Part II   Monday November 11, 2014

Yesterday I took the day off, and went with two other American aid workers and Pastor Caleb and his fiancé to the family beach.

At 1 we three women climbed into the back of Pastor Caleb’s old blue truck and 30 minutes later we were at the family beach.   The shoreline meandered around in a slow bend moving back to the western mountains.

This beach is a family place with lots of tables and chairs set back from the sand line.  The palm trees provide the shade.   The tables had those plastic fruit and vegetable coverings with common white plastic chairs.

First thing we did was order drinks.  Linda said that we must have a real coconut for the milk and the meet.  Then, I had an idea.  I wanted to put some Haitian rum, I had heard so much about, into the raw coconut milk. After drinking some and adding a little rum, a young boy of about 9 was asked to split the coconut. When he did, he chipped skillfully with a 12” machete type knife.  He cut a small piece off the bottom and then hacked the coconut in 2.  The small chip was used to scrape off the top lining inside the coconut, and then wedge the ship into the sides of the raw coconut which lines the think shell.

Then, there’s looking at the ground and the shoreline. Trash.  Stamped into the sand all around.  Bottle caps, broken glass pieces, coconut pieces, plastic bottles.  Then along the shoreline where the sea meets the sand, there was an old red backpack wedged into the sand with every incoming wave.  Next to it was a plaid shirt half buried in the sand, while each wave washed over it.    Along the shore, the sand is a combination of famous Caribbean white sand and black sand.  The ocean up close has more of a green color than the Caribbean blue— except as you look out into the distance.

We ordered lobster or fish dinners, ate them, and sat for a while in companionable silence. When we were all done, several young boys came around, and Pastor Caleb handed them the unfinished plate of rice and beans, plantains that we had not finished.  Almost everything in Haiti is hungry.  These people eek out an existence just like the dogs, cats, ants and cats that roam around making hungry food business.

Then, we left this scene to run into  the  endless serf.  I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in I don’t know how long.  I jumped and screamed with each big wave carrying me forward with the surf only to immediately laugh at the water swirling around me. Dondi and Deb joined me in the serf to all play in the coming tidal waves until we were so tired– it was time to leave.

Fathers and sons were digging a hole in the sand, then placed their feet in it and waited for the waves to wash the sand around the hole.  Another man sat spread-ledged facing the short so that the incoming tide washed against his back.

Others were farther out from the shore waiting and playing the waves as they washed ashore.  I found such joy and delight in this—jumping into the waves and laughing.

We left soon after that— back to the truck.

There’s another aspect of this afternoon that in some ways made it not so pleasant. When we sat down, there were three Caucasian women and three Haitians—one woman, Pastor Caleb’s fiancé and our driver.  We hardly had sat down, and we were greeted with individuals selling carved wooden art, bits of candy and small bags of some kind of nut, goat shish-ka-bobs, and conch shells both small and large.   They came around all afternoon, and we kept having to say no, no thank you, no merci, no thank you, no merci.  Until we left…

In the truck Pastor Caleb had to visit a few people, and Dondi has bought a piece of art from an older man who told her he was hungry and wanted to sell something.  She bought a piece, and as we sat in the back of the truck more people, mostly children, tried to sell us something—when we said no.  One at a time said he was hungry and kept saying” one dollar. I’m hungry.”

We left, and I though about that scene all the way home.  The dogs running around the place—one dog was pooping and then all of sudden ran off holding up a paw and crying.  I don’t know what happened.

I just sat quietly in the truck on the way home—

Part II

Blog entry for November 7,2014

I think this is the first day I have had time to write.  I am sitting at FLI and have about an hour to just sit.  The teachers are all off somewhere doing something—mainly roaming around and sitting and finding something to eat.

I have found a dish to have almost every night for dinner at the hotel.  It is rice and beans with a creole sauce.  It is unlike anything that I ever had in New Orleans.  Not spicy at all, well maybe a little with all the garlic.  It is a tomato-based broth, with some oil, green papers, onions and lots of garlic.  I pour this over the top of the rice and beans mixture.  I have eaten this for four days, and it never quite tastes the same.  Last night I added sliced tomatoes and avocados on the side.    Almost every morning for breakfast I have a peanut butter on bread, some fruit jelly—and here they leave the seeds in the fruit— some I am messily trying to get the seeds out of the jelly and whatever fruit they put out— mangoes, bananas, some pineapple or watermelon.

I did go shopping today for some art to bring back home.

I have been watching the chickens and animals as they roam around.  In Jacmel, the dogs, chickens, goats have free range.  They wander about the streets the same as the people.  No one bothers the other as each tries to eek out some nourishment from the soil, or selling fruits or exchanging goods and services.   I have seen dogs whose ribs and hip bones stick out and I know they are starving.  No one seems to notice or try to feed them. They just wander around picking up what they can from the streets and garbage piles.  Some have better luck than others.  Everyone scratches !  Another chicken just walked into the area pecking around for food. Outside another motorcycle tax honks to scare the dog out of the street.  Next door, the pastor is having the students sign while down the street a boom box blasts a song.  Two people are having an argument about something, or they are talking really loudly.  Then, it quiets.  People come in off the street to get water from the spiket.

It’s almost 4 and the meeting is about to start. At 5, I have the English Club, and after that I will have a dinner of rice and beans at the hotel, grateful for all that I have.

Part II   Thursday, November 6, 2014

This is a street scene typical of Jacmel. Of course, the day had started out with a rainstorm.  After being here 8 days, I have come to be a little more comfortable with the daily pace of life.

I found out that there are no teaching credentials required to teach in Haiti.  I went with one of the teachers to Concordia University where he takes classes to earn a degree.  I talked to the administrator there and asked him about setting up a program for those who want to have a teaching license.  It might mean coming here during the summer and teaching a summer session for these teachers.

I am looking out of my hotel window, and looking upon the most beautiful scene—it is on the later stages of dusk lay like  peach ribbon across the mountains as the sky blends into a darker blue.  Then, below there lies the Caribbean bay that is frame for me by palm trees.

Here is a picture of ELI— the English Language School where I am working.

This is the main classroom is the house.  It has no air conditioning, and often times no lights because the electricity usage rotates around the city.  It usually comes on about 3 in the afternoon and goes off again at 2 or 3 in the morning. The teachers have to work in the dark sometimes, since now the sun sets at 5:30, and they hold classes until 8 p.m.

There is no running water in the house or kitchen appliances, but teachers and students buy water from street venders for about 5 gourds about 25 cents…  that’s three bags of water.  There is a water cooler in the other room adjacent to the one you are seeing, but that is a recent acquisition.  Water out of the tap is not safe for anyone to drink here in Jacmel.  I am not sure how they recycle the water either.

The FLI school has about 50 students overall.  The teacher volunteers, 6 of them now, take turns teaching the classroom almost every evening—except Thursday.

I feel like I have finally found something to do that has more meaning than sitting in my office and writing articles.  I realize that I need to do that as part of my job, but I also have found people with whom I can talk about the work here. UD Professor Bonnie Robb has also been helpful—so helpful—in sharing resources and materials with me so that I can be here to help these young Haitian teachers.  Every day I spend with them is a joy. They have a desire to learn beyond anything I have experienced among the students who have been in my classrooms.  Even though droop in the heat, sitting in the small classrooms at FLI, and I droop with them, we go on and get through the material.

I forget sometimes that I am conducting research—it means more for me to be teaching someone who wants to learn.

II Day 5

I have been busy, and this post covers a few days of events.   On Saturday, I went to a procession of voodoo priests and priestesses and followers to recognize the beginning of Gedde.  Gedde takes place during the whole month of November, but it begins formally on the 1^st with a parade through the city streets.  It is not a parade in the same sense of the celebratory parades in the US, this was a sober event.

I offer the little I know about Gedde.  The colors are black, white, yellow and purpose.  In the hotel I am staying in, the dining room tables were covered with black and purple tables clothes over the weekend, and then they switched to yellow and white beginning today, Monday.  Big spiders and skull masks framed in black drape are hung around the hotel.

I have added some pictures from the procession.  A man dressed in long white garb carries a wooden cross on a stand and stops at each intersection.  Then, a women uses something yellow, I think ground corn meal, to draw a heart shaped figure with lines extending from the heart shape and then crossed with another line.

Then, an older women dressed in all white, with a white cloth wrapped around her hair, places offering in each of the four chambers of the drawing.  The offerings consist of bread, corn and beans. Then, the male priest dressed in white, followed her and poured some liquid offering outside the same four chambers.

the man in the black and purple located in the center back of this picture is the main voodoo priest.  As they all making offerings into the heart, the process continues with chanting lead by another priestess down the street to the next intersection.

Trailing behind this main group of priests and priestesses, and two lines of younger voodoo believers who are all dressed in white and respond antiphonally to the voodoo priestess’s chant.

I am learned in bits and pieces, Gedde is devoted to the dead.  In November the spirits of the departed believers come back from their 11 month rest in the cold sea.  They want to be warmed, and as such after the main procession,  dancers and other members may drink hot spicy liquids and dance for their ancestor’s spirits hoping to warm them.  In the cemeteries, believers will spicy food, burn black candles and offer drink like rum, left on the graves of the departed.

In spirit this is very much like El dia de los Muertos, as it is celebrated within Mexican culture, and our own Halloween.

I am trying to make this blog as descriptive as possible and not tool much about what I have been doing at FLI, the Foreign Language Institute.

I have interviewing the teachers at FLI and making curricula about how to teach English.  The research aspect of this is going well, and I am learning a great deal about how to ask the right ethnographic question and get the information.  Haiti is a complex society with its own set of rules.  I have been trying to learn them—but one doesn’t learn them in one week.  Like today,  one of the teachers told me this phrase in Haitian Kyreole:  “  Colon ki bat:  loosely translated it means the following:  If you are not part of me. “  We were talking about this in terms of getting a job in Haiti.  The system is dependent upon “ who you know and not what you know.”  So, if you are part of me, then the individual is responsible for the person who is part of them, and that means finding a job or some kind of employment.  Otherwise, you’re not responsible for that person.  These are the kinds of logical systems that bind forward progress and help for individuals by what they know and not who they know.

That’s it for today, wishing you peace and rest— on island time!

Part II  Day 2  Haiti  October 2014

Thursday was a wonderful day.  I am here in this beautiful place—things have improved in Jacmel. The roads aren’t all paved yet, but the city is bustling with  activity.   Max and Yvenord took me walking into the city from FLI to get a phone, buy minutes and get some Haitian dollars.

We planned my two week work here, and then we went shopping.    Yes, shopping, and shopping Jacmel is an one of a kind experience. First, the streets are crowed with two or three people on motorbikes— some of these are what qualifies for a taxi.  Then, there are the people walking along the streets—some paved, but mostly diret roads with ruts, rocks and rough edges before the 2’ ditch along the side.  These are filled with debris from plastic bottles, and the small plastic sacks which carry about 8 ounces of water.  Just thrown everywhere.  Now, the edge of the street or road ends and then within 1’ is the entrance to a building—which may be a phone store, a pharmacy, a beauty shop.  In the US, companies have their logos posted and some building are designed to represent that companies’ brand—I am thinking about MacDonald’s for instance.  Here, there is no real way to tell—except with the digital store.  The store has an outside brand and the sleek green and white IKEA desk and work space interior. Very modern. Very sleek.

Then, outside again into the dusty road. Intersections are dangerous—in a good sense. The motorbikes, the people, the carts carrying good, wheel barrows filled with sugarcane or some other good, people dragging farm animals—cows and goats mostly—and women carrying goods upon their heads, all trying to negotiate the intersection.  Oh, did I tell you that they have no street lights!!! Some horns are blaring, and everyone takes his/her own risk at crossing the intersection and navigating the streets.  Then !!!!

Needed minutes on the phone.  I had a phone, but I needed minutes.  Well, we went to a street vendor for that. A sinlge man, sitting on a chair under an umbrella holding a cell phone.  I paid him 25 GOUDRES — I think— for some minutes on my phone. Then, we turned and got a taxi out to the tent city, where Max’s girlfriend and daughter live.  On another taxi !!

This is the area where the citizens were moved who were affected by the earthquake.   It is what you imagine and then worse.  There are streets, a medical facility, a water tank supported by Save the Children, and a police station.  The living space is defined by fencing and boards grafted together upon a plot of land.  There are rooms within each structure, again framed by the ply wood and fencing.  Catianna had a table for cooking, a place for her daughter, to sleep on bed that defined one wall in length, and another for Catianna to sleep.  Very simple, and a translucent drape to cover the entrance to the home.   No door.

I had to have a long talk with myself about my American sensibilities and judgments.  What I mean here is that I no longer look at what they don’t have in terms of material goods, but what they do have, however humble it is. I make no judgment, but try to appreciate this way of life and the circumstances surrounding in.  The tent city is such a place to leave one’s sympathy and embrace the humility of such an existence.   I am humbled in ways I cannot begin to give words to.

You could say that I have come to love and appreciate this city and its culture. I am only sorry that on my first visit here I was not able to see this, but it was masked by my own health concerns.  Now that I can partake more of the culture, I am excited about being here.

AS I write this, I am sitting on the patio of the hotel with the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean to my south, framed by the coconut, banana and mango trees.  There is a slight breeze causing the palm fronds to wave in the wind.  For the first time in over a year, I can drink beer.  I am having a Prestige beer, the American style lager of Haiti.

Yes, I have worked today in the heat.  Let me tell you a little about the heat.  It’s about 88 degrees Fahrenheit here. It rained a little last night.  Today the sky is blue and filled with puffy white cumulus clouds.

The beauty doesn’t help with the heat when you are not a “heat” person. I am not.  To me, 70 degrees is too hot.  I have on long sleeve shirts to protect me from the mosquitos and the sun.–doctor’s orders.  I take a bandana each day, but within 30 minutes, it is soaked and stays that way.   I teach in a small 10 x 10 room with no lights or air conditioning to balance the heat of the day. So, I sweat some more.  My cloths are usually soaked by the late morning and stay that way.  I also wear long pants—doctor’s orders—to again keep away the mosquitos.  I am not complaining, but November in Haiti is hot.  I want to remember this when January arrives in Delaware and I am once again looking at the cold snowfall—as much as I love the cold and snow.

Part II  Day 1   Haiti, Jacmel   October 29, 2014

I left this morning at 5:30 am for a ride to the airport.  As the day progressed, it was uneventful, as flying goes.  All good when things are uneventful.

This message will be short–  What a difference 6 months makes.  I was prepared to meet the Port au Prince  milieu  with less shock than when I had first seen it.  BUT—things have improved and it started before I left the airport.

There are clean toilets that flush in the airport terminal— it’s still chaos with everyone getting their luggage—I know you all have been in airports where people stand really close to the baggage claim.  In Haiti they stand really close, and then there are the people with the carts who are trying to get their luggage next to the people who have claimed some of their luggage and holding onto it for dear life amongst the crowd.  Then there are those like me who doesn’t’ know which of the two carousels has been assigned to my plane.  I wander between the people checking both carousels to see if I recognize anyone from the plane or my brightly colored luggage.

Well, it comes, and I am ready to leave, but now I have to pass through luggage security—I can’t find my luggage stamps, and I am carrying 5 different pieces, trying to sort through my backpack to find it–  Then, he sees that I don’t speak French, can’t find the ticket with the luggage numbers, and he just waves me — nicely—after punching some holes into my other official tags.

I wonder out to find Yvenord —there smiling among the sea of Haitian faces—one I recognize. The next things I see are the people sweeping the streets and piling the trash up in piles with trucks coming by and loading it !  OH !!!!! what a difference.  It is actually really cleaned up—so much more than before that I can see the curbs, the street and the actual sidewalk without all the debris.

Apparenetly,  Natalie, the present President of Haiti, has instutitued public works projects like street sweeping and paying the people a salary— a real salary.  There is actual building construction crews,

street crews putting in or repairing streets and side walks !   It’s amazing.  Yvenord also told me that two companies have come to Haiti and they are collecting all the plastic.  He didn’t know what they are doing with it, but it might be a recycling effort of some kind.  I will attempt to find out while I am here.

Yvenord, a young Haitian teacher from FLI, was my escort and so I regaled him with questions for most of the 3 hour trip.

Even more— when I walked into my room at the hotel— it has bright new bedspreads and pillows!   It seems that 6 months and some of the Haitian Presidents initiatives are making things happen— and time.