In Front of the Elementary School

Here, students at the school in Cabois congregate around a seller of fried dough and crackers.

Here's a view of Tap-Taps I saw on the way to Port-au-Prince. One started out as a van, one started out as a truck, both are old and capable of some serious carpooling. The truck taptaps can carry 20 people; the vans might be limited to more like 16. At least one person has taken Tap-Taps as a symbol of how desperately bad things are in Haiti, but I kind of love them. They're so cheap and easy to use, they run frequently, and if you don't mind other people's company they aren't uncomfortable either, except on the bumpiest roads. Some have kind of sharp bits that will bang you in the back or the head a little if the vehicle goes over big bumps and you're sitting in the wrong spot.

Below is a view out the back of a Tap-Tap, where you can see several of the passengers.

Beautiful Child, Broken Truck, Broken House

Fredjina here is one of my favorite people. She's cute and loving, for no reason I think... it's just how she is. She's standing here in the back of a broken pickup in front of a broken house - the pickup was put here in hopes that it might eventually be fixed - its battery is no good, some of its tires have no air (and probably wouldn't hold air if you pumped them up) and it may have other problems. The truck can, however, be used as a climbing toy, a mirror (there aren't too many hand mirrors around but you can look in the truck's mirrors) and a hand drum (just sit in the pickup bed and bang on the sides for a wonderful variety of sounds). Life is beautiful in Fayet.

No-one lives in the house in the background - the people who built it made the roof in such a way that water pools on the house and leaks through the roof.

Prepare for a Feast!

The door on the left is the one for the little shed space where we wash hands, wash ourselves, and store water in a large plastic drum that reaches up about to my waist. The door on the right is the outhouse.

This is (from left to right) Yanick, Wenson, and Dadi, in the space between the outhouse and the back door of the house. This is the food preparation space. A goat has just been slaughtered for a child's first-communion feast. Wenson is cutting the meat into manageable pieces. Yanick is cleaning out the intestines. Dadi is sitting around looking adorable as usual.

A View of Port-au-Prince

I spent a little bit of my time in Haiti, in Port-au-Prince. For those who've never been, I'd like you all to have an idea of what it was like. There are some great pictures of Port-au-Prince at this post shared by another blogger:

http://toonenhaiti.blogspot.com/2008/05/retournen-anko.html

My experience of Port-au-Prince was that it was a bit of a difficult place to be. There's no hiding the pollution of thousands of automobiles and motorcycles that lack all of the fancy pollution-control tricks that are used in developed countries. A million people living in close quarters without government-funded trash removal service (or any other kind of trash removal service) and living without running water, toilets, moder sewer systems...

Here are some pictures of the suburbs of Port-au-Prince, taken from a Tap-Tap as I was on my way to the airport to leave the country. By the way, if you don't know what a Tap-Tap looks like, check out this Google Images search for "tap tap"!

Literacy Center Student on the Mountain

Gerald Lumarque asked this adult literacy center student about her experience with the literacy program while we were hiking up the mountain. I can't really understand what she was saying in this video. If you do, send me a message (julianbrelsford =at= gmail-dot-com and I'll add your translation to this blog post.

This was along the path to the cave of Anacaona.

Adult Literacy Center Student Gives Feedback

Gerald Lumarque interviewed this Adult Literacy Center student. She said that she learned to sign her name, and she learned the numbers from 1 to 10. She's been participating in the literacy center (which meets weekly) for four months. She's also starting to learn to read and write, and to do arithmetic. They also learn singing (but, she says, "we adults can't really change the way we learned to sing.") Gerald asks, "Do your children ask why you go to literacy classes" and she responds, "No, because I'm really happy that I go to the classes."

Toys in Haiti

This bike can't be pedaled, but it can be ridden downhill! There's a sand pile in the yard outside, and the kids put the bike on top and roll down. Haitian kids are kind of ingenius at finding fun in ordinary stuff. If I had kids, I'd rather they did creative play like this, instead of watching TV.

Here's a soccer game played with a lime and some sticks.

Souri Ayisyen - Haitian Smile

Another picture of a student at the Jean-Jacques Dessalines School in Cabois. I think sometimes joy isn't reasonable, it just is.

The Haitian Spirit

Mano is all dressed up.
My friend Wenson only smiles when I'm not telling him to smile for the camera! Below, Mano sits on the rooftop with a big smile.
Mano and Wenson both live with some pretty tough circumstances. But they also show, I think, the spirit of resilience that's you can find all around in Haiti.

Me with the Kids

This is a video of... children posing for a video camera. Taken by 11-year-old Mano. And for those of you looking to see me on video, here I am, about halfway through the video. Not a lot being said in this video: the children, Dadi and Berlou, are saying each other's names, and Mano asks me to squat down so I can be seen on camera.

More Photos and Videos at...

A student at the Jean-Jacques Dessalines School in Cabois.

There are more photos and videos at my blog about the work of "Heads Together" in Haiti, including a video of me helping two teachers sign up for facebook.

World Religions in Dabon

Here, the religion experts are talking. Between the two of them (Rachael on the left and Zo on the right), they participate in and/or teach: Christianity, Freemasonry, Islam, Haitian Vodou, Yoga, Quakerism, and Hinduism. A lot one could learn here.

Literacy Center Student doing Math

Above is a short video of a man doing some fairly complex addition in his workbook at the adult literacy class held each week at Jeral and Yanick's house, in Dabon. Below is a two minute video of Yannick teaching a new student how to make letters. To all you folks who helped fund this work, many many thanks! Mesi anpil! Nou vreman kontan nou ede nou. We're very happy you've helped us!

Dadi Loves Fritay

This is by far the most adorable video of a Haitian child that I took. Dadi isn't very talkative. Typically when he would start talking, I'd get out the video camera and then be too late. I think the food he's got there is deep-fried salted flour. Dadi is the son of Jeral, the community organizer who you can see in some of the other videos I've posted. For most of my time in Haiti, I stayed in this house with Jeral's family.

These videos were taken using a Flip video camera.

Translation:

Me: "does it taste good?"

Dadi: "yes"

Me: "say that again"

Dadi: "it tastes good" ... "it's not hot, it's cold"

Me: "it's cold?"

Dadi: "it's cold, it's not hot, it's cold"

Joy in Haiti

This is an adult literacy class in Dabon. I like how everybody seems to be really enjoying the learning experience. This is one of those examples of people who don't have much, but they sure do have joy.

Singing at an Adult Literacy Center

Folks here are singing during an adult literacy class held in Cabois / Kabwa, in the Jean-Jacques Dessalines Elementary School. Members of Woodbrook Baptist Church in Baltimore are a big part of why these adult literacy classes are possible. The school and literacy centers are also funded in part by Beyond Borders Florida.

Jeral Talks about the wall

This is a wall that was built to help direct water into a small canal. After this video was taken, the river eroded the earth from underneath the wall, so parts of the wall fell down. In the video, Jeral speaks in Creole about how a steel gate was needed to keep excessive amounts of water from flowing into the canal when the river rises, but that's beside the point now.

The water was fairly high while this video was taken - a couple inches above an adult's knees, at the deepest point of crossing. (It'd be substantially deeper for anyone who did not carefully choose his or her crossing point.) With practice, it's fairly easy for adults to cross the river while the water is at this level. But when it's a few inches higher, there's a large risk of falling, and possibly being killed, if you try to cross. At the points where it's fast and deep, this river is not a good place to test your swimming skills.

An 11-year-old's self portrait

This is "Mano", short for Emmanuel. I'm pretty sure he took this photo himself. He lives in Dabon with his aunt Yannick, uncle Gerald, and two cousins. He moved to Dabon this year and feels lonely because, he says, he doesn't have any friends who live in Dabon.

Blan! Blan!

I often close my eyes right when someone's taking my picture. Here, I was drinking a sprite, partly because I really wanted to consume something with calories. Even though I've been told there's no guarantee soda bottled in Haiti won't make you sick due to impure water.

Generally when a white foreigner first travels to Haiti, it's not easy for him or her to understand exactly why many Haitians call out, "blan, blan!". Usually it's children who call out this way, but adults sometimes do it too. At least one person described the sound and strength behind the word "blan" as being like gunfire. Still, I knew there was no harm in it and didn't mind that folks acknowleged my existence.

I've spent most of my life interacting with white people and then, for a good two and a half weeks in Haiti, never saw a white person other than myself. Nothing struck me as odd about this (people are people, right?) until I saw, not one, but four white people walking in the road in rural Haiti. I was on a motorcycle headed to Dabon, so it wouldn't have been that easy to get off and talk to them. But I felt a really powerful curiosity - why are they here?

What are they doing? What languages do they speak? I wanted to say something just to acknowlege that I saw them, too. Really, I just wanted to call out "blan, blan!" Figured it might sound funny but on the other hand, it might sound really rude. Didn't say anything.

Somebody told me they were probably missionaries.

Praise God with Drums and Dancing!

In the bottom right are the red plastic covers we put over our food to keep bugs off. There's no electricity and no fridge, so if you don't eat the food the moment it's cooked, you cover it. In the center are shelves that holdvarious decorative things, plus the radio. It runs on batteries. The batteries don't have to be replaced often. There's a wire that runs from the radio out to a tall antenna held up with PVC pipe on the roof. We generally listen to a mix of American popular music, and Haitian popular music (which is definitely influenced by American music). I, feeling somehow more free to be myself in my new life as a bizarre white boy in Haiti, dance to the music pretty much as often as I feel like. Once I danced on the roof, where any neighbor could see, because I could hear the music and I liked it. Malenn, who had become one of my friends, couldn't hear the music from the next house down the road, but watched me dance anyway. She said she liked it.

After a few weeks, Haitians who had called me "blan" (which can mean "white" or "foreigner") are learning that I speak Creole, live like a person without money, hang out with regular people. (maybe I should have brought more money from the US, maybe not.) And one or two people start calling to me, in jest maybe, "Ayisyen" (Haitian) instead of "blan". Some folks start referring to me as "the Rasta foreigner" and some tell me I'm Haitian. I feel like I've really been invited in to their homeland.

Haitian Metal Art

This is a beatiful piece of art given to me by my friends in Fayet. Unfortunately, it's too big to fit in my backpack and I didn't want it to be a problem while I traveled back to the US. I'd like to get the chance to bring it back to the USA some other time.

Heads Together Farewell Feast

The Heads Together Fayet community threw a party and feast for me shortly before I left Haiti. The food was great, and I was hungry too! I'm really grateful to have spent the time among this community and I miss all my friends down there. A picture of the food all laid out on the table.

Haitian Hand Cart

Another picture from my last day in Haiti.

This is a Haitian hand cart. Our tap-tap was caught in traffic after we passed this guy, so he was just walking along behind us. We delayed him a little, too. As a friend of mine said of Haiti, "lavi a di", life's hard. I'm sure you don't get rich quick transporting goods on a cart like that.

Here are some pictures taken shortly after my little swim in the beach. Incidentally, this photo was taken really close to the site where a large, recent model, passenger bus (one that carries maybe 70 passengers) had a head on collision with a five-seat car earlier the same day. I didn't take pictures of the aftermath, but the car was basically flattened, and people were talking about how the big buses drive so fast and assume nothing will be in the way, and then this sort of accident can happen.

Me at the Beach

These are just some pictures of my silly little trip to the beach on my way to the airport in Port-au-Prince, my last day in Haiti this summer. I swam around all by myself for a few minutes, got some probably-polluted water in my eyes and mouth, and then got out of the water and continued on toward the airport. The beach surface was made of conch shells, which I think is because this is where they go harvest, um, conch (?). I don't actually know whether I've got the correct words for things like this in English or in Creole. Oh well.

My two traveling companions who came to the airport with me, Jeral and Jeannot, seemed kind of bored as they sat waiting for me to finish swimming.

More pictures here.

Ecole Communautaire Jean-Jacques Dessalines de Cabois

Here, a teacher, Laurent Junior Finance, prepares an activity for the Flag Day celebration at the school.

Translation/summary of the video from Haitian Creole to English : The building you see in the background of the video was the original site of the school. That building was rented, but the school is now in its own building about 100 feet away. The school was started by a group known as "Rural People's Coalition of Fayet" which was running adult literacy programs - the group decided that they wanted to provide education for children, so that the children wouldn't be forced to attend adult literacy classes in order to learn reading and writing. The school's name is "Jean Jacques Dessalines Community School in Cabois", or "Ecole Communautaire Jean-Jacques Dessalines de Cabois".

This video shows the second grade class, and then two classes of older students, (the very small class is 3rd-4th grade) entering the new Jean-Jacques Dessalines school.