First Education Day

Tuesday, January 7^th, 2014

Today was our first visit to open up a dialogue with Haitians about nutrition and health during pregnancy and how they can best use some of the resources non-profits make available to them.

Before we got going, we started off with a hot and spicy Haitian breakfast. We then left early enough for the ride out to one of the areas where mothers had gathered to receive aid and meet with us. The ride took a while, but we had a great driver and it was really great to see more of the country side. Once we arrived, we were welcomed and given seats to be amongst the mothers.

Before we had our talk, the children took turns being weighed and measured by a nurse. It took a while since  most of the youngest ones were pretty scared of the glass scale, but things moved along smoothly enough. One girl kept coming up to us and running away. Eventually, she brought one of the older boys with her and made a certain attempt to introduce us. Kids are cute and funny in any country.

When the weighing/measuring was done, we started talking about what we had learned about nutrition and the moringa tree. Each of us had specialized in one of several educational topics: nutrition during pregnancy, birth, birthing pains, the moringa tree, or the cashew fruit/cashews. We talked a bit about our subjects and asked the mothers what they knew about them. They explained to us that they knew a lot of the information already and that their trees were being eaten by goats. We talked to them about taking care of the trees and the necessary protection involved. Then, we talked about nutrition for children. They explained what things they gave their newborns and toddlers in terms of breast milk and eventually other foods. We commended them on doing a great job so far and to keep it up.

View of Cap-Hatien, where we stayed. 

Our base was around the mountain on which the city is located.

Since we were done, we enjoyed lunch in the car (Haitian coca-cola and peanut butter sandwiches, which were awesome) and left.

Once we made it back, we took turns reading out loud from Bossypants to pass the time (after I had napped) and then we took time to reflect on the day. Gabie explained that the mothers hadn’t taken good enough care to protect the moringa trees given to them, which was why goats could easily destroy them. We realized we should’ve reiterated that information even more so that they could be convinced to take better care of the trees. Gabie went on to explain that a lot of the information we had prepared was already well known and had been conveyed to locals by Hatian health workers. We could help by reiterating that information in order to build up the locals’ confidence in their health workers’ knowledge, thus building a better relationship of trust.

We reflected more on what Gabie had said after dinner. Tomorrow we plan on putting what we’d learned to good use for the next set of mothers.

-(Anderson Johnson)