i'm back!?

seriously, it has been so long since i've posted, and i only keep putting it off because i really just don't know where to begin.  catching up….. since my last post…  a lot has been going on!  

spent about a month in the states from early august to early september… family, friends, love & my first burning man.  vacation well spent.  :)

snake (soley leve's graffiti artist) tagging his way thru the cite

back in haiti, things are rocking & rolling in Cite Soleil.  Soley Leve (the rising sun movement) has been getting lots of attention and has found some financial support!  this means that not only can we achieve a lot more regarding community development, but also that i will have a stipend to cover my living expenses, allowing me to stick around a while longer!  you see… just go after your dreams, do what you really love, and things generally work out for the best.  love it!  

soley leve truck brings the sound & the party

So life in the Cite is pretty good… there has been some violence in my hood since being back, but things seem to be stabilizing now.  Each day this week we've been holding community action days in different neighborhoods to revive the movement in a big way.  The events have been a big success… every day we load up the Soley Leve truck (yes, we have a truck now!) w/ a big sound system, bringing the party to the street where the action is happening… envision crowds of people dancing w/ brooms, shovels and paintbrushes in hand.  It makes getting dirty a lot of fun!  Monday is a Haitian national holiday commemorating Dessaline's death.  There will be a big march through the Cite, followed by a big party in Plas Fyete, the public plaza.  i love my life.

Here's a nice excerpt from the book i'm reading now (Just & Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures, by Daniel and Carl Taylor), which pretty much sums up what i'm doing here in Haiti: 

Go to the People.

Live with the People, 

Learn from the People.

Plan with the People, 

Work with the People.

Start with what they  know, 

Build on what they have.

Teach by showing, learn by doing.

Not a showcase, but a pattern.

Not piecemeal, but integrated.

Not odds and ends, but a system.

Not to conform, but to transform.

Not relief, but release.

~Jimmy Yen

a student of the world, I'm learning every day.  we all have something to offer.  let's help each other out.  

love, light, peace and joy!   will post again soon!  :)

yummy seasons :)

Those who know me well probably know how excited I get about mango season, particularly in Haiti.  I’m talking mangoes EVERYWHERE; lining the streets in pretty little green & yellow piles, heaped in baskets atop the heads of women en route to market, loaded to capacity in big trucks from the country to the city, the sound of one falling from the blow of a sandal, rock or green mango cast by a young boy or girl, and the smell of them fermenting on the ground during peak season (there are that many).  Mangoes of some forty different strains, varying in shape, size, taste, color & texture, can be found in haiti.  I, of course, have my favorites, but it’s fun to try them all.  Another thing that makes mango season in Haiti better than anywhere else is that you can buy a whole big pile of ‘em for about fifty cents (that and people are always gifting them)!  I almost live on mangoes alone through the months of January - July in Haiti.   

And just when I’m about to turn into a mango… avocados come to the rescue!  Mango season is petering out now & the avos are starting to roll in (the absolutely best time ever) here in haiti.  Since the day I spotted the first avocado in the street about a week ago (the lady selling stuff had only one &, after doing a double-take, I turned around to snag it up) I have, no lie, been thriving pretty much solely on avocados an mangoes.  It’s just too friggin’ hot for me to eat a plate of hot & heavy rice w/ beans & sauce.  …but a nice avo salad (avo, tomato, onion, olive oil & balsamic vinegar) has been my daily pleasure (maybe next week I’ll switch to guacamole w/ homemade tortillas ;).  And, here, a beautiful rich avocado sells for about 20 cents each.  Eating those imported things in the temperate US just doesn’t do it for me.  Haiti’s got me hooked.    ;)        

       

ps: i borrowed these pics from the web. 

ladies, be a diva, please

I never, ever, thought I would write about anything concerning a diva of any kind but, hey, look, it’s happening.  It’s just that I’ve been part of one too many conversations concerning menstrual cycles where I couldn’t help but tout the blessings of the menstrual cup.  Sooooo, if you dON’T know what I’m talking about, perk up your ears (or eyes, I suppose) and listen for a sec.  

The menstrual cup is a small, pliable, silicone cup that catches all the goods when inserted in the vagina during your menstrual cycle.  Personally it’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me.  No more buying tampons every month (which are not cheap). No more creating “feminine” waste every month.  And no more being caught off guard (don’t you hate trying to discreetly ask around for a tampon?). 

There are several brands out there, but I have the Diva Cup.  It’s simple, comfortable & so much easier to deal w/ than pads or tampons.  And if you think it may be messy, think again.  Plus, one cup lasts about 10 years! 

That’s all I’ve got to say about that.  Go ahead, do your own research, & go get one if you don’t already use one!  It’s better for you/me & better for the planet.  How can you go wrong?    

I'll be in the states for a month in August, so if you want me to bring one back to Haiti for you, let me know!

revolution baby

painting the town of la reference

According to modern economic standards, Haiti can be perceived as the most helpless and dependent population of the Western hemisphere. There were 4,000 NGOs working here before the earthquake, which leaped to 10,000 on the ground after. $10 billion have been pledged to lift this country out of misery but 18 months have passed and it’s a mystery where all of that money has gone. …or is it (into the pockets of aid workers, perhaps?)?

Port-au-Prince residents, when questioned about the lack of traction on the entire movement, as well as at the individual level, bear the same explanation: “We don’t have money. We don’t have the means for change.” And that's the problem: The mentality is that money is the ultimate solution as well as the universal impediment.

However, despite these realities, a quiet revolution is taking place in Cité Soleil, which is probably the most disenfranchised community in all of Haiti. Sure, they are poor. They say so themselves. But poverty is a relative term. In their case, they are poor because they have always counted the things that they don’t have. But if they count up all that they do have, regarding resources, they will see that they are, in fact, rich. The most amazingly refreshing thing is that THEY GET IT. They finally understand that NGOs can’t and won’t save them. They understand that money is not ever going to come on its own. And they’re finally starting to understand the value of their own heads, hands and hearts. It’s so exciting to work alongside a motivated group of young Haitians without being viewed, personally, as a piggy bank.

new street sign for la reference

So we had initially named the little movement in our community of La Reference, “Pwojè Soley Leve [The Rising Sun Project]” but we now realize that we are not alone. This movement is so much bigger, extending far outside the limits of our street. There are other groups just like ours who have self mobilized to actively put forth a positive image of Cité Soleil.
   

mural at la difference

One is a group called La Difference, who has successfully transformed an area of 4 blocks into a beautiful oasis of cleanliness & security.
 

sunset near the wharf

Another is the Cité Soleil fishing cooperative (OPECS) who, in addition to fishing, organizes voluntary beach clean-ups and works together to maintain clean public toilets, etc.
  
 

CSA share

Then there is a farming cooperative (REMISOV)in the rural part of the Cité who has reclaimed the land once run by the Haitian American Sugar Company to grow organic food crops while creating their own micro financing system.


And the list of groups volunteering to make a difference for their community and rule their own destinies keeps growing. Yesssss….


So my mighty sidekick, Sabina, and I have been working to connect the dots between them so that they realize that the entirety of Cité Soleil can and will change, and soon, if they just combine their efforts and continue on this path. We’ve been having meetings and they are getting organized. This is now the movement we are calling “Rising Sun”. Could it be a revolution? I love this shit.

super-adobe in haiti

house in bigones

Shelter is a big issue in Haiti these days.  Homes are a status symbol here, and one’s class may be determined by their roof: straw/thatch= lower class, tin/zinc=middle class, concrete=upper class.  For this reason, concrete block houses have been considered most desirable and folks will stretch their resources to the limit to have 4 concrete walls and a roof.  In most cases, this has resulted in very weak structures, the cement to sand ration way off.  

This error was exposed to the world all too blatantly on January 12^th of last year, when the majority of concrete homes came crumbling down in and around Port-au-Prince and Leogane, leaving an estimated 316,000 dead, 300,000 injured and about 1.8 million homeless.  A year and a half after that 7.0 earthquake, the cracked, collapsed and piled up remains of these once “high class” structures can still be seen and about 1.5 million people are still living in idp camps. 

building process

Needless to say, Haitians are now generally frightened of concrete buildings.  In most cases, the rubble where they once stood has been cleared to make way for humble shacks of sheet metal or plastic tarps, where people feel safer.  Who knows how long it may take to rebuild this country but, on the positive side, this is a golden opportunity to do it right.
  

What might be the right way?  I would say, one that is affordable, that uses local materials, which withstands hurricanes and earthquakes and that which is appropriate for a hot, tropical climate.  Hmmmm….    There is a lot of experimentation going on here at the moment w/ various building methods but one that I find most interesting is super-adobe.

bamboo air vents

Super-adobe is a building technique using long (uncut) rice sacks filled with a mixture of earth, sand and a little cement (optional), which are stacked upon each other (held together with barbed wire) in a circular pattern and tamped down, eventually forming a dome structure with ventilation at the top.  Such structures have a lot of thermal mass and the ones that I’ve visited in Haiti were surprisingly cool inside.  And, although not traditional in Haitian culture, they are simply beautiful, even by local standards.  What’s perhaps most important is that they are virtually disaster-proof and all of the materials can be obtained locally at a reasonable cost.

I had the opportunity to help build one of these structures during a permaculture design course at the GrassRoots United base in Port-au-Prince last month.  It was definitely a labor intensive process but, with a good group of people and a little organization, it can actually be pretty fun.  Perhaps the best part, though, is sitting back and admiring such a collective work of art as it progresses with each day of hard work.   I hope to see more and more super-adobe homes popping up throughout Haiti over the years to come.  I might just build my own.  ;)

natural light and air flow

Groups working w/ super-adobe in Haiti:

Love & Haiti Project

Konbit Shelter

community center in bigones

Twoutye: The Bottom of Haiti

I’m pretty sure I’ve now officially seen the worst that it gets in Haiti. The dump. Although I know that there is plenty of dumping going on throughout this island nation, I had no idea that an official dumpsite actually existed. In fact, It does… in an area called Twoutye, which is in part of Cite Soleil, where I now live. My friend, Sabina, was accompanying a photographer who is interested in third-world sanitation out there, so I took the opportunity to go along for a visit.

the only water source in twoutye

 This dump is where they throw anything and everything, including human waste and, I wouldn’t doubt, bodies that have perished under cholera, bullets or otherwise. It’s anything but sanitary; not at all contained. And right alongside this putrid mess is a population of about 320 people, living in ramshackle homes of scrap metal and plastic tarps. There are no toilet facilities to be found and there is one well that serves as the only water source for the community. Some of these people are said to have lived there before the site became a dump and others have come afterwards. Regardless of origin, the dump is everybody’s business.

The meager houses appear to be floating in a sea of both muck and plastic bottles of which the families collect and sort for a refund from a recycling company. I asked one of the young boys who had been digging around in the trash heaps how long he and his family had lived there. He replied, “About one year” and then explained that they had come to make some money. He said that they used to live in 19, an area in Cite Soleil with some of the worst gang violence. These people are at the bottom of the bottom. Recycling is great and all, but nobody should have to live in such severely wretched conditions. They receive about 3 gourdes per pound of sorted plastic bottles.

a makeshift house & plastic collection

The Rising Sun Project

Quite a bit has happened this past month.  I spent the first two weeks of May translating for a permaculture design course, which was hosted by Grassroots United in Port-au-Prince.  I went into that gig expecting to fly home to Ohio right afterwards but it’s now June and I’m still here.  And for who knows how long.  So much came out of that course that I find it hard to even begin to explain but, in a nutshell: new lifelong friends & working partners, a new permaculture guru, a second permaculture certificate, a crash-course on super-adobe construction and, to top it off, a new life project [or two]. 

To make a long story short, I was inspired by one of the projects presented at the end of the course and I’ve kinda made myself a part of it.  The project is taking place in Cité Soleil, which is a part of Port-au-Prince that has a global reputation for its level of poverty and gang violence.  And although violence indeed exists in certain avoidable areas here, in actuality, it’s a beautiful place to be.  The people are at least as friendly and beautiful as in other parts of Haiti and the sense of community is unparalleled.  The big idea of the project is to transform one of the “worst places in the world” into a functional, autonomous ecosystem by working with leaders in the community to break the cycle of misery by applying the basic permaculture principles.  What that basically means is to start seeing the problems as solutions and to start valuing each and every thing, animal and person as a resource.  One underlying principal of the project is to do everything without money and just START SOMETHING POSITIVE with what you have.  The other pieces will fall into place. 

That said, it’s no simple task to change the mentality of a community.   However, it makes so much sense with the way it is presented that people are getting it.  We’ve got a solid group of guys that have taken it upon themselves to change the image and reputation of their neighborhood.  After all, it’s the people who make a community, not the other way around.  This group of guys is going out each and every morning to clean the street.  They’re cleaning up the market place.  They’re planting trees and gardens.  And they’re spreading the word.  The project is catching on like wildfire and has already created quite a buzz throughout the city and we’ve been approached by several folks/orgs that want to help.

So, needless to say, I’ve moved right into the zone; a section called Bwa Nèf.  I’m living in one of the temporary shelters with walls of shiny blue tarps, provided by Samaritan’s Purse.  I’ve set up my tent inside and, though I still need to work out a way to poop & shower, it’s not so bad.  I also bought a purple bicycle.  I must say, I’ve never lived quite like this before but I’m excited about where this is all going.  There are a lot of details that I fail to mention but the possibilities are limitless. 

As for a project name, it has been a challenge but we realize that we do need one.  We’re working in Cité Soleil, which means “Sun City”, so the name “Rising Sun Project” came up and we all agreed that it could work.  So, there it is:  Pwoje Soley Leve (in Creole), or “The Rising Sun Project”.  Give some feedback, please.   

Cité Soleil.  That’s where you’ll find me… I think at least until August.  Woohoo!  :)