Haiti, sometimes you shine up real nice.

We lucked out and were able to spend last weekend in a pine forest about a three-hour drive from Port-au-Prince.

It was magical - a green and misty wonderland where we were able to wander the woods for hours, soaking up the beauty of it all:


We waded in streams, collecting watercress and wild mint...


We stayed in an enchanting little cabin, one of about 20 scattered throughout the woods:

Bryan spent time lounging around with Ben and his still-busted knee:

- except when they tried to get the perfect hammock shot. I do believe this is the one photo the dignified Mr. Depp couldn't take himself:

And Kurt even showed us where to find wild strawberries and raspberries!


Rave reviews. I can't believe we didn't discover this place until our last weekend in Haiti.

Ironwomen.

Yesterday afternoon six of us intrepid MCC women set out for a 28-mile bike ride through the Artibonite Valley, from Mirabelais to Desarmes:

I'm not really that short. It's just the wide-angle camera
lens and the tall Rachel standing next to me.

Sometimes we stuck together, sometimes we spread out, but either
way we were the biggest spectacle to hit the Artibonite since Fet Dezam.

Pancha won the award for Toughest Cyclist, considering the size and
weight of the brand-spankin'-new cargo bike she pedaled the whole way. (And good job on successfully completing Bike #2, Ben!)

Margot was the second toughest with her long-tail
cargo bike...this cow was pretty interested in the whole affair.

- or was the cow more interested in Esther's balancing act?

The trip was challenging and definitely stretched us
(couldn't resist!), but was a great time.

These photos are courtesy of Ben Depp, and I'll add links to the photos other folks took as they become available online.

These photos are also proof that we returned safe and sound to Haiti. It was really helpful to have people around for the sixty-to-zero, Philadelphia-to-Dezam transition that was challenging last time. We're hopeful this bodes well for the next few months!

En route

Over the past few days we've been busily preparing for our trip home to the U.S. for the Christmas season (yay!). Mostly things went smoothly, but there were a few little hiccups:

Leaving Dezam on Monday, we were all set. Our bags were packed, the house was cleaned, the worms were fed with hopefully enough food (but not too much) to tide them over the next few weeks, and Jides was all lined up to water our plants. We even brought a motorcycle with us in the truck to Port-au-Prince, knowing that the vehicles in Port would be few and far between. Everything was set. Almost.

The first hiccup was Jean-Remy telling us - halfway to Port - that he wasn't staying there until Wednesday (the day of our flight) as originally planned, so he couldn't drive us to the airport. Also, the motorcycle he was going to take back with him now needed to go back on Tuesday afternoon. Okay, sigh. Let's try to find another vehicle and someone to take us the airport.

The second hiccup came when we were using the motorcycle to run some errands after reaching the Port office on Tuesday. Within 15 feet of leaving the office, I ran over a seemingly innocuous black pile of dust...which turned out to be the remnants of a burnt tire. Unfortunately, this was a steel-belted tire - and by "belts" I mean hundreds of steel wires embedded in the tire that hadn't burned away with the rubber, a mass of which entangled in our rear wheel. The rear sprocket looked like a perfectly executed moto-destruction weapon. Fortunately, a passerby found some wire cutters for us and we cut and pulled until it looked like we could escape, so we did.

We made our way to the street and onto the main road, which was clogged with traffic. I slowly drive up the hill...until 5 cops caught up to me on foot and demanded that I pull over. Hiccup. Apparently, my license is bad, I don't have the right motorcycle designation, hiccup, I don't have the registration, hiccup, and the license plate is the "old" kind. Apparently, hiccup. Kurt came to our rescue and talked them out of confiscating the motorcycle and my license. Shockingly, we were allowed to leave, sans bribe, sans problem - just don't use the moto again until it's legal. OK.

Tuesday night we were presented with a pleasant hiccup, if such a thing is possible. Joel and Rachel invited us to their house for dinner, and we also got to go to the surprise birthday party of a new friend's fiance (two social activities in one night, wow!). We had fun watching a very stubborn pinata get whacked while cries of excitement and laughter floated up from the Haitian guests. After that we hotfooted it over to Joel and Rachel's and had a great night eating pizza (thanks!) and talking about all sorts of things. It was totally great, since we never have dinner with people in Dezam and never ever ever have two things to do in one night.

Our last hiccup came this morning as we left around 10am for the airport to catch our our 1pm flight. Usually this drive takes about 20 minutes, so as we sat in traffic, cars inching along, we started to sweat. Alexis, our intrepid chauffeur, was driving fast-and-furiously (okay, mostly slowly but still furiously) and managed to get us around a roadblock and to the airport about an hour before our flight. That's a little too close for comfort given that things in Haiti can sometimes (read: usually) get complicated. We got in through security, through check-in and another security point, and we started to calm down. Once inside, we bumped into not one but two friends who were also on their way home for the holidays.

So here we are safe and sound in Ft. Lauderdale, taking advantage of nice and fast and free wireless internet, a live band playing jazzy tunes about 15 feet from us, coffee, pizza, and English. On a super happy note, our only checked bag was the first to emerge from the luggage carousel, (when does that happen?) and when we got to the torturous customs check they waved us through (again, when does this happen?), which means we did not have to unpack and show each and every one of our stashed Haitian goodies.

This might be the last post for a little while as we will be seeing most of you shortly. Once we are back in the land of eternal summer we hope to return to posting frequently posts.

Merry Christmas! (hopefully without hiccups)

A Tale of Two Papayas

Last Thursday, the environmental education team trekked to the Central Plateau to visit Mouvman Peyizan Papay, a 36-year-old peasants' movements in the town of Papaye. We are planning to bring all the teachers in our program here in December, so we came to check out MPP's work and make arrangements for our excursion with their staff.

We started with a tour of their experimental gardens, learning about their soil mixture, irrigation systems, and permaculture strategies:


Their small-animal husbandry addresses the problem of elvaj lib (in which goats and other animals roam freely and eat what they like from various gardens). These goats are fed from the farm - the woody stems they don't eat are later used to build erosion barricades on sloped land.


Tire gardens protect plans from ranging chickens and provide a more controlled environment for managing the soil:


The mandala garden was bursting with garlic chives, cabbage, chard, peppers, and spinach:


This horse was not technically part of our tour, but isn't this one of the greatest saddles you've ever seen?

I think our teachers are going to have a terrific time.

The second papaya is a little closer to home. Our neighbor/landlord let us know that she disapproves of our rooftop garden:

"Why are you growing those papayas? You know they won't do anything."
"Yes, but it's more for fun [and shade] than anything..."

Pilgrim's Progress-fashion, we've nicknamed her Madam Pa Renmen (Mrs. Doesn't-like) because of her many complaints. If she can see us do it, she doesn't like it. It's hard to take her seriously after a while. This is a situation we're trying to improve with a spirit of humility and cooperativeness, but in the meantime I've realized that "love your enemies" and "love your neighbors" are basically the same commandment.

MCC Haiti - Annual Retreat

Returning to the Pearl of the Antilles

It's been over a month since our last blog update, and for good reason. We were busy packing and preparing for a trip home to the U.S. to visit family and friends for 3 weeks and then to busily get things together to return to Haiti.

Overall, it was an amazing trip home - we slipped right back into our old lives just like we had never left, and when we bumped into old friends on the streets of Philly some of them never knew we had been away. We biked through our own city on our own bikes and slept in our own bed and ate at all of our favorite restaurants. And of course we visited friends and family, which took us to Bristol, TN, Norfolk, VA, back to the Philadelphia area, and up to Boston, MA. Lots of smooth highway driving and cheap rest-stop food took care of any longings we had had for both in our year-long absence (well, we could take more of the smooth roads). We even got to attend our annual church retreat and hang out with a lot of church friends, attend a book discussion group (intellectual stimulation!), play shuffleboard, go on hikes, skip stones, and have lots of great conversations.

The time flew by. Haiti felt like a distant memory and almost like we had never even been there and that the past year never really happened. Near the end of our trip I had to write an e-mail in Kreyol and forgot the word for Thursday (ouch!).

The day of our trip back to Haiti, we fumbled around with suitcases and scales and measuring tape to make sure our bag wasn't oversize or overweight, an offense for which Spirit Air could charge us $150. We stressed over our almost-too-big bag while we stood in line at the check-in counter at the Atlantic City "International" Airport (our airport of choice because of the hundreds-of-dollars difference compared to flying into PHL). We got halfway checked in, bag and all, before the attendant asked us about our return ticket.
What?
"Well, we have no return ticket because we originated in Haiti, and this is our return flight."
"Hmmm," she said. "Do you have a Haitian visa?"
"Yes." We handed over our permis de sejour. She paged through them, obviously not understanding the French, and said, "These aren't good enough."
"What?!"
She politely responded that we need visas, not a permis whatchamacallit thingy.
"But no, this is it, this is the document, there is no other thing!"
She smiled a practiced Spirit-Airlines-customer-service smile and said, "my hands are tied." For an added measure of drama, she said, "I could lose my job over this, and I'm sorry, but it's just not worth it."
Lose your job? over what?
She told us to take a seat while she talked to a supervisor. As we sat, a few curious TSA guys walked over and asked us what the problem was. We explained, and they were shocked that we couldn't fly - but of course they could do nothing, and added that the customs guy just went home and wouldn't be back until 8am tomorrow morning.
"But isn't this an international airport? How can you have no customs official from 4:30 pm until 8am the following morning?"
After a few seconds of laughter the TSA guys admitted that ACY isn't really an international airport - but they may get a flight to Canada next year. Wow.

We finally talked to a supervisor, who proclaimed again and again that her hands are tied and it's not the fault of Spirit Airlines that we have just fallen through a crack in U.S. government regulations. We inquired again about how we can get to Haiti. Can you move us to another flight? She informed us that we need to buy a return ticket. Great, a nice affordable ticket, I'm sure.

We stepped aside to discuss for a minute whether this is the hand of God telling us not to go back or just some huge inconvenience through which we need to persevere. Huge inconvenience won out by a hair, and we bought a fully-refundable return ticket to Atlantic City for a random date within the next 90 days.

Of course the fun didn't stop there. Our connecting flight to Haiti didn't leave until the following morning, so we tucked into a corner of the Ft. Lauderdale airport and tried to get as much sleep as possible in the midst of fluorescent lights and the midnight-shift work crew making repairs to the terminal.

The rest of our trip was uneventful - we arrived in Port-au-Prince, where Ben and Alexis picked us up. It was great to catch up with them, since we hadn't seen them for about 6 weeks. We ended up spending the night at their place in Port, since Jean-Remy had errands to run and didn't want to return to Dezam until the next day. Hurray!

Being in Dezam the next day was good and bad. Leaving the U.S. and friends and family was hard, and hanging out with A&B had cushioned the blow, but in Dezam we were welcomed by our musty house, overgrown, untended plants, our neighbor's construction material stacked against our door, broken potted plants, and no water in our water tank. Welcome home!

Coming back has shown us how drastically different our lives are in the U.S. and Haiti. Here we still feel like strangers in a strange land and breaking into a new "community," especially this one, is much harder than one might think. Our trip home made us appreciate the community we have in the U.S. and the ease with which we can understand and make ourselves understood. We've found rural living to be much, much more difficult than living internationally, and have been reminded that we are social people that thrive on having lots of friends and acquaintances and lots of things to do.

So where does that leave us now? It leaves us still trying to build a life here. To find things to like. To find things to do. To find a place in this culture that lands us somewhere other than "development workers here to give handouts " or "white person here to exploit the market." To try to enjoy our remaining time of rural living, since it might be the last time we ever get to live in a place like this.

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.

Never say no to a change of scenery.

Bryan and I took advantage of an unexpectedly free weekend to visit the southwest part of Haiti. It's like a whole different country down there! Paved roads...trees...the ocean...

We stayed with a friend in a nearby town on Friday night before heading to a small guesthouse on the coast:
Good: mosquito-free "camping" indoors.
Bad: not having any photos of our hosts to show you. (Not taking photos of people we like? That's how we roll.)

We drank it all in:
Good: cooling off in the gentle waves.
Bad: brushing my foot against a sea urchin and getting a splinter that ended up staying in my toe for a week. Ouch.

Good: sitting in the shade feet from the water's edge.
Bad: well, there's not much bad about that, is there?

Good: staying at the beach until dusk.
Bad: dusk comes before 7pm in these parts this time of year.

I need more weekends like this one. Total spirit-lifter.

Fete Saut D'eau/Fet Sodo

Last Sunday, after a yummy birthday breakfast for Bryan (strawberry preserves! baked oatmeal!), we headed to the waterfall down the road for the annual week-long Vodou/Catholic festival. Yes, that's right: Vodou and Catholic. The Catholics celebrate the Vierge-Miracle, or the appearance of the Virgin Mary in a palm tree near the waterfall in 1847, while the Vodouisants come to pray to Erzulie, the goddess of love (often considered the Vodou equivalent of the Virgin Mary). Handily enough, both festivals run from July 7-16.

The waterfall itself is gorgeous enough to be a draw any time of year. We wore bathing suits and hiked up to stand under the rushing water, laughing with the dozens of people around us. It was the first time in a long time I've been around more than two ethnic groups (i.e., Haitians and me), since Sunday seemed to be some sort of UN/MINUSTAH visiting time.

Yesterday afternoon a few members of our team decided they wanted to check out the festival (for the first time ever, a fact I find somewhat astonishing considering that Dezam is pretty close to Sodo). Since the main part of the festival was supposed to be happening last night through this morning, we tagged along to see what we could see. What a difference a few days make! The waterfall was so loaded with people we didn't even attempt to bathe.

Along the road headed up to the entrance point, spur-of-the-moment rara bands sang and danced.

People stopped to light candles and leave offerings - rum, herbs, and plastic rosaries - at various places along the road.

We couldn't figure out what this carcass in the tree was - goat, perhaps?

Things were pretty similar last year, apparently, although it seems like the road has really improved since 2001 - now you can actually drive nearly all the way to the entrance point if there's space for a vehicle to pass.

I was glad we went yesterday for the sake of the experience, but overall it was one of the worst days we've had in Haiti. People were wildly aggressive: making fun of the blan, throwing things, telling us we weren't allowed there. I was cursed at more times yesterday than I ever have been in my life. I think our Haitian teammates were pretty surprised at the things people were yelling - and fortunately they went out of their way to look out for us.

Since this sort of unofficially kicks off the summer festival season in Haiti, many participants will head from Sodo to Limonad to Veret and onward. For me, though, this is the end of the party line.

Oh...the places you will go.

- or the places you will have been. We just wrapped up a whopping 10 days away from "home" with Kànaval celebrations, a 5-day trip to the D.R. with our team, and a few days lounging at the beach in Labadee/Cap Haitien in the north.

Kànaval

Nothing but the biggest celebration to hit the Catholic world each year, Kànaval is the last great splash before Lent begins. In Haiti it's a break from daily routine, a chance to fe dezòd (go a little crazy), and an amazing marketing opportunity for Haitian companies. Since this is our first year, we decided to head south to the annual parade in Jacmel (usually a week earlier than the rest), a town known for elaborate papier-mâche costumery:

Our working hypothesis is that things creative in Haiti are usually
political or religious. Yes, that is a MINUSTAH man getting mauled by a tiger.

The team's excursion
The morning after we returned from Jacmel, we loaded our team into the "bus," as Sharon likes to call it (our Toyota Landcruiser; it seats 12 Americans or about 20 Haitians) and set out on the much-anticipated trip to the D.R. For 4 of our teammates, this would be the first time they left Haiti. (Last minute maneuverings: we still didn't have Fritzner's visa – it was dropped off at the Dominican embassy for processing, and was supposed to be ready the morning of our trip. Luckily for him, it was.) Our frontier crossing went off without a hitch, even though we were stopped at SEVEN police checkpoints after we entered the country. Does the same thing happens in the U.S. along the Mexico border, or is this just really over the top? A lot of Haitians do cross the border illegally to find work, so I guess this is the Dominican way to catch them. Still. Some of these checkpoints were only a mile apart from each other.

11 hours after leaving Desarmes we arrived in Piedra Blanca, home base of Floresta, a reforestation program actually working on both halves of the island. They have had amazing success working with the Dominican government, which has made reforestation a national priority. (Tourism is booming, and tourists would much rather see trees than bare burnt earth and some cacti.) We toured eucalyptus and cacao forests, and also checked out Floresta’s agricultural work: oregano, cilantro, and pineapple fields.

Pineapple.

Jean, looking both studious and majestic.

Chocolate in the wild.

Learning about organic fertilizer with Rafael, a Floresta agriculturalist.

Our last day was spent taking in the sights of Santo Domingo. The best part for us was listening to the reactions of our Haitian co-workers:

Fritzner screaming to Frantzo, “Look! a road over our heads!” as we went under an overpass.

Nahomie whispering, Mezanmi! (“Oh my gosh!”) as the gate lifted after we dropped in our toll. (Tolls!)

Total silence as we drove past a big TV billboard; they sat enraptured.

It was a little sad for us that things that are so routine for us (and are actually nearly outmoded – who doesn’t have EZ-Pass?) were so remarkable to them. We so admire the bravery and persistence of Haitians in just living, but feel frustrated that it has to be that way – but we’ll leave the complexities of development for another post.

Labadee/Cap Haitian (Okap)

We decided to hop off the bus in Port, as we had decided to use the 5-day Kànaval weekend to take the bus south to Les Cayes to visit a friend. At the last minute, we were made an offer we couldn't refuse. Kurt (our new Country Representative – hooray!) and his girlfriend Hillary were headed north to the beach at Labadee and to check out Kànaval in Okap. The huge advantages for us: we wouldn’t have to sit on buses for hours, we could check out a place we’ve heard is unmissably great, and they could drop us off at our doorstep afterwards. We're in.

The town of Labadee is pretty much owned by Royal Caribbean; they’ve fenced off a section of the beach as a huge tropical tourist playground. Since we were not guests of Royal Caribbean (we stayed at a beautiful fort-turned-hotel with a little beach) we were not able to access this wonderland, but gawked Haitian-style at the cruise ships that arrived in the bay each day. They’re huge!

The ethereal mosquito net in our hotel room. See the greenery
outside? And the fan in the corner? That's a little slice of heaven.

Our "roommate": an intrepid hermit crab.

The next day we took the boat taxi back to Cap Haitian for Kànaval. To give you a sense of what this is like in Port-au-Prince, thousands of glitter-covered Okappers dancing in the streets to the loudest music ever is considered pretty tame. It was fun to see everyone enjoying themselves, taking one day to dance away sorrows.

Returning home was bittersweet: we love to travel, but living out of a bag gets old after a week or so. Hello, garden! Hello, home cooking! We missed you.