I spent my Spring Break checking out agriculture projects in the Southern Hills of La Vallée de Jacemel, Haiti. Here is my journal. I hope you enjoy.
Day 1
3/15/11
Well this is the first time I have booked a flight to Haiti when I arrive same day, and of course my flight leaving Dallas this morning ended up being delayed four hours, thus causing me to miss my connecting flight from Miami to Port-au-Prince. Brilliant. Well thanks for the free hotel room and three meal vouchers American Airlines, not to mention the 3,000 bonus mile to my advantage account!
Day 2
3/16/11
Started the day out with a 5:30AM departure from the Holiday Inn Express to Miami International Airport. Finally made it to Haiti this morning around 9:15AM a hour late. For some reason this trip I have spent more time lounging next to airport gates and sitting on planes that are still on the ground, than actually in the air flying...
Got to the baggage claim area in PAP and only found one of my two checked bags... Left the luggage tags for both bags on the desk of the hotel room I stayed in Miami last night. Great start to the trip, I know. Spent about 20 minutes talking with the baggage claim ladies about my second bag. (It's always fun talking with Haitians in my limited Creole. The ladies I spoke with knew English but I always try to keep things in Creole until we reach that awkward point where I say or something is said to me without comprehension) They recommend I wait on the next plane from Miami to PAP and maybe my other bag will be on that plane. I reluctantly agree. Went out side to drop off the bag I did have to my friend Gaston. I'll be working with Mr. Jean Gaston on this trip learning about his many agriculture projects in the southern part of Haiti. Eventually the 11o'clock flight lands from Miami and what do you know I find my other bag. I head back to meet up with Gaston outside and run into my dear friends Dustin and Jenna Wadley! (dustinandjenna.wordpress.com) They are at the airport picking up our friend James the executive director of Center of Hope Haiti Inc. the orphanage they are helping to set up. Small world huh? I would have stayed and chatted with them a bit, but after delay after delay and sweating it out in the baggage claim area for the past two hours I wasn't in the mood. Promised I'd see them before I left back to the states.
Meet back up with Gaston and we head out from the airport. Can't help but notice this sign when we are leaving the airport:
I ask Gaston if former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is coming back to Haiti after seven years in exile and he says yes he should be back tomorrow. Pretty crazy time to be visiting, the elections are on Sunday March 20th and now former president/dictator Aristide is coming back. Should make for an interesting trip!
It's about mid day when we arrive at Gaston's house in Port-au-Prince. When we walk in he referrers to the building as the campaign headquarters. My friend Gaston is involved in the up coming elections between Michel Martelly and Mirlande Manigat. He is campaigning for Manigat and will be responsible for proctoring voting in the south. While waiting on Gaston to pack his bag for our trip to the south I watched a TV commercial about Cholera. It showed how to prevent getting the disease, the symptoms, and how to treat the disease. Rather interesting I thought.. I only wish more Haitians could see it. It's a bit ironic because the Haitians that have enough money to afford electricity and TV arn't at a high risk to get the disease as the poorer class who probably will never see the commercial.
We stopped at a hotel called the Le Palmier Guest in Petionville, Haiti. It's owned by a Cuban man name Juan. Nice guy Juan is, he showed me around the hotel explaining to me the history, all in Spanish. I'm pretty sure Juan only speaks Spanish. Gaston later tells me that Juan defected from Cuba and came to Haiti to open this hotel. Rather interesting I thought. We decide to eat lunch at the hotel which by the way has a website if your interested in checking it out: www.lepalmierguesthotel.com
For lunch we have chicken and fried plantains. One of my favorite dishes to eat while in Haiti. Gaston and I talk about agriculture projects he has going on and what we will do in the next few days. I end up checking into the Le Palmier Guest for the night and Gaston takes off for PAP to do some election stuff.
Later in the night Juan asks,"Tienes hambre?" I reply, "Si! Tengo hambre. Yo quero pollo y arroz! Beber Prestige!" I love the diversity of language here in Haiti. I'm talking Spanish 2 this semester, which is a good thing because Juan only speaks Spanish. The waiter brings me my diner of chicken and rice and I eat alone in the bar area. After diner I head up to the lounge area of the hotel and watch some TV. The hotel has direct TV so I get even more TV channels that I have in the states! I watched an episode of Anthony Bourdains: No Reservations and then call it a night.
My room at the Le Palmier Guest:
This is the first AC unit I have ever had the pleasure of using in Haiti. It is amazing.
Day 3
3/17/11
Slept great last night thanks to the rotating AC unit in my hotel room. Forgot to pack my bug spray but didn't have any bites. Headed down for breakfast about 7 and greeted Juan, "Beunos Dias!" Lounged in the lobby of the hotel for a bit before breakfast and perused through a Haitian Creole to Spanish dictonary. It belongs to Juan I'm guessing.
Ate bananas, ham and cheese omlete, and bread for breakfast. After breakfast I sat with a Haitian art dealer at the lounge area and we talked about the upcoming election and the return of Aristide. Chatted for about a hour and Gaston shows back up and we load up and head for La Vallée.
We drive through Port au Prince listening to election coverage on the radio. It's quite commical listening to the various radio coverage, you can hear the over exaderation in the voice of the radio broadcasters and various people that call in. I can make out bits and peices of the radio broadcasts and alot of it is people calling in against Michel Martelly. They claim that he is a murderer and a theif. After talking with several Hatians about the election, Martelly is pretty far to the right in a political sense.
On the drive to La Vallée we drive through Port-au-Prince and I can't help but notice the still collapsed buildings from the January 12th quake from over a year ago.
Also noticeable on the drive is the numerous tent cities set up throughout the city.
As we leave the city of Port-au-Prince we start to enter the Haitian countryside. The landscape becomes more green and luscious. We pass through a city called Léogâne which I can tell is farming city. We pass fields of sugar cane and other crops.
Gaston tells me that Léogâne was the epicenter of the January quake and almost all of its buildings were destroyed.
To get to La Vallée we drive up a winding mountain road. I have been up the winding part of Haiti's famous Route 3 on my way to Hinche and it feels like this road is more steep and winding. We pass groups of children making their way back home from school on the road. I notice how smoothly they navigate the roads in their school uniforms.
As we travel up and up, mountains beyond mountains I notice the hills and hill sides are bare and empty, robbed of precious trees. The erosion that has taken place is easily noticable.
We finally arrive in La Vallée de Jacmel after about two hours of driving. It's not that big of a city that is kind of spread out amongst the hills. Jacmel is a big city in Haiti but we are not in Jacmel, we are in La Vallée de Jacmel. Jacmel is east of where we are at now. Are first stop in La Vallée is to Gaston's agriculture school, because of the election school will be out tomorrow and the day after the election. We drive a bit more in La Vallée and arrive at Université Polyvalente D'Haiti (La Vallée location).
The agriculture school is two stories tall and the lower floor is a primary school for children in the mornings. When we first arrive classes are in session upstairs.
When we first arrived I met Lukmen the assistant director of the school. He Handels the running of the school when Gaston is out of town.
Gaston Michel Director of the agriculture school.
Gaston and Lukmen.
After meeting Lukmen and chatting for a bit we headed upstairs to check in on a few classes in session. The first class we stopped into was an accounting class.
The second class we visited was a French class.
Now you may be asking why would the agriculture students need to be learning accounting and French? It was explained to me that students take accounting classes to learn about keeping track of growing yields and all the other mathematics involving in growing, selling, and managing crops. The students take French classes because French is the language business is done in. Most Haitians speak Creole fluently but not all can speak, read, and write in French or Creole for that manner. It's important for the students to learn French because any official document in Haiti most likely will be in French also.
After visiting with students, teachers and directors at the school we head down the mountain for lunch and then head to the house we will be spending the night at. Gaston owns a couple rent houses in town that he uses to house teachers that he brings in from Port-au-Prince.
Home sweet home for the next couple days.Day 4
3/18/11
Didn't sleep much last night, I shared a room with Gaston. Gaston's snoring is so loud I don't understand how he doesn't wake himself up. Anywho we got up about 8AM this morning.
Today we are going to a farmers meeting near the the coastal town of Jacmel. We picked up some bananas for breakfast and got gas and a tire fixed. The meeting is going to take place in a small community called La Breselienne. The road to our meeting spot gets worse and worse and eventually there is no road and we drive on a dry river bed and make our own road. During the rainy season the river bed (our road) is an actual river and we would have had to take a boat to get to La Breselienne.
Auguste had spent the night and morning informing farmers of the meeting and we had a pretty good turn out of 20 or 30 farmers on hand. Gaston gets local farmers working together in the growning of crops. Every so often Gaston gets all of the farmers together and holds meeetings to hear concerns and take questions. The meeting is long and in Creole so I don't understand much. Bits and pieces here and there I can understand. Every so often Gaston takes the time to translate a concern brought up by one of the farmers. Here are some of the things discussed at the meeting:
1) The problem of other farmers livestock getting into the crops of other farmers.
Solution: Tie up your animals.
2) Organic Keylime trees- From what I understand everything in Haiti is grown organically. Most farmers are too poor to afford pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. Farmers grown Vetiver around their gardens to keep damaging insects away. Later I have learned that Haiti is one of the largest countries in world to produce Vetiver. Back to the business of Keylime, Gaston is going to assist the farmers in growning Keylime trees in the hills of La Vallee. Gaston says Haitian keylimes are the best.
3) Gaston brings up the concern of cutting down trees. Cutting down trees is a touchy subject because farmers must cut down trees to produce charcol in order to cook their food. Less than 2% of Haiti's natural forest is still standing because of mass deforesterization. Laster on the ride back from La Breselinne I ask Gaston how else Haitians can cook their meals. Gaston says to government should provide propaine cook stoves to villages to combat the problem of deforesterization.
4) The farmers express their concerns about their children leaving Haiti to work in the sugar cane fields of Santo Domingo. They make more money in the Dominican and sugar cane production is better because they have more mills to process the cane.
5)Secondary School- The area has a primary school in the area in which they send their young children to, but their is secondary school in the area. Gaston tells them he will look into some things and get back to them later.
After the meeting is over we all sit around and drink coconut juice. When we are done drinking the coconut juice and eating the insides of the coconut I am brought some fruit bread to try along with coffee. The coffee was cold and I wasn't a big fan of the fruit bread, its the thought that counts right?
When we are done eating the meeting turns into a political debate about the up coming election. Auguste reams into a farmer wearing a Michel Martley wristband and starts passing out Mirlande Manigat cards. Shouting and loud banter ensues and we make are way back to the car.
The ride back to La Vallée is even rougher on the way back. We stopped in coastal town called Bainet.
While in Bainet we stopped at a few restaurants to see if they had any fish and no luck. Bainet is a pretty town though, with nice beaches.
3/19/11
Woke up about 7AM this morning and Gaston told me we are heading higher into the mountains today. I pack up and we head out for the day.
We pick up a friend of Gaston's named engineer LaRoche. Engineer LaRoche is Haitian and got his bachelors degree in Haiti and his masters and PhD in Belgium. We next headed to a hotel for breakfast. First we had some hot chocolate with bananas and bread. Then they brought us omelettes.
After breakfast we left the hotel and went to check out a house that engineer LaRoche owns. It is far from finished and need quite a bit of interior work done but it has a beautiful view from the back porch.
Today we are going to check out the site that Gaston wants to put the dam that was previously discussed in the farmers meeting. Engineer LaRoche is an hydroelectric engineer. On the car ride to the site LaRoche is going on and on about the workings of the proposed dam. The closer and closer we get to the dam the rougher and rougher the road becomes. Eventually there is no road anymore and we are just driving making are own path. We finally reach a point where we can no longer drive anymore and we must get out on foot. Engineer LaRoche is the first one to jump out of the car and he leads me down a path and around a bend and exclaims, "Ici!". He shows me where the proposed dam is going to be placed, just below a waterfall that currently isn't a water fall because its the dry season.
Engineer LaRoche goes into explaining the dam project in Creole and I can kind of make out what he is saying. Gaston eventually catches up with us and further explains the project and expresses his main concern of repairing the road to be able to get the materials for the dam project.
After looking at the dam site we head to where the artificial lake construction is underway. I have heard of artificial lakes before but not in Haiti. We drive sometime on rough roads and stop ontop of hill with several big construction vehicles (CATs) Below I can see what looks like a huge hole in the ground:
Gaston tells me that the lakes will improve farmers irrigation methods and will be stocked with Tilapia. I ask where all the water will come from to fill the lakes up ad he tells me they will fill up during the rainy season no problem.
Engineer LaRoche and I
After looking at the artificial lake sites we drive to a location that use to be a coffee plantation. It was abandoned and needs building repairs but doesn't look too shabby.
Today was our last day in the south and we headed back to Port-au-Prince.
3/20/11
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."
-Karl Marx
Today is election day in Haiti. I lounged around the hotel in Petionville most of the day and watched election coverage on TV and played dominoes.
3/21/11
I spent this whole day sick... I must have eaten something that didn't agree with my stomach. I spent at least a hour or so on the toilet with a bucket between my legs, simultaneously throwing up and well you know what you do on the toilet that can't be done standing if your a guy. Ironically I was quite comfortable in this position... After laying in bed feeling terrible, I went down stairs and told/acted out my sickness to Juan in Spanish. He handed me a sprite and a jar of salt... I drank it and was still sick surprisingly.. Later he gave me some pill from a medical kit. I took the pill not know what it was and not much caring. 30 drowsy minutes later I felt like a million bucks!
3/22/11
Today is leaving day. Gaston picked me up around noon or so and I met up with my friends Dustin, Jenna, and Will at a supermarket in Petionville. I volunteered with Center of Hope Haiti last summer and spent a month in Hinche, Haiti working with Dustin and Jenna. I later met Will in New York at a fundraising event for COHH. It was good to see old friends and catch up on all the work they have been doing in Hinche. We went out to eat at the Visa Lodge and caught up over Cheese Pizza and Prestige.
After saying my goodbyes to Will, Dustin, and Jenna, Gaston and I make the short drive to the airport and say our goodbyes. Gaston offered me a job working with him in La Vallee and I intend to accept once I have graduated college.
On the plane ride back to the states I sat next to a Haitian gentleman. Can't remember his name but we got to talking. He asked me about what I was doing in Haiti and what not. I told him I was learning about agricultural projects and intend to return to live and work here one day. He gave me a puzzled and crazy look. :/?? Something along those lines. He told me that was good though. After that I fell asleep.
I can't really explain what draws me to Haiti. I enjoy the culture and the people. I also enjoy helping people and learning. That is all. Overall it was a good trip.
