Home Soon

I've started a number of drafts for the blog, but I've had a hard time finishing them. I'll work on that in the next couple of days. I'll be home two weeks from yesterday. I can't believe it.

Third, Thirsty, Three, Throw, These, Those, That

I gave my second English lesson today. There were a lot more students today. I've decided to focus on pronunciation, as a lot of Haitians have studied for a number of years, but they don't have many native speakers with whom they can practice. In some ways, it's easier because the lessons can be very basic, and we can simply work on bringing their pronunciation closer to a natural pattern.

I start with TH. The aspirated sound in "third" generally becomes an f sound. So I tell them to stick out their tongues and relax their lower lips. They look at me like I'm crazy. I tell them to try it. Same reaction. So I lean forward and stick my tongue way out. I make the sound. They all laugh. Then I said, "Try it." This time they do- even if they mess up, they can't possibly seem more ridiculous than I. I take that as success. I still hear f, though. So I hold down my bottom lip. They try that. Almost perfect. We make it through a list of maybe 15 words before moving on to the th in that and this. And h, and r. Each time I try to make the sound I hear them make, followed by the correct one. When they hear them together, they seem to be able to catch the difference. If we go back and forth, my making a sound, their repeating it, and my making it again, back and forth, I can hear their sound approximating mine more and more closely. Haitians have an amazing capability for learning languages and accurate pronunciation once they have access to the correct sounds.

After warming up with sounds, we practice conversation. Many of them already know a lot, so I let them direct their own conversations in pairs at the front of the class. When I hear a grammar problem or something that doesn't sound natural, we talk about options for how to best express what it is that they want to say. We clap for everyone when they finish. There is often a lot of laughter, but I make it a point to have them laugh at me first, so the laughter ends up being fun rather than embarrassing.

To practice reading, we go over a few English sayings (strategically pertaining to things like punctuality and perserverance) and a passage I typed up about daily activities.

To finish, we sang a few rounds of "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes," and then I taught them the Hokey Pokey. For those of you who have had the distinct pain of hearing me sing, you can appreciate the graciousness of the Haitians who patiently listened long enough to catch on and rescue me by joining in.

And we'll do it all over again on Monday at 4pm!

Intellectual Infrastructure

There are so many ingredients necessary for successful development: social capital, economic resources, participation, good governance and accountability, physical infrastructure... and now I'm getting an up-close and personal look at the importance of intellectual infrastructure. I'm not sure what the proper term is, but I use "intellectual infrastructure" or "intellectual capital" to mean the build-up of education, mental capability, and skills, and abilities, including things like problem solving, entrepreneurship, initiative, and the simple capacity to hear, comprehend, and follow instructions- that a society uses to improve and progress. I suppose these are a bit like good health- you take them for granted until you don't have them. And Haiti definitely suffers a deficit right now.

Where does the problem start? I've already mentioned that the percentage of the population that receives schooling is fairly small, and the percent that finishes high school is tiny. There aren't many venues for alternative education either. The quality and style of education creates its own challenges as well. An authoritarian method that requires rote memorization and allows no room for creative thinking creates a body of people who can recite masses of information but who do not ask questions or develop original work. To be "correct," a student must not only derive the same answer as the professor, she must solve it in the same way. Questions are a way of disrespecting authority, and it is not acceptable to question the Haitian hierarchies that are so strongly enforced. Additionally, the French basis for the educational system emphasizes abstraction over concrete practicality, so students can do high-level math or physics, but cannot apply them to solve the problems around them.

Of course, this is not universal, but I believe that variations from this pattern correspond quite highly with brain drain (the best-educated individuals tend to leaving the country for better opportunities elsewhere), which is another contributing factor in this infrastructural deficit.

Another factor is purely organic. Malnutrition has been a factor for so long that I'm constantly interacting with people of all ages who have simply had their intellectual capacity eroded from childhood. Extreme iodine deficiencies are estimated to be a problem for a third of the population, and incidents of parasites and worms cause anemia in males as well as females. Even in an ideal educational environment, these children will not be capable of learning until their nutritional needs are met.

How does a society overcome these obstacles?

Pwof Ansanm, the group providing the teacher training, is trying to make a dent in the educational style, to spread methods that encourage creativity and problem-solving. The work they're doing, however, has a difficult time counteracting the societal patterns and previous formations that lead so forcefully in the opposite direction....

Evaluator's Dilemma and Workouts

I've been feeling rather tired since Monday, and I decided to skip the gym on Tuesday, and just did 35 minutes of cardio yesterday before going home. I've taken a nap two days in a row, and made it a point to drink more water. I felt a lot better this afternoon and was able to do a full workout and lead an abs class again. I think I've just needed a little time to adjust to the change in schedule and stress. The heat has also been a little worse the last few days. I had adjusted nicely, but the almost-August temperatures, especially around noon in the sun, are a challenge.

Today I committed myself to a few more teaching activities: English at 4pm on Mondays and Wednesdays for any interested professors (and anyone else, but I'm not advertising) and abdominal workouts at the gym at 6pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We'll see how this new schedule goes...

I've started writing up parts of my evaluation already, during the class sessions. One of the first issues I'm tackling is sustainability or possibility of expansion in light of the low local involvement we face. It's a real problem, and I'd like to address it as such, but even as I write, I realize that I don't want to be responsible for a donor not giving money to a project I think is very worthwhile. In fact, if it is handled well, the program may very well lead to increased involvement and participation, but it's not an obvious likelihood. We're dealing with a small program, in some ways an experiment, and the level of funding and other resources it requires are still pretty minimal. At this size, the potential losses or gains are fairly small. But if you're looking at a large program, with millions or billions of dollars, affecting huge numbers of people? If a project is successful, it's great to be able to measure that and recommend that it continue or expand. On the other side, though, who wants to be the one responsible for cutting a program that, while it may not be generally efficient, significantly impacts at least some people who really need it?

I guess the goal is to find ways to pinpoint the weaknesses in worthwhile programs that can be improved while emphasizing the overall value, so as not to discourage potential investment. When highlighting problems, though, you have to hope that opponents of decent projects don't grasp at the weaknesses as excuses to end the whole thing- a realistic concern. And if a program is cut in favor of another, you have to hope that more people will benefit more from the change. But it's a lot easier to make those decisions when you're not the one losing aid...

Roadblocks

I watched "The Agronomist" tonight, a documentary by Jonathan Demme about Jean Dominique, a Haitian elite who spent four decades running a semi-independent radio station for the people, and who was assassinated in 2000. It was quite good, and it helped me with some of my Haitian history.

The entrance to Jeremie from the direction of PaP has now had a roadblock for about a week now. Because the government has officially declared no tolerance of the "bandits" (causing a few less-than-trustworthy sources here to call it civil war), there are fears that they will spread into the countryside, and into Jeremie. So far, a few weapons have been found, but it's not clear that the bearers have anything to do with the violence in PaP.

First Day Almost Done

We have survived the first day of the course. In the end, I became responsible for registration- figuring out who was there, who could be a substitute, etc. I think I accidently signed in two too many social sciences profs, putting us at 58 total, but we were able to fit everyone, and we think the benefits of not turning people away is worth more than keeping the number right at the original goal of 56.

At the same time, I was trying to chase down everyone who hadn't completed their questionnaires, or who hadn't answered all the questions. I think I have questionnaires for everyone now, but the blanks are still mostly blank. I'm going to abandon that effort now, because the course has started, and I don't want to be mixing in the effects of partial treatment. That means some of my questions will be even smaller sample sizes, but it's what I have.

Tonight's homework for me will be to set up new rosters for taking attendance, and I'll start entering the questionnaire data. I'm also trying to track the changes in the participant list. I'm keeping everyone who has ever been on the list, because I still have some data for a lot of them, and it may (or may not) be interesting to compare the characteristics of the professors who have entered or exited the list of intended and then actual professors.

I'll also start writing up a general description of the proceedings of the program. Hopefully, the descriptive information will provide a basis from which to build the evaluation.

And right now, I have a strong case of what they call "tet chage" here- too much swimming around in my mind. I'm trying to figure out what will be the most effective use of time and energy- for the evaluation and the program. I'm also trying to understand just a little bit of the development issues here in Haiti- I can see so many of the problems, but the answers aren't so obvious. I've been engaging a lot of capable people in dialogue, trying to see what I can find and/or spark.

T minus 24 hours and counting

In just less than 24 hours, we well be at the College de Professeurs Reunis setting up to welcome and register the 56 professors that are coming for training. We have the group almost balanced into two groups: math/science and social science/language. I think we're up to five women now, which could very well be 80% of all the women secondary schools in Jeremie. There are still maybe 15 professors who have not completed my pre-evaluation questionnaires (eek!), but I hope to be able to get them to do them as quickly as possible while everyone is setting up and signing in. I'm trying to decide how feasible it is to try to get everyone else to fill in the questions they skipped on the first round, and what potential ramifications that could have on the quantity, bias, and general quality of my data for that.

I'm really curious to see how everything turns out. For all the apparent chaos, Joy seems to feel confident that many more things are under control than for other programs in previous years, and I find her optimism in this quite comforting.

Coffee High, and French Education

So after the gym today, I passed Joy and Carlo having coffee. I stopped and had three espresso-size cups. I'm having a hard time sitting still long enough to write this, and I think I'm vibrating....

It's great to have Carlo here, and it's generating a lot of discussion about the program and what Jeremie and Haiti need for education. Talk about extremely opposite approaches. Haiti's education system has come from the French one, very theory- and philosophy-based. And there is a gap when it comes to practical application of theory. AND, this is a problem for us, because we're trying to teach new approaches to teaching, so the theory may be embraced, but never implemented.

We've also be talking a lot about what contributions would be most useful here. It has been suggested that we need to find ways to apply our tools to the curriculum that the professors use. I'm not sure that I agree, for two reasons. First, this is a small program, without a lot of resources, and the "national curriculum" is nearly impossible to find in written form, so the efforts needed to attempt might not be a good use of what we have. Second, I think our applying of theory to the curriculum here would perpetuate the same problem, of Haitians not solving their own problems and creating their own path of development. If Haiti is really going to progress, Haitians have to do it. I believe the outside world can and should provide tools and support, but the actual process of taking development into their own hands is an essential part of building strong social, educational, political, (etc.)infrastructure.

I'm hoping by the end of four weeks, we can have professors talking together about what they'd like to see change and how, and for them to start working together to implement these plans. It would be a small start for building some social capital, but as the Haitian proverb says "Piti piti, zwazo fe nich."- "Little by little, a bird builds its nest."

Work picking up

Joy, my director here, arrived safely yesterday evening with Carlo, who will do one week of training with us. She noted that my blog is one week out of date, so I decided it's time to check in. In brief:

-I now have less than one month left- I'll go home August 13. I can't believe it! It's going by so fast!
-I was cranky for a couple of days and didn't want to publish anything that I would regret...
-Emily is coming later than originally expected, and we won't really get anything more than a little rain in the wee hours of Saturday.
-Joy is here, we're working out all the little details, and we're sharing a room. She warned me that she snores, but I slept perfectly well and made it to the gym by 6 this morning.
-Michael, the other professor in the program, has decided not to come. Carlo will cover the internet training portion, but we're trying to figure out what else to do.
-I'm setting up my first Access database in ages. I've forgotten all the tricks, but it's lovely to be putting all the information together.
-We are coming to the end of mango season, which is a tragedy! Fortunately the avocados are in full force, and I eat one almost every day.
-I got a card today from Kang (THANKS!), and I have figured out that mail takes about a week to arrive, so not as bad as I thought. So, if you get the urge:

Angeli Kirk
Sant Lespwa (HHF)
Jeremie, Haiti

...Back to work!

the gym, and Dennis

Well, my first intention was to write about my extended trip to the gym today. After doing normal cardio, I ended up teaching an abs class; I started to do a few crunches, but a group of women followed me, so we turned it into a full session. Then I took an impromptu salsa lesson- as I've somehow been convinced to performed a choreographed piece with the professor for a party Sunday to introduce the dance classes- Kristin, don't laugh). Two and a half hours later, I wandered home.

I'd end there, but I read that my dad didn't sleep for imagining what Dennis might be up to, so I'll add that things are fine and quiet here. There was a lot of water and some wind, but little damage where we are. I think some areas on the road to get to Jeremie are a bit messy right now, but real damage has been minimal compared to other hurricanes, which sometimes cause mudslides from the mountains.

Hurricane Dennis

I’m waiting out Hurricane Dennis right now (I saw the name online- here they just refer to it as “the wind.”). The radar images show it passing over us (I’m near the tip of the southwestern peninsula), though the eye is passing farther to the west. There is a lot of wind and rain, but it’s not so frightening as a tornado, and we’re high enough on the hill to avoid flooding. I’m not sure what the people right on the water do. I’ll have to ask once everyone comes out again. I was stir-crazy in the apartment, and most things are closed, so I walked (that got quite a reaction) to the Haitian Health Foundation office where the other American girls work. Internet access in Haiti is satellite-dependent, so I’ll have to post this later, but the combination of generators (I assume) and solar energy stores allow us computer access (Jeremie has not had city-wide electricity for about two and a half weeks now- the problems in PaP make gas a scarce and expensive resource right now.),

Haitian Cuisine

The food here has been very good, and NOTHING is low fat. We eat an incredible amount of carbs: RICE (diri), plaintain (banan), banana (fig), potato (patat), breadfruit (veritab), bread(pen), and a root they call yam, but I think it’s more like a cassava or something. There’s some corn (may), too. As for meat, we have FISH (pwason), goat (cabrit), beef (bef), chicken (poul), and pork (cochon) (but I told Marie Claude that I don’t really like pork, so she avoids it for me). Goat is definitely my favorite, with beef as a close second. I still have a hard time avoiding the bones in the fish, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat the eyes or the brain yet (I’m working on it), though they are considered to be the best part. Marie Claude generally removes the head for me. Fruit: mango, oranges (zoranj), limes (citwon), grapefruit, passion fruit, pineapple (anana), grenadine(?), jaka (which I don’t even know how to describe), and lots of avocados (zavocat) now that they’re in season.

There aren’t a lot of vegetables: cabbage (chu), carrots(carot), something they call spinach (espina) that is currently in season, onions (oinyon), hot peppers (piman), and tomatoes (tomat), which just went out of season, as far as I can tell. Eggs are very hard to find. For as many chickens as are running around everywhere, not many people eat them, and the eggs you do find are shipped in from Port au Prince (which may be why they are even scarcer lately). The bean sauce (sos pwa) is fantastic, and the peanut butter (manba) comes in sweet and spicy varieties. Most things seemed to be fried/cooked in oil or boiled, and there is always a lovely sauce. Preferred spices include sugar, salt, pepper, ginger, and Maggi bouillon cubes. When I actually ask what has been added, it’s hard to get anyone to list everything; they normally give the above list, and then say “epi”- spice.

Favorite drinks here include coffee, beer (Prestige is the fantastic Haitian brew, but there’s also a supply of others), juice, and soft drinks. I had hot chocolate in Dame Marie, made from locally-grown cacao, but it doesn’t resemble the hot chocolate we’re accustomed to in other places. Water doesn’t seem to be super popular, but you can find Aquafina, and a number of assorted treated varieties; I think the popularity is directly proportional to the ability to afford to need treated water.

Malaria

I am in the tropics. Two of the four Americans I live near here have malaria. Funny, it doesn't seem like a big deal here. Nancy was tired for a week, and Nicole kept sweating on and off. They take a couple doses of chloroquine, which is the same exact medication I'm on to keep from getting it (I'm the only one taking it, but they're all here for more than a year.). And that's the end of it. At the maternity center here, it's a little more of a worry, because of potential birth complications. Then, at the same time, in the rural areas, where it's not diagnosed, or if it's diagnosed, it's not treated, and the result can often be permanent disability or death.

It all comes down to access and means. And we have them. Some people don't.

Product Review: Sunscreen

It seems like the sun stays up forever here, and I am no longer Washington-white. To prevent skin cancer and incredible short-sleeves-and-a-skirt tan line, I have become quite religious about the use of sunscreen. Among my collection:

Banana Boat, SPF 15. A decent regular SPF 15, waterproof, and a great banana scent. My favorite tool for trying to even out the short-sleeves-and-a-skirt tan line without frying myself at the beach.

Neutrogena ACTIVE Breathable Sunblock, SPF 45, sweatproof, waterproof. When I first tried this one, I was ready to throw away all my products! Had I not seen the label, I would have assumed it was just (fantastic!) lotion. They’re not joking when they say non-greasy, and the smell is nice- you don’t smell like you’re headed to the beach. Unfortunately, my face broke out after just one use, so I wouldn’t recommend it for sensitive skin.

Banana Boat SPORT, SPF 30. This has become my staple. The stripe across the front says “Ultra Sweatproof,” and thank goodness! I’ve never sweat anyplace like I sweat here. It still smells like sunscreen while in the tube, but the scent could be worse seems to disappear once you apply it. I’ve also been excited about being able to use it on my face every day, without breaking out.

As though I weren’t sweating enough already…

Happy 4th of July. I’m going to celebrate by joining Jeremie’s only real gym on its opening day. You’d think in a country with much of the population malnourished or undernourished, I’d have no need….but everyone blames the rice. With an inscription fee of about five dollars and a monthly fee of about ten, I figure it’s not the end of the world if I don’t go all the time. It could be quite a spectacle to have a “blan” (white) at the gym, but maybe it’ll increase enrollment- my gift to Rodrigue, the owner and a friend of mine.

The gym hours are 6-9am and 4:30-8, to avoid both work hours and the worst of the heat. I’ll brave the heat this afternoon, but I think I’ll try to go at six tomorrow. I don’t really have anything else to do at that time, and even on the days that I “sleep in,” I’m out of bed by 6:40 (and that’s when I force myself back to sleep). No, I didn’t expect to ever hear myself say that either, at least during my stint in grad school.

If everything were going smoothly, this wouldn’t be Haiti.

A new little(?) glitch in the program. On 10 July, a number of teachers from Jeremie will go to Caray (sp?) to grade national exams. By mathematical chance, this means some of the teachers we have chosen for the program, and those teachers would have to miss at least one week of the four-week training, which starts on the 18th. But, of course, we don’t know who those teachers are, to be able to replace them. So, tomorrow I’ll take yet another trip to the Ministry of Education (at this point, I can’t tell if we’re starting to bond or if I’ve worn out my welcome), to compare my list of professors to the list of those going to Caray. Jacson has a number of teachers who have asked to be on a waiting list, and he will use those as replacements.

While it is essential that we have teachers who can attend the entire training, adding in another group further complicates my understanding of the targeting mechanism. I’m not sure if those teachers on a waiting list are those who applied originally but weren’t selected or if they’re just teachers who heard about it later and were interested; I’ll have to ask. In any case, they are teachers who are well-connected enough to have learned about the program; they represent a group that takes initiative and is particularly persistent, perhaps more than the general teacher population. Also, I don’t know how teachers are chosen to grade national exams. The characteristics of the group we’re losing may be significant.

We’ll see how it goes.

P.S. Joy, I hope this isn’t the first you’ve heard of this, but if it is, Surprise!

Addressing the Violence

So you've probably heard at least a little about the violence in Haiti. Or, if you're my mother, you're scouring the State Department warnings and church newsletters for anything that could befall your baby, and you're personally keeping track of each kidnapping and murder- and emailing me all the details (sorry, Mom!).

So I ask around a lot, and here's what I understand of it. National elections are slated for November 13. Everywhere you turn, you see banners encouraging everyone to register to vote and have an identity card made. The elections are meant to find a legitimate replacement for Aristide, who was ousted by a revolt in February 2004 and temporarily replaced by a US appointment.

Elections and democracy sound good, right? Not everyone seems to think so. Violence has been escalating for a while now, apparently protesting the elections. Murders and kidnappings for ransom are becoming quite common, and the victims seem to be randomly chosen from all walks of life. People stay in at night, and they go out during the day not knowing if they'll come home. My Haitian friends here avoid business trips to PaP if they can, or they keep them as short as possible.

No one really agrees about who is committing the violence. The general consensus is that the violence probably started with Aristide's supporters who don't want a legitimate election to reduce his influence. Some still hold that this is the group responsible for everything. Others thinks that there is also a group being paid for the sake of keeping the current government in power. They are not likely to be able to hold their positions in the election, so there is a good deal of money and power at stake. A third theory blames either or both groups but also suggests that other random individuals are participating in the kidnappings, just for personal income. I don't think anyone really knows. In any case, it's hard to crack down on the perpetrators because many of them are police, so they are often tipped off before they can be captured.

So what does it look like here in Jeremie? Quiet and fairly somber. The only differences are the recent election banners and a growing number of cars as wealthier families move here to escape the violence, which is primarily in Port au Prince but also in a few other major cities. I like to ask "Do you think it'll come here?". The answer is always a resounding "no." When I ask why, I always get the same two answers. First, Jeremie is small, and peace-loving. Everyone knows everyone, so it's impossible to have the random violence that occurs in PaP, where you can remain anonymous and never really know your victim. Second, Jeremie is isolated. There are two (horrible) roads going in and out of the town, so one phone call to or from any of the towns on the way would alert everyone of any problems with hours lead time. The other options are a twelve-passenger plane, or a weekly barge. Basically, Jeremie just isn't worth the effort.

And will elections actually happen? It's hard to say. Haitians are registering to vote, though not in huge numbers. Some people are confident that international support and their own personal resolve are enough to see at least some form of an elections. Others think the violence will accomplish its purpose. I guess we'll find out in November.