Adventures in Haiti - 4

Adventures in Haiti - 4
July 15, 2005

Dear friends, family, colleagues, distant contacts and anyone else whose
email address got onto our email list:

You haven't heard from us in a while . . . but life is still sweet and green
(The rain is here, even if it's not in Southern Ontario). Since you heard
from us last (which we can't remember when it was) we've been pretty busy.
In the last few months we have:

- done a few seminars and a whole bunch of visits to the tree nurseries.
It's always fun to visit, thin, transplant, compact, and degarni mangoes
with the committees, see all the trees coming up and getting hyped about
giving the trees to people in the communities

- visited churches in each of the communities to mobilize and educate them
about the distribution of trees.

- finished the first round of tree distributions in the 21 communities where
MCC works. Thus far, 291,000 tree seedlings have been distributed. We hope
to hit 400,000 by mid August.

- Handed out certificates to our 138 students (from 4 local schools) in
environmental education for the 2004-05 school year. Highlights were
visiting forests, writing letters to the Haitian minister of the environment
reminding him to protect Haiti's forests, eating and planting mangoes,
planting trees in the schoolyard on the last day of school.

Big plans to expand the program to make it more hands-on and participatory
by marrying it with the tree nurseries are taking shape. In the past
months, each of 21 tree nurseries choose a school that they'd like to work
with. We'll choose 10 to start with this year. This means we're training
the teachers to do the teaching (this year and previously, Esther and
Francklin were teaching). Esther is tying herself to a chair to write the
curriculum and training planned for the first week of September.
By September, we will also have a new person to replace Francklin to work
hand in hand with Esther to support the teachers, the students, and their
visits to the tree nurseries.

- went on a retreat with our MCC colleagues. The first year that we went as
a whole team (Nationals and Expats). It was a lovely few days on a remote
island off the coast. Great food! Air conditioning! Amazing showers! Lovely
beaches! Ahhhhh . . . . life in the Caribbean. But we were happy to come
home to the valley (Artibonite) again.

- we've also been getting more and more settled into our MCC team, our house
that we moved into in January, and our community. It's both rewarding and
challenging to be more and more "known" in our community. Becoming more
proficient in Creole, being comfortable walking around everywhere and
talking to the neighbour through the cactus fence is fun . . . but having to
talk to everyone and face the barrage of demands and kids yelling at you
isn't always fun. Life really isn't fair.

The big news is that a new soccer field has gone up across the road from us
and there are organized games there every few days with Kompa Kreyol (music)
and snacks for sale. It's 10 gourdes to get in (about 25 cents) but we can
watch from our front yard for free. Next time y'all visit, we'll try to
arrange a match for you to watch. We are thrilled to be part of the crowd
and not what the crowd is watching.

In other news . . .

- registration for elections has started. This is a positive development,
but many people feel like the elections won't happen on schedule. Port au
Prince is still having some problems. The presence of UN troops helps
sometimes, but also hinders sometimes. There is talk of the US Marines
coming in again.

- two hurricanes just passed through - Denis and Emily. We got a few heavy
rainstorms, but nothing too bad. The south of Haiti, typically, was hit much
harder and people died when a bridge collapsed and there are always issues
of drainage due to lots of plastic (imported mostly- blah). These two
storms mark the beginning of the storm season, and are also a reminder of
last fall's devastating floods in Gonaives.

Ok, that's the news from Desarmes. We hope and pray that your lives are also
enriching you and those around you. Please let us know how you are all doing
and what exciting things are happening in your lives.

If you want to, you can visit our blog site. We just uploaded a bunch of new
pictures there. You can also go back and read some articles that we put up
a few months ago. We'd especially encourage you to read the ones that detail
the current human rights and political situation in the country.

http://www.mattandestherinhaiti.blogspot.com

Be well. Love and peace to everyone.

Matt van Geest and Esther deGroot
MCC Haiti