Summer 2007

I haven’t written much about the challenges of the project itself, but things haven’t been smooth sailing the whole way through.  The interviewers aren’t used to working 8 hour days (some aren’t used to working much at all), so it has been a challenge to motivate them to do what we told them they would expected to do.  Sony hasn’t been happy with the way his salary is being handled, and I’ve had to deal with the complaints even though his salary wasn’t my decision.  And every morning we have “discussions” about how much money the interviewers need for transportation for the day.  I made the mistake of counting on Sony to give me honest answers about how much they need.  However, my major means of communication with the interviewers has chosen instead to egg them on to ask for far more than they need.

You can pray that all of those things improve, but as I write this looking back on Wednesday, I realize that all of those things have improved significantly since then.  However, the path to get there was somewhat painful.

I thought that one way to solve several of the problems at once was to embark on a journey with a team of interviewers for a day.  Rather than spending a few hours with them at the close locations, I would go with them to a really remote community.  This would give me a realistic picture of the difficulties of the job as well as the amount of money necessary to make a trip such as this.  Hopefully it would also prove to be a bonding experience and break down some of the barriers between me and them.  And I have to say I was a little pumped about the opportunity to make a trek to somewhere that’s even more out in the middle of nowhere than what I have been calling home. 

So we decided on Mont Bayard, one of the furthest places on the list.  Madame Evelyn recruited two moto drivers especially for the trip and made sure everyone was there an hour early.  In the morning everyone was talking about the rain from the night before and the fact that we might not be able to cross the river, but all of the moto drivers said that we could go ahead and try.  Sony, on the other hand, claimed that he wouldn’t be able to cross the river and that we would have to cancel the trip. 

I haven’t mentioned that he has a lame leg, but he later admitted that my suspicion was correct that he was just using this as an excuse to air some of his complaints.  Essentially he went on strike at the most inopportune time possible.  This forced me to send the moto drivers home unhappily and change where we were sending two of the interviewers for the day, all in front of a crowd at the clinic.  In the middle of this, I didn’t have time for the usual “discussions” about money for transportation and just gave out what Sony said, which I later learned was even more inflated than usual.

After that Sony and I talked one-on-one for awhile.  I’ll leave the details out, but it was a pretty trying experience.  The one bright spot occurred when I returned to the guest house and the two ladies that take care of me asked why I was back and not going to Mont Bayard.  I responded “Don’t ask” in Creole which they thought was pretty funny.  I spent the next hour or so praying and contemplating if and how to fire someone twice my age.  Carline and Christiana spent the next hour repeating “Don’t ask” in Creole to each other and rolling in laughter.

I’ll conclude by saying that things with Sony are much better now.  We settled the issues, put a lot of things out on the table which needed to be discussed, put what we discussed into a written contract, and have moved on.  I have actually noticed a marked change in Sony’s attitude already.  You can ask me about what I learned from it all later, but for now I’ll say it was a difficult but great learning experience.

(Preface:  While I promise this round will be a little more light-hearted than my previous philosophizing, I did a half-decent job at convincing myself this is true and there’s a part of me that wants to write a paper on it.  Let me know if you think I’m on to something.)

Many a scholar has tried to identify the root causes of poverty, and the island of Hispaniola provides a unique opportunity to put those theories to the test.  If we understand the differences between the DR and Haiti, perhaps we could understand what causes some countries to experience more economic development than others. 

One of the most noticeable differences is that Dominicans like baseball and Haitians like soccer.  One might conclude that it is the love of soccer that entraps people in poverty, while countries which adopt baseball progress more rapidly.

First, let us consider why playing baseball might allow a country to progress.  I would argue that the game of baseball teaches valuable life lessons about overcoming adversity that are difficult to encounter in any other sport.  Like a poor man who faces grim odds of working his way out of poverty, a batter must deal with the fact that he will only succeed about 30% of the time, if he is good.  He must learn to accept that he will not be rewarded often for his toil but that he must persevere and maintain his hunger to overcome.  A young boy who learns this lesson on the diamond will surely take it into anything he does.  After all, if one can hit a baseball, which has been called the hardest thing to do in any sport, one can surely work his way out of poverty.  Sometimes the two are tied together not just figuratively but also literally.  Remember the words of Slammin Sammy who said, “Beisbol has been bery bery good to me.”

But what about soccer; on what basis can we conclude that the love of soccer traps people in poverty?  Consider the economics of sports on Hispaniola.  I recently discovered that the price of a good soccer ball in Haiti is $50.  What bothered me was not so much the fact that I had to shell out this amount but rather trying to reconcile this with what I know about this island and sports.  The ball was clearly imported from the US (probably after being imported from some other country), all of which led to what I consider to be an extremely high price for a country in which everything else is extremely inexpensive, relatively speaking. 

However, every day as soccer balls are shipped into Haiti and poor Haitian communities pool their money for weeks so that they can play soccer, Haiti exports more baseballs than any other country.  The Dominicans on the other side of the island know this, and they have discovered that sports equipment that can be found locally is the way to go.  So they grab a hold of a lot of those baseballs before they leave the island and they improvise the rest, such as using milk cartons for gloves and bottle caps and cane sticks to practice hitting.

We can see that playing baseball on the island of Hispaniola is cheaper than playing soccer.  We can also see that the side of the island which has discovered this fact is more economically developed than the side which has not.  Perhaps this is not just a coincidence.

Skeptics may doubt this math and argue that the average soccer ball lasts through many more games than the average baseball.  While this is certainly true in the big leagues, I take this to be irrelevant in developing countries.  In my experience on the island of Hispaniola, lost balls are rarely a reality.  Whether it’s soccer or baseball, there is a group of young boys at every pick-up game whose sole responsibility is to fetch the balls that go out of play.  And whether this involves hunting through sugar cane fields for foul balls or wading out into the river downstream of an approaching soccer ball, the muchachos and ti moun have an uncanny ability to return the balls. 

I’m not sure that this can be applied to all countries, but I can say that if Haitians would just trade soccer for baseball, they could save a lot of money and would probably be better off.  Maybe I should give up trying to solve the water problem and introduce them to baseball.

Blaud came back today.  With money for the project and a soccer ball.  Bato (I’m really not sure how you spell his name, but he’s the guy who lives on the compound and comes to get me every day when it’s time to play soccer) told me that Blaud had bought a ball.  I’m not sure why, but I just assumed that the ball was already in someone’s possession who would take it to the field, especially since Bato was heading straight to the field like every other day.  However, we arrived to the scene of a small group playing with a ball half-full of air.  Obviously the new ball hadn’t arrived, but the news that there was a new ball in the neighborhood had arrived at the field.  Which meant that a few of the guys shot rapid fire questions at Bato and I wondering where the ball was.  I explained that I misunderstood and didn’t know we were supposed to bring the ball.  They told us to hurry back.

A few of the little boys looking on from the road were quick to hand off their bikes to us so that we could get back to the clinic faster.  Bato got the bike that was too small for him, and I got the one that didn’t shift gears.  I’m not exactly an all-star bike rider, so I got some snickers for my difficulty in navigating through the bumps, but I made it back. 

I ran up to see Blaud and explained that there was a lot we needed to discuss, but right now I just needed the ball to get back to the field.  He handed over the shiny new blue ball and the bill, and Bato and I headed back with the ball.  Bato agreed that he would keep it at his house every day, and he took it down to the field.  Apparently Blaud did a good job at picking out a ball because they seemed to be happy. 

All in all, I was happy with this resolution to the story.  I’m grateful that God let me give in a personal way, and at least so far it hasn’t seemed to create a surge of requests.  However, there is still one thing bothering me from the whole transaction, so if you’ll forgive me, I’d like to do a bit more online philosophizing about poverty.  Since I ended up getting a little carried away, I’ll leave it for the next post. 

The cook for the guest house doesn’t come in on Sunday morning, so the last two weekends we just made our own scrambled eggs and “just add water” pancakes over the gas stove.  This was my first weekend on my own at the guest house.  I don’t know if Madame Evelyn didn’t trust my ability to add water to the pancake mix or if she’s just a pretty cool lady, but she invited me over for Sunday morning breakfast at her house.  It was pretty sweet.  She sent someone to come get me and lead me down to her house because although it is just down the hill, I had never been there before.  We had Haitian coffee and Haitian soup and talked in Spanish.  A good way to start the morning.

We went to a different church this week in a small town.  Both of Christophe’s kids came this week, which occupied Christophe such that he couldn’t really translate much for me.  So I zoned out during the sermon and did two things.  The first was being entertained as Ti Kris and his younger sidekick terrorized the surrounding area.  They would just walk around taking ladies’ purses and bring them to Christophe who would return them with a “Sorry” and a smile.  Over and over and over.  It got a little old for the people sitting around us, but never for the little ones.

I also read around in Matthew which was where the verse for the sermon came.  This led me to a closer look at the “Ask, seek, knock” verse.  I also read another passage which provided some more food for thought following last week’s reflections.  Jesus says that God will separate us into sheep and goats based on whether we feed the hungry and clothe the sick.  Then he will invite those who have fed the hungry and clothed the sick to inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for them.  Pretty enlightening on last week’s topic for philosophizing, and pretty sobering when I reflect on my own life.

This is intended to be part two of a two part post, but if you can’t wait and want to jump to this one first, here are the Cliff Notes to the post below:  this place is really thirsty for stuff.  People are poor.  They know white people have more money.  So they ask for stuff. 

You can’t blame them.  The question is - how should we react to this?  You can interpret “we” however you want - Christians, Americans, development workers, humans - I trust at least one of those titles fits you if you’re reading this. 

When I reflect on how I’ve dealt with giving stuff to poor people in the past, two responses come to mind.  One is to keep on walking when beggars ask for money because “you shouldn’t trust poor people to use the money wisely” and “there are better ways to help them.”  The other is that when you know you’ll be coming into contact with poor people in a “safe” setting, you take suitcases full of stuff and pour it out on them.  And then you take pictures of them with the stuff and everybody feels good.

I have participated in each of these options but have grown dissatisfied with each.  I suppose that recently I’ve been attracted to a third option, that of serving the poor by giving money and/or being a part of organizations that provide services for poor people.  This is better than dumping stuff on people because programs go closer to the root of the problem, and it’s certainly doing more to help than walking away.

But this approach isn’t doing me much good when people ask for stuff.  I felt like I missed an opportunity after I walked away from the lady with the sewing machine.  But more than that, I missed her. 

What I’m learning is that each of these three options is borne out of a view of the poor that lacks something essential: the poor are people.  If we keep walking and say that all poor people can’t handle money themselves, we treat them as if they don’t have the human capability to make decisions.  If we dump stuff on them, we treat them like they are just empty vessels that need to be filled with stuff and then they’ll be ok.  And if we choose programs as the only way to help, we reduce poverty to a problem to be solved and forget that there are people in pain while we’re trying to fix it for them.

Now I’m not saying that any of these three reactions is always wrong.  (After all, you know you’ve asked a good philosophical question when there’s no clear answer).  I’m not going to be able to give to every person who asks and even if I could, I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be a sustainable way to end poverty.  Showering gifts on people makes them happy, and that’s good.  And there are many programs which are doing great work in attacking the roots of poverty.  Programs also happen to form kind of the basis of the field I’m entering.

I guess what I’m learning is that in order to truly serve people, we’re going to need more than one hard and fast approach.  We’re going to need minds that recognize that the poor are people and hearts that respond to them.  We’re going to need to act out of relationships with poor people and with a God who is related to them as well.

On Friday morning, when this post was half-written, I read a passage in a book in which the author said that we can not say we love God and pass by our hungry neighbor.  Ouch.  That was pretty tough to swallow.  I just asked God to bring me to a place where I wouldn’t pass by the next time.

Well, He didn’t wait long.  After reading that, I walked down the hill to have our morning meeting with the interviewers.  Along came an old lady who wanted to be treated at the clinic but had no money to be able to do so.  It was pretty obvious that she had been sent there and I knew what I needed to do, but that didn’t take away my discomfort with the situation.  Especially because this was happening in front of the interviewers who were already complaining that they weren’t getting enough money for their work.  (I take this to be more of the typical “negotiating” process, and I have to say I’m glad that the project is set up such that I am removed of the responsibility of responding to this type of asking for stuff).  I told her we would help her, and when I went to meet with Christophe I told him that I would pay for her to be seen.  The clinic does accept people who can’t pay, so I said that I would just reimburse the clinic for the services for the lady, which I thought would be a better way to handle it than to just hand over money in front of the interviewers.  When I returned and Sony explained this to her, she understood and thanked us but said she wanted money in hand so that she wouldn’t be embarrassed about not having the money to be seen.  She kind of stormed off upset.  After the meeting I went looking for her, but apparently she was already in the clinic.

So it still feels like I’m stumbling around trying to figure out how to react to people who ask for stuff, but I’m learning tons.  Pray that I would continue to grow in this way and that I would break through preformed approaches and follow God’s leading when more people ask for stuff.  And if this stirred up any thoughts and opinions, feel free to comment.

This week was the first week of field work - sending the interviewers out to do surveys, observing them doing so, and doing some qualitative interviewing with my translator.  The week brought lots of challenges but we finally have some momentum going.  In lieu of a day-by-day log, I decided to go slightly deeper and write about something that I felt was a major theme this week.

Many of the week’s notable events fell under the title of “how to react when people ask for stuff.”  I wish I had a good answer.  It has become a dilemma that I’ve been wrestling with a lot lately.  This post is an attempt to capture the stories that led to my struggle.  I’m not proud of all of the stories, but I’ve grown through each one.  The next post will be some philosophizing out loud (or online I guess) which helped me gain some clarity and which you may or may not find interesting (philosophizing is something I happen to enjoy a bit, but maybe that’s just me).  Hopefully at least one of the posts will interest you, but if not, I’ll just ask for prayer in knowing how to react when more of these situations arise.

Story 1:  I was observing one of the interviewers going through the survey with an old lady.  The lady was pleasant and happy to show us a water filter that doesn’t work anymore.  Now she uses Gadyen Dlo.  About half way through the survey, she explained to Sony, my translator, that she had a sewing machine that was broken.  Apparently she told him that the Bible says, “Ask and you shall receive, knock and the door will be opened for you.”  And so she wanted to ask if we could fix her sewing machine.  I explained that I don’t really know anything about sewing machines and that I probably wouldn’t do her much good.  She said that some money for new parts would be ok.  I didn’t quite know what to say, so the interviewer just went back to asking questions.  We didn’t give her any money at the end.  I left feeling more comfortable than I would have if I had given out money from my own pocket to one of our participants on Day One, but something told me I missed an opportunity there.

Story 2:  There’s a boy who lives on the compound who hangs out near the guest house periodically.  He really likes playing with his ring tones, several of which are songs in English, none of which I have ever heard.  Anyway, about the only phrase in English he knows (other than the lyrics to the 5 seconds of his ring tones) is “Give me money,” which he always says with a smile.  Some times he gets creative and says “Give me” followed by a point to his shirt or shoes or some other article of clothing.  One night this week he explained to me that he only has 3 shirts and 1 pair of pants.  I told him that I need my stuff while I’m here, but we’ll see when I leave.

Story 3:  Then there’s the soccer crowd.  Last week (enter overdue story that was never posted due to lots of work and little internet) there was a guy that came to soccer who spoke English.  We all took the opportunity to communicate beyond the few words, thumbs-ups, and high fives to which we had grown accustomed.  One of the first questions that they asked me was if I could buy them a new ball.  I said we’ll see.  But this one really got me.  I have a bond with these guys.  I can personally feel their pain when the guy with the pump doesn’t show up on time and we have to sit around waiting for a pump so that we can reinflate the one ball that keeps its air for a decent amount of time.  I had wanted to do something about it even before they asked.  That night I thought through some of my reservations about buying them a ball.  Since it is still early in my stay here, I was afraid that buying a ball would invite more people to ask for and expect me to buy them whatever they want, something with which I wasn’t exactly comfortable.  The fact that a new soccer ball would be displayed before half of the community also raised some concerns about people wanting stuff from me.  However, I realized that buying a soccer ball wasn’t going to announce that I have stuff any more so than the color of my skin already does.  In the end I found only my own discomfort with giving people stuff to prevent me from buying the guys a ball, so I asked God earnestly to allow me to do this for the guys.  I felt a peace about it the next day, but I ran it by Bill before he left.  He completely understood my desire to avoid setting myself up as someone who can and will buy whatever people ask for, but he thought that a soccer ball was a very appropriate thing to do.  He suggested that I talk about it with the clinic director and find a way for the clinic to give the ball to the guys.  Even though people would probably know I was involved, this seemed like a good option, so I took it.  The clinic director agreed to look for a ball in the nearby city where he lives (which happens to be the closest place where you can buy a soccer ball).  The ending of this story is also yet to come because the clinic director has still not returned from his city (a story for another day - he has been waiting for some of the money for this project to come through, something that hasn’t happened due to a yet unexplained series of complications involving the US government and a large Haitian bank).  Hopefully he’ll return quickly and with a ball.

A few more lessons about life in Haiti during the rainy season:  Rain has the power to change a lot of things quickly, but its effect on soccer is not quite as quick.  What do you do when you’re caught in an afternoon deluge on the soccer field in Haiti?  You keep playing in earnest, trying to finish the game to two goals while your clothes get heavier by the second.  Because you know that soon the dirt field will be too muddy to make the field completely unplayable for the day.  And what do you do when that happens?  You split up among the houses that are next to the field and huddle under the roofs until the rain stops.  And the guy who lives there comes out to chill and talk about the rain with the team that is standing under his roof.  And when the rain stops, you walk back down the muddy road breathing much easier with the reduced humidity.  This was all quite an exhilarating experience and one that really made me soak in the beauty of Creation (quite literally).

Learning through experience is always so much better than by learning by the books.  Recently I’ve been learning that safe water is an issue in developing countries.  You would think I would have known that since I have chosen to devote myself to this issue.  But you can know something and then you can know something.  Now rather than just believing the proposition that water is a problem in Haiti, I’m living it.

The missionaries that fund the clinic installed a water system which serves the guest house, the clinic, and a few other houses for the clinic staff.  The system pumps water from the river, filters it, chlorinates it, and pumps it up the hill to the houses.  That’s why I said we had showers and flush toilets.  But the filters aren’t designed to filter river water when river “water” means something that has just enough liquid to make the mud flow. 

Thus:

Lots of rain + Deforestation –> Muddy river water

Muddy river water + Empty storage tank –> No water coming out of the taps

The empty tank problem could have been prevented, but apparently prevention wasn’t on the mind of the guy who is in charge of the system as we approached rainy season.   The tank is big enough to hold several weeks’ worth of water, but he apparently sees his job as refilling the tank when it gets empty rather than keeping the tank full.

Thus, the only way to make water come out of the taps is to eliminate at least one of the first two problems, which might not happen for…awhile. 

Finally,

No water coming out of the taps –> Fun times with household water collection, treatment, and storage in rural Haiti (which happens to sound vaguely familiar to some of the language in my proposed thesis topic)

We’ve been using the rainwater catchment system to keep a big 55 gallon drum full of water.  We use that to fill up our trusty old bucket when we need to flush the toilet or take a shower with a bowl and a bucket of water.  Christophe will be sending someone to get some drinking water from a community down the road which has a piped network.  Until then, we’ll be treating rainwater with good old Gadyen Dlo.

This is actually another one of those things that felt unfamiliar at first but now just kind of seems like a normal part of life.  It is sobering to remember that the fact that we have a rainwater catchment system and a truck to transport cisterns of water from the next community, which puts us a couple legs up on most Haitians around here.

This morning I awoke to the sound of a trumpet.  There are always people and animals awake and making noise as soon as the sun comes up, which tends to be several hours before I’m ready to get up.  However, I think I’m finally starting to adjust to this schedule and I felt somewhat awake when I heard the trumpet around 7AM.  So I walked down the hill to see where it was coming from with a book and a cup of Raisin Bran in hand.  I found the guy who turns the generator on and off sitting on the roof of the eye clinic belting out songs by memory.  He was just playing away, so I sat down in front of the eye clinic and was serenaded while I ate my Raisin Bran and read my book. 

When he came down, I explained that even though it has been a long time, I played trumpet too and I asked if I could play.  I played a scale and then squeaked out a scale the next octave up.  I asked him how he learned to play.  He said something about a book which I didn’t really understand, but then he sang Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do while showing the fingerings.  I realized that he may not even be able to read music, which made his playing even more impressive.

Another guy came down and introduced himself.  We had one of those conversations which is highly inefficient but beneficial to everyone’s learning in which I spoke in Creole and he spoke in English.  We didn’t get too far, but it was fun and I made a new friend.

Today we gave the interviewers the day off so that we could start on the weekend’s work which involves getting a ton of stuff together before the survey can actually begin.  Daniele’s project was to clean the sales data.  Bill has left us for Europe, so my job was to pick up where we left off with all of the geographical issues.  Essentially I had to figure out the locations of all 100+ communities which are listed in the sales records so that we can determine which communities to include in the survey and which communities to exclude (so that we don’t end up sending the interviewers on week-long treks to find two people).  The GPS points we took while traveling along the main road were a big help, as was some internet data and Bill’s topo maps.  But then there was the sizable chunk of communities which are nowhere to be found in any of those, most of which we now know have more than one name and several spellings for each of the names.

Once again the key to solving this problem was Madame Evelyn.  I’m becoming more convinced that Madame Evelyn knows everything there is to know about people, water, and places in northern Haiti.  I explained the project and showed her what Google Earth is and how I had built a map of as many communities as possible.  We talked through all of the missing communities, and her job was to tell me if she thought we should include it or exclude it, give some directions of how to get there, and then work with me to locate it on Google Earth.  The master plan is to print out a big map with all of the included communities on a bunch of 8.5×11″ sheets of paper, duct tape them together, and post it on the wall of the guest house to help with the study in general and when giving directions to the interviewers.  A big task, but a really fun problem-solving activity (a real-life Spontaneous problem for all of you fellow OMers out there), and another afternoon full of Spanish.  Good times.

Hey all,

Just wanted to update and say that everything here is going really well.  Other than internet access.  The now-daily afternoon/evening rains have been putting the satellite internet connection out of commission each night, so this is the first time I’ve been online in a few days.  Posts might become less frequent, but I’ve been enjoying your comments and emails and look forward to more.  Mesi (thanks)!

Michael