Episcopal News Service Article on CASB

I've been through quite a blogging drought, but I think that just means things are advancing even faster at work with CASB.

Check out the following Episcopal News Service article and video by Lynette Wilson on the revitalization program of the Centre d'Agriculture St. Barnabas where I work.

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2016/02/22/haiti-episcopal-college-prepares-students-for-agriculture-agri-business/ 

Photo: Lynette Wilson/Episcopal News Service

CASB Master Plan

In my new position, I'm working as a project manager for the stabilization and revitalization of the St. Barnabas Agriculture Center (CASB), which primarily features an agricultural technical school with a 2-year academic program. It is one of the higher education institutions in the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, but has recently suffered from various difficulties, prompting a push to reinvest in the center.

My work is just a part of what will take many more years to realize. I want to share a bit here from the CASB Capital Development Plan put together by Haitian Architect Herve Sabin and the Studio Drum Collaborative to provide more context and motivation behind this project.

Ecole Lo Limonde

Thabenie invited me to visit a primary school she supports in a rural locale called Lo Limonde. This is a walk-through of my visit. I deliberately restricted use of my camera to have a more personal interaction, so I'll use more words to illustrate the experience.

I started the trip on my first ever moto ride (I only decided to do this because most of the trip was on a gravel road and not the busy paved road). We drove for about 45 minutes to Tierra Muscady, where our path ended and we had to switch to foot travel. 

The path traversed pretty typical rural Haiti countryside with very few trees, some farm land, and a lot of open grassy areas with sparse livestock. Dusty now, in the beginning of the dry season, baking in the sun and with little water.We walked for about 45 minutes, crossing one knee deep river, before arriving at the school. As is typical in rural Haitian areas, there is no centralized village. In Lo Limonde, the school is the only building excluding fairly spread out houses.

Masters of the Dew

Masters of the Dew by Jacques Roumain is one of the books on my Haiti book list. It is one of my favorites so far, and I felt it called for it's own blog post. You can see the other books on my list here.

Roumain tells the story of rural Haitian farm life in the 1940s through the story of Manuel, a Haitian who returns home after working in Cuba for 15 years. He brings with him a perspective and skill set unfamiliar to the community to which he returns. I found the book very insightful into Haitian culture and the difficulties of rural agriculture, the presence of Christianity in Haiti, and the human element.

I highly recommend this read, and I want to share a few passages I found particularly strong and challenging. The first calls out the approach we take on the challenges we face. One Haitian proverb says, "deye mon, gen mon," which means, "beyond mountains, there are mountains." The second passage acknowledges our significance as individual fleeting lives. And the third passage briefly and poignantly describes the deterioration of our land.

Centre de Formation Fritz Lafontant

Centre de Formation Fritz Lafontant (CFFL) is a vocational school in Corporant, about a 20 minute drive down Route 3 from Cange. They train students in agriculture, wood working, and construction through various hands-on projects. It's a beautiful facility with expansive fields of various crops, many of which are experiments to determine better varieties of plants to produce in Haiti.

I got to visit the school for the first time recently, and now I'll be teaching English there two hours a week! My first day is next Tuesday, and I'll be teaching the woodworking students. It should be a fun, regular task to add to my otherwise chaotic and random schedule.