Trek to Parc Nationale la Visite and Seguin

My new bike

So I bought this hot bike for $35. It's a Trek from the 70's or 80's. Bryan and I went bike shopping in Saint Mark where there are a few vendors, each with ten or twenty bikes. To demonstrate the bikes' durability they bounce them off the ground in front of us. This bike wasn't for sale but when I walked over to look at it the owner appeared and started giving me a sales pitch.

After I bought it, I flipped the handlebars and chopped them off for a more upright stance. Bryan had a small handful of bar-tape that covers a few inches of handlebar. I chucked the front-derailleur because I won't ever go fast enough in Port to use the big chain ring, and my little brother brought me some new 1 1/4 tires, my Brooks seat and my BMX helmet. I haven't had time to ride much yet but it's going to be so awesome. I'm going to hit some single-track in the countryside tomorrow and hope the bike holds together.

Looking forward to

1. Three more weeks with Tim and Andrew.

2. Planting the cilantro seeds they brought and hoping rainy season humidity will help them germinate. With a steady supply of cilantro I could probably live in Haiti indefinitely. As it is, we'll have to see...

3. Cinnamon rolls from the bakery in Fermanthe. Saturday!

4. A Sunday boat trip with Fritz the Rastafarian to the Iles des Arcadins. These little islands off the Cote des Arcadins are supposed to have some of the best snorkeling in Haiti.

5. 3 days in Desarmes next week, planned of course so that we'll be there on Friday, market day, and I can do two of my favorite things of all time: buy fruits and vegetables in the market and EAT them.

6. Vacation!! We're taking the first week in June off to do some sightseeing/beachlounging with our guests: Aux Cayes, Port Salut, here we come!

Recent highlights and lowlights*

Note: activities are not listed in order of importance or level of enjoyment.

Ben:
- Filming Lisa Simpson in the Central Plateau. I'm not making this up. Lisa Simpson's voice is a donor for the Grameen Foundation. Last week she and GF president and CEO visited Fonkoze clients in Boukan Kare. Ben (along with fellow MCCer Josh) is working on a short documentary film of their trip for fundraising purposes.
- Watching the biodynamic garden he planted behind the MCC office become a biodynamic JUNGLE. Beware of the unrestrained pumpkin vine.
- Broken boots and chacos in the SAME WEEK. He's practically barefoot now. Dad, send ShoeGOO.
- Being the proud new owner of a Trek road bike from the 1980's, purchased on the street in Saint Mark. Also, getting bicycle tires and parts from home last week (Thanks T and A!)

Lexi:
- A bout of something that seemed an awful lot like giardia
- Gorgeous albeit rainy weekend backpacking trip to Seguin. I'll post photos as soon as I can retrieve them from the depths of my husband's photo archive. Anyone who has ever asked Ben for a photo knows what I'm talking about...
- Transitioning into a new job! By August I will be the policy analyst and advocacy worker for MCC Haiti. I'm very excited.**
- Watching my sunflowers and nasturtiums bloom.
- An amazing package from our moms and Karen: tea! trail mix! lavender Dr. Bronner's soap, rice paper, funnies clipped from the Charlotte Observer and more!
- Taking T and Ben with me to yoga. This, thankfully, turned out to be a highlight
- Re-experiencing the beauty and challenges of Haiti through the eyes of our visitors

T and A (Ben's brother and nephew aka our current month-long house-guests):
- Sleeping on our floor and washing our dishes (despite our disdain for food-for-work programs, this is working out quite nicely)
- Actually not sleeping on our floor, but in a hammock under the stars on our lovely porch (T)
- In the middle of the night: Barking dogs and the church across the valley with the insanely loud sound system (lowlight, not highlight.) As a matter of fact, said church is producing some eardrum popping sound as I write this at 11:15 PM.
- Helping to vaccinate 300 goats in Boukan Kare and practicing Kreyol with the CLM case managers
- The incredible mountainous view from our hike to Seguin
- Playing ping-pong (A)
- Sorting TB samples at the Gheskio Clinic for two days (T)



* inspired by my sister's "things we love about our new ap't" blogpost. If you're ever bored reading our blog, skip on over to hers. It's much funnier.


** more on my new job coming soon.

Haitian government chooses MCC partner to produce documentary

Joshua Steckley and Cathryn Clinton
May 12, 2009

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Support Local Production (known as KPL in Creole), an organization co-founded by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), has been selected by the Haitian government's Presidential Commission on Competition to produce a documentary and a commercial that highlight Haitian agriculture.

The government-funded documentary and commercial will be used in the government's campaign to increase sales of Haitian agricultural products locally and abroad.

Since its founding in January 2008, KPL has produced 10 commercials that encourage Haitians to consume local produce. These are broadcast daily on the publicly owned Haitian National Television.

KPL coordinator Ari Nicolas says, "When we started over a year ago, we had to pay $2,500 a month for the television station to air our commercial two times a day. After the food riots last year, they started giving us free airtime. Now, the government is paying us."

In addition to governmental changes, the national broadcaster recently quit broadcasting commercials for imported rice. Haitian farmers have lost jobs because cheaper, subsidized rice from the United States has flooded the Haitian market.

In response to international encouragement to help alleviate poverty, the Haitian government began market liberalization in 1986. While lowered tariffs brought cheaper imported food to Haiti, they had a devastating effect on agricultural production, particularly in rice, sugar and poultry sectors.

Christian Aid, an international development charity, estimates that around 831,900 Haitians have been affected by the loss of agricultural income.

According to a study in 2008 by the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a nonpartisan organization, Haiti now relies on imports for more than half of its food supply.

Nicolas does not blame all Haitian troubles on the market liberalization policies. He says that 300 years of slavery and colonialism taught Haitians they were inferior, and this belief affects them today. "We wear Western clothes, create Western music and eat imported food because we still think who we are and what we can make is no good," he says.

Through commercials, school visits and conferences, KPL reminds Haitians of the importance of valuing their humanity. "As KPL, we are simply trying to make Haitians remember who we are, and what we can produce. Once we can change this mentality, everything else will follow," Nicolas says.

The KPL commercials can be viewed online at http://www.mcc.org/haiti.

Making Mango Jam

Election Follow-up

As it turns out, none of the senatorial candidates got the majority vote necessary to win the election. A re-vote (which is different from redoing the vote in the places where the election has been annulled) has been rescheduled for June. Redoing the vote in the Central Plateau will take place on an undetermined date sometime after June. The government hasn't annulled the election in the Artibonite, or even just in the Verettes area (read my last blogpost if you want to know why this is apalling). I hate to dwell in cyniscm, but I keep returning to the fact that thus far it has cost $16 million to hold an election 2 years late, with less than 11 % voter turnout and no conclusive result. I need some hope. (Just not Hope II).

Observations of this Election Monitor

It's taken me longer to get around to writing this post than I had hoped, but after an exhausting weekend of monitoring and the subsequent writing of a 6-page report in Kreyol, I haven't felt like reliving it in English. As a whole, the experience was a huge disappointment. Not because we didn't see any action (on the contrary, flying rocks, rubber bullets and torn up ballots abounded), but because it left me wondering if democracy in Haiti is a totally hopeless proposition. Have I mentioned that all of my coworkers at POHDH (theoretically one of Haiti's leading human rights institutions) think Haiti would be better off with another dictator? They argue that under Duvalier, less people were starving, the roads were in better condition and electricity was readily available. Knowing the atrocities carried out by the Duvaliers, it's been hard for me to stomach this analysis, but then I'm not Haitian... In Haiti's case, the right to food, shelter and clean drinking water probably should supersede the civil and political rights that come with "democracy."

But back to the subject at hand: the April 2009 Senatorial Elections in the Artibonite Valley.

Desarmes:
By 6 AM Josh, Yvon, Leronal and I are at the voting center in Desarmes (the National School) to watch it open. All centers are supposed to be open from 6AM-4PM. The local officials running the election are just starting to show up (and so are voters), ballots haven't been counted, a list of registered voters' names hasn't been posted and the center is in chaos. There are 2 Nepalese MINUSTAH (UN peacekeeping mission to Haiti) soldiers and 1 PNH (Haiti National Police) officer stationed at the center.

Voting opens a little after 7 AM, by which time some of the earliest voters to arrive have already left. Each classroom is divided into at least 2 voting stations, with very little privacy. The mandate (candidates' party members who are present for monitoring purposes) stand too close to the voters and we see several attempting to influence people's votes. Illiterate voters (about 60% of the population) must announce to the room which candidate they intend to vote for and the mandate for that candidate comes forward to show them where to mark the ballot.

Voting stations are divided alphabetically, but most voters don't know this. There is no list of voter's names posted outside of the classroom doors, and the guides funded by EU and USAID money to direct voters are nowhere to be found.

I am astounded by the number of people with voters registration cards that are turned away because their names do not appear on the list of registered voters. There also appears to be some confusion among voters as to whether they are supposed to vote in Desarmes or Valere (several kilometers away, up a mountain). I meet one woman who has walked from Desarmes to Valere and back to Desarmes trying to to find out where she is registered to vote. She never does figure it out.

In a way, none of this matters because by 2 PM independent party members have stormed the center, ripped up and/or stolen all of the ballots and someone has been shot.

Valere 9:00-ish:
Similar issues but less chaotic. A fight breaks out among several mandate while we're here. At one point I'm in a voting station where no-one is voting and for lack of anything else to do, I write "Everyone is staring at me" on my notepad.

Enroute from Valere to Verettes 9:30-10:00AM:
We are behind 3 UN trucks near Douen and an angry crowd is building a roadblock. We are told that a group of independent party members just stormed the voting center in Douen, fired shots in the air and stole the ballot boxes. It appears that the UN are here to pick up the soldiers that were stationed at the center. The crowd is throwing rocks at the UN vehicles and Josh backs up. Several soldiers jump out, fire rubber bullets into the crowd and dismantle the roadblock. The crowd lets us pass with no problems. We encounter several more crowds and roadblocks before Verettes and try to keep our distance from the UN vehicles.

Verettes 10 AM:
More of the same until a group of about 10 unarmed young men (teenagers, really) enter the center. They divide up, force their way into the voting stations, overturn furniture to scare people and start ripping up ballots. Onlookers tell us that they are with the independent party whose candidate, Michelet Louis, is featured as a tractor on the ballot (there are photos on the ballots as a way to help voters that can't read or write recognize their preferred candidate). The armed MINUSTAH soldiers at the center do nothing to stop this and I seriously start to question the point of having them posted at each voting center. I don't see PNH officers anywhere. The boys steal the ballots that they don't rip up and rumor has it they take them off to burn them. I walk into an empty voting station, the floor covered with torn ballots and I almost start crying, I'm so frustrated.

Drouet:
Late morning. We pull up just in time to see another group of guys, older this time and angrier looking, storm the center. They miss three stations, but less than 20 ballots have been filled out in these stations and no-one else is going to come try to vote now. The UN soldiers stationed here look bored.

Uneventful 2-hour drive to Gonaives. Aside from a few UN tanks and a pickup truck here and there, we're the only vehicle on the road. Public transportation has been banned country-wide today for security reasons, so many voters have to walk for miles to reach the center where they're registered to vote. Most don't bother.

Gonaives:
Thankfully, we miss the biggest incident in Gonaives by about an hour: a serious fight among party members in one of the voting centers. By the time we get to that center, it's practically under lock-down.
We visit 3 voting centers. Voter participation has been low and everyone seems bored. I walk into one station where all of the officials are asleep. We get complaints from people working in the stations that they haven't been brought any food or water and voters here still have to visit several centers to find out where they are registered (I see the same woman in all 3 centers), but at least here they don't have as far to go between centers. One of the centers that we visit, L'Ecole Ebeneezer, actually has guides directing voters to the correct stations!

Saint Mark 3:30-4:30:
When the polls close at 4:00, we're in Saint Mark to observe the counting of ballots. It doesn't take long: the station that I'm in only has 34 ballots to count. Each voter has had the right to choose two candidates or to mark a blank box, indicating that they do not support any candidate. The station's president holds up each ballot to be viewed by me and the mandate that are present and reads aloud which candidates have been selected. The secretary keeps a tally. At the end, they add up the votes and compare the official results with the tallies the mandate have been keeping. One of the mandate has come up with different numbers, so everyone recounts their tallies and agree.

It is announced that they began the day with 481 ballots. After counting the blank ballots that are left, they come up with a total of 488 ballots. If anyone notices the discreptancy, they don't mention it. As a monitor, all I'm allowed to do is watch and take notes, so I don't say anything either.

Driving back through Verettes at the end of day, the only sign that an attempted election has taken place is a a flattened ballot box in the middle of the road. The UN vehicles that we were following earlier, now dented from being hit by rocks, are in front of the police station.


This election cost $16 million.


If you're interested, here's the UNDP's take on the elections: UNDP audio slideshow

Here's to the care and restoration of our earth:

HAAPPY EARTH DAY!

"The biblical concept of peace embraces personal peace
with God, peace in human relations, peace among nations
and peace with God's creation."
- Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, 1995

I recently reread the excerpt that I posted in November from the Cry for Suffering and was touched again by the truth and beauty in it. Since Earth Day is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for our environment, what more fitting day to reflect on whether or not we as individuals are at peace with creation?

A reminder:
Because we believe that God has created all and that which was created is good, we believe in loving stewardship of the physical world:

As images of Christ, we are co-creators with Him, taking care of that which has been given to us, being active in creating and forming instead of consuming and destroying. The world is connected, no matter how much we try to separate it. All that we have comes from the earth. And so we learn to see the connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. Life is sacred, revealing its beauty, pointing us to Christ and His Kingdom that is growing around us and in us.

As followers of Christ, we enter into the world and see its beauty, wanting to conserve and create more of the beauty of the world for those who come after us. This stewardship might mean driving less. It might mean not using air conditioning or turning down the heat. It might mean buying less and having a smaller variety of foods. It might mean planting a garden or taking fewer showers. It might be political or economic involvement that struggles for conservation. Those things are not an end in themselves but are a testimony to our hope of redemption.

Election Day

is tomorrow, but it doesn't look like voter turnout will be very high. In general (and with reason), Haitians are pretty disillusioned by the electoral process. Given Haiti's history of electoral violence, others are simply too scared to go out and vote. It's unclear whether that fear is well-founded, although anti-government and CEP demonstrations are being predicted. I will be acting as an election monitor in and around Gonaives, Saint Mark and Desarmes, so I hope that those areas stay calm.

In a February blog post I discussed some of the controversy leading up to these elections. If you're interested in follow-up reading, here are two fairly good articles I've come across:
Haiti's Senatorial Elections Already a Fiasco
Haiti: Fanmi Lavalas Banned, Voter Apprehension Widespread

Unfortunately hope for Haiti is still dependant on America?

A comment, if I may, on the much-lauded Hope II Act: what in the world? Creating a friendly environment for sweatshop labor that increases Haiti's dependency on foreign markets aka neocolonialism (and let's not forget the insidious link between free trade and foreign aid) is going to stabilize this country? C'mon, let's try to do something that doesn't only benefit us for a change.

For those of you who don't know about Hope II and are interested: the Hope II Act is U.S. trade legislation that grants Haitian exports free access to U.S. markets with the intention of revitalizing the Haitian economy, the garment industry in particular.

p.s. Regardless of whether or not I am not a proponent of free trade (I'm not): Per bilateral free trade agreements already in place, shouldn't Haiti and just about every other country in this part of the world already have free access to American markets? And if it's not free, but rather preferential access that Haiti is being granted - isn't this in conflict with said trade agreements?

Happy Campers

the view

Along with just about every other outdoor activity, camping is one of the pastimes we sadly gave up when we moved to Port-Au-Prince (though granted, everyday life here sometimes feels like camping). But on a recent hike in the mountains above the city, we realized that maybe just maybe we could pull off camping in Haiti. On Good Friday we and the Thompsonowaks packed up what limited camping gear and warm clothes we have here and set out for the Wynn Farm. Turns out that yoga mats make great sleeping pads.

Happy Campers 1
Sunset over the mountains

Camp stove Ben cleverly made from 2 soda cans:

Happy Campers 2 (note how happy we are to be laying in grass!):