Perspective from the mountains

Ahhhhhhh ... spent Monday through Wednesday decompressing!  It'd been a month since I returned, and HODR mandates that all volunteers leave base for three days after 30 days of work.  I went with four other friends to Port au Prince -- we camped on a pristine piece of land up in the mountains with a great view of the city.  It was the first time I've felt legitimately chilly during the two months I've spent in Haiti.  It's about a 15 minute drive up a mountain outside of Port au Prince.  Some of my friends here randomly met some Haitians while hitch-hiking around PAP, and these guys introduced them to this community.

F (Haitian) and G (American) both plant trees.  F comes from this area where we were camping, and G has lived in Haiti since the late 1980s.  They're affiliated with an NGO called Trees For Life -- this year, their goal is to plant 100,000 trees in Haiti.  I think they've done 50,000 or so.  They're planting all sorts of trees -- pine & bamboo are the two kinds I recognized.  Bamboo's especially important.  Being lightweight, strong, and easy to grow, it's a perfect building component for a hurricane & quake-susceptible developing nation like Haiti.  One reason for the huge number of casualties following the quake (estimated at 300,000 -- or 3.33% of the pre-quake population of approximately 9 million) is the lack of building code.  So many structures here are made from extremely thick & heavy concrete, reinforced by rebar.  If homes were built with lightweight bamboo, thousands might still be alive.

However, lumber is not easy to find here.  Haiti is currently heavily deforested due to decades of logging, which accelerated during the 1990s as charcoal demand skyrocketed due to a fuel shortage.  With simply more trees, many of Haiti's problems would shrink -- housing, food, erosion, flooding.  F has been independently planting trees in Haiti for decades & only within the past few years hooked up with Trees For Life.  This man has the utmost respect for all life on Earth.  We had several mangoes & avocados over these days -- when we were finished eating, he saved the seeds for planting.  This guy is a true visionary, with meaning & intensity in every word.

I met many of their friends, too.  THE BEST GUITARIST in the world lives up there.  He makes his living from music & somewhat famous around Haiti.  This is akin to running into Yngwie Malmsteen in the woods of Sweden or something.  I know my way around the fretboard quite well, but this guy absolutely shreds.  I'd like to go back there to learn more from him & possibly also to make some recordings.

In Port au Prince, the divide between the rich and poor is especially visible from the mountain where we stayed -- you see huge modern homes with large fences & gates right next to tiny dilapidated shacks.  The wealthy here just acquire wealth, resources, food, property, land, etc. and hold on to it indefinitely.  Not too different from any other country, I suppose, but this is especially amplified in a country and city stricken with extreme hunger and poverty.  NGOs drive around the city in their air-conditioned Land Rovers going from meeting to meeting while kids starve in the street.

PAP doesn't strike me as an extremely dangerous city, certainly nothing like its reputation.  I wouldn't walk around alone at night in certain areas, but the same goes for many major cities worldwide.  Only once -- during the rock fight that didn't really happen -- have I felt unsafe in Haiti during my two months here.

This coming week, I'll be staying out at Jacksonville Beach, a town about 30 minutes away from Leogane -- a team of eight volunteers will be working with several local volunteers on building a school.  Usually we return each afternoon after work, but since the work site is so far away, we'll set up camp there.  We'll be training the local workers in our school-building methods so hopefully they can duplicate it in the future.  This project will probably last at least a month.

The first stage involves setting the foundation (which I'll be working on) and pre-fabricating the school's walls and trusses.  Next week, when this is finished, we'll erect the school, attach the trusses, and affix the tin roof.  After that, the walls get plastered and doors & furniture go in.

See you next week!