Electricity is available again
in Papaye, after having taken a leave of absence for close to
two years. I realized two nights ago, after the fifth night with
electricity, that it might be worth my while to have more than
one light bulb in my five-room house. The telephone has also been
working on a fairly consistent basis and my email server is usually
up and running. I don’t have sufficient experience in Haiti
yet to be able to tell you what the signs are that will indicate
approaching chaos, but lights, water, and telephone seem like
indicators of a progressively more positive situation.
The most costly aspect of my task of accompaniment right now
is the emotional anguish I experience when people share with me
their stories of suffering. Many members of MPP were killed and
many more went into hiding during the three years of the Haitian
army’s brutal rule after the coup of 1991. Fanfan, a workshop
coordinator for MPP community groups, lost one of his young sons
while he was in hiding. Fearful for his life, his family didn’t
even let him return to the city of Hinche (pronounced “Ensh”)
for the funeral. In 2002, at a community meeting held in Hinche
to discuss the problems of the communities and the effects of
Aristide’s new government, Dieugrand, one of MPP’s
agronomists, was shot and nearly killed by a group of thugs supporting
Aristide. During the same meeting, the group burnt one MPP truck
and destroyed several of their motorcycles. The most difficult
part about hearing these stories is knowing that in most cases,
the suffering could have been avoided if U.S. policies in Latin
America and the Caribbean were focused on supporting and encouraging
truly democratic institutions rather than on controlling economic
and political processes.
One of the other important aspects of my work is to share the
skills and knowledge in alternative forms of agriculture that
I learned and refined at Rancho Ebenezer in Nicaragua. As part
of this work, I am working with a team which includes one other
MPP agronomist and two Haitians from the nearby community of Basen
Zim. One team member is Duveron Joachim, who graduated from Saint
Barnabas in Terrier Rouge, a PC(USA)-supported agricultural school
in northeastern Haiti. Together we are creating an experimental
model of the “ideal” yard, where goat, chicken, and
rabbit production will be integrated with vegetable production,
soil conservation, and reforestation. One of the particular emphases
of our vegetable production will be the “miracle tree,”
Moringa oleifera, a fast-growing tropical tree that produces
highly nutritious, edible leaves, and seed pods, and has a root
system that can be cooked and eaten like potatoes. Work in our
yard, which the crew has named “The Road to Life Yard”
began just under two months ago and already has over 150 yards
of soil conservation hedgerows, a small cacao plantation, bananas,
papaya, and mango trees, and a system of nine old tires set up
out of reach of marauding chickens where we have begun to grow
spinach, beets, carrots, peppers and eggplant. A small goat shed
is the next big addition we hope build by early September, along
with a small space fenced with chicken wire where we will begin
planting Moringa trees using a drip irrigation system that will
allow us to produce Moringa leaf throughout the dry season. The
system we use to design this kind of yard production is called
“permaculture,” a concept for putting together sustainable
agricultural systems that was first developed in Australia.
In my first letter from Haiti, I claimed that Haiti is a “land
of abundance.” As God would have it, I sent that letter
out at almost the same time several communities about sixty miles
south of us were suffering massive flooding. My claim of abundance
in Haiti must have seemed odd in the face of such horrendous suffering—as
many as three thousand persons killed and thousands of families
left homeless, precious field crops and domestic livestock washed
away. Nevertheless, I stand by my observation. Haiti does have
an “abundance” of problems, but Haiti is not the wasteland
presented by the media. Where is the true abundance of Haiti?
I am a long ways from discovering all of Haiti’s abundance,
but I have seen it is in the hands and minds of artisans and technicians,
such as Guenen (Ge nay), the furniture maker who led the crew
that built all of the furniture in my house—beds, bookcase,
clothes closet, kitchen table, stools, dish cabinet. All of it
they built by hand without a single electrical tool, in less than
two weeks. Or in Pepinot (Pep ee note), the local bike and motorcycle
mechanic. One night I watched Pepinot as he meticulously took
apart and put together the carburetor for a 125 Honda, again and
again for over an hour, until he finally got the motor to run
properly, each time saying he would try just one more time and
then leave it for tomorrow. I see it in the fields of corn and
sorghum and mangos and oranges and bananas and eggplant and beans
and okra planted and tended by Duveron and the other farmers in
the area. And I see it in the generous spirits of people wherever
you go—the oranges or mangos or eggs or eggplants that rural
families thrust in your hands as you leave their house, saying,
“Take some of this, sorry we don’t have anything else
to give you.”
My graduate advisor and friend, Doug Lantagne may have sent me
the best possible summary of what it is like to work in Haiti.
Doug wrote me, “Haiti is a special place, with a special
people that has problems and potential so tightly wrapped together
it is always difficult to find where one begins or ends and the
other takes over.” That’s where I am, right in the
middle of an astonishing tangle of problems and promise, working
with an organization that has planted itself in the middle of
it all and declared its faith in the hope and the promise.
In Christ,
Mark
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
140 |
