Bonswa! (Good afternoon/evening/night/everything after 11am in Creole)
Given our poor (read: lack of) Internet connection in Cap Haitien, I have the privilege of offering a third blog post in a single day! I’m sure our millions of readers are thrilled. (yes, that was sarcasm!) In all seriousness, though, we do truly appreciate the well wishes, prayers, and blog-reading from our family members and friends back home! (Note: I wrote this blog between 10pm and 11pm, though I couldn’t post until Monday morning. However, I was too tired to change it, even though the greeting was wrong and it wasn’t actually the third post in a day!)
Our day began at 9am, which afforded us an unbelievable amount of sleep after the many preceding VERY early mornings (of course this would be the morning that a rooster would wake me sometime that began with a 5 and I couldn’t go back to sleep, but it’s not every day you get to see the sun rise in such a stunning setting!). As we were enjoying a delicious breakfast of bread on the hotel balcony, our community partner for the day, Gabrielle Vincent, of Sunje Ayiti, made her grand entrance (and by grand entrance I mean she walked up and said “I’m Gabrielle” and gave Melody and me hugs – doesn’t take much to make me happy). After chatting with her for 20 or so minutes in the hotel lobby, our group (eight team members, Gabrielle, an intern named Olivia, an ICC representative named Marline, two translators, Evians and Pierre, and our driver, who was only ever referred to as “chauffeur” – yes, 14 people!) piled into our van and headed off to Sunje Ayiti in the village of Limonade (yes, this is where lemonade was invented, leading Gabrielle to mention the importance of getting a lemon statue similar to the Georgia peach or NYC’s Big Apple, but that’s a story for another day).
I’ve spent some time trying to think of adjectives that might appropriately express our time at Sunje Ayiti – inspiring, uplifting, mind-blowing, humbling, and the list could go on. We certainly hope to work with Sunje Ayiti as we fill out our at least four-year commitment to Haiti, and we hope today was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between our organizations. The day was incredibly jam-packed and I couldn’t possibly remember all the details, so let me hit the highlights:
· Visit to a farm: Our first stop with Gabrielle was to visit a large farm Sunje Ayiti was working to develop (side note: it’s right across from the future site of a 10,000-student university the Dominican Republic is building to aid Haiti – super cool!). We saw countless rows of more types of plants than I knew existed, but the most fascinating aspect was the organization’s commitment to putting Haitians to work. Sunje Ayiti employs up to 40 farmers during the harvesting season and at least seven year-round, thereby letting the farmers earn their food and not just receive a handout. Empowerment for the local people was certainly a theme of our time with Sunje Ayiti.
· Goat/chicken farm: Sunje Ayiti also received a grant that provided 100 female goats (and one African boar goat) and 2,000 chickens. The goats were then bred (at alarmingly fast rates, actually) and then given to local Haitian families and communities; the chicken population also ballooned from 2,000 to 10,000 and were also given to local families and communities. Being given the opportunity to care for these animals has been empowering to the Haitians while also providing a direct financial or nutritional benefit.
· Cocoa factory: Arguably the centerpiece of Sunje Ayiti’s work is its cocoa factory, which is in the process of being built through a grant. The business currently operates out of what appears to be a family home; basically, Haitian women make the chocolate and carve it into aesthetically-pleasing shapes and then sell it for $5 each (side note: they’re going to have a Web site soon – great Christmas presents!) I don’t really understand how it works, but if you mix some combination of water, chocolate, milk, and sugar, you should get delicious hot cocoa (we bought lots of it and I’m excited to try it out – luckily there are instructions in the bag!) An already awesome operation out of a small home in Limonade, it was exciting to see Gabrielle already thinking of innovative ways to make the product even better, such as having a sealed bag to make it last longer and a logo of Limonade on the bag itself.
After our time at Sunje Ayiti, we rushed back to the hotel to pick Catherine up (she unfortunately wasn’t feeling well) and dashed off to the airport to make our flight (we did end up sitting – slash sleeping – in the airport for over an hour, but I suppose better early than late!) We then boarded our (very small) plane for the 20 or so minute flight back to Port-au-Prince. The plane may or may not have been guided by a standard GPS and I may or may not have talked a lot more to Jesus during a patch of super rough turbulence.
As we left the airport, we witnessed a fender bender that was somehow only our first (in the parking lot, not on a street, no less!) and then navigated the utterly confusing (to me, at least) streets of Port-au-Prince. The street that we (apparently) usually came in on had been closed and our driver, Jason, navigated via a makeshift map written in pink marker on the back of a piece of paper, but at least we managed to arrive back in Walls safe and sound.
We then enjoyed a delicious dinner complete with a (very large) cake given to us as a gift by our friends at ICC-Cap Haitien followed by an intense and wonderful reflection session led by the one and only Melody Porter. Our night was completed by laughter-filled games of Zoo (everybody has a ridiculous animal they have to imitate) and Essence (one person answers questions with the essence of a fellow group member in mind and then you have to guess who it is; sample questions include “if this person were a bad habit, which would they be?” or “if A is for apple and B is for banana, which is C for?”)
And then everybody went to sleep or shower and I wrote this blog post. The End.
Kidding, sort of. I just wanted to take a minute to reflect on how much we have grown both as people and as individuals on the Active Citizens Continuum (ask your group member or Google it!) Some of us had been on international trips or even to Haiti before, but I don’t think you can ever get acclimated to the poverty and devastation we have seen. You also, however, cannot help but be constantly inspired by the resilience, work ethic, hospitality, and plain old kind-heartedness of the Haitian people. We might be “blans,” (i.e. foreigners) but we still have a special place in their communities.
We are also getting nostalgic about our imminent departure from this temporary home. Gone (for awhile at least) will be the mosquito bites, sweat stains, brushing teeth with bottled water (harder than it sounds!) and transportation nightmares, but so too will be our beautiful new friends in this wonderful place. Those of us who aren’t graduating are excited to return in January (though we will miss Brian and Wesley a whole lot!), we all must leave now, and I think it’s safe to say that each of us is leaving a piece of our heart here in Haiti.
If you made it to the end of my verbose blog, I appreciate it; I typically have a lot to say, and that is only exacerbated by this life-changing experience. Thank you again for all of your love and support, and we look forward to seeing you all Stateside very soon.
Peace and love,
Timmy and the W&M Haiti Compact
No comments:
Post a Comment