Day 11: Delmonte Shapes Up

Previously on the NU Haiti trip...

Delmonte had not worked at all. He passively stood while the team and Macles (the other translator worked their butts off. However, when word reached his supervisors about his work ethic, he had but one choice: shape up or shape out...

After the some one had a conversation with Delmonte's supervisors, his behaviour drastically changed. He worked a lot harder and even broke a sweat. Clearly hard work is in Haitian culture, just Delmonte needed some gentle reminders. Delmonte is actually a very talented young man and demonstrates what Paul Colliers in The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, calls the "brain drain" or that when a country falls behind and all the talent leaves to more prosperous areas. Also, we worked on fixing up a small field and planting 4 different types of wheat seeds in it. 

Despite the focus being on work today, one of the interns still managed to annoy me. I don't know if he would normally annoy me, but it was just the right amount of me being tired, him being both arrogant and overly talkative, or that he didn't work very hard.  I later observed that what I perceived to be arrogance may have just been his nervous reaction. That is, that he may have talked arrogantly about himself and his family and everything he's ever done because he was nervous. I hope it was a nervous reaction. 

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 9: What will heaven be like?

We went to church today and it was wonderful. Normally I would tune out to a service in an entirely different language, but today was different. Even though more than half of the songs were in Creole, there was a great peace and I felt like God was there. 

I let a couple of kids use my Tablet even though it had my Bible on it. It felt good to let them use it for a bit and I got to use the time to just talk to God. The pastor only seemed to reference the scriptures anyways. The Haitian Pastor is pretty animated and I couldn't tell if it was one of those "Fire and Brimstone" services or he was just excited. I'm glad I couldn't because it would have ruined the whole experience if it was a fire and brimstone service. 

Also their churches are a lot more open, literally. Most of the "walls" are metal bars placed to  in such a way that they don't give you the impression that you're in a prison, which is quite a feat for metal bar windows. 

Even though it was in a different language it was beautiful and made me think of what Heaven will be like. Since I knew the songs it wasn't to hard to follow. I figure Heaven will have people of every culture so it'll have a bit of this feeling we had today where there were Haitians and American Christians coming together to worship God.

Day 8: Foiled by the Fallen Rain

Yesterday we collected soil samples reflecting only the field we planted in. Our goal today was to take soil samples from the surrounding area to see how we could best serve the Turpin community. God had different plans for us as the road to Turpin was completely blocked by a river that had swelled due to the rainfall we've had in the past few days.

Instead of more soil sampling, we given a unique opportunity. We learned how the recent cholera epidemic was handled and the RN was willing to let some of us shadow Mission Of Hope's mobile medical clinic. She gave us pointers on how to read blood pressure and pulse. Also she told us how they had to hire equally from all the gangs in City Solei to keep them from attacking each other while they were handling the Cholera epidemic.

Later Dr. Dirt, Dr. Steinkamp, Cristina, Andee, Hannah, Devan, Carly, Angela, and I went to see how bad the river was. It had cleared up by the time we got there to a reasonable depth to cross so we went on and saw a pretty good layout of the land. Also we saw a site that looked like it may have been used for some ritual and got to do spider hunting.

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 5: Presenting the info like a boss

Yesterday was a day of awkward. Today was a day of feeling like a boss. Yesterday we barged into a village unannounced. Today we were invited and sought after. This time I did not feel like a monkey.

We traveled to Turpin to give the farmers a presentation on the nutrient needs of plants, composting, and how to improve their soil. Seems like no big deal, but the farmers stopped farming about forty years ago and they lost a lot of knowledge about farming. Also Haitian farmers believe that if they add anything to the soil their crop is no longer Haitian. Convoy of Hope wants to help them with seeds and farming education. Convoy of hope only gives them seed if they agree to get instruction and give Convoy of Hope ten percent of their harvest; that way it's a hand up and not a hand out.The farmers were attentive (at least for the first two hours) and asked some good questions about the material mostly about pest control and didn't seem like they had a hard time with composting as we had expected them to. 

After the presentation we explored the farmland, which was pretty flippin' sweet! I felt like David Livingstone or Bear Grylls. Mostly today was good because there were no forced conversations or asking for handouts, just us working with the Haitians. We treated them with respect by not treating the people like zoo animals and in turn they opened up to us and gave us respect. It works a lot better this way.