First full day

Monday, January 6, 2014

First full day!

After a very long, satisfying night of sleep in our new temporary home, (we all slept for about 11 hours – talk about some travel exhaustion!), and breakfast with Gabi, we started our first day of the trip – and it was definitely a busy one.

In the morning, we traveled with Gabi (and sadly without our fearless advisor, Melody, who was home sick for the day – which Melody and the team were both pretty sad about) to the nearby location where her recently-opened restaurant is up and running. The property on which the restaurant is located, Konpleks Anba Tonel, is directly across the street from the Université Roi Henri Christophe, a purposeful choice of location: The restaurant uses local meats and vegetables – sometimes even as local as the peppers, spinach, and eggplant that they are growing on the same piece of property – for the meals provided. University students are able to get breakfast and lunch for a reduced price, and professors and other customers can also come get an affordable meal as well. The restaurant consists of open pavilions and brightly colored tables and chairs, and an overall comforting and relaxing atmosphere.  

A quick backtrack for some information on the Université Roi Henri Christophe: This Haitian university, funded by the government of their neighbors, the Dominican Republic, is now the biggest university in Haiti – it is now only in its second year, with 3,000 students, but a capacity for 10,000.

Hopes are high for the students who attend and the leadership they will develop from their education. This was especially apparent in our first meeting with a group of Université Roi Henri Christophe students. Gabi arranged for us to meet and have lunch with an organization of student leaders from the University, the Ligue des Etudiants de l’Idéal Christophien. It was very interesting to see what their organization focused on, most importantly leadership and a shared interest in furthering their educational opportunities, with a basis of bringing Haiti back in line with some of the ideals with historical Haitian leader Roi Henri Christophe. Going into the meeting, we didn’t really know what the goal of the exchange was intended to be. However, after introducing ourselves and discussing our different individual academic goals, the leader of the group expressed a desire to set up an educational and cultural exchange between our two colleges. Although we were all enthusiastic about the idea, we didn’t have all the answers we needed. Thankfully, both our group and the University students were enthusiastic about reconvening at the end of the week after doing a bit more thinking and clarifying on the idea.

Next, after a bit of drive (with our favorite driver ever, Piti!), we visited a town called Phaeton. Sonje Ayiti has been working with the town in some capacities, but Gabi explained to us on the way there that the village has been dependent on a feeding program established there for many years now. This was a classic example of a somewhat flawed, but well-intentioned way of combating hunger: Each day the feeding program gives one large meal to the children and adults of the town – which probably at first was keeping many of the malnutritioned children alive. But now, after years of the feeding program providing free food, the town has become somewhat dependent; many adults have lost the motivation to find other more sustainable ways to provide food for their families, and the feeding program has devolved into a long-term band aid, but not an effective cure. Gabi discussed with us why it was difficult to convince people that this was a dangerous cycle. We talked with the woman who runs the program, a lovely and very hard-working person, and got to interact a bit with the children who came to the school to pick up their meals. Gabi also sent Grace on an errand to get soil samples from the town – she wanted to get the soil tested to see if it is fertile enough for certain crops to grow in the area (Grace definitely got a funny look from a couple of 7-year-old girls for putting some random dirt in a plastic cup). 

Children in line for feeding program meal

Next we visited a farm in Paulette and chatted with the farmer in-charge of the projects going on there, which have been supported by Sonje Ayiti. He gave us a crash course in the water irrigation system they use – pretty impressive – showed us what plants are growing on the huge piece of land, as well as the greenhouse, and a hut where there are peppers and vegetables being dried. Just one more example of Sonje Ayiti’s efforts to enhance sustainable food security. We also saw our first glimpse of a large property covered in newly-built, colorful rows of “temporary” housing, funded by USAID. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and Gabi explained the housing was placed with good intentions, but has created some frustration for being on fertile land that could have been used for crop, and for the seemingly random location.

So overall, Monday was a good day full of a lot of visits and a whole lot of learning about the complicated factors that go into aid projects, whether they are small or large-scale, successful or unsuccessful. We went home, team-napped briefly (of course), and had our first Haitian dinner with Gabi, where she filled us in more on the background of some of the projects we had learned about through the day, and helped us create some guidelines for the nutrition programs we would be helping with on Tuesday. Then Grace led rooftop reflection, after which we were all ready to go to bed to prepare for a big day (and early morning!).

-(Natalie Burke)