Haiti Week 2

I feel like I’m overdue already for an update on life in Haiti. Here’s a random assortment of what’s been going on.

1. I’ve been reporting a story with friend and photojournalist Ben Depp, whose blog with wife Alexis I highly recommend you read. On Monday he happened upon an eviction of a camp in Delmas, the same area of Port-Au-Prince where I live. I arrived after the damage was done, and was dumbfounded. Apparently the police came in with clubs, machetes and even a bulldozer to destroy people’s tents in order to get them out of the public park. You can read more about this in the Miami Herald’s story about it.

2. We’ve got internet! David found it remarkably easy to get internet for the apartment. Supposedly it’s unlimited and about 60 bucks a month. I’ll need it for my online classes at JHU, which start on Tuesday, but I’m also really looking forward to being able to video chat with folks back home. Now if only the electricity would stop cutting out…

3. On Wednesday I tagged along on a tour of Fonkoze’s programs that David gave to a group of recent master’s graduates of an NGO leadership program at UPENN. We went to Sodo, a small town that serves as the base of Fonkoze’s central plateau branches. Its name, Saut d’eau in French, means waterfall, is named for the falls known as a location for voodoo cleansings. We visited a few households that participate in Fonkoze’s program for the extremely poor, where women living in stone and mud houses on remote mountainsides receive social and financial support to try to raise livestock or start small businesses. We attended a Ti Kredi meeting, the program David directs, which was fun for me because it reminded me of coordinating meetings in the DR – singing, games, dinamicas. David did a dinamica, the famous, Alele (for you Peace Corps people out there) and the women loved it. We had a delicious Haitian lunch with fried chicken, moro, tostones, and limeaid and then went to the waterfall to cool off. The countryside in Haiti is beautiful, full of rugged, treeless mountains. It was an interesting respite from Port-Au-Prince.

4. I am learning Haitian Creole. M’ap aprann Kreyol Ayisyen. I’m starting to be able to pick out words and am learning some basic grammar. It’s a little bit different situation than Peace Corps, because I’m not forced into as many conversations as when you’re living with a host family. But I am going to try to seek out opportunities for conversation and continue studying to get to the point where I can have them. David is a tremendous resource as a fellow grammar junkie and an all around language genius.

5. I applied for a job! It was really easy, I just sent my resume and a cover letter. Yesterday I decided that I’d like to work here, if I can. So I guess this is the start of the job search!

I miss all my Peace Corps friends already. I hope they’re all having an easy-enough transition to life in the United States.