New projects!

So I've got some more projects to do now! I'll give a small recap of what I've done lately.

Dante and I have been working on the rooftop garden and compost pile. We did a bunch of cleaning, clearing away of old "yard" waste (mostly into the compost!), sprucing up, and work on the compost piles themselves. (Harvesting finished compost, consolidating piles, etc.) The compost pile area could use a roof so when it rains it doesn't get overly soaked and leak out everywhere. There is enough scrap tin roofing around that we can use it for that. We also got the dry toilet* back in working order so that can be used and the contents composted. After some tender loving care, the compost pile is up to 140 degrees F!!!! I'm such a nerd - I love this stuff. I have found that Haitians are very resourceful and creative sometimes out of necessity, when money or materials aren't available they find a clever way to get the job done (i.e. building or fixing something). Oh, there is also a random solar water heater on the roof, and I fixed that up, cleaned it off, and tested it out. It's not one of those panels with heat exchanger tubes in it, it's a hemisphere of mirrors with a platform in the center (like a sattelite dish) where you can place a pot of water and heat it up that way. It works really well! It was fun playing with it.

The bigger projects are that the larger compost sites in the nearby towns of Limonade and Milot also need some TLC, to make sure they're working properly and geting up to temperature. They are probably a little dried out. Dante, Agronome (more on him later), and I are also going to take finished compost from the Milot site and plant some corn in a controlled experiment - corn in normal soil, corn in 100% compost, corn in 50/50 soil/compost, and the same 3 categories also watered with diluted urine water - so 6 categories in all. This is very useful as a visual to show people the benefit of using compost and urine as soil amendments. I'll be working with this dude known as the "Agronome" who is a Haitian about my age who studied agriculture in university. I think he's even nerdier than I am when it comes to this stuff!

One random thing - anyone who enjoys juvenile humor about excrement as I do would appreciate the words for "taking a dump" or "going number 2" and for "taking a leak" in Kreyol. Taking a dump and poo itself are both kaka (either verb or noun), and peeing is simply pipi (pronounced peepee - also either verb or noun).

I'm glad to be able to do something useful. Everyone in Port au Prince is super busy and I'm able to help them get these other projects crossed off their To Do list since they are too busy to come to this part of the country! In general, I really love everyone I work with, and all the Haitian people I've met as well. They are super friendly, and my Kreyol is progressing, which is helpful!

* SOIL builds and implements dry toilets, as opposed to composting toilets or wet non-composting toilets. This means that the material doesn't actually compost while in the toilet structure, but must be moved to a composting site for composting there. Additionally, it's a dry toilet, meaning that urine is captured separately. There's a urine diversion tray built in to the toilet so the urine is collected in a separate tank. The poo and organic cover material go together and stay very dry since the cover material is extremely dry. This has the added benefit of killing any pathogens (bacteria, parasite worms or eggs, etc.) that are in it, since they all die off rapidly in dry conditions. At home I used leaves or highly shredded paper from work as the organic cover material. Here they use bagasse, which is the leftover plant material from harvesting sugar cane. It is in superabundance here, and the factories are happy to give it away.

I will write more about the pros and cons of these toilets later!

Learn about Haiti

I spent a lot of this past weekend reading. A particularly insightful, troubling, well-written, and (not exaggerating much here) earth-shaking book I devoured is "Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment." Paul Farmer, the Harvard doctor who set up the famous network of health clinics in Haiti (his great biography is 'Mountains Beyond Mountains') reviewed this book, saying that it is "THE best book for anyone wanting to learn about recent politics in Haiti." And Paul Farmer is LEGIT!

The book goes a long way in explaining why Haiti is so incredibly poor and how it has been beset by a wearisome history of oppression - both domestically and internationally. Surprisingly, the US had a major part to play, and not the positive one I might have hoped for. US and international aid agencies also have not only flaws but outright agendas that often help cripple the country.

For some people this book will be (highly) political. For me, it is simply and profoundly about truth. What happened in the beginning of Haiti's independence, and in its more recent history? What were peoples' motivations? What were the consequences (or fruit) of their actions and decisions? In these decisions, were the Haitians treated with dignity and respect? Where was profound hypocrisy involved?

I truly, truly, truly cannot recommend this book enough. It opened my eyes to a lot of things I had never realized or understood before. It made me furious, it made me cry, and it also gave me hope. (Geeze, that sounds melodramatic, but it is seriously true!!!!) Please, please, read this book!

(The version I read came out in 2007. There is an updated version coming out in November 2010 that additionally covers the period 2007-2010. I would recommend getting the book now anyway!)

Le Bourgne, Jack, and Wisnell

Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures in Le Bourgne...sometimes I feel out of place being the only person walking around with a camera! This is a "tap tap" - a common form of public transportation. They are modified pickup trucks, and usually very colorfully decorated - very reminiscent of how trucks were elaborately painted in India and Nepal. Unlike there, most here in Haiti have Christian imagery and/or phrases. (The books in the pictures are bibles, one portrays Mark and the other Romans)

Le Bourgne is a beautiful but poor town by the ocean. There is a beautiful beach just 30 minutes away by tap-tap. Erinold (an employee of SOIL, I earlier misspelled his name as Arinol) has some family there, so we usually ate meals with them and stayed in an apartment SOIL owns. A family lives on the first floor of this apartment, and on the second floor there are two rooms, sparsely furnished. The three of us stayed in these, and there was no electricity to have a fan so it was unbearably hot. Jack and I decided to move our bed (we had to share a bed!) to the roof where it is cool and there's a nice breeze. Wisnell also moved his mattress up there and LOVED it. He was so excited to be sleeping up there! I am amazed at how people here get used to sleeping in the heat, but that doesn't mean they like! Jack and I actually got cold!! - probably the only time I'll ever be cold here in Haiti. It was great going to sleep under the stars, and waking up to the morning view from the roof. Rooftops are a big thing here, and the place I stay at in Cap Haitien also has a great rooftop with a garden and a compost pile. I will put up pictures on that and the projects I've done around the house in a later post!

We went to Le Bourne to meet with the mayor who is a big supporter of SOIL. Jack wanted to talk to him about his ideas (more on that later). Unfortunately, the mayor was actually down in Cap Haitien so it was ironic that we swapped places. It was a fun trip, and we met a lot of people there, including a woman named Rosie who lived in Jamaca for 20 years but moved back to Haiti to help improve it. We visited with her, and saw her place outfitted with a small solar panel, rainwater collection, food gardens, banana trees, and coconut trees. We ate coconuts hacked open at the top with a machete. They were really good. I'd never eaten the coconut "meat" straight itself before - it was tasty!

Also, a little about Jack and Wisnell. Jack is finishing up his last year of undergraduate study at Notre Dame. His professor is also a priest who has lived in Haiti (crazy huh) and so he is doing research with that priest for SOIL, checking for the presence of helmunth eggs in the compost. He's applying to medical school and wants to live in Haiti after that and set up a clinic, school, and ecological haven. His parents and one sibling are on board and are considering moving out here with him! Jack and I were all excited that I could come out and help work on setting up composting, a fish pond, gardens, greywater treatment, and so on. He's shooting to buy 5-10 acres of land in or near Le Bourgne (he loves the town), so he's making up plans and figuring out how much he'll need to fundraise over the next few years. It is relatively cheap to start something like this in Haiti so I'm confident he'll be able to do it! He's also read Ghandi and likes his emphasis on self-supporting villages and enterprises so we were dreaming about what that could be like. Maybe I'll do an official project through graduate school with him and his project!!

Wisnell is a student and also works part-time for SOIL. He works with children and creative projects to teach about environmental topics, like a "trash to art" project. In the future he wants to continue working on such projects, and to be active in helping poorer people to communicate with each other and work together to build a better future for themselves, and to try to encourage people from the upper classes to build relationships with poorer folks, too. His English is much better than my Creole, and it's fun to work with him on helping each other learn. His younger brother Rosemond won Haiti's version of "American Idol" and now lives in Palo Alto, CA and travels to LA to record music. Wisnell was very happy when I told him I would love to visit Rosemond next time I go out to visit my brother in the Bay Area!

Picture Time!

Weekends here are very slow, so I've got oodles of time to catch up on blogging! Some people at the house here actually live in the town of Milot, about 30 minutes away, so they go home on the weekends. Jack just left on Friday, so I'm the only "bla" (white person...very flattering word, huh!) around. Wisnell is a student and he goes home for most of the day on weekends to see his parents. Tony, our house manager and security guard extraordinaire is in and out. So it's just me and Tikka, our dog. We really bonded yesterday since it was just the two of us. She is an imperfect yet welcome outlet for affection since Elisabeth is so far away!

Here are some pictures from the trip to Le Bourgne!



We passed on a couple of pickup trucks with long, extended beds and tarps for shade to take us to Le Bourgne. Apparently, Wisnell and Erinold were wanting to wait for this van, which has air conditioning. The only problem was that we waited 2 hours in the heat for a two hour ride! Jack and I were complaining! Well this van obviously started undergoing some repairs, so we caught the next one, a pick up truck without a tarp! Oh well, se la vi!



This is a shot looking down the street to the right of where Jack and Wisnell are looking in the next picture.



Jack and Wisnell! Erinold disappeared for a couple of hours - I think he found a friend or something.



Now this picture is shot looking in the direction that Jack and Wisnell are looking in the previous picture (and a little to the left). Those houses don't look very secure on that hill!

quick update

I went on a trip this weekend to a small town called Le Bourgne about a two hours' drive from Cap Haitien. I went with Jack, an American student at Notre Dame, Wisnell, a Haitien who works for SOIL and is also studying English, and Ariand, another Haitian dude that the SOIL people here know who has some family in Le Bourgne. We didn't have electricity there so I've been away from the internet. Tomorrow is my first full weekday in Cap Haitien so it'll be exciting to see what it is like. The house I'm staying at is teeming with people - employees who live here, people who help with the cooking, and other friends who just drop by to hang out. We also have a sweet dog named Tikka. I'm diligently studying Creyole, but it takes time!

Hope everyone is doing well.

-Ethan

Arrived in Haiti!

My bike ride is done, and it was super fun, although predicatably hard at times given the heat and whatnot! I LOVE Warmshowers.com, the hospitality website for people who are doing touring rides across the country (foreign countries as well). I stayed with so many wonderful, nice, and interesting people along the way from NC to FL!

Here's an update on my day in Haiti so far:

After a long delay due to mechanical issues, my 8:30 AM flight finally left at 3 PM. I had a good flight, and all the Haitians waiting at the terminal were super friendly and had lots of energy. They were apparently discussing the whole topic of Wycliffe Jean running for Haitian President.

Anyway, I was relieved that the airport wasn't as crazy as things in India or Nepal. (Ebeth and I traveled there earlier this year). I found Amy, my SOIL person, relatively quickly. There were also some Mennonite folks arriving that day so I thought that was interesting. One group was MCC and another seemed to be a conservaitve Mennonite group (a woman had the head bonnet thing on and said she was Mennonite). I had thought to myself if I couldn't find Amy, I could go with the Mennonites and use their resources to find out where Amy and the SOIL group are. (If for instance, the lateness of my flight screwed things up with the SOIL schedule). Of course, everything was fine.

One thing that was scarier (but still fun) than INdia/Nepal was the motorcycle ride to SOIL's office and my lodging. THe roads were worse than Nepal, many were unpaved and very rocky/bumpy, and it's noticeably hilly. The trash isn't nearly as bad as India and Nepal which is also nice. Just based on what I have seen, it will be easier to adjust here than India/Nepal. I think I will like it a lot here. I've met a lot of neat people at the place I'm staying. SOIL doesn't have room for me at their offices, and I'm staying just two blocks away at a "Coalition House" shared by several NGOs. I currently have a room to myself with three beds in it, and two fans. I'm most excited about having a fan. That is great! Makes a HUGE difference. Also, there is an internet place right across the street, and on the top floor people have computers with internet access. I'm at the cafe across the street now.

Tomorrow I fly to Cap Haitien, a town in the north, where SOIL originally started. Their operations up there are now largely Haitian-run and managed, which is a good thing. Cap is definitely supposed to be less hectic than Port-au-Prince, and there is even a super fun festival in Cap this weekend that I should be able to go to. It'll be interesting to see what I will get involved with up north, in terms of projects and helping out. I'm planning to meet with the Haiti MCC (Mennonite Central Committee - an organization that does development work, mostly by supporting local initiatives) at the end of August and I'm curious if anything fruitful will come out of MCC learning more about SOIL. I really think their goals and methods line up very, very well and at the minimum I think they would both be glad to know that the other exists and be encouraged by that.

That is all for now. Love to you all,
Ethan.

Lots of biking

I'm currently in Savannah, Georgia in a beautiful thunderstorm being enjoyed after some excellent Thai food with my hosts, Mike and Patty. The riding has been intense, with all the stuff I'm carrying on the bike (food, clothes, tent, sleeping bag, etc.), the extra drag, the extreme temperature/humidity, sunlight, and so on. I definitely overestimated what I can do in a day, based on my experience with century rides in a controlled setting on my racing bike. Oops! 95 to 100 miles is definitely my limit, with 90 being better, and 75 being comfortable. I went 95 today towards Savannah, and fell short by 15 miles and was graciously picked up by Mike. I was rolling along at 9-10 mph at that point, just drained. In general I didn't and don't feel too bad at all, I just can't go fast on my bike! (And my butt hurts a lot while sitting on the bike seat).

Overall it has been a great experience. I enjoyed camping on my own, and I've really enjoyed my hosts so far through warmshowers.com. I stayed in Charleston, SC the last two nights, having arrived two nights ago after a 12 hour day of biking (8 AM to 8 PM - UGH!) but had a rest day there. Cedric and his housemates and friends were awesome. We went to a going away party for some of their friends that were moving to NYC (so Ebeth and I will hook up with them there!), and on my "day off" went to the beach, swimming in a pool, enjoyed root beer floats, and just hung out. They were a fun group and very active in community affairs, sustainability, and the like. You meet such interesting people through this whole hospitality thing, it's great! I've got to hit the hay now for another long day of biking tomorrow. I have 120 miles to get to Folkston, which is totally unrealistic, and Mike is being kind enough to drop me off far enough that I only have about 95 miles to go.

I've heard more about Haiti as well so I will try to put that up later!