15115: Casey: News from Matenwa, Lagonav (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Nancy Casey doesn't have an e-mail address at the current time.

Two months ago I arrived in Matenwa, a village in the mountains of Lagonav
(near Nankafe and Masikren, for those who know their way around the island).
I'll be here for another two months, living with a family, working on my
language skills, working some in the community school, and helping with a
gardening project.  After that, I'll have a better idea of what I might "do"
here, and I'll return in the fall to stay for a year or more with a more
focused idea about my role.

I am connected with the Lekol Kominote Matenwa Pou Developman.  This is a
project, or institution, set up with the practically limitless energy of
Chris Low, an American woman in conjunction with AAPLAG
(Asosyasyon....Paysan...Animate....not sure how all the words of this acronym
string together).  Anyway, on Saturday, International Women's day, we
celebrated AAPLAG's 15th anniversary of working on Lagonav to build and
support centers focused on literacy, community education (konsyiantizasyon),
and development.

It is so dry here now.

The one thing that I was least prepared for when I came, I think, was the
environmental degradation.  I have heard and read the words that describe
what I see every day--rocky eroded mountainsides almost bare of
vegetation--but the stark reality of it stabs me in the heart.  I think
because I also see the tiny houses which dot the baked landscape and I know
the people who live in them.  I can be airlifted out of here at the snap of a
finger if things become to tough for me.  But life isn't all that tough
because I pay my family to make sure I have adequate nutrition and "plenty"
of water (a 5 gallon bucket every 2 days).  I can guess and sometimes see the
misery that the citizens of this community experience, but what it would
truly feel like to live it is beyond my imagination.

People say that everyone's hearts will be lighter when--if--it starts to rain.

It's windy.  The wind rattles the tin roof of my house and drives dust
through the cracks in the doors and windows when they are closed.  Lots of
people cough with the dust.  (Especially me!)  The dust on the road is almost
ankle deep in some places.  I suppose if it begins to rain and rains too hard
and too fast, it won't be such a blessing.

Cisterns are dry and water sources (springs) higher up have given out.  The
spring where the community gets its water is weaker, but still running well,
and huge crowds come from far away to get water.  There have been fights.
You can hear the shouting at the bottom of the ravine from far away.
Citizens of Matenwa try to go to the water at night so that the people who
come from far away can have better access.  Some are trying to organize
people to stand in line, or for the locals to let the ones from far away go
first because their lot is harder, with a walk up to 2 1/2 hours to get here.
 I find this generosity in a time of such scarcity touching.

The price of gas has tripled (and then some) since December.  Until the water
started giving out, lavi che was a main topic of conversation.  The one-way
taptap ride to the wharf at Ansagale is up to 25 dollars.  About triple from
last year.  Almost everything on Lagonav--from kivet to tomatoes--is
imported.  Gas for the trucks, gas for the boat, there is gas in everything
we touch, and so the hikes in gas prices are distributed all the way down.
Friday is the day of the biggest market.  All weekend the talk is of prices.
It seems like the same few goudes just get passed from hand to hand.  Where
does the extra money come from when everything costs more?

Enough of the misery.  We're starting to eat mangoes.  Here is my happiest
story.

Although my "profession" is teaching, I have always been interested in
gardening, backyard farming, and in general, food, and so I've tried to have
my eyes and ears open about how to share what I know in a meaningful way.
The school has a garden space that has produced a few tomatoes and carrots,
but has never been organized or focused very well, I think, for a lack of
understanding of how you make it happen.  I've been more than reluctant to
leap in with my northern climate gardening skills to say "this is how you do
it", because I really don't know specifically how to garden here.

I did show up with a laptop computer and a digital camera, though, and on the
second or third day here, I briefly met Jean-Rene Gabriel, an agricultural
technician (and founding member of AAPLAG), a Jacmelien who now lives in
Lotore, a 2 1/2 hour walk away.  He was animated, congenial and interesting,
despite my worse-than-awkward language skills.  Someone told me he had a
beautiful garden, and I found two teenage boys interested in environmental
issues who agreed to take me there.  When we visited, Jean-Rene interacted
mostly with the boys.  I could follow what he was saying because I understand
gardening, and I took a zillion pictures with the digital camera.

Jean-Renee has been living and working in that community for about 15 years.
When he began it was barren--a former mango forest turned to baked earth.
He's worked hard at soil building and erosion control, doing all those things
we just wish would happen all over Haiti.  In addition to his own very
productive vegetable gardens, fields of manioc, pwa kongo, and peanuts, and
reforestation/erosion control projects, he's worked thoughough the community
to help people get their own gardens going or improve the ones they have.  So
we were everywhere--on his land and other peoples, looking at a variety of
plantings and experiments in growning things.

I put the pictures in the computer and showed them to the classes at school.
There came a flurry of activity to try to make our garden just like his.  The
students and teachers weren't satisfied with just the pictures, and arranged
for the upper grades to walk to Lotore and visit Jean Rene, too.  We went
yesterday.  Everyone is charged.  He is one amazing man--a bundle of energy,
an extremely hard worker, articulate about problems, solutions and
techniques, and adept in community organizing.  The sense among the students
and teachers was, "Oh, I get it.  THIS is how you do it."

Jean Rene is coming next weekend to do two days of training with our teachers
and few community members.  He'll help us plan the school garden and try to
find a way to start a pilot project or two to work on one of these eroded
hillsides.  The school has some money to pay for the hard hot work of
trenching, making terraces, and moving rock, so we hope we can begin some
kind of work right away.  (The number of strong and able men so willing to
work if they could just find it is another one of the things that touches and
saddens me as I learn about life on Lagonav.)

So, we'll see what happens.  Yes, there is much misery here, but much hope,
too.  People so want their lives to be better, and oh don't we hyperorganized
white folks wish we could plop ourselves down and line them out to show them
how!

There is much more to tell about my experiences here.  What it is like, what
I see, the people I have met, what the everyday encounters feel like, how
each day has challenges and surprises, how the warmth and generosity of so
many people here is so deeply touching, how beautiful the smiles are, how
empowering it is to slowly learn to function in a place that is so
bewildering sometimes.  One could write forever, but the longer I am here,
the more my "insights" seem trite.

You can write me at my at-home email address:  nancy@turbonet.com.  Email
from here is arduous---it begins with the hour and a half taptap ride to
Ansagale, and the phone line may or may not support the connection long
enough to actually do the email.  So I probably won't respond until after I
have gone home to Idaho in late May.

My best to everyone who cares about Haiti,
Nancy Casey