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.