A Sunday Hike

On Sunday of this past weekend Liz and I decided we wanted to do something active; partly to get a break from Matana, partly to burn off all the Manba we'd eaten Saturday, and partly just because we have been wanting to explore the mountains and river that we live next to.  We go running a few times a week and we always go up the gravel road from Matana into the mountains, so we are familiar with that route, but we really wanted to find some new terrain to explore this time, so we decided we would walk through Raypool (one of our CHI and Gadyen Dlo communities) and then find a way down into the river bed from there.  

Following the river - the view upstream

We thought we would just hike through the river - it's never any deeper than 2 ft, and most if it is less than half a foot with lots of rocky areas not even submerged.  We originally wanted to walk upstream in the river bed as far as we could and try to find the starting source of the water.  However, as it turned out, Sunday was laundry day for many families in the area, so walking along the river bed made us feel like we were invading on people's privacy a little bit (as many of the women were washing themselves, and their kids, along with the clothes).  At one point after we made it past several large banana farms which bordered the river on both sides, we found a path that went straight up one of the foothills next to the river.  In the picture below, the path we ended up taking is right where Liz's head is.

Following the river, the view downstream

This turned out to be a really good turn for us to take in our hike because we got to actually do some intense climbing, but also because the views we got from the top of these little mountains were breathtaking.  And, we didn't pass another person after we got out of the river area, which made the whole thing more relaxing, peaceful, and gave us just the kind of break we needed from constantly being stared at and called out to ("blan, BLAN, BLAN!").

View from our first peak: banana fields and the ocean

 Up on the first peak overlooking the banana fields

After making it to the first peak we had challenged ourselves to, my stubborn adventurer side came out (and probably the endorphins kicked in at this point) and I couldn't stop saying "let's just make it to the top of that next peak, we've got to see what's on the other side!"  And for most of it, Liz was right there with me in full agreement, however when we started losing sight of an actual path, and finding we had to fight with more and more thorn bushes to continue, she suggested we call it a day and head back.  Unfortunately, having set my sights on making it to this final peak, the highest mountain we could reasonably get too, I just couldn't turn back without having gotten to the top.  I'm really lucky Liz is such a good sport and pushed through with me, although I knew she was (understandably) cursing me in her head.  The worst part was about a 15 minute span less than 100 meters from the top, where we literally were surrounded by several variations of thorn bushes in all directions.  We experimented with different methods to get through them, including trying to crawl underneath them, use our backpack as a shield, and trying to step down on top of them.  Eventually we made it through and to the summit - but we both definitely looked like we had gotten in a fight with a cat (and lost).

 Liz at our summit - view of the ocean, all of our CHI communities, the river, and lots of banana fields 

 The view at our summit behind us towards more mountains

Our relief of making it to the summit was slightly overshadowed by our fear for the way down for two reasons.  First, Liz and I both have bad knees; she's had several surgeries, and I've had knee problems since I was 12 and had Osgood-Schlatter's disease - and we both have the most pain and feel like our knees are weakest when we go down steep slopes.  Second, since we had made it to the top with no path, just bushwhacking the through the thorns, we were terrified we'd have to do the same thing back down.  Amazingly though, Liz was able to navigate us down the mountain finding a dried up stream bed that eventually lead us to a real trail.  In total our decent back down to the river took no more than 40 minutes.   

 Resting on some rocks in the river after getting back down the mountain to the river - still about a 45 minute walk home from here and we were just about out of water to drink.

We ran out of water shortly after making it all the way down, and decided that a stop by the coke lady for bags of water and some cokes would be the perfect end of hike reward.  When we sat down next to the the grandmother (that must own or co-own this "store" with her daughter), she couldn't stop exclaiming about how red we looked from the sun, and kept telling us that we should go to the market and get big straw hats to protect our face, chest and shoulders.  She speaks no English, but this was pretty easy to understand through hand gestures and her exclamations of "rouge, rouge!" (red, red!).  

After that we headed back to Matana, where reality started setting back in.  The day before, our water tank -  the tank that supplies our bathrooms with flush-able toilets and showers - had run out of water.  I feel kind of silly for even acting like this was such a big hardship, considering that most of the families we work with around here have never lived in a home with running water, and are always going to the river and canal with buckets to get water for their homes. (I mean, this is what I'm here studying!) But as hot, sweaty, sun-burned, and saturated with bug spray as we were... Liz and I made the difficult decision - one I can't believe I'm actually going to include in my blog - to take a quick dip in the canal. We didn't want to cause a scene, so we tried to find somewhere close to Matana but out of sight of other people, and eventually had to settle on a shallow, narrow little irrigation canal for the banana fields down the hill in front of the mission.  For as long as we debated whether we should or shouldn't go through with it, the few seconds of bliss that came from finally going through with it was totally worth it.  Ironically, we found out later that evening that Guilene and the girls had manually filled our tank with enough water from buckets that we could flush our toilets again, and take a 30 second shower, so in the end we didn't even really have to worry about all the coliforms we'd just been exposed to in the canal.

Desperate times call for desperate measures

The Market, Manba, and a Moto

The market for our area is a 6 dollar (Haitian dollars – so this is still less than one US dollar) moto ride away, in a district called Ka Fou Pwa.  It is on every Wednesday and Saturday, and I had been wanting to go for a while now.  Saturday morning I went with Guilene, one of the Haitian women who is sort of the boss of Matana while Mahalia and Raymond are away.  She speaks a little English, and combined with my tiny bit (but steadily improving) of Kreyol, it makes for just enough understanding between us that we can communicate decently. 

I went to the market mostly just to see it, but also with a short list of things Liz and I needed, including: mangos, passion fruit, oranges, eggs, Haitian peanut butter, toilet paper, D batteries for Liz’s fan (which I’m very jealous of), and sunglasses for me (because my one pair has so many scratches now its hard to see out them).  I probably should have thought this list through a bit better before I set out to buy it all and only brought a purse, but luckily Guilene had her backpack and helped me carry the heavy fruit. 

Abbey and Liz had warned me about the market, with regard to the unpleasant smells and sights I would experience; and I’ve been through some markets in villages in Poland with my grandmother so I wasn’t totally unprepared for it.  Still, I saw some parts of dead animals I never ever wanted to see, and I smelled some smells that words could never describe.  I definitely regret not getting a picture, and maybe I will get one at some point in the future. But there were just so many people, and so much movement and chaos I just couldn’t stop to take out my camera.  Plus, with how narrow the isles are, how fast Guilene walked, and how low hanging all the tarps and ropes are, I couldn’t take my eyes off where I was going for even a moment.

We were actually very successful at the market, with the only thing not found being the Haitian peanut butter (manba in Kreyol).  When I expressed how disappointed I was about this, Guilene, much to my delight, suggested that we just buy peanuts and she would make it for me.  This turned out to be a great activity because after she and the other girls roasted and salted the peanuts, Guilene came to get me and Liz asking if we wanted to go down to the neighborhood grinder to help her (because she has a bad wrist).  We were very happy to help, and it was really, really fun.  Haitian peanut butter’s secret ingredient is the fresh whole peppers that get grinded in with the peanuts; and it makes for the most delicious, slightly spicy, smoky, nut butter I’ve ever had.  I seriously need to start making Haitian peanut butter at my house (probably a food processor would do the job, although I’d honestly prefer the grinder).

Some of the cool murals at the park in Arcahaie

After gorging ourselves on our manba, we decided we needed to do something different and entertaining for the rest of our Saturday afternoon.  With Santho’s help we arranged a moto to pick us up and drive us to downtown Arcahaie, where there is a nice park and views of the ocean.

The ocean and a nice little donkey

We really just wanted to drink a Prestige (Haiti’s only beer brand) and sit by the ocean.  However, once we got down there we realized there was a soccer game going on, and this meant that all the bars and eating places were full of drinking men, so we took a walk around the big central park instead to try and come up with a safer plan.  We ended up calling one of our translators, Smith, (whom I’d run into at the market earlier) and he came to meet us in the park.  Smith probably speaks the best English of all the translators I’ve worked with here so far, in large part because he lived in Canada for almost 10 years.  With him by our side, we were brave enough to walk through some neighborhoods towards the ocean, and discovered a little tiny building that sold cold beverages, kind of like a walk-up drive through.  And, it was perfectly situated right on the edge of a little row of houses and less than 200 meters from the water.

We were able to get a beer and walk out to the water, where we discovered that while there was no beach to speak of, there were piles and piles of discarded conch shells (and trash of course).

Conch graveyard

After our little stroll by the ocean, our moto driver came back for us, and I finally got a picture showing how we squeeze on these little motorcycles and ride around.  #Blansandwhich? ;)

Our Trip to Léogâne

On Wednesday night I had the great honor of meeting Michael Ritter, the founder of Gadyen Dlo.  It turns out, Dr. Abbey actually knew him and lived in the same aid house when she was down in Haiti after the earthquake.  After Peterson (Gadyen Dlo Supervisor) told us that he couldn’t get anyone from the Gadyen Dlo production facility in Léogâne to deliver him any more chlorine for our newly trained team, we decided we would just try to contact Michael directly.  It turned out to be perfect timing for him, and he suggested he come to Matana on Wednesday night from Port-Au-Prince where he was flying into.  Because I have been studying the Gadyen Dlo program for the past 8 months, I really sort of felt like I was meeting a celebrity!

Michael first started developing the program for a business plan competition back in undergrad.  Then throughout his MPH he continued to work on the program and became more familiar with the water situation in Haiti, eventually working on it for his thesis, and implementing Gadyen Dlo shortly after graduation.

For the past several years, he’s lived in Haiti full time, and is running Gadyen Dlo out of a property he rents in Leogane, where they also produce the hypochlorite solution.  Because Abbey was leaving Thursday morning for Port-Au-Prince to begin the second leg of her time in Haiti, we decided that we could all go together, drop her off, and then continue on to Léogâne;  both to give Michael a ride home, and to pick up the chlorine we needed for our Arcahaie Gadyen Dlo program.

In true Haitian style, our plan was slightly delayed due to some car trouble Peterson was having Thursday morning.  But he eventually found a friend who was willing to drive us in his cousin’s car.  Only problem was that the new car wasn’t an SUV like Peterson was going to take us in originally, it was a BMW sedan.  (An older one, but still, I really got a kick out the fact that I was road tripping around Haiti in a bimmer.) So, for the first hour we had to squeeze 4 of us in the back seat, because Peterson, and the car owner’s cousin (Pepe) were in the front.

After dropping off Abbey we made our way to Léogâne and toured the facility (see pictures below).  We couldn’t stay too long because we had a 3 hour drive home, but regardless, it was great to see how the Gadyen Dlo chlorine solution is produced in person, and to have had all that time to talk with Michael on the car ride there.

The two pictures below are just some of the shots I got from the car as we drove through various suburbs of Port-Au-Prince.

Notice the color of this water that people are bathing in and collecting in their buckets. (No, its not a dirt road, its some sort of water way.)

Our drive home was fairly uneventful, aside from our 30 minute delay when some armed government officers detained our vehicle at a random checkpoint.  They asked for our driver’s papers, and then apparently it took about an 80 dollar bride and a lot of heated debate for us to finally drive away.  The whole exchange and conversation between Peterson, Pepe and the guards, took place outside of our vehicle while Liz and I just sat in the back seat and watched.  At one point we really started wondering if any of these guards would even check on us, to make sure we weren’t kidnapped or something.  Interestingly, the first guard that came over to talked to us asked us both right away if we were married, saying that he was really interested in finding an American wife… Then he just kept asking for our phone numbers.  Eventually, a second guard walked over and much more seriously asked us if we were ok.  Overall it was another one of these incidents where recounting it makes me realize how relatively crazy an experience it was, but at the time Liz and I weren’t surprised at all that we had been detained—or that the solution ultimately was to pay the officers a bribe.