Luc, Anna Ray, and Mama on our front porch with some of the neighbors.

Luc enjoying the millet fields.

Anna Ray helps out with getting water for bath time.

Getting Goats

The mountainous area Corey and Selise hiked looking for goats.

The walking continues... 

Attese, one of our goat project recipients, carrying her goat pen supplies.

Luc and Anna Ray at the goat meeting.

This past week Corey and a local goat afficianado/herder have set to the task of finding 36 quality goats for the first InKind goat distribution in Wozye.  This has proved to be a difficult and time-consuming task as we are quickly learning that there is no Wal-Mart for goats in Haiti.  This morning he walked for 6 hours searching the market of some inner, mountain villages that are known for their goats.  After six hours and a lot of sweating and climbing there were none to be found.  They will go out again tomorrow to a village that is closer to Les Cayes and I imagine on and on.  Although I am skeptical, the people here seem quite confident that this task is possible.

It's been fun to watch people here carrying supplies for their goat pens down the road and the endless discussions of various goat gaits, noses, and teeth.  The two goats that C has found are beautiful creatures- one with a stark black coat and the other brown and tan.  It's hard not to look at these animals and see the great potential hope and prosperity that they harbor.

The meeting of the first InKind families was long and excited.  People are being asked to pay back 100-200 Haitian gourdes every month over the next 3 years for their goats.  This is the equivalent of $2.25-$5.00US.  They must all sign a contract agreeing to the amount they are able to pay back, build their pens, and plant their gardens with the appropriate grasses and we're off to the races.  The money each participant pays back monthly will then go back to the cooperative for it's long term sustainability.  Given that a goat's gestation is 6 months and the female goats ideally need 8 months rest in between pregnancies.  We figure that a herd of 3 pregnant goats can quickly turn into a herd of approx. 18 in the next three years.  So, essentially, the people in our project have A. started a savings account and B. it's set to grow 6x in the next 36 months.  It's a pretty good deal.

Once again, it's hard to express our gratitude and the truest of all gratitude of the people here for your generosity.

Illness

Our neighbor, Aona, resting in front of our house with a 102 degree fever.

The medical exam room

The pharmacy

A couple of weeks ago, our neighbor- a little boy who is about 10 years old- had a fever.  His mother came to get me as the night began to fall and I promptly went to his house with my thermometer and stethoscope to see what was going on .  I found him lying on a straw mat on the floor with his father sweating and shaking.  His mother had taken a black marker and painted crosses on all of his toenails along with all of the toenails of his little sister.  The fear and the concern in his house was felt everywhere.  I was able to give him some Ibuprofen and Tylenol for the night and encourage his mother to take a taxi (moped) into the hospital the next day.  The next morning I went over to check on him and he was off to school- all better!!  This is how I became known as the great miracle worker- the great dispenser of Ibuprofen.

People have started coming to my house daily for blood pressure checks, bandages (i.e. a good basic clean technique Dial soap wash, and some neosporin), and carrying children that are coughing and wheezing.  There is little I can do for them besides basic vital signs and dispensing some of the mass amounts of pharmaceuticals I brought for my own children.

Medical care here is scarce at best.  There is a clinic in Roche-a-Bateau and a hospital in Port Salut each about 20-30 minutes from our village.  Although this is not far, it is a world away for our community where there are no cars, no jobs and no income.  Consequently people are left to their own remedies- boiling herbs, Voodou, resting, waiting, drawing crosses on their toes.

Last Thursday, we put Luc and Anna Ray to bed and all seemed well in the Almond household.  About 2 hours into bedtime, Anna Ray began vomiting.  She vomited all night long.  As I lay with her, I began to understand a tiny fraction of the fears that people must have here.  We also have no car, no phone for 911, and we are foreigners in this land.  But, of course, we could and would pay for anything she might need.

I've had the opportunity to visit some clinics for a day while I've been here.  One of the doctors I shadowed who does a mobile clinic saw 40 people with only a $5.00 stethoscope (note: no thermometer, no blood pressure cuff, no oto/opthalmascope), some Ibuprofen, antacids, 1 ampule of Ampicillin (he mixed this with water and then placed it in approx. 10 different patients eyes for infection), 4 vitamin B12 ampules for anemia, and 4 oral doses of ampicillin.  Honestly, after that day I wasn't convinced that even I would pay the $1 US for that care.

It's amazing to me that somehow this whole island is still inhabited by people who are able to walk, run, laugh, and dance.  But, it is and here we are.

Photos from the goat classes

Goat Classes

The first InKind goat classes in Wozye ended on Wednesday!  The classes ran from 8-2 Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week.  Corey hired a woman from the village to make juice and bread for everyone for breakfast and provided a little money ($2.00 US) for lunch.  The kids and I walked down to the classes on Monday morning to see how it was going.  The class that was planned for 20 people had quickly grown to 45 people coming to learn about goat herding, goat pens, appropriate nutrition, biology, breeding, money management, and stewardship.  A local pastor and veterinarian, Jacobsen, taught the classes with great enthusiasm and love for the people there.  He taught that a good goat herder is witnessed when the animals come when they are called as they are well cared for and fed.  There was a long discussion with various opinions about how to tell if a goat is pregnant.  One man suggested that you cover the goats nose, cutting off the air supply, and see if it urinates.  When they tried this on one of the goats at the class- indeed it did- urinate that is on the dirt floor of the classroom.

Corey will make the trip into Les Cayes on Friday with Jacobsen to buy the first Dominican goat for the project.  We are hoping to distribute goats to the first ten families by the the end of December.  They will be able to crossbreed their three female goats with InKind's Dominican goat making for a stronger breed.  

The excitement for the classes, the possibility of development is palpable.  Our neighbor expressed over and over again to me what a "beautiful thing, beautiful thing" this is.  We're excited too for some clear forward motion and the opportunity to help a little tiny village who seems to have been lost in this little tiny country.

I was able to bring the news of the Tejas fundraiser for InKind in Colorado Springs and the news of all of you who are supporting this project and us in so many ways.  People here are thrilled to know they haven't been forgotten.  I can't thank everyone enough for your incredible support.

MESI!!!!

Photos of Les Cayes (taken by Mia)

Anna Ray chases someone's fancy dinner behind the Hotel in Cayes.

Most of the gas pumps are empty, and surrounded by long lines of men. It's easiest to buy gasoline one gallon at time from a roadside vendor.

Corey inquires about borrowing a scooter at the Merci Jesus Shop.

A street scene.

It seems like all of the signs in Cayes are handpainted.

Cayes is the third-largest city in Haiti. We stayed at the Hotel Meridien; these are the pleasures we found.

In the restaurant next door someone fashioned these sustainable and lovely curtains.

Many businesses invoke God on their signs, both to give thanks, and as a bulwark against jealousy, saying: this was a gift.

Merci Dieu.

Luc and Anna Ray love sugarcane. Who wouldn't?

"All is vanity."

Tap-tap buses.

Bathing

This afternoon Anna Ray and I sat by the river with the women bathing and washing their clothes.  An older woman spent her afternoon in the cool waters of the river meticulously scrubbing her sandals clean with river rocks- washing her body and rubbing it smooth with river stones.  The people here take great pride in cleanliness. They sweep their dirt floors, wash and iron clothes that will inevitably be soiled shortly thereafter in the mud and the dirt that surrounds us.  They are careful not to fall and take great lengths to walk around any mud or water so as not to get dirty.  At first, it struck me as odd all the attention that is paid to cleanliness.  I am used to a world of Spray N Wash and clothes that are easily replaced if soiled. Our lives in the US are ones of ease and convenience.  In Haiti, life is so hard.  Washing clothes for a family requires a sometimes long walk to the river, hours of scrubbing them clean and rinsing out the soap, the long walk home, drying, and ironing.  They iron their clothes with irons that are filled with hot charcoals and still manage to keep them clean and free of the ashes that would inevitably spill if I were to attempt this task.

I let Luc and Anna Ray get dirty.  They love splashing through mud puddles, playing in the sand, building houses with dirt and rocks, chasing chickens.  But, of course, I intend to leave our soiled clothes and shoes behind as we will be able to replace them when we get home.

It is only a culture of great wealth that pretends to be poor.  I often think of the college students driving around Colorado Springs in their SUVs and Subaru wagons while wearing torn and tattered clothes.  Here they have very little, but care for what they do have with great attention.  It still continues to amaze me that people have hope here.  They do hope.  They hope and wait for better roads, for clean drinking water, for medical care, for food to feed their families.  The weight we bear here is their hope.  They hope that we are here to change things, to make them better, to cure all ills.  Of course, we are powerless to do all these things.  But, we will continue to hope with them.

Luc gets his first haircut from Mama.
Luc and Anna Ray enjoying a bucket bath.

Trash

     Corey went to Les Cayes today to copy materials for the goat classes that will begin on the 8th of December.  The kids and I spent the afternoon sitting on our front steps with our neighbors.  I pretended not to notice the group of children who were carefully picking through our trash.  Of course I knew this would happen as we had a similar experience in Fond des Blancs.  When I packed us for Haiti this time I was careful to remove all the packaging and trash I could to throw away before we came here- hoping not to be publicly shamed by our vast consumption of things.

     There is no public waste disposal system in Haiti.  Any trash you have is piled outside your home and eventually burned with coconut shells and leaves piled up around it.

     It was interesting to see what the kids wanted from our trash.  They saved the Doritos bags from my birthday, an old BIC lighter that no longer works, the lid of a wet wipes container, and kindly returned a Ziploc beef jerky bag to me.  Surely, they thought, we did not mean to throw that out as it still seals and can be used for sugar, flour, important paperwork, etc.  One of the neighbor girls, Judlyn, turned the shiny aluminum side of the Doritos bag into a dress for her doll.

     We are required to live transparently here and that is hard for me.  The people in Wozye know exactly what we consume, how many beers/ cokes we drink, how much water we use.  They take great interest in our activities.  But, of course, they all know these things about each other too.  They know who has new sandals, who gets to eat meat or fish at meal time, who is sick and who is struggling.  It's hard to be asked to live in total truth and transparency.  Yet that is what they ask of each other and what is necessary to live cooperatively, to live in community.

Photos of Wozye (taken by Mia)

A beautiful chair outside the home of Pierre, the mayor.

The main road.

Phillipe is Sentidye's brother.

He's a dear friend to Elisabeth and Corey.

Johnny and a baby.

A taxi like the one Elisabeth, a driver and I took from Cayes.

The fishermen weave their own nets.

Corey and the pastor talk at a goat project meeting.

A whole parade of children helped us scrabble up a hill to get this delicious, rare treat.

A typical dinner at the Almond's: fried plantains and fish.


The world's staple and theirs.

Luc and one of his two best friends, Leline, on our orange-finding expedition.

This kind woman invited Elisabeth to attend at her baby's birth.

Trash for burning.

Judelon and Deacon, the Almond's next door neighbors and friends.

Luc and Anna Ray found the letter Z on this house.

The next-door neighbors.

Men fish the sea near Rosier all morning, every morning. They rarely find big fish, and so must collect ones like these, which are not much larger than sardines, and then cook them in the sun.

A weaver in the small Rosier market.

Sweet miss and I catch up on stories.

"Mama," Anna Ray likes to say, "you're the Queen of Me."

Elisabeth commented on the terrible truth: you can't find food in many villages on earth, but you can always find Coke.

This home in Rosier is an example of the Nike Swoosh school of architecture.

A neighbor's hopeful garden.

Anna Ray outside of church. Elisabeth carried Anna Ray's princess shoes in her bag.