Day 17: Checking out the Beans for the last time

Haiti is interesting. I will miss Manansse, Delmonte, and Macles, but I will say I'm glad that this is my last full day in Haiti. I enjoy the sunshine and the green in the mountains, but Haiti has a lot of struggles. Among those struggles are learning how to manage their natural resources so that they neither become dependent on them or run out. I miss my family and my friends from home and I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Today we checked on all the beans again and collected data on them. I hope that the work we helped Dr. Dirt do will help the Haitians. There's a lot more emphasis on community in Haiti than in America, at least from what I can see. This is something I would like to work at and something I think is lacking in America. For the most part I'm just happy to be heading home.

Day 12: More of NOT being the monkey

Remember how when the NU group visited a village uninvited and kind of awkwardly, and then we visited Turpin and felt acceptance and less like Duane Elmer's monkey? This time we did it even better.

Today, I felt like a celebrity, in all the good ways. We went to a Thomaseau, a remote farming community in a valley. We greatly respected and they even had a few drinks and snacks waiting for us when we arrived. We were able to give more advanced presentations and they drank in the information. When I spoke, I forgot to mention my name and after my presentation they made a big deal of knowing my name and I felt honored.

They Thomaseau community valued the help and were puzzled as to why we did it for free. They even gave us a lavish meal of chicken, rice, and other vegetables they were growing. Tomorrow we get to investigate their fields and help problem solve troublesome areas in their farms. I feel that this approach was a lot more relevant and part of the Haitian culture, or at least done in a way they respect.

On a side note was totally rude to one the members of the NU team today. Devon said something I disagreed with and I feel like the way in which I voiced my thoughts was too harsh as it closed off any room for discussion. I tend to do this a lot, so I hope she knows that I respect her and care about her.

Also, we got stuck on the way back, which was a pretty fun adventure in and of itself.

Day 10: Mobile Medical Clinic Day!

You can learn a lot about a culture by examining the people of that culture medically. That's what I did today.  I was in the triage station, so I organized about 40 patients by taking vitals (pulse, temperature, and blood pressure) and asking some basic health history questions through an interpreter.

Haitians have a very high emphasis on cleanliness, but they don't understand that to clean some one, you need clean water. This is evidenced in that all of the women that came in today had one common complaint: vaginal itching and discharge. Not only do they douche a lot, but they use dirty river water to do this which is the source of their discomfort. With some basic knowledge of about proper cleanliness this problem could be corrected.

What surprised me most was when a 16 year old girl walked in. Her right eye was swollen with bleeding in her eye with the surrounding area being heavily bruised. When I asked her how she got it, she said her father beat her. The translator didn't even flinch. when I asked him about it later, he said it was normal for a man to beat his children or wife in Haiti. Not an organized spanking or some form of discipline, but just a man losing his temper and beating his family. While some things may be right or merely different, this aspect of Haitian culture is wrong.

Day 7: Soil Sampling Solei

Today we cultivated soil and planted the beans we sorted yesterday. The goal is to find a variety that is resistant to the plant virions in the Haitian soil, has good nodulation, and can grow in harsh soil conditions (Nodulation is when the bacteria in a root forms a node which is used to transfer some of the nitrogen from the air into the soil so it can be used by plants). In all we planted 1200+ st. ft. of bean seeds for 3 reps of 100 seeds for 16 different varieties with a total of 4800 seeds planted. We also sampled the soil around the area.

Turpin is a generous village as the local church donated the field we used so we could conduct research. A big sacrifice as it could have produced a lot of food for them. Besides that they were also very hospitable and even brought us a large bowl full of mangoes.

We also got to view the spectrum of the Haitian work ethic. Delmonte just sat there and tried to take pictures of himself to make it look like he was working, while Macles worked his butt off. I think this is just a representation of the individuals themselves and not of Haitian society as a whole although I am told that Haitians think it strange to see 1 or 2 Haitians working with a group of Americans if they're not getting paid. Delmonte was getting paid so he's still not excused.

Day 6: Banishing the Bad Beans

Today we presented i n a different mountain village to present and the canter couldn't make it up a hill. So we walked the rest of the way. A whole forty yards. This village also accepted us quickly and surprisingly all the kids of the village really liked Delmonte as he led them through a few spontaneous games and songs. The guy definitely has a way with children.

One of the strange quirks of Haitian culture is when it is appropriate to be naked. Apparently as long as you are either bathing or washing clothes it doesn't matter where you are. even swimming counts. A lot of the time they bath or wash clothes right next to the road or village and don't really care if who's watching.

While we gave our presentations we received a little visit from the local witch doctor. He was polite and didn't cause a scene, which apparently he did last year.

After we got back we started sorting beans for an experiment that Dr. Dirt is doing. Mostly we just threw out the bad beans.

Also, a few of our crew probably need a "strategic withdrawal" as their snapping a little easier at each other. Duane Elmer calls a "strategic withdrawal" a temporary withdrawal from the foreign culture to give yourself a break and then to re-enter. I'm hoping our problems will be fixed by some sleep and a little break from the new culture.

Day 3: Bob Ross would be proud

Today marked the first day of actual work. Everybody was ready to work as we already had two days of just chilling. We painting the inside of two cement buildings and a few of the local Haitians joined in with us as we worked. During the quake in 2010, the deaf community in Haiti realized they need to band together to survive. Afterwards a lot of them moved to Berci and the villagers that helped us just so happened to be deaf.

Dr. "Dirt" (Dr. Jason Streubel) has a PhD in Soil and is leading to effort in educating the Haitian farmers about how soil affects their crops. His son Macquin turned out to help us paint. He's only twelve.  After most of the work had been done he decided that my shirt would also make a great canvas. He failed to enlighten me as to his plans, which I think was his intention. It kinda annoyed me so I took away his paint roller, so he wouldn't use it against anyone else. I still wonder it my reaction was too much. It stopped the little Haitian kids from following emulating his behaviour, but it may have been a little too quick of a reaction. I was also annoyed because I hadn't gotten any paint on my shirt yet. oh well 

Day 2: Hate is strong word, but...

In our preparation for this trip, we read a few books about cross-cultural experiences and one the of the books we read was Cross-Cultural Connections, by Duane Elmer. In his book he talks a great deal about how to best engage new cultures and how acceptance is key to cross-cultural connections. I was not very accepting today.
In my defense, I totally accepted Haitian culture today; it was just the other group with us that ticked me off. In my defense I only openly mocked them once or twice -and it was even to their faces (although I doubt they realized it). 

They were a group from North Carolina. I have nothing against North Carolina. They were from a Christian "Leadership College". I'm a Christian so we're still good at this point. However, this group has some interesting quirks. They felt like Bible Thumpers in that they were uneducated in everything except their college's view  on leadership and the bible. They are also hospitable to women in that they help them, but it always has to be announced. It felt very insincere. 

It can be actually be very loving when a man carries a woman's luggage, especially if the woman is smaller and the man is quite strong. It instantly loses it's charm when another group's leader publicly commands every male to carry the women's luggage -especially when there are about five males in a group with a size of over fifty. Also, the guys constantly tried to one up me whenever I did something nice that wasn't publicly announced. I kinda ticked me off a bit, so I guess I wasn't too accepting of them. Maybe the sermon in church was about that today. Too bad it was in Creole. I guess I'll never know, but what I do know is that a bunch kids were a lot more loving than me. The kids we visited at the small village of Berci were really accepting and SUPER happy to see us. They were accepting. I would've just starred at a bunch of weird strangers walking through me village, but they were super happy to see us.

Day 1: Arrival

Last minute packing is my specialty. I successfully packed everything I needed for Haiti in less than two hours. Those were also the last two hours I had before I had to leave for Haiti. My team consisted of twelve total members: Our two professors, Dr. Steinkamp and Dr. Tomandl; nine other biology majors, Andee Callaghan, Angela Naa-Dei Martey, Bethany Zilger, Carly Moeller, Cristina De Anda, Devan Pascarella,  Hannah Jacob, Joy Mukiri, and Paul Lee D; and me. We left later on the seventeenth from Seattle with next to no idea what we would be doing for the next eighteen days and arrived in Port-au-Prince on Saturday Morning.

Haiti has made some vast improvements on it's airport, or so I have been told. This year we only suffered minor hustling by the fake airport staff. According to the great Steinkamp, last year was a lot worse. They pseudo Haitian airport staff dress in red polo shirts and wear almost legit name tags. Almost meaning almost complete, or not so real-looking, or yeah-I'm-a-guy-trying-to-hustle-you-into-paying-me-to-do-something shades of phony. They proceeded to accost Steinkamp and tell him we were not allowed to claim our own luggage and needed to give them our baggage claim tickets and they would get our stuff for us. It's a very smart business idea, but definitely something I'm glad doesn't happen in the States.

Once we got to the Mission of Hope Compound, we played some basketball with a few of the Haitian children who live on the compound.