conversations, walks, and visits.

(Did you notice that Bryan s wearing long sleeves in this picture? The
temperature was actually below 80 degrees!)

Bryan's knee also had a great time getting to know folks.

We also got to check out various embroidered projects, as this cottage industry can be found in nearly every household there.

After giving us a pretty rockin' garden tour (complete with samples of cocao, coconut, cherry tomatoes, and some kind of wild grain to take home with us), Niniz's sons showed us how to press juice from raw sugar cane.

Did I mention it was in the middle of nowhere?

All in all, we enjoyed ourselves. Be sure to click through to Leah's blog for more photos and details of the trip.

Making treasures

This week the environmental education team hosted a program in "trash formation" with a group called the Asosyasyon pou Konbat Fatra Plastik (the Association Against Plastic Trash, or the AKFP). We invited nine extra-interested kids from our Environmental Agents program to participate in the 5-day training.

The goal was to learn how to make these:
- which are fashioned from snack wrappers and strips of cardboard (cut from USAID vegetable oil shipping boxes, naturally). Not only is this a creative way to transform unsightly used packaging into something useful and pleasing, it gives these kids the tools to start a small business if they choose.

They divided into teams, each person cutting, folding, and stitching together the long strips.

After a day or so, they warmed up to each other and passed the time having fun hanging out.
See? It's not a sweatshop!

(Remember the Agent on the far right? That's Silmique, who rocked the mountaintop tree planting day a few weeks ago. He confirmed overachieverness today when he mentioned that he's already started making these bags at home in the evenings. No, he says, his hands aren't sore from all this detailed finger-work.)

A few of the finished products:

So this is a dream development project, right? It offers a creative solution to Haiti's ubiquitous trash problem and provides a way for kids to make money and protect the environment.

Win-win...almost. I do think it's a great project, given a few caveats:

1. "All Haitians have is trash, and they make such great things with it!" True, there is a lot of trash here, but there is a danger in thinking that empty plastic wrappers are the only resource this country has. Making these items can be seen as a true act of creativity, since Haitians aren't obligated to work with these materials any more than Americans are.

2. Finding plastic trash is easy, but finding carboard is surprisingly difficult. It can be had, but having it might present too much of a challenge to starting a business.

3. Where is the market for these bags? At $15-20 US each, they're out of the price range of the average Dezam area resident - and as Frantzo pointed out, you can buy a goat for that kind of money, which will reproduce and create a return on your investment.

(If I could step on a tiny soapbox for a minute: price is actually a really interesting question. $20 is next to nothing for a week's worth of work, but all too often tourists and travelers are on the hunt for bargain-basement souvenirs and treasures: "I got this great handmade X for $2!" We in the developed world need to change the way we financially value the labor of others, regardless of where they live.)

4. Reusing does nothing to reduce consumption, of course still the primary way to reduce trash production.

I am encouraged by the fact that these issues are being addressed by AKFP and my Haitian coworkers. This morning they discussed the idea of having multiple price points to allow more working- and middle-class Haitians to afford the bags. They discussed the value in using these bags with pride, showcasing local handiwork. They recognized that this is a stopgap measure while we all work on reducing consumption.

And that discussion, my friends, is something of a development dream come true.

Reforestation or Agroforestry?

Lately I've been noticing a problem with the terminology used to describe our program. I understand why it's easier to call our program reforestation because that's what the world wants to hear. People want to know that other people are reforesting land by simply planting trees and not ever cutting them down. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The other day someone asked, "It sounds like your program is agroforestry and not reforestation, is that true?" I thought for a moment and said "yes."

Dictionary.com provides this enlightenment:

re·for·est: to replant (an area) with forest cover.
re'for·es·ta'tion: n. the restoration (replanting) of a forest that had been reduced by fire or cutting. v. (used with object) to replant trees on (land denuded by cutting or fire).

ag·ro·for·est·ry: a method and system of land management involving the simultaneous cultivation of farm crops and trees; agriculture incorporating the growing of trees. Agroforestry ensures a continuous food supply, some continuous economic return, and the avoidance of soil degradation.

And courtesy of Wikipedia, there's also
sustainable forest management (SFM): the stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.

I think agroforestry fits us better than reforestation, and we're not yet at the whole-forest level of SFM. Maybe each of the definitions fit us in some way, but which one sounds sexier and which will get funding? Reforestation, of course.

I just feel sometimes like we are misleading people. Our supporters think we plant trees which hang out in the ground and grow, and everyone is happy. Most of the Haitians who plant MCC trees cut some of those trees every year to make money. They make charcoal, harvest firewood, mill lumber for building, etc. I get a little agitated (just a bit) when people think that we shouldn't let them cut trees. The people in our communities still need to make a living, and I think it's awesome and amazing that we have arrived at a program that both reforests the land and grants people a way to achieve some financial independence at the same time.

From now on we will have to reference this project as the KSM (Komite Santral Menonit) Reforestation, Agroforestry, and Sustainable Forestry Program. And in Haiti acronyms never make a pronounceable word so we can call it MCC/KSM RASFP. Easy, eh?

I guess that's it for now, even though now I feel like one of those people that are always trying to explain their very technical job to someone and eventually just say "I work with computers."

I plant trees.

Bryan

It's so complicated.....

Before I got to Haiti, I loved looking at Appropriate Technology (AT) websites to get ideas about what I could do when I got here. There are usually a lot of bicycle-powered devices, so I am of course immediately drawn to them. If you need a brief refresher, Appropriate Technology is taking things that are cheaply and readily available in an area and finding some way to use them to relieve a problem.

Usually AT is really interesting and totally MacGyver-inspired. Some bailing wire, a box of matches, and some duct tape, and people don't go hungry. It's really amazing stuff that I totally fell in love with. There are bicycle-powered electricity generators, water pumps, corn grinders that could pretty much save the planet. But after my love affair with AT, I came across some other commentators that spoke to the challenges of AT.

I heard a story of a village in Africa where women spend hours and hours every day washing clothes by hand. Someone saw this and thought, what an amazing waste of time! So they gave them some time-saving bicycled-powered washing machines. However, the project was a total failure. The first challenge was the deeply-rooted thought that women should not ride bicycles. It also turned out the time the women had been spending on laundry was also an important time for them to hang out and talk, and once they could wash clothes in 3o minutes the community became more disconnected. Okay, that's just to point out that there are always multiple layers in considering whether a project will actually work.

I still thought AT was great as long as you work out a few kinks here and there, but still didn't quite get it. An example that hits close to home here in Haiti is cutting trees to make charcoal.
A lot of people in Haiti do this (When I say "a lot," I mean that it almost seems like everyone supplements their income at some point in the year with a little charcoal-making). Obviously, finding alternate cooking fuels would alleviate the pressure to cut down much-needed trees. I found a website that describes how to make briquettes with waste material from other crops, and there are people here that are trying to promote the use of propane gas stoves. But a lot of Haitians think food doesn't taste as good cooked over a gas burner, and they prefer charcoal fires. When you hear this it's almost mind-blowing that they prefer taste over environmental sustainability. But in reality so does every American...right? We prefer eating a perfect banana shipped from Costa Rica more than food grown in our area, and that's a taste preference, right? It's hard to argue when it comes to such a cornerstone of culture of food.

After having these ideas swirling around in my head for awhile, I now see AT from the other end of the spectrum, the receiving end. I see people come to Haiti with a million ideas, a few thousand dollars, and expect to change the whole country - but really don't sit for more than a few minutes to get to know a Haitian. It's usually "what can I buy? how can my money be most effective here?" Well, first save your money and sit with some people, share food with them, visit their homes, ask about their kids, look at family photos and see them as people and not as problems that need to be solved.

I just get hung up on the fact that people seem to think that it's so easy to solve "basic" problems like food, water, and fuel - that because Haitians are relatively poor, they will eat or use anything we suggest.

Several times here I have seen folks offer suggestions for "Haitians," and our teammates look at the ideas and say, "That may be good for the peasants up on the mountain or folks in Gonaives" - when the intended audience is in fact them. It's so easy to solve other people's problems, right?

Appropriate technology enthusiasts (like me) sometimes seem to get caught up in the simple brilliance of a new idea and lose track of the person/people it's for. I don't mean to discourage anyone from offering new ideas to help people, but after being here for 6 months I now see how complicated it can be. Someone recently asked why people don't cut open their tin cans and flatten them to make roof tiles. I said they don't because they buy sheets of tin roofing. The person pointed out that it would be cheaper if they used tin cans. True. But my new litmus test for suggestions is to imagine asking the same question to someone in North America:
"Save all of your cans for the year and flatten them out to re-roof your house."
"Well...It might save money, but it's easier to just buy shingles!"
People in Haiti think the same way - who wants to be the only one in town with "trash" for a roof? I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because people are poor doesn't mean they have no pride, that they don't have opinions and want to make choices.

I will also admit that we live in a relatively wealthy part of Haiti. We live in a town where people do not go hungry. They have gardens that are productive and extended family networks to support them. When a hurricane comes they lose some crops, but they don't lose everything. I still see people that wear old clothes and get up at 3:30 am to work in their gardens, but they have old clothes and they have a garden which is a lot more than some people have.

I guess I'll just say that I personally feel bad that I used to only see the "developing world" as the "developing world." They weren't people I knew or friends, they were "developing cultures"....right? Well, now they're not "Haitians" anymore; they're Jean, Meleck, Frantzo, Fritzner, Nahomie, Francklin, and Michelet. Now when people come with all their ideas the only thing I want them to do is see how great Jean is (they're all great, but he is really great) and we can save the grand idea for next week.

I guess this is me finally realizing the MCC point of view that relationships are the primary
reason for us to be here and the rest will, hopefully, fall into place.

Thanks for reading,

Bryan