Summer 2007

So the guy who runs the clinic bought us a kabrit this weekend.  That’s Creole for goat.  (Vegetarians and faint of heart, you can skip to the next paragraph).  We all knew what was coming, and neither one of my housemates was particularly looking forward to it.  So this morning a guy shows up at the back door dragging a cooler full of meat in one hand and four hoofs in the other.  Bill told him to keep it outside for the time being.  Our cook came waltzing in behind him and started to walk into the house carrying a goat head by the horns.  This was too much for Bill who got upset and told her to leave and take care of it later.  I found the whole experience quite humorous, although I’m still puzzled by why she was going to come through the house with the goat head, unless she was planning to put it in the garbage can.

This morning I met with Sony and went over some of the transcripts from the focus groups.  Typing up every word that Sony said in the tape was pretty monotonous, but the change in the type of data entry was welcome.  Bill suggested that I pull out some of the problems and possible solutions that came up during the focus groups and lead a discussion with the program technicians (Madame Evelyn, Christophe, and Renald).

Lunch was pretty good.  However, limes and deep frying made it impossible for me to really report on what goat tastes like.

This program has really done things the right way.  Madame Evelyn, Christophe, and Renald are the ones running the show.  Every time I brought up an issue, Madame Evelyn told us which of the resellers’ suggestions they have already tried (which was most), which have succeeded, which have failed, and what we should do now.  She even had an answer to the cell phone guy.  She said that she has heard this before and she told him that if this happens, he should just call her and say the words “I’m out of solution,” hang up, and she’ll bring him some solution without him spending more than a couple cents on his cell phone.  We had a good laugh about that one.  Madame Evelyn is a smart, tough cookie.  The meeting made me feel slightly useless as an aspiring “trained researcher” who used all the right techniques and just uncovered things about which Madame Evelyn was already aware.  However, I think it was good for someone to raise all of these issues in a discussion about these things with everyone there.

After entering more data, I wandered outside to find my friend who lives on the compound and plays soccer.  He was already in his soccer shirt and cleats, so I got changed and we headed over.  At the field I was greeted by the section of 2-5 year old kids pointing and saying “Me-ka-ail.”  I remember seeing the group of kids the other day, but I don’t remember talking to them, let alone telling them my name, but apparently I stick out a little. 

One girl, probably about 4 years old, had an obsession with asking me “Como ce va?”  Just about the time when it was getting old and I was about to start ignoring her, she threw in a “how are you?” followed by a “como estás?”  I tried unsuccessfully to make those conversations last longer than the previous ones, but I was quite impressed at the 4 year olds’ knowledge of languages.

Tonight Bill and I played on Google Earth.  We used Bill’s topo maps, a website with coordinates for a bunch of towns in Haiti, and Madame Evelyn’s drawing of where the resellers are located.  Her map consists of dots along a straight line, which represents the relative position of the resellers along the one road (actually a really windy road) which connects most of the towns in the area.  We entered about 40 of the 50+ towns where the program has a presence, and tomorrow we’ll probably print a map and select which communities will be a part of the study.

This morning I went to church with Christophe.  While we were having a late breakfast of pancakes and eggs, Christophe stopped by to let me know that he would be leaving in 15 minutes.  After I hurried to get ready and walked out the door to Christophe’s house, I realized that I was 2 minutes late.  In a temporary moment of insanity, I began to feel guilty that I was going to make a Haitian late for church.  I knew at some level that I shouldn’t be worried about being on time, but there was some northern American part of me that kicked in and made me jog over to his house.  Not surprisingly, I was invited into the house to find that he was still in the shower and his wife was changing Ti Kris (Little Christophe), the 2 year old boy who wanders into our house from time to time.  We left the house promptly when church was supposed to be starting.  Right on time.

Ti Kris sat on my lap on the way to church.  His quacking noise is improving.  I guess I was giving all of my attention to him since it wasn’t until we had almost arrived that I noticed that our truck’s windshield was virtually full of cracks.

After a brief walk up a dirt path, we entered the one-room, open air concrete building and sat behind the rows of kids who get the front benches.

The scripture reading was Psalm 118 and the sermon was about the protection of God.  That’s about all I got.  But it was cool to meditate on Psalm 118.  It struck me that when we consider entering a situation (for instance, going to Haiti), we do our “risk assessments” and make formulas out of risks and benefits.  Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, but the very concept of “protection” doesn’t quite fit into the equation.  Protection is personal.  So check out Psalm 118 to be comforted by a God who protects us.

The singing was beautiful.  The pastor just starts a song and everyone joins right in without any words in front of them.  Everyone from the little kids to the very old pours out their hearts.  Loudly.  It brought me to a tear or two.  And although the women’s group that did a special song sang the same chorus what seemed like 50 times (even I knew the words by the end), it was some of the best harmony I have heard in awhile.

At 2PM we had a meeting with the resellers.  Which means that at 2:10, when 4 resellers out of the 20+ who had been invited were present, I began to think we would have to resort to Plan A (interviewing each of them individually).  Individual interviews are actually what I had been preparing to do for months.  However, last night we decided on Plan B (doing two focus groups) upon hearing Madame Evelyn’s report that all of the resellers were going to show up for a meeting with us.  But of course, 10 more showed up shortly after 2:10, so we returned to Plan B.

The focus groups went well.  They had some interesting ideas which I brought up with Bill.  Most of their ideas boil down to the fact that they want the program to create new roles for them and pay them, but in the process they highlighted some weaknesses in the program.  The award for creativity goes to the man who said that the way to improve the program is to give him more cell phone minutes.  His rationale:  as a reseller, he periodically runs out of bleach solution.  When he also runs out of cell phone minutes at the same time, he can’t call Madame Evelyn to tell her to bring him more solution.  Then his customers come to him and get discouraged and have to go without treating their water.  But if he had more cell phone minutes, these people could have safe water.  Although I don’t know that free cell phone minutes is the wisest investment of the program money, stories like this one did point to weaknesses in the current system which we might be able to change.

Well, as I sit down to write this, I didn’t have to clear any roaches out of my bed, making tonight one better than last night.

Today was market day in the nearest town.  Bill and I and Christophe, one of the water program technicians who lives in the compound, took the 30 minute walk to the “mache.”  Walking around the mache is an experience that is virtually impossible to convey unless you’ve been there, but here’s a sampling of things you might see: People carrying chickens around by the legs through the crowded dirt roads (more like roads of rocks).  Young girls selling freshly caught fish which come in two varieties, whole or chopped into quarters.  Motorbikes with multiple people navigating through the crowds (I think a father and 3 children took the prize in the “How Many People Can You Fit on a Motorbike?” game today, but I’m sure that record won’t last for the whole trip).  That fails to do it any sort of justice, but at least I warned you it wouldn’t. 

I had a strange paradoxical feeling the whole time.  I was aware at some level that what was surrounding me was so unlike anything we experience in the US, but at the same time, it all felt kind of natural.  People are people, and they’re all just living their lives like the next guy.

Honestly I didn’t take in most of what was going on around me because Bill and I were having a very lively discussion about the project in southern Haiti in which I’m involved. He has years of experience with doing water projects in Haiti and posed some really great questions for our organization.

Bill made sure that we stopped to say hello to Miss Miriam, who is a young woman who resells the bleach product.  They have known each other for years and Miss Miriam was very friendly.  She invited us in to her house and we sat and talked for awhile.  While we were talking I played pass-the-limes back and forth with a cute little girl with a really big smile.  When asked how old the little girl was, Miss Miriam said 1.  She added that she has been taking care of the girl ever since the girl was 1 day old.  I had just assumed the girl was Miss Miriam’s natural daughter, but it turns out that Miss Miriam found her by the river.  Yes, by the river.  As I sat troubled by this and not quite knowing what to think, Miss Miriam left the room to get something.  She returned with a black plastic grocery-sized bag filled partly with leaves and explained that this was the bag in which she found the girl.  She completed all of the paperwork to go through with an official adoption.  I guess evil is alive and well in this place and so is a God who seeks us out and rescues us.

Early afternoon consisted of more data entry.  I suppose the multiple languages going on simultaneously keep my mind in the “ON” position.  Today I realized that the job requires typing names in French, understanding notes in Haitian Creole (written by a woman with whom I speak Spanish), and translating all of this into numbers.  I listen to music in a mix of English and Spanish to make sure I don’t doze off.

Apparently I was decent enough at soccer because I was invited back.  Or maybe I’m just enough of a novelty.  One of the boys who played yesterday apparently lives on the compound (I was unaware of this).  He came up to the guest house and asked if I wanted to play soccer again.  I said yes and he told me it started in 5 minutes.  I hustled down and made it before the latest game had started, which gave me time to at least introduce myself to the guys.  I scored my first goal today.  Even though I’m definitely not the best one out there, I have the biggest target on my back.  When one of them beats me in the open field, they’re sure to celebrate about beating the “blan,” but when I beat one of them, my team is sure to chatter back with what I take to be trash talk.  It’s pretty fun.

The rainstorm made tonight’s internet experience a bit difficult, but we got through.  Tomorrow I’m going to church with Christophe in the morning and leading focus group discussions with all of the people who resell the bleach product in the afternoon.

Today was training day.  We met the four people who will be doing the surveys and I spent the day training them.  Madame Evelyn selected them because they live close and are good users in the program.  Raul is a middle-aged man who used to teach.  There is another former teacher, a girl trained in computers in her early 20s, and a girl that’s probably in her late teens.  The young ones seemed to have picked it up the quickest.

Haitians have an intellectual disposition.  They grasped some concepts very quickly and others less quickly, but they asked lots of critical questions about why we were doing things a certain way.

After the training, Daniele showed me a bunch of really complex coding that she had worked out in Excel.  Analyzing all of this sales data in Excel is kind of insane but kind of cool and probably necessary.  It’s really messy but you can visualize everything that’s going on.  It also forces you to think very logically and carefully.  I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere but I’m a little too tired to make it a clean one right now.  I learned a lot and all of the logic problems along the way were pretty fun.  We talked through the conceptual issues about analyzing the sales records, troubleshot some of the coding, and ended up with a bunch of different options for analysis which we will send to the big guns at CDC for input.

After that we took an exercise break and I chose to take a run.  Sony told me that he was heading toward a small town nearby on a motorbike, so I went ahead of him.  It’s amazing what saying “bon swa” (good afternoon) will do.  I was getting stares everywhere I went on the run, but every time I said, “bon swa,” people’s demeanors changed instantly.  I always got a “bon swa” in return, usually a really big smile to go with it, and some times a thumbs up.  They still probably think I’m a weird white guy, but I felt some sort of connection.

On the way back I caught a glimpse of a soccer game.  There were about 10 boys in their late teens playing in a shortened field with sturdy tree branches placed in the shape of a net frame.  There was also a decent sized crowd of boys ranging from about 3 years old and no clothes to about 20 years old and soccer cleats (and other clothes too).  They invited me to come down to the field and put me on a team right away.  As a shortstop, I still maintain that whoever created an athletic event in which using one’s hands is against the rules must have been on crack, but these days I take what I can get in terms of sports.  The practice I got this past year at Emory allowed me to maintain at least a respectable status in a game against mostly teenage boys.

After a run and a short time getting run into the ground by Haitians, I was happy to see Sony on the way back to the clinic.  Maybe I looked really tired because he offered to get off his friend’s motorbike for me, making my first motorbike ride in Haiti a welcome experience.

The night consisted of more data entry, Haitian rum and coke, and discussions about the place of research in what we’re trying to do in this so-called field of international development.  A good combination.

Today I awoke to the sound of cock-a-doodle-doos coming from chickens on just about all sides of the house.  Whoever named the sound a chicken makes was pretty much right on.  After a breakfast of eggs, avocado, and mango, Madame Evelyn came up to the guest house to talk with Daniele, Bill, and I about the project.  Madame Evelyn has served as a technician for the water program for years, and she helped us understand the records she keeps.  They’re amazing.  She speaks Spanish and Creole, so most of the hour-ish meeting was conducted in Spanish.  I felt bad that Sony, whose job for the next 6 weeks is to follow me wherever I go and translate for me, probably felt rather useless this morning.  However, I confess that I didn’t even think about that for awhile because I was so thoroughly enjoying speaking Spanish.  One of the few but big disappointments of choosing this summer project was that I thought I probably wouldn’t get to practice my Spanish.  Although Madame Evelyn’s role will be limited and I don’t know how much more Spanish we’ll speak, I enjoyed it while it lasted and hope to do more.

After a long philosophical lunch during which Daniele and Bill put forth their ideas about what makes certain countries collapse, I trained Sony on qualitative interviewing techniques (since I’m a master at this after taking a 2-credit class this spring).  As we were talking, Sony found an English Bible and took the opportunity to show off his reading skills.  He seemed very interested in teaching me about what he was reading, so pray that we have more opportunities to discuss the Bible and maybe even teach each other some language skills in the process.

After that Daniele and I had the pure exhilaration of entering data.  It’s the glamorous part of the job.  Last summer, I never did resolve the issue of why God had me working a job purely for the money in which I was told the first day, “if you take this job, we’re pretty much going to throw you in a closet with a bunch of data and have you enter it all day long.”  Not that it compensates for all of the hours I spent in that closet, but perhaps I can at least see that last summer’s experience prepared me well for the next week or so of entering 1-2 pages of sales data with notes written in Creole for each of the 2,000+ families in the program.  I reverted to the data entry groove of putting part of my mind on auto-pilot and philosophizing with the other part of my mind.  We’ll see how long the fun with data entry lasts.

If today is anything like the coming days, the hours between 6 and 8 will be a flurry of activity.  That’s when the generator comes back on (and so does the internet) after being shut off around lunch.  It’s amazing how cooperative three internet-deprived people learn to be and how efficient each one of us becomes at checking email and what not when we are forced to do so.

However, the 2 year old Haitian boy who lives in the house beside us stole the show and overshadowed the attraction of the internet during his visit.  We have yet to get him to talk, but he warmed up to us blans today when he took a seat at the kitchen table between Daniele and me.  After I made some quacking noises at him, he found it amusing to try to repeat them.  His attempts resulted in something between a sniffle and a sneeze.  He also learned that making faces and rolling his eyes gets him lots of attention, especially from the ladies.

We planned for tomorrow’s all-day training session with the four interviewers and entered more data lit with the light of laptops and head-lamps.  Tomorrow should be a full day, so pray that we develop good relationships with the rest of the team which we will meet for the first time.

Our day of travel went surprisingly smoothly.  There were plenty of logistics that could have gone wrong that didn’t.  I suppose knowing people helps.  Daniele, my mentor from CDC, breezed us through the Ft. Lauderdale airport with her frequent flyer “Gold” status.  Bill’s friend in the Port-au-Prince airport breezed us through customs.  Bill’s other Haitian friend breezed us to the in-country airport where the two Brazilian pilots got us through a brief rainstorm to an airport in the north.  Daniele giving lots of US government money to a guy who trailed our car on the way to the clinic breezed us through the last leg of the journey.  Apparently they have redone some of the roads so that the previously 2-hour drive winding up and down hills is now a 1-hour drive with an occasional strip of concrete.

It’s quite peaceful here at the clinic.  The compound sits on a hill with a view of mountains on the other side of a river.  The view is beautiful despite the fact that there should be lots more trees on the mountains given the climate of the island as a whole.  Good old deforestation.  Inside the compound there is a medical clinic, the factory at which they produce the chlorine, a couple houses for the Haitians who work full-time at the clinic, and the guest house for missionaries, which is where Bill (the program manager), Daniele, and I are staying.  Our setup at the clinic is pretty sweet.  All day long we get water for showers, flush toilets, and water for drinking that is chlorinated with Gadyen Dlo, the product we’re studying.  During the morning and early evening we even get electricity.

Today we met a couple people who work for the water program and charted out a schedule for the rest of the week.  Should be fun.