Wake of the flood

Haiti missionaries push long-term agricultural development solutions

by Alexa Smith

      Since 1991, Babe and his wife Sharyn, a teacher, have served as Presbyterian Church (USA) agricultural missionaries in Haiti at the invitation of the Episcopal Church of Haiti.

      The program — called the Comprehensive Development Project (CODEP) — has sought to create a sustainable agricultural watershed along the Cormier River and is designed to be one day totally Haitian-run.

      “Too much foreign aid is directed toward the equivalent of soup kitchens,” Babe writes. “With most food and aid given, there is no expectation of, or responsibility to, change destructive patterns. Accountability measured by behavioral change and other factors can and should be a requirement for continuing assistance.

      “If the church, humanitarian organizations and foreign governmental agencies continue to direct the majority of their efforts and funds to critical relief needs, is there any reason to imagine the needs will not be even greater tomorrow?

      “It’s time to make a horribly difficult decision. It’s time to look longer term and stop simply reacting to disasters that could have been greatly minimized or averted,” he writes, bemoaning the quick-fix mentality that dominates U.S. culture — even church culture.

      Babe’s words this day — good news and bad news — illustrate his concern.

      The good news is that when Haiti was hit with late-May storms, there was less flooding and erosion inside the 12-mile CODEP project than outside it.

      The bad news is that until the CODEP watershed is completed, one stormy season can still ruin the crops and the chance for survival for Haiti’s dirt-poor population. Crops more suitable to the terrain need to be introduced as well, another slow educational process.

      This time, the rains washed away the black bean harvest, or, buried it to rot in the ground. Without the storms, the crop would now be drying in the Caribbean sun, the first step before the pods are shelled and the beans eaten, stored and sold. For these subsistence farmers, selling black beans pays for school, clothes and medicine. Black beans also provide 80 percent of the protein in farmers’ diets.

      “Attempts to salvage some of the bean crop are ongoing. Many of the beans were picked, but unable to be dried,” explains Babe, adding that, in the United States, the beans would be drying in storage sheds, cooled by big fans and unaffected by the weather. “A large number of farmers have gardens they have not even harvested. Rain and mud have covered many of the plants.

      “Everywhere we go, there are whole families trying to manually separate the sprouted seeds from the rest. It is a tedious job.”

      It has meant digging and cementing fish ponds to capture rain water and provide more food and income — five tons of fish were harvested last year. Four million trees have been planted to stop erosion and to provide wood for cooking fires. Terraces, hedgerows and ditches are tucked inside the hills to collect and slow water that would otherwise wildly pour off the mountainsides, flooding everything below.

      “Now the water slowly drains off the trees, grasses and decaying leaves, working its way downhill until it forms a stream,” types Babe, summing up ecosystem recovery. “Rather than a rushing deluge of muddy water, this slowly released rain carries little silt — or mud — and the release may occur hours or days after the rain, eventually flowing into bigger and bigger streams, thereby becoming part of the river system” he says, providing a mini-lecture in watershed ecology.

      This time, the CODEP system worked. While other local rivers washed away houses, gardens, trees and livestock as they crested, the Cormier River — still three feet above normal — stayed put. The watershed acted like a gigantic sponge, capturing about one-half-million gallons of water in cisterns, runoff ponds and fish ponds.

     Rather than rolling down the hills as a flash flood, it is now slowly being released to the sea.

      This kind of report is music to the ears of Susan Ryan, the coordinator for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. Too often she’s called when a disaster hits. But she prefers finding ways to avoid disaster in the first place.

Soil and water conservation – as well as reforestation – are part of the Cormier River project.
Photo by Jo Ella Holman

      “Disaster work is long-term work, like the work Rodney is doing here,” she says, citing the years of labor that have gone into this 12-mile swath. “It is a slow, slow, long process.”

       Currently, between 200 and 500 CODEP volunteers give one day a week to the project’s work. Each person represents a local family.

      Babe is now trying to introduce new crops, more suitable for the hilly terrain. He’s encouraging the planting of fruit trees, starting the saplings in the shade of the four million other sturdier trees.

      Another promising crop is moringa, a fast-growing small tree with edible protein-rich leaves, seed pods that resemble string beans and which also produces an edible oil.

      But for now, his neighbors are squatting in the dirt, searching for salvageable black bean pods. It isn’t going well. What’s worse is that the rotting tendrils will not turn into seeds for planting next year.

      In a few weeks, farmers will plant sweet potatoes. But they lack the nutrients to keep a family alive.

      “Journalists, aid workers, humanitarian groups, government agencies, they’re all reacting to the horrible news (of the flooding in Haiti),” Babe types. “The flooding was devastating. The loss of life and property are immeasurable. But such catastrophes help us lose sight of the bigger
picture …