The black boogers of a dusty nation

Day one: orientation. Post breakfast we were regaled with presentations from hospital staff including a particularly long one from the director of the hospital and a not long enough one from the program manager of the Haiti Tree Reintroduction Project (HTRIP). We were then given a tour of the hospital, the prosthetics lab and the community services building including the tree nursery. I am not a too huge fan of hospitals and it felt particularly awkward to be tromping around one that only caters to the seriously ill. The prosthetics lab was fascinating. It was explained to us that after the earthquake resources could not be distributed well in Port au Prince so the clinic and lab was set up in Deschappelles by the Hangar company. Not only can the prosthetics be made in a few hours but they also funded and designed the “Haiti knee” built especially for the hilly terrain of the country.

Wall art in the hospital

The cashier

tree nursery!

Day two: much walking. I woke up on day two with both ankles swollen and a sore knee. Despite this, we hiked up to a community called Sous Dupon to see one of the original HTRIP plots and basically interrogate the technicians and property owners. We were told that it was about an hour walk but it quickly became clear that Haitian time doesn’t nearly approximate Greenwich mean time. (In fact, the true calculation is: HT = 2GMT + 7 minutes.) The soil of Haiti has been severely degraded and in many places all that remains is the limestone base so this means that the dirt roads are a blinding white.

The demonstration plot was terraced and protected by live fencing and the trees were in good condition. However, other plots had noticeably lower tree survival with no move towards replanting. It seemed like the farmers were discouraged because without fencing the goats ate all the trees. What can you do?

I was particularly impressed by Ruth the intern. She had a real rapport with all the technicians and was able to translate and phrase our question in a culturally appropriate way. There were certain concepts that we struggled to convey in Kreyol, particularly money and time. In trying to quantify the money lost in exchanging food plots for tree plots, we asked, “If you planted one field full of pigeon peas, for how much could you sell the pigeon peas?” and the answer was generally “Who the heck would only plant one crop?” We also tried to ask more basic questions like what was their income and what did they sell to earn money and were they earning more or less now. We were generally met with “I don’t know” until Ruth asked “How you pay school fees?” So our brief attempt at a socioeconomic study of reforestation projects met with a bit of a roadblock. It would be very important to have someone very familiar with the language and culture design the questions if you wanted to get real answers.

Later that afternoon heading back into town we saw two huge trees. The technicians explained to us that these marked boundaries between landowners but now hold voodoo spirits that prevent the tree from being cut down. In fact, if you tried to cut them down, your hatchet would be swallowed and you might be killed. It was possible to communicate with the spirits through the trees, leaving offerings and such. One technician then said he didn’t believe this because he was Catholic. Haiti, like Bolivia actually, is a fascinating example of syncretism, where Catholicism (or whatever dominant religion) is adapted to feature aspects of the native religion and people who go to church and call themselves catholics might also make offerings to voodoo spirits.

That evening we went to the pool and played sharks and sardines (although what self-respecting shark eats sardines). The notes I took in my journal include the phrase “the black boogers of a dusty nation.” I shan’t expand but I will leave you with that image.