Christmas in Cange

My first Christmas away from home was filled with relaxing celebrations with new friends here in Cange, plenty of Skyping back home with my parents, and reading nice emails and message from friends and family. I had a wonderful multicultural Christmas, reaching out beyond just Haiti and the United States.

And, at the beginning of the celebrations, we had a beautiful double rainbow over Cange. Considering it's the dry season in Haiti, this was an extra special treat for the holidays.

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.

Manifestations, Bishops, Salt and Pepper

Last week, all American Episcopal missionaries in Haiti were called to Port-au-Prince for several days with a group of bishops, spouses, and staff from the Church Center in New York (including our boss David Copley!). The group was on a mission of presence--to experience just a part of the Episcopal Church in Haiti and to invigorate the ministry of the church in the country.

 I had to travel a day earlier than planned because of pre-announced manifestations in Port-au-Prince coinciding with the November 18th Haitian holiday marking the Battle of Vertieres, the final part of the Haitian Revolution in 1803. I traveled with a group from Cange on their way to a soccer game in the national stadium, and on our way we passed these amphibious UN vehicles on their way to the city for security. We were confined to the hotel all of Monday as the demonstrations blocked the main roads in Port-au-Prince. The crowd came just past the hotel, moving up the street through Petionville.

 

Sustainable Solutions: Chapateau Water Committee

Over three months in, I'm still hearing things like, "what do you do every day?" or "I still don't understand what you do." Most of my job involves meetings--I'm provide a supportive role for various groups and projects going on in and around Cange. Meetings usually do not make for interesting blog posts or photographs, so I haven't posted much about them. But this past week was an exception, when I went to the village of Chapateau to help form a water committee for their village water system.

Engineer Brian, Colon, EDUSC visitor Gordon Smith, and I rode in a dugout canoe across the lake to Chapateau. The Clemson engineers have been renovating a broken water system there, but they wish to provide the village with a sustainable mechanism to improve maintenance and local control of the system. The water committee will hopefully prevent the village from experiencing long periods without water at their fountains and reduce dependency on outside aid.

Brian and Colon

For this process to work, the engineers have been working closely with the villagers so the developed committee is locally grown. Colon, a Haitian gentleman who works frequently with the engineers, provided his usual invaluable support by leading the meeting with the village. His leadership and presence bridges the cultural gaps left between the engineers and the community, significantly improving the potential of success for the project.

Drums, Dancing, Kleren and Sodo

On All Saints' Day, my Haitian culture and Kreyol teacher Emmanuel Milien graciously took Jenn and I on a trip to Sodo, a beautiful waterfall on the other side of Mirebalais from Cange. Sodo is a Haitian Vodou site that attracts many worshipers and visitors for services around the year. Corresponding with All Saints' Day, November 1-7 is one such large Vodou celebration, and we went in pursuit of a cultural experience. Though we actually found little activity at the falls, we had a few interesting stops along the way.

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.