Salt Production Update

I've now completed two meeting with the salt committees in villages spread along the seashore. AMURT has been working with these communities for over a year so all the committee members seem well informed about the coming project. However the project we'll embark upon requires far more money and work than an individual can produce. However every time I bring up the issue of Cooperatives during a meeting the room is filled with silence. Pressing the issue the only response I find is "Salt producers aren't in the habit of working together" Unfortunately I don't have any experience with cooperative either and so I am casting about looking for ideas. I ask Sampurna, the head of the agriculture projects, for ideas. She did know of a couple working agricultural co-op and gave me the charter for one. Reading through it was very helpful. I had nothing specific included and must have just been created from generalized co-op template. It simply gave a structure and rule of conduct for any group of people trying to work together. I may end up copying much of it into the charter I will eventually help draft for the salt producers.

On the subject of skeeters

My town's name means Hot Springs in French and I've make good use of the array of cold, warm and hot pools. This geological blessing has its downside. The abundant water run off incubates a plague of mosquitoes that's if not of biblical portions it's darn near it. They are so numerous, they creates an ever present background whine like you might have living next to a airport or freeway. Even during the hottest days I'm obliged to wear my jeans and long sleeve shirts just to keep them away. During the slow parts of the day obsessively plot how to destroy them all.

Waiting

Work has yet to begin in earnest. Although I would have much preferred to have jumped into work day one, I've instead had to make due with the slow pace of country life. I start the morning chopping wood, starting a fire, and boiling water for oatmeal and hot chocolate. After breakfast I dive straight into Snow, a book by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. The book is well composed and intriguing and it being my only distraction I've been deeply engrossed.





Around midday the solar panels have stored away enough power that I can briefly check my e-mail but not much else, the battery system has long needed replacing. In the afternoon we've been rearranging all the rooms: bedrooms, kitchen, rec. room, office space, everything has moved to a new location. However I must add, bedroom means my backpack and sleep mat, office means a couple laptops and a table while kitchen means some sacks of grains, four grapefruit and a few spices.

All the AMURT members subscribes to a diet of only "cooling" foods (no meat, eggs, onions, garlic, or mushrooms) and this combined with a cash shortage has causes dinners to be a fairly simple affair. We've had eggplant pasta, eggplant & rice and just last night eggplant & millet. But eggplant is a steal at just $0.08 each, so you really can't beat it!

Initial Introduction to Salt Production

I rode my motorbike down to the coast to see the salt basins and get acquainted with the heads of the committees. The salt producers have already been working with AMURT for some time. Last year they worked on rehabilitating old basins, this year they are hoping to start implementing a more advanced method of production. Ewan, the head of the infrastructure project, had already called a meeting and explained the goals of the project so there wasn't a lot of info for me to add; rather I just chitchatted, set dates for future meetings, and told everybody "Soon, soon, the project will be starting soon." All the salt producers seem very skeptical; one remarked "it's been soon for a while…" All I could do was shrug. "Soon" is all that the donor, the World Food Program, had been saying over the last 6 months.

Yet the food arrived the next day and now 700 bags each of rice each weighing over 100 pounds fill our warehouse. Next week the beans and oil will arrive. The day before, I was dreading the awkward silence that would have surely made up most of next weeks meetings, but now by incredible luck I'm exactly where I need to be.

Although this food is labeled AID it often fails to serve that purpose. The overwhelming majority of Haitian's are farmers, things like rice and beans are their staple crops. As in all economies, if the market is flooded with cheap low quality imports, the domestic producers are hurt. Strangle as it may seem, the cheap AID rice, hurts the Haitian peasant farmers and causes hardships for this very large segment of the population. Click here for a definition of agricultural subsidies.

I have mixed feelings first about paying workers in food rather than money, secondly, that the food is of such a low quality I would never eat it myself, lastly, that food imports depress the wages of poor farmers. (Click here for an article regarding the harmful effect of agricultural subsidies on poor communities) All this aside, the new method of salt production could greatly improve the earning potential of these poor coastal villages. Plus, at a future date the new salt could be iodized. The Anse Rouge area is the principle salt producer region of Haiti . With iodization the diseases associated iodine deficiency would largely be eliminated throughout the entire nation.

Photo glimpse from past times in Haiti and the DR

Marie-Phila

Marie-Phila and Jidline cutting Jack's hair

Friends he made the first time Jack was in the Dominican Republic. They hosted him for the night. When he went back a few weeks ago he visited these same friends.

Bicycle generators, beer, and salt production

I got a little burnt riding through the desert so today I'm just taking it easy researching homemade remedies to our rural problems. My first scheme is a bicycle generator, which I hope will solve a couple problems. All I'll need is an old broken bike, some wood or metal to make a flywheel, and a little electrical motor to actually produce the volts. I'll keep you posted on my progress. The second wild scheme is beer brewed from Haitian grains. A little research on the web and a little inquiring with people from Africa leads me to believe millet beer will not be the answer--the consensus, too thin, too sour. However I did come across some recipes popular in the 13 colonies during the colonial era. The beer was made from wheat bran and molasses and supposedly the founding fathers were quite keen on it. In Haiti molasses is readily available but wheat bran is thrown to the pigs. I may also be able to use corn or millet to provide the sugars needed for the fermentation so long as the wheat bran is providing the body, color and flavor.

Tomorrow I'm heading over to make my first inquiry into the salt production. I'm not going to take the sun lightly again. My limbs are going to be fully covered with a straw hat to boot. Although I feel intimidated by embarking on such a large project with so little knowledge and no help from others, there is really know one else doing anything, so whatever I can contribute is going to be better than nothing.

A day in the life......

I headed into St. Marc for a bit a shopping. I successfully found new school shoes for Marie-Phila and little super glue to try to repair the old ones. I also bought cigarettes for Camilla and Ya-ya to resell and a sack of little cookie so no one could say I didn't bring them anything.

Once home in Pierre Payen I went swimming with the little kids for the fourth straight day. They are now feeling more at home in the water so I am able to leave them to play in the shallows while I get a little exercise out in the deep. Tag is their favorite game whenever I come in from the deep I swim from the distance of a pool length underwater and try to take them by surprise. After that the kids scatter and all begin chanting "Jack pa ka kenbe'm." (Jack can't catch me!) Marie-Phila observes me swimming underwater and to escape from getting tagged, she also ducks underwater. However when she dunks her head under and starts thrashing wildly, she never makes it more than a few inches in any one direction. Undaunted she will surface, gulp some air and give it another go.

During one of the breaks from swimming I walked over to "Laki" where many of the employees of Clean Water for Haiti live. I was hoping to find my friend Evens to walk him through typing his resume. He had been telling me about taking occupational education classes on the weekends. He has already finished plumbing school and is now working on electrician school. He had told a couple of the other guys and they had started attending classes too. Since the filter project at Clean Water for Haiti is going rather slowly I was hoping AMURT could hire some of these young guys who are so eager to learn new skills. AMURT's current project will only last 5 months but it could be enough time to get start on some new crafts. So I spent an hour or two helping Evens polish his resume but only on condition he sits with the others and walks them through it the process too. There wasn't too much left of the day and I went to sleep soon after sundown.

Yesterday I had to say goodbye. I stopped by Marie-Phila's school but didn't stay long. I then began hitchhiking north. From Pont Sonde to Gonaives one of the Jaspora gave me a ride in his fancy jeep. Although he lives in Orlando, FL he was born near the poor remote area AMURT works in. He asked lots of questions and had some interesting stories about life the NW of Haiti. Even though he was headed right where I was going I promised to stop by my friend Roman's house so I jumped off in Gonaives. I can't say if it was lucky or unlucky but instead of spending the night at his house I met Roman as he was on his way out the door. I was able to get my motorcycle out but I was a little sad I didn't get a chance to see how he was doing. I rode back to Sources Chad and will start surveying and gathering a list of contacts for the salt production project. I may also spend some time looking into developing some cottage industries like hot sauce or mango chutney.

Generous Hospitality

***As written by Jack***

Four of us in all were heading to the capital,Port-au-Prince. Raphaella and Ica were soon flying to their homes. Demeter and I were just going there for business. As the day was winding down and Demeter was fatigued from the drive, none of the 4 of us stepped forward and said he or she wanted to take a break from the road, but our thoughts all seemed to move in that direction. Saying Hello to the people at the mission I used to work at, turned into asking to spend the night. Although the mission house has several vacant bedrooms with several empty beds, Chris, the director of the mission and his wife Leslie, don't really allow people inside his house. Instead we'd be sleeping in a side building. We arrived after the restaurants had closed and Chris didn't offer us any food. So for dinner I suggested we eat at the house of my haitian friends the Fresno's. The Fresno family squats on a barren hillside up from the highway. Their house is typical for Haiti, made of oddly shaped stones held to together with mud. No one in the Fresno family has real employment. They buy wood from the market, split and repackage the wood and then sell for a couple pennies more. As the weary traveller's took showers and settled in for the night, I walked around with Wesley, the oldest Fresno son, who helped me find a place to buy little cornmeal and beans. When I arrived the Fresno family gave me the warmest of welcomes and Ya-ya, the matriarch, immediately started a little cooking fire. That night the four visitors sat with the family and joked around. We took turns joking around, singing songs, trading tongue twisters, and sharing a little of our native languages. Demeter mentioned on a couple of occasion how he understood why I chose to spend most my evening here during the year I worked for the mission.

Tortuga Island

***As written by Jack***

Tortuga was pretty interesting. We arrived at night and radios, TVs outdoor lights, were all blaring, no EHD though, everyone has solar panels and generators. A man invited us into his home, we passed an hour or speaking English and watching DVD's on Haitian history. Instead of being the far flung corner of a failed state, Tortuga bridges the divide between Haiti and the Bahamas. The people here are supporting themselves trading with or working in Nassau and to me seemed untouched by the politics or economy in Port-au-Prince. In addition the hurricane type rain it receives every night makes it into a jungle paradise. The canopy is mostly intact and there are springs gushing everywhere. We didn't get a chance to see the uninhabited north coast or the wide sandy beaches on the western tip, so there is still a lot left to explore.