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."