"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!