On the road

As of Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, I am in Desarmes to visit MCC's reforestion project and Ben is working in Mirebalais and Boucan Carre. The plan was for both of us to accompany Bryan and Sharon as they move to Desarmes, then spend a week here learning about the program. But when we went to visit FONKOZE, the organization that Ben will be working for as photographer and field reporter, they requested that he start work immediately. They are trying to raise funds for a new project and are making preparations for the Haiti Solidarity Conference in Miami at the beginning of next month.

Desarmes (Dezam in Kreyol) is in the rice-producing Artibonite Valley. To get here an MCC staff member drove us to Mori, where the bridge we needed to cross was destroyed by the recent hurricane(s). The bridge is on Route National 1 which, as its name suggests, is Haiti's main north-south highway. Buses are lined up on both sides of the river, where passengers and livestock disembark and cargo is ferried across the broken bridge in wheelbarrows and on motorcycles. It's total chaos. It took two trips, three wheelbarrows and a motorcycle taxi to get all of us, our luggage and supplies for Dezam across the river.

So far, I've been getting to know the MCC team in Dezam, visiting the pepinye (tree nurseries) and ti fore (little forests) in the surrounding area and enjoying the much slower pace of life in the countryside.