Kids of Delice

I figure it is time for a few more cute kid pics.  Almost all of these pictures are of the kids who live in our "model" village, Do Digue.  I call it a model village because it is where CHI recently started their latrine project by building two composting latrines; have a CHW who lives there; have most homes using the Gadyen Dlo system; and are the village that will be benefiting from the road project set to start later this month. Do Digue is an area with a lot of need because it is located across the river from the main road and thus inaccessible by vehicle; but is also home to many of the warmest and most helpful people I was lucky enough to meet while in Haiti.

These kids particularly loved borrowing my sunglasses and trying to read English words from my Kreyol-English dictionary.  They were actually all home from school that day because of varying illnesses.  The girl in the middle suffers from asthma - I could hear faint wheezing every breath she took - but her inhaler ran out several months ago, and her parents think going to school and running around with the other kids might exasperate her condition too much.

Playing soccer - although not evident from the picture, this ball was actually deflated due to a huge rip in it. It didn't bother these boys.  And, it worked to my benefit at least, because it made the ball move at a slow enough pace for me to actually be able to kick it with some amount of accuracy when the kids would pass it to me.

These kids were actually from Raypool, the community where the school we taught at is located.  They started following Alin and I towards the river as they were all supposed to be collecting water for their families.  Alin and I were heading from Raypool to Do Digue to continue our surveys, but had decided on taking the "back" way through the river for a change in scenery (and honestly because I was so hot I just wanted to walk in the water for a while).  I only noticed what a large group of kids were behind me because they starting singing "Lave men ou ak savon, ak savon!" - the song about hand washing we taught them during our lesson at their school.

These little girls from Raypool were helping me to get this darling boy to "souri!" or smile, for the camera.

Puppies and kids - this might be my favorite picture from the whole trip.  This was taken at Islan's house right after Alin and I finished our 50th (my goal number) survey.  

Offerings

After writing the post about Voodoo, I started noticing little offerings everywhere I went.  Alin thought it was very amusing how every time I'd spot one I had to grab my camera.  Below is actually a Voodoo temple, you can tell because of the flag - its a square shape and generally the same block color pattern.  Around this temple, we found many, many spirit offerings.

Below, the offerings are in the black plastic bags.

I've always loved this tree, but I had never noticed the offering hanging from it until after my Voodoo talk with Alin.

Just to clarify, I asked Alin recently how many of the offerings we were spotting were to give spirits whom someone wanted to perform some sort of evil task for them - as opposed to the number of offerings that he thought were meant for good - and he just laughed.  He said, "first of all, the offerings aren't to get them to do something specific, they are an obligation." I was confused by this, and after asking for clarification he told me, "it's a part of being involved in Voodoo, offerings are something you do ALWAYS, not only when you want your spirit to do something in particular.  For that, you just need to ask your spirit specifically." Oh, right. 

"Lave men ou ak savon... AK SAVON!!!"

Out of all the incredible experiences I've had here in Haiti, I think my favorite was last week.  Liz, Alin,  John (another translator), several of the CHW women, and I went to a school in Raypool and gave a lesson on safe water and hygiene.  We got the idea to do this in part because of how interested kids in the Gadyen Dlo communities were to see the posters we had laminated for Santho, Rolax, and Watson.  Liz also has some experience doing these types of educational visits to schools in Honduras, and for me designing and implementing these types of water-based programs for kids in schools is probably what I want to do most in my life. So, about two and half weeks ago we walked around Raypool looking for this school, "Catherine Fleur" because we had heard that most kids in Do Digue attend it.  We ended up meeting with the director who was very excited for us to come back and give the students a lesson.  He mentioned to us that the worst problem the students at the school face is malnutrition, and that every week they end up having to send students home who are passing out during the school day.  Probably dehydration and having had nothing to eat. 

The school does have a Gadyen Dlo bucket and uses it (and the chlorine) everyday, but we still brought them another one (in addition to two free bottle of chlorine) because it just seemed crazy to only have one bucket for that many kids.  We also brought another Gadyen Dlo bucket for them that we fashioned with two soaps attached by rope and wrote "Lave Men Ou Ak Savon" (wash your hands with soap) on the bucket. This was also conveniently one of the main lines in a song we made up and taught all the students.  We used the tune of the "head, shoulder, knees, & toes" song, and made up a song about hand washing.  Since Alin has lots of experience teaching in schools he was excellent in his role as translator/teacher, and one of my favorite things was that he told each group of students that the additional "ak savon" after each line was for the boys, "the baritones" as he called them, to really let loose and belt out as loud as they could.  They took this job very seriously - it was adorable.  I should note that this week (one week after our lesson), as I was walking around doing surveys in Raypool, kids would run up to me and start singing that song whenever they saw me.  Talk about heartwarming.

The students lining up for attendance first thing in the morning.

 The school has kids from age 3 - 16 but eventually they were divided into three different age groups, so we taught our lesson a little differently for each group.  But the main messages were the same, wash your hands after using the bathroom and before eating, and always drink treated water.  We also taught the songs (we made another song to the tune of "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands" that was about always drinking treated water) to both groups, we played a germ game with glitter, and explained the concepts of germs and water contamination with posters for each of the three groups.

One of our posters, with the youngest group of kids

A game we played to help demonstrate how quickly germs can spread. We asked for 5 volunteers  (per age group) and sprinkled glitter into their palms.  Then we asked them to rub their hands together and go back into their group and shake hands with as many people as they could.  We then told them the glitter represented germs, and they could now see how quickly germs can spread through their school. 

One of the CHWs, Tamara, explaining our water poster.  (This poster took me about 3 hours to draw and color ... it's definitely the most artwork I've done since taking a studio art class in undergrad.)

The glitter game with the oldest kids.  For each of these volunteers we made up specific scenarios and color coded the glitter.  For example, the gold glitter was for someone who didn't wash their hands after they used the bathroom, etc.

After we had done our lesson for each of the three age groups we came together as a whole school for a picture and one final rendition of the two songs.  I'm trying to post a video of the singing, but our internet here is so spotty I'm not sure if I'll get it to work until I'm back in the US.

More Surveys and Some Voodoo

Surveys are exhausting.  I wasn't expecting that my fairly simple, 20 question, verbal surveys would prove so mentally draining.  I think part of it is that doing just about anything here in Haiti feels more laborious for me due to several constant factors, including: the extreme heat and sun, not knowing the language, not having reliable electricity or internet, not having private transportation, having no anonymity whatsoever, and not knowing where anything is (like places where I would go to buy certain things).  But, conducting these surveys - even with the help of a skilled and smart translator - is even harder because on top of it all we are walking around in the heat and sun all day trying to find houses where we will initiate conversations with strangers, ask them personal questions, write down their answers, take a reading of their home's GPS coordinates, and ask them to bring us some of their treated water so we can test it, and depending on the type of test, record that result or take the sample with us and plan on returning the next day to relay the results.

To make matters more difficult, there were certain discrepancies that kept arising in the responses people were giving to several of my survey questions.  For example, my first question:  Where do you get the water you use for drinking?  This often produced answers like: from the canal and the pump.  However, later on in the survey when I would ask what they use to treat their drinking water, I'd get responses like:  "nothing, because we buy our water from the trucks."  Okay, so you get your drinking water from the canal, the pump, and the water trucks?  Then they'd answer "yes" and look at me like, "Duh! Why are you asking something so obvious?"  This type of thing happened a lot, and resulted in a lot more time spent going back over questions we'd already covered to include the newly uncovered information. 

 An "Always" brand water truck

Speaking of water trucks though, I must sadly report that while these trucks are a very common source for providing drinking water to people in these communities (which the people all think means it is treated), all the water samples I have tested have been positive for coliforms.  What a waste of the very little and hard earned money these families have.  But, I know that as depressing as it is to find out stuff like this, it's so important because now we know that the Gadyen Dlo workers should re-emphasize the need to treat all household water - even the expensive truck water.  

Ok, enough complaining - the best part of conducting these surveys is that I do get to go around and see real life going on in the communities, and get to see people's homes, gardens, yards, animals, and of course their darling kids.  Alin, being a school teacher is excellent with kids, and whenever we walk past groups of kids on their way home he always gets them laughing (I wonder if sometimes to my expense) and gets them to tell us something that they learned in school that day.

His comfort with talking to and engaging kids was one of the other reasons I was very happy he was our translator on Thursday last week.  Liz and I got to pilot a water, sanitation, and hygiene education program which we designed, at one of the schools in Raypool, one of our Gadyen Dlo communities.  That was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and I'll discuss the whole experience in much more detail in my next post.

One interesting area of Haitian culture which I haven't had much opportunity to learn about is Voodoo.  All I really have heard over the past month is "oh see over there?  That's a Voodoo temple."  And, as I mentioned, a few weeks ago I heard a Voodoo celebration going on first hand for several nights.  So, after Alin pointed out this building (below) and told me it used to be a Voodoo temple (but was now was just used as a home for a few families), I decided I'd ask him to tell me a little more.

As I understand it, in Voodoo, you communicate with spirits who are the ones that have the power to affect your or other's lives.  Some people actually are married to spirits.  Alin tells me this is why it is so important to get to know your girlfriend, and her family, for several years before you marry her - because you want to make sure she is not already married to a spirit.  If you do happen to marry someone who is married to a spirit it will mean "a lot of problems for you," because that spirit will obviously be jealous and pissed.  But, sometimes the people who are married to the spirits don't even know the spirit has married them for several years.  But, if you are married to a spirit, and a human, you could at least designate a room in your house for the spirit - you just need to make sure your human spouse never goes in there.  

I'm slightly unclear about the different levels of these spirits because it seems like some spirits are more powerful and more encompassing than others.  For example, the Voodoo celebration I was hearing from my bedroom would have been to honor a spirit who is serving all the people at that celebration, whereas a spirit wife or husband might only work for their spouse.  Similarly, there are also Voodoo priests, who are people that have an even closer relationship to spirits and you can hire them to get the spirits to do what you need.  

But again, I'm not sure why sometimes you can make a personal offering to a spirit, like leaving some food hanging in a tree, and sometimes you have to go to a priest to do it. 

At the Voodoo celebrations, sacrifices of goats or chickens are very common, and some of the meat will be buried, hung from a tree, or put out on a rock along some path where the spirit will easily find it.  The rest of the animal is then eaten by the people who are there celebrating.  The whole idea is that you've got to take care of these spirits so they stay in a good mood and want to keep helping you - and not the opposite.  Alin tells me it is definitely possible that some of the offerings we see hanging in trees (in coconut holders, or other purse like containers - I'll have to post a picture, I have seen a few since we had this talk and he explained it too me) are placed there because someone is mad at someone else and is asking their spirit to do something bad to them.  However, these offers could also be intended for a spirit who someone is wanting to do good for someone else, like heal them, for example.  

Now, I should probably put a little disclaimer out there and point out that Alin doesn't "believe" in Voodoo because he is Christian, and says "you can't be Christian and believe in anything except God."  But, he was raised by his mother who used to practice Voodoo until Jesus found his family when he was a young teen.  So, everything I've written here is just my understanding of it based on how he described it to me, so don't take any of this as fact unless you do your own research to back it up.

It's hard to see in this picture, but the part of the mural on the far right is of a man chained to a tree with knives stabbing into him in his thigh, stomach, and arm.  A lot of the paintings on this building had similarly morbid imagery, which was both fascinating and disturbing to me.  It actually made me a little uneasy to photograph it for some reason, so I took these pictures as quickly as I could and then walked away.

Surveys with My New Translator

Last Monday, I was supposed to start working with a new translator I had "interviewed" the week prior.  However, at 7 am I received a text from him saying that his mother was not doing well and he needed to take her to the hospital, so he was very sorry but would not be making it to work with me that day - but that he was sending one of his friends as a replacement.  

I was very worried at first because I've found that even among official translators here, ability to actually speak and understand English is highly varied. And, I had already explained my whole project, the purpose of the surveys, etc. with the other translator and was just dreading having to re-introduce everything to someone new.  However, all my worries were quickly assuaged when I met Alin.  It turns out that he is a part-time English teacher himself, and the first activity I did with him was to sit down and translate my whole survey into Kreyol.  This was helpful to us both - by going over all of our survey questions before hand together - and showed me very quickly how lucky I was to have him by my side. 

Doing laundry at the canal

The surveys that we did this week were so that I could have a small "control" group for my evaluation of Gadyen Dlo, thus I only went to homes and spoke with people that did not use the system.  It was also a helpful tour of the area, and just overall in understanding the multi-faceted water issues the people living in these communities around Arcahaie face each day.

One of the many precious mamas and babies we met throughout the week

Some girls we met while looking for homes to survey - shucking beans

Alin, my new translator, and my favorite baby puppy from Do Digue

More on Alin, the surveys, and our other projects last week soon!

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? ;)