Heartbreak in Haiti

The first part of this post was taken from Meredith’s journal, written on March 10^th.

Clesia had her baby today. I have been looking forward to this day since I met her. Her smile drew me in instantly and I felt a bond with her that is difficult to describe in words, a connection shared by two strangers from different cultures. Right as she waddled into the clinic at 31 weeks pregnant I knew we were going to be friends. I was struck by her beauty, her kind manner and her infectious smile, despite being a refugee from Port Au Prince. I have mentioned Clesia before since I work with her brother Obed at the clinic and when he told me 16 family members had arrived at his door after fleeing Port Au Prince- and one being his pregnant sister, I told him to have her come for a visit. Clesia arrived from Port Au Prince with literally a pair of clothes and her son Samuel. She had no paperwork documenting any sort of care during her pregnancy. She said her due date was Feb 28^th but she walked with a saunter that left me thinking she was closer to term than 31 weeks.

After her initial visit I continued to follow up with home visits, taking her blood pressure, making sure she was eating well, screening for pre-ecclampsia, talking about breastfeeding- but mainly just to spend time with her and her beautiful belly. Her baby was always so active, “l’ap bouje” (that means, she’s kicking!). She would say to me all the time and I would just rest my hands on her belly feeling the movement and getting to know the little one inside. Visiting Clesia became one of my favorite things to do. Our conversations were simple, focused on her and the baby, but our time together was so sincere and sweet. She would greet me with a hug and kiss and grab my face in her hands. Being a victim of the earthquake cast a dark shadow on her life and I could see the stress of the situation through her brother. He would confide in me all the troubles they were having, so many people under one roof, struggling to buy food and no idea what the future would hold. Clesia’s husband remained in Port Au Prince because he did not want to be a burden on Obed up here in Terrier Rouge.

Obed’s wife also had family arrive after the quake. Her sister had been in the hospital during the quake and was being treated for an infection a few weeks post partum. She was able to make it out of the building alive but returned home to find her house destroyed. By the time she and her three children made it to Terrier Rouge days later she had a 103 fever, typhoid and malaria. I first met her at the clinic when I was asked to start some IV fluids on her. Her health was only the beginning of her problems though. While in the hospital her milk supply dried up so she was forced to buy formula for her baby. On one of our house visits, we found out that her baby had been only given tea for the past three days because they were unable to buy formula. Seeing the tea in the baby’s bottle filled my heart with a sadness and rage that left me feeling helpless. We were able to give them some formula from the clinic- but as that supply was finished they were back to tea. I gave them some money the following week and tried to stress over and over again the importance of formula. Now she is living in Cap Haitian with her parents and three girls. I hear they are all doing okay but her malaria is still causing fevers, as it was resistant to the chloroquine- but she could not find another drug to treat it. All I can do now is hope and pray the baby is drinking milk and she is finding better treatment for her malaria- a difficult task for a family with nothing and no money.

Last night was my most recent visit to this burdened household and I am sad to say matters are only getting worse and more difficult. Clesia was 1 week over due, according to her memory from care in Port Au Prince, her ultrasound in Terrier Rouge confirmed this, but ultrasounds at 31 weeks are not as accurate. As soon as I walked through the door I placed my hands on Clesia’s belly and asked how her daughter was. She looked at me with concern and said the baby had not moved since yesterday morning. My heart dropped to the floor and I just knew the baby was dead. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. Thanks to the fact that Berry was in town we had a car to drive to the hospital. As we piled in the car I was overcome by that same sense of sadness and frustration, why is this happening? Has she not been through enough suffering yet? Could this have been prevented?

We bumped down the road- avoiding the wandering goats and cows and made it to the hospital about 40 mins away. We were forced to wait outside in the dark parking lot, as it was late and no one but patients were allowed in Maternity. My suspicion was confirmed as Obed came out to tell me there was no heartbeat. Because we had a connection with a doctor at the hospital we were able to have Obed’s wife stay with Clesia for the night. Clesia came out of the hospital to see us- and we just hugged. The doctor came out too, some questions were answered and it was time for her to be admitted and us to leave. We stood outside for a bit with the smell of urine in the air and the site of family members getting ready to sleep outside the hospital. I looked at Clesia and she had her hands clasped against her chest, eyes closed, swaying side to side. She said to me, “god still lives, we have not lost the battle.”

As I said goodbye I held her close, feeling her belly press up against me with her little girl inside. This little amazing person I had been feeling kick and wiggle for over a month, but I would never get to know more than that. After hugging I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I stepped back to look at her. Her face for the first time was cold and sad, she looked at me holding back tears and I could see the pure pain in her face. She turned and walked up the ramp to the hospital alone, to await the delivery of her daughter. We loaded back in the car to drive home, everyone exhausted. I thought of the task ahead for Obed, calling his brother in law in Port Au Prince, who has lost everything, to say he has lost his daughter. How can any one person bear this much weight and pain? When we finally arrived home I was too tired to think, I climbed into bed to put my mind to rest, the reality seemed too sad to believe. Clesia is one small story of women in Haiti, one small story of the life of a refugee from Port Au Prince. She is just an example, there are so many more out there who have lost parents, friends, sisters, brothers, children and will continue to lose them from infection, cholera and malnutrition. She is also one story of maternal infant health and what it means to be pregnant in Haiti. I realize this happens too in the US, but needless to say our ability to detect and prevent such tragedies from occurring is far better than here in Haiti. I bet her daughter had Clesia’s smile.

Switching gears now to a more uplifting topic. The rabbit project is advancing! We are really encouraged by all the interest we've received so far from you all. On Monday morning we held our planning meeting with Village Nativity, the Makouti agronomist, and IDDH to finalize the details. We discussed how this project can benefit the whole community, since only five families out of twenty will be receiving cages to start. We decided that the rabbit producers would provide rabbit meat for the whole village. We have also been planning a structure to protect the cages from sun, rain, and theft. The village has recently been having problems with outsiders stealing anything from their streetlight’s solar panel to the fish in their pond. The house we designed will be built from stone, cement, chicken wire, and metal roofing, and will have room for eight 4-chambered cages, so that there is room for growth. (Future producers will be able a buy cages on credit that can be repaid with rabbit). This structure is part of the project that will end up costing more than we originally thought. Despite that all the labor will be provided by the rabbit producers, from making cinder blocks to searching stone for the foundation, this structure will cost 750 dollars. But we decided that this is something which is worth doing right. We don’t want to leave this project’s success vulnerable to theft, or build a shoddy structure that needs to be replaced in a couple years.
This raises our fundraising goal to 1,250 dollars. So we can start this project now Meredith and I are paying for the project up front, and Seeds of Self Reliance will reimburse us with any donations for the rabbit project that they receive. Once again, a tax deductible donation can be mailed to Seeds of Self Reliance, 3727 RT 15
Jeffersonville, VT, 05464, and write “rabbit” on your check.

Thank you!!!

Time to Get Involved!

As we continue to mourn the hundreds of thousands of Haitians who died in last month earthquake, many more of their brothers, sisters, parents, children, and good friends have been leaving their destroyed homes in Port au Prince to seek refuge with their family in other parts of the country – many people returning to the small city or village in the countryside where they were born. It is these people that remind us that this catastrophe was not just a natural disaster, but it was and continues to be a disaster of Agriculture. It has been the inability of the sons and daughters of Haitian farmers to find a living in Haiti’s mountains or plains that drives them to the overcrowded and poorly constructed capital. And now as these refugees return home, rural Haiti is challenged to provide for even more families than it was already struggling to sustain.

During our time here in Haiti, Meredith and I have met many people who are stepping up to this challenge. Their answers have been school garden programs, vegetable cooperatives, a youth farm, research on jatropha bio-diesel, composting toilets, and much more. It is with this sense of optimism towards creating a better and more sustainable rural livelihood that we have been working with the Nativity Village. This community of twenty families, about a half hours walk outside town, was built this past year by one of the largest charitable organizations in Haiti. Its new residents were given a house here because they had none to call there own before; however, a nice home does not help you feed your children. That is why we, Seeds of Self Reliance, have decided to partner with the Nativity Village to help them develop their agro-ecological resources in a way that will provide them with a quality livelihood for generations to come.

We believe that animals are an integral part of any agro-ecosystem. They eat food inedible to humans, create fertility for vegetable production, and most importantly provide a rich protein source that is greatly lacking in the Nativity Village. One animal that performs all of these functions magnificently is the rabbit. The rabbit needs only weeds and leaves, it creates one of the best organic fertilizers, one of the healthiest meats, and can produce upwards of 20 offspring a year! We are working with Makouti Agro Enterprise in Cap Haitian to set up 5 interested families with rabbits. The new producers will partner with us by building a structure against sun and rain, purchasing the rabbits on credit (they’ll pay them back with rabbits they produce), and providing rabbit for other families in the community to eat or raise. The Makouti technicians will be giving trainings on rabbit biology and future cage construction, as well as 4 follow up visits to make sure that this project is a sustainable success.

We are asking for your help to buy the metal cages necessary for healthy rabbit production. Each family will receive one large cage with 4 rooms that will allow them to raise one male, two females, and the offspring for meat. Each cage costs 100 US dollars, so if each of you give just 10 or 25 dollars we can reach our goal of 500 dollars, which will allow us to start this project before we leave Haiti.

Last week I biked out to the Nativity Village for a meeting to discuss how the community can finish the barbwire wire fence which will allow them to begin growing crops safe from free-range cows and goats. The fence was supposed to have been built by their large charitable organization months ago. After the barbwire is finished they will line it with a living fence of cactus, which will last as long as it is maintained. Until then the women and kids have been tilling small gardens and fencing them with piles of thorny branches - yet unfortunately the cows still break in. The president of the Village Committee, a young father named Willa, has been planting dozens of trees all around town. He protects them with small circle of metal or branches, but the goats eat them despite this. These people desperately want to be able to make a living from the land of their new home. They do not lack skills or motivation, only a little means to be able to begin.

Please help us raise the money we need to get this project started. A tax deductible donation can be mailed to Seeds of Self Reliance, 3727 RT 15
Jeffersonville, VT, 05464. Make sure to write “rabbit” on your check. Thank you so much.

Peter and Meredith

Pictures

We will try to get another post up soon but in the meantime some photos from around town here




A proud mama with her brand new baby girl Wilna, born at home with a midwife I work with, she is my age and this is her fourth child!



Peter and John at the farm in January during John's visit! We miss you Chef Juan Dulez!



Women selling firewood at the market

Life goes on

Hi everyone,

Just a few quick updates… Life keeps on plugging away after the earthquake but the affects we fear will still linger for a long time. There is an estimated 400 families now here from Port Au Prince and most of them came with nothing so there is a lot of pressure on their families here in Terrier Rouge to feed them and provide for them. This is not easy since people living here already struggle to feed their own large families. A few days ago we saw a food handout set up by the UN. There was barbwire fencing to keep people in line and there were UN officers with those shields they use during riots to keep the crowd under control. The whole process seemed very organized and calm though and I think people were thrilled to get a little support.

Some schools have started to reopen. But not all the children have returned to school yet, we hear that a lot of the parents are still nervous about sending their kids to school in a big building, for fear of another quake. We are still unsure of what this all means for the kids here from Port Au Prince, since school there will not open until March and many of these families do not necessarily plan to go back to Port Au Prince, since they have no home to go back to. The schools in Terrier Rouge can take some new students but not all. The church across the street from us has been having lots of special memorial type services in the evenings. We have enjoyed sitting up on our roof listening to the singing and drumming. The other evening we heard the singing start down the road, and hundreds of people flooded the streets carrying candles and they ended their march at the church. It really was a beautiful and powerful sight.

These last few weeks have been very busy for us both. Meredith got to work closely with a US group doing cataract surgeries and helped them with translating and even got to scrub in and watch a surgery. The clinic has been busier than ever and she continues to head out to Paulette once a week to help run the small clinic out there.

Peter has been living and breathing rabbits. He is working with a village outside of town and an organization in Cap Haitian to try set up some other families with rabbits too. We think it is a great animal for Haiti because it can eat only weeds, reproduces like a … well …a rabbit, its meat is some of the healthiest, and there is nothing sweeter than rabbit poo for the garden. Stay tuned for more rabbit updates and how you can get involved too!

We planted some roof top containers so we hope to be getting some fresh greens in the future. Peter’s garden continues to grow, all of his cilantro was sold at the market, and his tomato plants look beautiful! We got to eat some fresh green beans a little while ago. We are both looking forward to the idea of eating more vegetables! The weather continues to be hot hot hot. Everyone says this is the hottest February they can remember, lucky us. We fear that our little winter has already come and gone, it was 88 degrees the other night as we tried to go to sleep with no fan. Since the earthquake we seem to not have power as often. So we ran outside dumped a bucket of cool water over us then got right in bed and tried not to move. We may have said this before but there really is something amazing about bathing outside in the tropics in February under a blanket of starts, we will try to get a picture of our shower up on our blog so you all can picture it.

Love, Meredith and Peter

Back in Terrier Rouge

It is hard to sum up the feeling of Haiti right now. When we returned back to Terrier Rouge last Sunday there was a definite sadness in the air. The whole town felt a little different. Every family in the whole country has a member living in Port Au Prince, or at least friends or distant relatives. Everyone has a story to tell about how the earthquake has affected them personally. Everyday T.R seems to grow a little bit more as family households fill with people leaving Port Au Prince. Obed, a man Meredith works with now has 16 people living in his house and more want to come. It is difficult to imagine how one city really does affect the whole country. There is a woman here who was in a building in Port Au Prince during the earth quake and was the only survivor in her family, she was pulled out of the rubble and saw that her sister, mother and son did not make it. She was so distraught she was just screaming and crying and saying how she was afraid to go to sleep. Another young girl rode all the way from PAP in a bus with a broken pelvis up to T.R. One of our friends lost both of her sisters and another friend lost her cousin who was in medical school there … and those are just a few of the stories.

Meredith has been very busy with the clinic, due to such an increased population. She has also been doing home visits and follow-ups with Berry Rice, the RN from the states who founded this clinic. Berry’s NGO received some relief money so we are able to treat those coming from PAP for free and offer them free medication – since the only thing they came with was the clothing on there back. One woman was in the hospital during the earthquake and was able to get out before the whole building collapsed, she returned to her home in City Soleil to find it completely destroyed, she has a new baby not even a month old and a 10 year old daughter, they came to TR to live with her sister. She came to the clinic with a 104 temperature after arriving the previous night by bus, her older daughter had cuts on her face from the falling rubble.

On a lighter note, we bought rabbits this week! John, our fearless leader, returned to Haiti with us after we said goodbye to the UVM class at the Santiago airport. He’s a little obsessed with rabbits (so is Peter now too). So we now have two does with four kits to start a little rabbit project here. Peter has been spending the rest of his time this week getting his garden back in shape and building a compost pile at the IDDH farm.

We know some of you at home may be a little concerned about our safety here, probably due to the cable news reports of people looting Port Au Prince and starving refugees pouring into the rest of the country to search for food. People we’ve heard from in the Capital say that it is one of the most horrible things they’ve ever seen; however, they also say that reports of looting are very over exaggerated and they are struck by how calm everyone is and how much people are working together. The resiliency of the Haitian people is unbelievable.

That is all for now, thank you everyone for all your thoughts.

Earthquake in Port Au Prince

As most of you have probably heard, a 7 point earthquake hit Port Au Prince yesterday afternoon. We are thankfully in the Dominican Republic right now, and the quake we felt here, while significant, did little damage. Our home, Terrier Rouge, is far from Port Au Prince, but as all phone lines in Haiti are down, we do not yet know how Terrier Rouge or our friends in Port Au Prince have been affected. The magnitude of this tragedy has yet to settle on us. There are likely more than 100,000 people dead, and the services, infrastructure, and homes of a city already living on the edge of survival have been flattened. Our hearts go out to the people of Port Au Prince, and all of their family and friends.

The Vermont Haiti Project has set up a special disaster relief fund, which we will link to here: www.vermonthaitiproject.org

Please give all you can.

We will be returning to Terrier Rouge on Sunday and will update you with our future plans as soon as we can. We appreciate all of your concerns. Thank you Hillary for spreading the word that we're safe.

Lots of love,

Peter and Meredith

Rain!

Where to begin… it seems like a lot has happened since our last post. Christmas week we had our first real rain, which lasted three full days, was very needed! We headed into Cap Haitian on the 23^rd despite the threatening sky – Peter wanted to pick up parts for a drip irrigation system he is wants to experiment with at two of the school gardens and in his vegetable plot. We traveled to Cap Haitian in the back of a truck, it is about a 40 minute trip. We counted 14 people in the truck at one point. The trip was just fine except when the rain started to pour and we all got soaked, the fellow lady riders were very helpful though when Meredith attempted to wrap her hair back in a bandana, they all jumped to show her how to do it. Then we had to walk to the bank in Cap Haitian and our shoes were soaked through within minuets. We did have the pleasure of getting a little holiday shopping done, we purchased a few candy bars and cookies at a little grocery store. We headed out of town to Balan to meet the Agronomist who has the irrigation parts. It was very beautiful there and the only downside was all the mud! When it rains here the mud afterwards is unbelievable. We went to the market after the rain last Thursday and people just end up taking off there shoes and wading around in the mud because there is no way to avoid getting dirty, it is a total mess. Everyone gets a real kick at seeing us walking around in the mud and everyone asks us if we are afraid of it.

We enjoyed our Christmas at Marieva’s (the Canadian nun we recently met) home up in Grand Basen. We went up with another nun who lives here in Terrier Rouge. There was a handful of Haitians there as well so it was quite the fun crowd: Americans, Canadians and Haitians. The afternoon consisted of good food (even stuffing!), good drink, a few fun games and even Christmas music, we felt right at home, except it was in the 80s and sunny. Christmas here is definitely more of a party; people eat and drink a lot, but there is not really any gift giving involved. Everyone cleans there houses and sees family and cooks a lot of meat. Our landlord had his family home for the holidays and they skinned and cooked a whole goat Christmas day, we had the pleasure of eating goat head stew!

On our way back down from Grand Basen we stopped at a soccer match and watched for a bit. There were two groups of men playing drums, maracas, and a wind instrument made from bamboo. It’s the music that we sometimes here in the middle of the night or early morning. This was one of those experiences that cannot be described in words, but the music reverberates in the center of your bones and chest. It’s the type of music played at voodoo ceremonies, and it came from West Africa, and has existed for God knows how many years before that. It was not just hard to keep ourselves from dancing, but I could’ve danced like I was in a trance or possessed by a spirit. But then I remembered that it is not my music to dance to like that, and try to feel grateful enough to have heard it.

After Christmas we spent the next few days in Terrier Rouge getting things organized before we went to the Dominican Republic for our real Christmas gift, a two week visit from Kathryn (Meredith’s sister). We headed to the DR this past Tuesday and picked up Kathryn from the airport Wednesday. Then we all headed up the coast to Rio San Juan for a little beach time before Haiti. The goal of these three nights at the beach was to enjoy the toilet, running water and to fatten Peter up. I think the trip was very successful and Peter ate bacon every morning. Rio San Juan is a pretty quiet little town that does not see many tourists but it was a perfect place to be right on the ocean and read a book, which is exactly what we were looking for. We spent New Years Day at a beautiful beach and Meredith finally got her pina colada, made with and served in a fresh pineapple. Saturday we started to make our way back to Haiti, but because it’s a long trip we spent the night in a town called Monte Cristi and crossed the border Sunday morning.

Kathryn was welcomed to Haiti with a nice little stomach bug and got well acquainted with our latrine – all in the name of understanding our life here better of course. The rain fell Monday making it a good day to rest and recover. Today we toured some of the school gardening projects and showed Kathryn around Terrier Rouge. We will be on the move again Thursday back over to the Dominican Republic, we are meeting up with John Hayden’s class trip (Peter did this trip two years ago, and Kathryn went on it last year). Every year he brings a group of UVM students to the DR for a service-learning class centered around community gardening. We are excited to get back to Batey Libertad and Batey Saman to see some friends from our time there in October. We will travel with them until the 17^th and then return to Haiti. Kathryn will travel too until the 14^th. It has been wonderful having Kathryn here to see our Haitian home, but she was a little scared when she saw the goats tied up and hanging off the back of a truck.

If we get time we will try to post at some point in the DR but more than likely we will update you all when we get back. Happy January everyone, lots of love to you all!

Meredith and Peter and Kathryn too!!