Nightmares

Maybe you already know this, but I tend to go through nightmare cycles. I go through a period where I'll have nightmares every night for maybe a week, and then I'll go maybe three without. Here in Haiti, though, there have only be couple of nights in which I can remember dreaming at all. It's been nice. Anyway, they were back last night; I woke up terrified in the middle of the night thinking there were people in my room.

Then this morning I woke up with my head where my feet always are. I'm not sure when that happened. I haven't done that since I was a kid. I really wish I could remember what I was dreaming all night!

Thank you, and new address

I just wanted to say a quick thanks to everyone who has sent me birthday greetings today. It's nice to hear from home! Thankfully, it's been a fairly quiet day. Marie Claude made me a chocolate cake and I'm doing a movie with friends tonight. This weekend we'll celebrate with a picnic at the beach. I think #25 is a success.

ALSO, my new address:

Angeli Kirk
Sant Lespwa (HHF)
Jeremie, Haiti

Missing the bottom

In our Intro to International Development class, we find a sort of disdain for development workers who work in poor countries and communities but who find their friendship in the elite or professional classes. We assert that you can’t internalize the needs of your average Joe (or Jean, in Haiti) when your friends are nowhere near average. My expectations are starting to change. As much as I’d like to tell you that I’m forging deep friendships with the people in the slums and the orphans down the street, it’s simply not true.

I hope to further cultivate the few Haitian friendships I’ve managed (They’re the only reason I’ve survived a month here.), but I’m not worried about finding new ones. For a number of social and language reasons, it’s hard to meet women, and the process of weeding through sexually-aggressive males is quite taxing. Now that I’m staying at the Haitian Health Foundation, I’ve made a few American girlfriends, and I’m thrilled. We also spend some time with a number of Cuban doctors and a small team of dentists from Port au Prince working on an NYU study of the effect of malnutrition on oral health. My Haitian friends are all educated professionals- accountants, agronomists, translators, and teachers. And I work with professors.

In the beginning it really bothered me that I was primarily interacting with foreigners and professionals- the small middle class- but now I’m starting to think that you become friends with the people who understand you best, and with people with whom the level of need/dependence is able equal in both directions. It’s hard to form a strong connection with a person when the conversation consistently returns to the types of cadeaux (gifts) they feel I can provide (anything from five goudes to a computer or trip to the US) or my evident need of a Haitian boyfriend. I think the problem arises when you base your assumptions of the needs of the country and your loyalties primarily on your experience with those friends. I can think of plenty of times when this philosophy might not hold well, especially if your work targets the lowest socioeconomic groups, but for now I’m working on measuring teacher development, so this is how I’m managing.

Evaluation: the first questionnaires

On June 19th we held an informational meeting for all the teachers who will be attending the seminar in July. Thirty of 60 invitees showed up; I was incredibly impressed. The meeting wasn’t called very far in advance (June 16th, I believe?), and we didn’t have a list of most addresses or phone numbers. Still, Waldinde (a teacher here who is working with us) managed to find or leave messages for the majority- in the span of a day and a half. (It takes me anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days to find any one person. I can’t imagine how he found them all.) Jacson (the coordinator here who helped initiate the seminar, and my good friend) shared all the logistical details, and then I handed out two questionnaires and a blank sheet of paper for each. The two questionnaires are something like “classroom management” and “content management.” With each questionnaire we have asked for a pseudonym that they will use for all questionnaires. This allows anonymity, but it allows us to track individuals as well. Then we ask some professor-specific information: education, number of years teaching, subjects, and schools. We also ask some school-specific questions: type of school (public/private, girls/boys/mixed, primary/secondary (They’re all secondary right now, except a few small schools that cover both.), and the class size. Then each questionnaire has about three pages of questions about how and what the teacher teaches. They are definitely long, and I am thankful for the captive audience. Maybe future questionnaires can be shorter, once I can see which questions give the most interesting/useful information.

On the blank paper, I asked the teachers to write some of their basic information- this time with their real names: best contact info, years of experience, and subjects. Then one more questionnaire, but I had Jacson simply read it aloud. It was about computer and internet knowledge and experience. For each of five areas, they labeled themselves as level 1, 2, or 3. This will help us put them into groups for the internet training, but we should also be able to monitor how their self-classification changes over time. The vast majority said they do not know how to use a computer, internet, or email. The entire group, however, expressed an earnest desire to receive as much training as possible.

As I have been entering the results of the questionnaires, I’m running into a consistent problem of unanswered questions. A handful answered every question, and a few more only missed a couple. This is a challenge of having participants fill them out on their own. I think some of the unanswered questions are probably the result of time constraints causing them to rush (missed lines here and there), but some may be an indication that a teacher didn’t understand the question, didn’t have an answer, didn’t think it was important, or perhaps felt that no answer was the same as choosing “never” or “no.” Because I have access to all the professors, I have marked the unanswered questions, and I think I will ask them to finish them at the beginning of the seminar. I’m fairly certain that those extra answers should be consistent with those already given, but I think I will keep two files, one of the original and one of the redone questionnaires. For each entry, I’m marking the date the questionnaire was done (and redone), as well as the number of questions that were skipped during the first completion. They may not be useful, but on the chance that timing or the personalities/abilities of teachers who didn’t fully finish is relevant, it’s nice to have the option of crossing out the possibility.

One question I didn’t ask and wish I had is gender. We only have three or four women teachers, but it would be nice to see if their answers vary noticeably from those of the men. Perhaps I can add the question on a future questionnaire.

We’re starting the process of tracking down the rest of the professors who didn’t make it to the first meeting. Hopefully I’ll be able to get all of them to finish the questionnaires before the first day of the seminar.

Sorry Dad

This is my brief entry to apologize to my father for completely missing Fathers' Day. Sorry, Daddy, and Happy Fathers Day! I hope you and Mom had a lovely time in Australia and are enjoying Wisconsin. I love you!

Minor Success

I will take a quick moment to celebrate my success yesterday:

1. I bought a small fan for 300 goud (about $8).
2. The fan works.
3. I bought a radio for Mary Claude (my housekeeper).
4. The radio works.
5. I had a one-hour conversation in Creole with my friend Emmanuel, slipping into English for maybe 20 words during that time.

I am thrilled. It doesn't take much.

And then the newness wears off...

I've been here a month now. This was definitely the week when the newness wears off. Don't get me wrong. I don't regret being here at all. But I've reached the point where "exotic" turns into "bizarre" and cultural differences that were interesting or amusing before become frustrating. The frustrations mainly come in two varieties:

The first is simply my difficulty understanding the rules here. Sometimes if someone tells you a time, it actually means that time. More often, each minute seems to translate into somewhere between 90 and 180 seconds, but I don't really know how you know which applies in any given moment (Do be honest, I'm not convinced Haitians really know either, half the time).

The same applies for a number of social rules and courtesies. The rules never seem to be uniform; I know this probably just means I don't grasp the complexity, but I don't feel like I'm making progress figuring it out! Creole also falls in this category. I can communicate some things well enough, but there are a lot of things I can't understand or say, and it's incredibly irritating sometimes.

The other type of frustration are the differences that I link to the perpetuation of poverty here. Communication seems to be hit or miss: "I know I was supposed to come here yesterday, but..." You can fill in the blank there with any number of things, like someone's birthday, lack of gas, another missing item, holiday, etc- often things that aren't a surprise and could have been announced beforehand. It's also very common to hear "I didn't get that email" and later see that an email has been opened, or "Yes, I got your email a few weeks ago," with no explanation about why they never responded with any of the information you've requested.

Sexuality fits in here as well. It is quite open here, and I'm constantly surprised at the fact that no one seems to think twice about men around town having a wife and a few girlfriends. No matter how you feel about sex itself, the results here are destructive. It is not uncommon for women to have eight or nine children by any number of fathers. Birth control measures may be available (I'm not sure how available for everyone) but the advantage of having a man's baby is that he may be a little more likely to stick around for a little while. That logic doesn't seem to pan out so well, though, as many men still don't stick around, and the mother has another mouth to feed without support. And you can forget about school at that point. Sometimes I want to shout "What about a little self-control, or PLANNING?!!!" I wish there were more legally-enforceable paternal responsibility.

My aggravation in this is compounded by how aggressive the men are here with female foreigners. I can't count how many times a day I'm chased down and told I need a boyfriend here. It's very blunt: "It doesn't matter if you have another boyfriend," or, "I think you should have my baby." Tempting, but no. I've stopped feeling the need to be polite (surprising, I know). Each day I am consistently thankful for guy pals at home, and for a few respectful friends I've made here.

There are a number of other things as well. In each instance, I can see why and how a pattern may have developed, but it's hard to just sit back and accept behaviors that keep a society from progressing. Worse, I think a lot of behaviors would change if there were economic stimulation, but there's no promise of that in the near future, especially as the violence escalates in Port au Prince.

Creepy crawly things

I've almost adapted to the ti bets here (bugs- literally "little beasts"). Two weeks in Dame Marie meant that my evening trips to the outhouse left me in the company of three-inch roaches and large spiders. It's been better here in my apartment in Jeremie, but Wednesday night I froze at the sight of a four-inch spider. It took me half an hour to chase it out of the apartment with a broom. I couldn't seem to kill it either...What a wimp!

The Roads

Wednesday I joined a group of dentist working on a study of the effects of malnutrition on oral health. They went to a little town called Paroty. The roads I've been on have been incredibly bad thus far, but this trip takes the cake for what I've seen so far. The ruts from where the water rushes down with the rain can be a foot deep or more. Just a short distance can take hours to complete.

I tried my hand at driving today, on fairly a fairly decent road from Ans d'Hainault to Dame Marie. The rules that got me through it:
1. There is a pothole coming soon even if everything looks smooth. Try to spot it as early as possible.
2. No pothole or rut comes alone, and the first one you see is probably the smallest.
3. Watchout for runaway cows.
4....and goats.
5....and chickens.
6. Even if you honk and flash your lights, most people aren't paying attention and won't get out of your way.
7. You're probably driving on the left side (wrong side) of the road because it's smoother. That means there will be oncoming trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles. If you happen to be on the right side, this doesn't change... Fortunately, there aren't a lot of accidents when everyone is flying along at 10 miles an hour...

Jean Philipe Germaine

Last week Bos Dejoie, my adoptive father for two weeks, took me on an expedition ann deo- to the countryside. After walking for a couple of hours and taking the cows up the hill for vaccinations, we stopped in on a little house. They explained that the tiny bundle I was watching in the middle of the bed was eight days old and that his mother had passed in the birth. This little boy was number 9, and it had been too much. That happens here, a lot. I didn't know what to say, so I just asked his name. He didn't have one, they said. And then they all began to stare at me; it took me a while to realize that they expected me to take care of the problem. And then it took me moment to catch my breath. All Haitian men have the name Jean, so that part was easy enough. I hope that Jean Philipe Germaine (his family name) won't mind the label I've given him. I left exhausted, holding back tears. The poverty here is so thorough that I still can't really process it. I wish I didn't have to.

Just a fan

It's so much hotter in Jeremie. My legs resemble a full case of the chicken pox, but it's really hot under my mosquito net. So I've spend the last two days trying to procure a fan (I have solar power in my apartment.). Today I asked my old hostel how much they had paid for the ones they bought two weeks ago. A large standing fan came out to 1750 Gourdes -- about $44US. I went to the same place, and the lady said they were out of the large ones, but she'd sell me a small one for 400 Haitian dollars. It took me a minute to realize that was 2000 Gourdes. I said I would be back. But that's not true. I'll have a friend go, without me, to get a reasonable price.

I hate feeling so dependent here!

Back in Jeremie

Yesterday morning I woke up at 3:40 to be ready for Doudou to pick me up in his taptap (a truck with benches in the back). I was thankful for the priveleged seat up front. He actually picked me up around 4:30, and by 8am we had completed the 48 km trip. Yes, 3.5 hours for 48km, but that's how it is here. The the roads are amazing really.

I am now living in comparative luxury. I'm staying in an apartment owned by the Haitian Health Foundation, with electricity and running water and a beautiful view, and I have my own housekeeper. It's strange really, and so I've just asked that she leave enough fruit and bread for breakfast and dinner and only make lunch as a big meal. That way she can come when she'd like for laundry and the rest.

It's back to work now, too. There is a lot to get done before we have the seminars in a month. The chosen teachers don't even know who they are yet!

Safe and Sound

I've received many messages and emails about safety after the State Department's latest warnings about travel to Haiti. It's true, Port-au-Prince is very volatile right now. Yesterday someone started a fire in the market, and there were fatalities. I, however, am in Jeremie, which is far from PaP (upwards of 8 hours by automobile), and quite isolated. Most travel to and from PaP occurs by plane because the roads are so bad. Jeremie is very quiet, and Dame Marie, where I will be for two weeks starting tomorrow, is even quieter. As for day to day safety, I am well taken care of here. There is always someone making sure I have everything I need.