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Fondwa/Jacmel/Aux Cayes July 08 |
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July 19-27, Fondwa, Jacmel, Aux Cayes, PaP Haiti
This trip was different from the previous ones. I decided to stay the whole week, as the first group of students would be graduating from the University of Fondwa. This group consisted of the seven business students which started in the founding year 2004. The students of the Agronomy and Veterinary Sciences which started at the same time have a 6-year program and thus will graduate in 2010.
I arrived on Saturday afternoon. Again the American Airlines flight was almost two hours late. Amenold and Vital picked me up at the airport and we had to drive to a mechanics shop in PaP immediately to have the starter in his car replaced. As we waited for the mechanic to return with the new starter, Amenold and Vital decided to buy plates of rice and beans and pork from a street vendor around the corner. After they finished Vital put the rest of the food out for the dog who had been sitting there with us. The dog sniffed at the food and walked away! They both started to feel pretty awkward, but the food turned out to be good after all.
When we arrived in Fondwa, I spent the evening with the teachers discussing, as always, what we could do to improve the future of Haiti.
Sunday afternoon I went with Max, his brother’s wife and her son, who where staying at his house, to the beach in Jacmel. On the way back we stopped at a Texaco station. This gas station is somewhat unusual, as it had a basketball court in the back. This evening they had a final game of the local league and the gas station turned into a sports arena, before the game we watched a dance performance to Haitian music by a dance group. It was a somewhat surreal experience.
Sunday morning as well as Monday morning and afternoon we had the last classes with the seven graduating students. We finished their part in the “water filter project” as part of the project management course I had taught this past semester.
The report will be the starting point for the other six business students who will be entering their third year in September.
The success of the water filter project depends on the support of the community leaders. We used the current water project as a case study. This project consists of a storage tank at the source in the valley, a 1/2 mile long pipe to bring it to the storage tank under the restaurant at the main road and a pump and generator to pump it up the hill. In this case the peasant community had not been involved in the planning of the project and therefore does not seem to understand it nor support it. An example is that some people have unscrewed the pipes half way up to get their water at that point. We are trying to explain to the people that we want to filter the water and then give it to those most vulnerable, the very young and the old. We had the water tested at a lab in Miami and it tested positive for coliform bacteria, though not e-coli. It definitely needs to be treated before consumption.
Our plan is now to sell the idea of the filtered water to the community leaders who in turn can explain it to the peasants.
It is very beautiful in Fondwa this time of the year. Everything is lush and full. I actually got lost on my ½ hour hike from the house in the valley to the restaurant on the road in Tombe Gateau. The course of the foot path changes as the fields it crosses are being planted and harvested. Where I used to walk there were now rows of six-feet high corn.
On Tuesday the students and the four of us drove to the beach for an afternoon of fun after 4 years of study. We had a great time, eating fresh seafood, drinking Prestige, swimming and playing in the water.
Wednesday I worked on finishing the grades for the students. Then we had a meeting about the future of UNIF with Sr. Judy representing APF and Max, Amenold and Vital of the University. Unfortunately for UNIF, the rector Max Delices had decided to leave his full-time position at the university and continue to work with the Hospice St. Joseph in Port of Prince. He will still be helping us even after he no longer will be living in Fondwa. He is currently working on obtaining the long awaited accreditation with the Haitian state university system. This will be very important for UNIF, as many grants require this accreditation. Before leaving, Max will present a plan with recommendations for the next 5 years to the Board of UNIF in Haiti.
On Thursday Max, Amenold and I left for the Cayes, a city in the South of Haiti, about 120 miles from Fondwa. The plains around Cayes provide one of the major rice-growing areas of Haiti. It was beautiful to see the rice production in full swing. We talked with the people from the company which leases or owns many fields in the area. The work with imported machines from China which provide a simple technology for the various needs of production. Even with the onslaught of subsidized and free rice from the US, the company is still able to sell its rice at a profit in Haiti. We stayed at the house of Max’s sister-in-law who is the mayor of the community outside Aux Cayes. Friday morning we spent on one of the beautiful beaches outside Aux Cayes and had a great lunch at one of the many little seafood restaurants along the beach.
After Amenold and Vital dropped me off at the airport I was informed that the flight to Miami had been cancelled. I called Michael Neumann who asked the Bishop in whose house he was staying if I could also sleep there. Graciously the Bishop allowed me to stay and I was picked up again by Michael and Ospri. Ospri is the driving force behind many projects in Haiti, several involving Partners in Progress as well. We went to the famous Hotel Oloffson, where we exchanged ideas over some cold Prestige. After breakfast with the Bishop and two other pastors I was dropped off again at the airport. In the usual chaos I finally discerned that my flight was to leave sometime around noon. I seem to spend way too much time in airports. I am also increasingly bothered by the ecological impact of my frequent flights. Hopefully we will be able to get the bandwidth from the satellite provider to get the distant learning project off the ground. That would allow us to give classes from the US while opening up the possibility for UNIF to transmit classes to distant areas within Haiti. At this point I am planning to cut back my schedule from monthly visits to once a quarter.
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May 17-20, Fondwa, Haiti
I again wanted to take the early flight from Fort Lauderdale, however it got cancelled and I didn’t fly out until 2 PM. That meant that it was too late to have a class on Saturday.
As always I stay at Max’s house in the lush valley down from the school. This night was filled with singing coming from a house in the forest behind us. The women and men sang in separate groups all night with only a few hours rest in between. I found out that someone had just died and this was the custom of the wake the night before the funeral.
Sunday was Flag Day. Amenold and I drove with several students to Marigot which is East of Jacmel. The town of Marigot is at the end of the paved road. From here one can go on a very bad road across the mountains back to Port-au-Prince or continue on dirt roads towards the border with the Dominican Republic. We staid and watched the school children parading up and down main street, singing and reenacting the revolution. On the way back we did some more sightseeing and stopped at Cyvadier Plage and Cap Lamandou before returning to Jacmel to have dinner at the hotel Jacmelian. When we returned we were greeted in front of the university by the watchman and several other people. This evening someone had scaled the wall, broken into a side door and made off with 6 large batteries and the language lab equipment. Besides the monetary loss of between $1,000 and $1,500 it also hurt the implementation of the energy project. This June the solar panels will be installed to supply enough power to run our lights and computers. The batteries are part of the installation and will have to be replaced immediately.
On Monday we had class at the school in the morning, going once more over the project management items we had already covered and discussing our project, clarifying who had to do what in the weeks to come. In the afternoon we shared the four laptops on which I had installed the Project Management software and together went over the remaining material yet to be covered. I gave the assignments and promised the students that in June we would have our long awaited exam.
On Tuesday morning I walked from Tomgato down the Road to Fondwa to the APF center in the valley. Fr. Joseph was not at the center, but I met Fr. McKnight walking on the road and had a long talk with him. At 88 years old he is still going strong, giving advice and providing encouragement. It is truly a pleasure to meet with him.
The trip back to Miami was routine without problems.
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April 2008 - Project Management Course |
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Tuesday, April 22, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
This time I only brought hand luggage walked right out of the airport and was picked up by the driver off the APF. After stopping at several locations and loading up the truck with gas bottles, a grill and many boxes, we left for Fondwa. All of the equipment was for a congress starting on April 23, which Fr. Joseph was organizing in Fondwa. This was a congress of political leaders from all over he country, invited to discuss the establishment of a new ministry of the Haitian government, dealing exclusively with peasant affairs. Surprisingly, in a country that is still largely rural, this did not yet exist.
The trip and the stay at Fondwa were uneventful this time (which sometimes is a good thing). On Sunday I downloaded a Project Management software program on the laptops in the computer lab and a dozen of us shared 5 computers while I explained how to use the program. On Monday we had two long sessions, diving deep into project management. I decided to initiate a real project to accompany the dry material. It is the “Water Filter Project” that picks up where the “Makaya Water Project” had left off. The Makaya project is to bring the water from the spring in the valley up to the APF center located in Tombe Gateau on the main road from Leogane to Jacmel. Tombe Gateau is somewhat of a downtown of the community of Fondwa. The scope of the Water Filter project is to install a filter and a holding tank for the filtered water. The idea for this project originated with the team of students that wrote the business plan for the Auto Parts Store across the street from the APF center. We decided then that maybe we could utilize the two huge empty tanks located there to store potable water.
Tuesday morning I drove with Max back to Potoprens and he dropped me off at the airport after we had lunch at a friend’s house.
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Saturday, March 15, Fondwa, Haiti
Arrival and exciting trip to Fondwa. I left extra early on the first flight to PAP from Miami this time because I had agreed to add a Saturday afternoon class for the directors of APF to teach them basic report writing and managerial skills. However, when I arrived in Port-au –Prince, one of my suitcases was missing. I had extra luggage because I was bringing a desktop PC donated by some good friends in Miami. So I spent six hours waiting for the next plane from Miami to arrive. Finally my luggage arrived and we were off. After picking up a sister of the APF order, we drove on to Fondwa. About halfway up the mountains we decided to pass a bus and suddenly a huge semi truck came around the corner about 100 feet ahead of us, bearing straight at us. Amenold tried to slow down to get behind the bus while the bus slowed down to let us pass. I decided that this was finally it, we all had to die some day. Then, at the last minute, reminiscent of Moses opening the floods, the bus went all the way to the right, almost falling off the cliff and the semi hugged the mountain and we went in between them, bouncing off the side of the semi and suddenly we came out at the other side, without mirrors, but still alive.
I was supposed to teach a class to the APF directors that afternoon, but we arrived too late and I was too shook up to do anything but have a few large Barbancourt and coke.
Jacmel.
I forgot that this Sunday was Palm Sunday and I had only three of thirteen students show up for the morning class. We called it a day early and I decided to go to Jacmel instead. On a good day there would be three cars in Fondwa, Amenold’s, Vital’s and Max’s. However, this was not a good day. Max’s Jeep was standing in front of the school with carburetor trouble, Vital’s was in the shop in Port au Prince and Max had taken Amenold’s car to go to PaP. So I took a Tap Tap, which meant waiting at the street for about half an hour and then standing in the back of a converted truck, holding on to the rafters for dear life as the truck careened around the many curves down to Jacmel. My sailing experience helped me adjust and after a while I started leaning into the curves and it was getting more comfortable. Once in Jacmel I walked through town, went back to the art shop where we had bought some paintings before but couldn’t make up my mind and had lunch at the Jacmel Hotel at the town’s beach. After it got dark I took a moped taxi back to Fondwa. I decided later not to do that again at night. When you see a single headlight coming at you, you never know whether it is another moped, or a car with either the left or the right light out. I made it back in one piece and the rest of the stay was uneventful.
Peasant customs.
On Monday morning, as Max and I started walking from his house to the school, he stopped at small peasant shack just up the hill from us. There was a group of about ten peasants sitting outside the house, most of them playing domino. Max talked to them for a little while and we were on our way. He then explained that the man of the house had just died and that it was the custom that neighbors and friends would come for about two weeks after the funeral and keep the surviving family company. They would stay all day and the family had to feed them and provide drinks. Then Max went on to explain that exactly a year after a person had died the Voodoo priest will come and perform a ceremony, which will put the soul of the departed at rest. Now the person is really gone and at peace.
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February 4 - 10,2008 Port-au-Prince, Jacmel and Fondwa
I was picked up at the airport by my cheerful partners of Fondwa, Max Delices the president and Amenold Pierre, the professor. Haiti was already in the middle of Kanaval and we dove right in. We dropped off my luggage at the house of a friend of Max and went downtown to the main square, Champ Mars. I did not recognize any of the landmarks. Viewing stands had been erected creating a new street winding across the square. People were milling about, starting to find their places for the evening parade.
We had lunch at a little restaurant hidden behind the stands. A little later we met up with several students and Vital Gerard, another professor. We passed a temporary Aids awareness center, which gave free Aids tests and handed out Aids information and free condoms during the Kanaval.
Max got us all invited onto a viewing stand sponsored by his friend’s radio station, Radio Ginen. That is where we passed the evening, watching a never-ending parade of very large truck floats. Each of these trucks carried a different band, all their equipment, HUGE speakers and many people. When a truck had passed us and the music of that band faded, another already appeared filling the air with a different sound. We danced and danced, as was everyone else on the stands as well as the thousands on the street below us.
Sometime after midnight we left (the parade kept going to the early morning hours), piled everybody into Amenold’s small Jeep, picked up my luggage and headed for Fondwa to rest a little before driving on to Jacmel to spend Mardi Gras day there. We spend the morning fairly hung-over on a beach outside Jacmel, where we slept some more, had lobster for lunch and a few more Prestiges, Haiti’s excellent beer. By late afternoon we drove into Jacmel, positioned us in a bar on the parade route and took in the much more relaxed village version of Kanaval.
After we recovered from all this I taught the last class of the business plan course and then gave the introduction to the next course: project management. This course would take us to the end of the school year in July, when the first group of students would graduate from the University of Fondwa.
On Friday I participated in a joint board meeting of APF, the Peasant Association of Fondwa and PIP, Partners in Progress, the main sponsor of APF and UNIF. The meeting was called to air differences that had arisen over time. I was somewhat caught in the middle, as I was a board member of another sponsoring organization in the US as well as a teacher at the University.
The next morning I rode together with the PIP Board on the back of the APF truck to the airport to return to Miami, carrying unforgettable memories.
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Moringa - The Wonder Tree, January 2008 |
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Miami Beach, January 2008 After my students and I arrived at the conclusion that the town needs a steady supply of clean, safe water, I was looking for a low cost water filter system. As I perused the internet, I came across the Moringa tree. The more I read, the more intrigued I became. One tree can supply enough material for one family to filter their water all year. The Moringa tree grows in Haiti. Scientists and lay persons alike publish their findings on the extremely interesting website: "The Moringa News Network". www.moringanews.org Here are some exerpts from a sample article written in Nigeria a while back: "Studies on the potential use of Medicinal Plants
and Macrofungi (Lower plants) in water and waste water purification" By Kenneth Anchang Yongabi
FMENV/ZERI Research Centre, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University
Pmb 0248, Bauchi, Nigeria .
Email:
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Typical menu of the restaurant in Fondwa, January 2008 |
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For a few days I wrote down what we ate at the Lakay Restaurant in Fondwa. Students, Teachers and the Fonkoze staff of the business center all share the same fare. While some of it may sound strange, it is lovingly prepared and always tastes wonderful. The day always starts with a very filling breakfast and ends with a small, very simple dinner. Lunch is the big meal of the day.
Saturday Dinner: Sweet Potato Soup with Milk & Water
Sunday Breakfast Spaghetti with ketchup and hot sauce, Avocado Chunks & Coffee & Water
Sunday Lunch: Salad of Beets, Cabbage and Mirliton, Rice and Beans w. Beef in Gravy, Fried Plantains &Water
Sunday Dinner: Bread w. Margarine & Hot Chocolate & Water
Monday Breakfast: Rice & Gravy, Avocado Chunks & Coffee & Water
Monday Lunch: Polenta, Bean Sauce, Cabbage/Mirlion/Beef Stew, Avocado Chunks & Water & Passion Fruit Juice
Monday Dinner: Bread w. Margarine & Hot Chocolate & Water
Tuesday Breakfast: Spaghetti with ketchup and hot sauce, Avocado Chunks & Coffee & Water
Wednesday Breakfast Polenta w. Lyan Payn (basket weed)
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Fondwa, December 19, 2007 |
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007, Fondwa, Haiti
I had started out in September with 17 students and 7 members of the APF, the Peasant Association of Fondwa. I arranged 6 groups of 4 persons, and asked each group to analyze one business run by the Peasant Association. The APF members did not return after the first session. That was probably due to the fact that only two of them spoke another language in addition to Kreyol. The students all speak Kreyol, French, Spanish and English, the latter two to varying degrees of proficiency. Their Spanish is generally better than their English, so I am teaching in Spanish. The business plans are supposed to be written in Kreyol, as the final products will be presented to the Peasant Association. They can then decide whether they want to implement all or part of each plan.
Not all students had returned to the school from their stay at home by Monday morning. The eight students who were present represented five different groups. I decided that they would all work together and finish the plan for the Auto Parts store as a sample for the other five businesses.
The analysis led to a totally unexpected recommendation. On Wednesday morning we jointly reached the conclusion that the Auto Parts store should be converted to a plant producing clean, healthy drinking water for the village!
The process that brought us there validates the whole teaching project for me. After analyzing the available financial information we quickly reached the conclusion that the store was totally inefficient and not sustainable in its current form. But we found out that originally it had served a social function for the community. It was set up by the Peasant Association to sell kerosene for the peasants’ lamps and gasoline for the various generators owned by the businesses and the university. However, at the beginning of this year an independent entrepreneur opened a gas station in a better location at the other end of the town. Since then the two large tanks behind the store had been sitting empty and unused. Once we started brainstorming what other liquids the peasants could need, we discovered that those who could afford it bought 5-gallon bottles of water either at the Culligan plant in Jakmel for 30 Gourds or of the truck passing through town for 50 Gourds. Those who could not afford either walked 15 minutes to the spring and carried water back to their homes. The spring water is not clean enough to drink untreated and particularly the babies and young children get sick. As there is a planned water project to bring the water in a pipe to the village, a treatment and filtration plant would be the logical extension. A non-performing business could be turned into a valuable service or the community and maybe generate some profit at the same time. This to me would be a huge success story. I am beginning to understand some Kreyol as I listen to their discussions of how to write down their thoughts.
Once we finish the current business plan course, we will embark on a course on project management. The tale of the fully funded yet unfinished project to bring the spring water in a pipeline to the village was the original reason for my wanting to teach in Fondwa in the first place. I can’t wait to find out what suggestions the other students will come up with for their underperforming businesses of the Association.
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Port-au-Prince, December 15, 2007 |
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Sunday, December 16, Fondwa, Haiti
I just arrived again in Fondwa, after spending Saturday and this morning in Port-au-Prince. I was picked up at the airport by Fr. Joseph’s driver, Woody, who brought me to the large compound of the Spiritan brothers in Solino, one of the poor districts with a bad reputation. Fr. Patrick welcomed me and showed me to my room. Because the priests work with the people in the neighborhood they are left alone and were not getting bothered even during the past two years, which were very close to civil war. Now the situation has calmed and when I said that I wanted to walk through downtown Port-au-Prince I was driven to the cathedral by one of the priests. When he dropped me off he suggested that I take a taxi back to the compound before nightfall.
I did not feel threatened as the sole white guy walking around but when I met a "guide" who decided that I needed to hire him I took him up on his offer. We left Champ Mars, the main square, and walked a few hours together. Port-au-Prince is extremely distressing. I found that in most tropical cities the wealthy people head for the hills every evening, but here they seem to have abandoned downtown all together and don’t come down at all anymore. Many businesses have simply closed their doors and the street vendors have taken over. Sanitation has collapsed, there is lots of trash and frequent whiffs of sewer smell. As the street vendors take up the sidewalks, one has to walk mostly on the street. That presents another challenge, as the cars, Tap Taps and trucks don’t slow down just because there are pedestrians.
Upon my return to the Spiritan’s compound, I met Efrain, a Cuban forestry specialist who is on loan by the Cuban government to help with the reforestation program in Fondwa. Efrain, Fr. Patrick and I sat and talked for a few hours while we almost finished a bottle of Havana Club rum I had bought in a super market. Then we decided to return downtown together and attend the free concert by Wyclef Jean and Acon on Champ Mars. It was a sea of people, but all peaceful and in a great mood. Several large screens had been set up in several locations around the square and we found one where we stayed and watched the concert. Fr. Patrick, who is Haitian, had to explain to several people who wondered about us, that we were not Minustah (United Nations forces in Haiti), but professors at a rural university and that we were staying in Solino. That changed the people's perception immediately. The presence of Minustah seems to be disliked by many. We left shortly before the concert ended and drove up the hill. Once we got back we climbed on the roof to watch the fire work, which we were told was to honor the dawning of Lavalas-day or the day of the followers of Aristide, the ousted leader of Haiti and of the Lavalas peasant organization.
Fondwa is a different world. The pace and the climate could not be more different. It is about 900 feet up in the mountains. While it was 90 degrees in Port-au-Prince, it's pleasant here in the daytime but the nights get downright cold. There is no readily available electricity and no running water.
I will teach tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday morning and fly back Wednesday late afternoon.
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Why I Decided to Assist a Rural University in Haiti |
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I get asked a lot how and why I got involved with UNIF in the first place. I hope this answers is good enough. |
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