Mark and Jenny--MPP/PC(USA)

2012-01-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hey Friends,

Two and a half weeks down, one week to go of Jenny's Mission Worker orientation. We head to Amesville next Saturday, with my niece, Sarah. She got here yesterday and will be helping us this next couple of weeks. Keila is happy.

Jenny has been dealing off and on with cough and now a full-blown cold. Annika made it through the worst of a cough, stuffy nose and fever, but still has the cough. Keila is getting over an ear infection and a runny nose, but still has a cough.

So far I'm just feeling generally a little bit draggy, sneezy and stuffy ears, nothing that acetominphen can't handle.

Keila is still playful, Annika is still smiling and Jenny is still making me laugh (and laughing at me). It will be so nice to be in Amesville with Mom and Dad (Grandma and Grandpa). Praying for a big snow storm next Sunday early early AM so Dad's meeting in Tennessee gets postponed.

Keila and I got to play in the snow twice while we were in Toronto. She learned to throw snowballs, although it was cold enough at the time, they didn't stick together very well.

After a week in Amesville, Jenny and the girls will be spending a week with at Keith and Priscilla (Sarah's parents). Keith and I will be headed to Haiti for a week. I will be helping to lead a group from Royal Oak Presbyterian Church, from outside of Detroit, Michigan.

Jenny, the girls and I will then head to Nicaragua and then to the Dominican Republic sometime the last week of February.

We continue to covet your prayers! But life is blessed, God's Grace is present and accounted for. We are surrounded by family and unexpected friends.

Blessings to you all!

Headed North

2011-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

We are all well, in Nicaragua for the holidays. Headed to Mission Co-worker orientation for Jenny on Tuesday. We'll be in Toronto, Canada and Louisville, KY for most of the month of Janauary for orientation, then visiting my family in Ohio for a couple of weeks in February.

Hope all is well with you and yours. Many blessings for 2012. May it be a blessed year for everyone.

2011-12-28T12:49:00.000-08:00

Check out photos I loaded onto Facebook. This is a trip the Road to Life Yard crew took to the Northeast Department of Haiti in November to collect vegetable tires. We turned them inside out in order to fit more on the truck. We were hosted by a farmer's group from the city of Terrier Rouge called Farmer's Movement of Terrier Rouge. The group has a visitor's center with the most basic necessities--water, beds and a place we could cook our own food.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2788280513505.138106.1453093926&type=1&l=ac3dc8c736

A Celebration of Yard Gardens

2011-11-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

On Friday, November 4th, a group of some 100 farmers gathered in the hills of Bassin Zim, in a local Catholic chapel, to celebrate God's abundance.

For the last year a committee of seven local volunteers has provided technical support to some thirty families learning to intensify and diversify their food production techniques, focusing on their own yards. Now, the committee decided, was the time for people to gather and see what has been accomplished. The event was entirely organized by the committee of local farmers; it was sponsored by MPP, with financing from the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project

Scheduled to begin at 7:30, the committee members arrived on site at 5:30 AM and began preparing the leanto that serves as a chapel for this remote area. I left our home in Bassin Zim around 5:30 AM and began winding my way down the hill to MPP's training center, where some participants helped me load 115 folding chairs on the truck, then off we went, with 8 or 9 passengers. We continued down the hill, across the Samana river and eventually up the torturous trail that serves as a road to the communities of Seramon, Matbonithe, Marilapa and Leodiague. When my brother Keith and two friends went with me to this area, Keith commented, "When Mark said we could get there by truck, I thought he meant there was a road." I believe I got stuck in mud three times on the way to the celebration, but we arrived by 6:30.

At 7:30 AM, people began arriving with examples of the production from their yard gardens. Then journalists from MPP's radio station arrived, together with a group of budding videographers. By 8:30 I was getting a bit antsy. Around 9:30, the main speaker, Accène Joachim arrived and the committee served all of the participants a spaghetti breakfast. The event finally got going by 10:00 or so. Nobody but me really seemed to notice that we were some 2 1/2 hours late.

I had offered the committee an award of something like $US 5,000 if things actually started at 7:30. They know me well enough to know exactly how unlikely it was that I would ever pay up, but even if I'd been serious, my money obviously would have been safe. By God's grace, and not by my worrying, everything came out very fine.

Here are some pictures. Photos provided by Eccène Joseph, a member of MPP's communications team.

One of the paticipants puts down her load of papaya that she and her family produced in their home garden.

Papaya, Haitian pumpkin, moringa powder, eggplants, moringa leaves, garlic chives, parsely and "masoko," an edible root that forms above ground on a vining plant. When the committee decided to ask participants to come with examples of their production, neither Alexander Placide (the MPP agronomist now responsible for the Road to Life Yard) nor I imagined there would truly be this level of abundance and diversity.

Worm compost (vermicompost), produced by African redworms. Wilner Exil, crew member and supervisor for the committee of volunteers, brought this example of one of the techniques that can amplify vegetable production.

Ronel Odathe, a journalist for MPP's radio station, Voice of the Farmer (Radio Vwa Peyizan), interviews Wilner Exil about the work the committee has done with local families.

Agame Elfraüs (left), myself and Moccène Joachim, as we judge the production. We quickly developed some simple criteria to judge each entry, including how good it looked, the abundance, the diversity and originality. The committee had included in their budget funds for prizes for the winners, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and consolation.

Mulaire Michel, the coordinator for MPP's technical team, holds up a papaya to comment on the capacity that farmers in Haiti have to produce good, healthy food.

Accène Joachim, assistant director for MPP, providing the keynote address, focusing on food sovereignty and how yard gardens are part of the road Haiti and Haitians need to follow to regain control of their own lives and to reclaim the future of their country.

Participants of all ages, men and women, listen to Accène.

After Accène's presentation, the committee called on a number of the participants to bear witness to the changes this production has made in their lives and the lives of their families.

Adpoleon Jacques, Wilner Exil and Jasma Joachim, three leaders of the commitee, present their vision for the work of the committee in 2012.

Myself with Wilner Exil (sitting at table). Wilner invited several other people to share their perspectives, including Agronomist Alexander Placide. It was Alexander who developed the idea of forming this committee at the end of 2010.

I provided my hopes for the committee as well, but also noted that the committee, and the participants in the community, are providing me with a model that I will use during the next several years, as I begin working with other farmer organizations throughout the country.

Finally, Agame Elfraüs announced the winners, one by one. The committee had arranged for music to fill in the gaps during the celebration. Now Wilner required each winner to dance with their display on their head before they received their prize.

Moringa, cabbage, green peppers and amaranth. The winning display.

Swivi--MPP's follow up in yard gardens

2011-10-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

MPP's project the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project has entered a new phase. We are focusing less on our experimental area at MPP's national training center here in Papaye and focusing more on taking what we've learned out into the community.

When we started the project in 2004, we were experimenting with different ways of growing more food, with less work, in small, intensively managed spaces. Our focus has always been the small areas rural families have around their homes. We call them "jaden lakou" or "yard gardens." "Yard gardens" may sound redundant to folks in the States, since our gardens in the States are almost always in our yards. But Haitians call all of the areas where they produce food a "jaden," a garden, and many of these small pieces of land are quite long distances from the families' homes, from their yards. So talking about "yard gardens" is not redundant in rural Haiti. It isn't new, either. As mission co-worker Carline White pointed out recently, Haitians have always produced food in their yards. What MPP is doing through the Road to Life Yard-Moringa project is not changing what people do. It is adding new ideas and new ways of doing what they already do very well, helping them do what they do even better.

As we work more and more in the community, one of most important tools is what is called in Haitian Creole, "swivi" or "follow up." We follow up with what we talk about at the center to see how people are applying it in their own yards. Since I returned to Papaye October 12th, I have been working with crew members, visiting their communities and the people who are applying these new ideas. So far, we've visited at least 58 families in five or six communities scattered around the center. Not everyone is doing a great job, but there are enough people doing good stuff to keep us energized. Here are a few stories.

Julienne Dorcin began working intesively with her yard almost as soon as she moved back to the community of Leodiague with her husband and children, about three years ago. Now she has become a key member of the committee formed in January this year to provide technical assistance to the growing number of families wanting to set up their own yard gardens. Julienne has taken her cue from Road to Life Yard crew member, Wilner Exil, and she does an excellent job, in her yard, and as she visits families. When she enters a yard, she immediately looks to see what they are doing, and whether its working. She listens as family members explain the activities they've carried out, and the problems they've encountered, then she provides them with advice and insights, based on her experiences. She has become an incredible resource, for her own family, and for her community.

Gilto Orné (left) and his brother, Abarky, decided they wanted to build a goat house closely modeled on the one in MPP's training center. Gilto sat down with me and with Alexander Placide, the other agronomist assigned to the project, and put together a budget. Based on that budget, Gilto borrowed on his salary that he earns working in the Road to Life Yard-Moringa project and began building the goat house with help from his father and brother, both of whom have construction skills. They had the boards sawn for the house, and put up the frame that allowed them to build a platform that the goats can walk on. This platform is the key element to this style of goat shed. It helps the goats keep their feet dry at all times and it allows the goat droppings to fall down through the cracks to the ground below. Having the goat dropping below and away from the goats helps keep them healthier. It also makes it easy for Gilto to collect it and then compost it in a neary hole. When the goat droppings have composted sufficiently, Gilto takes the fertilizer and uses it in his vegetable production.

In the photo above, you can see the tree leaves that Gilto hangs for the goats to munch on all day, a gourd in the center, filled with salt that the goats can lick, and a water bucket to the right where the goats can drink their fill whenever they wish. Gilto works with Wilner Exil at the Colladère Farm every Thursday and I can tell you from experience, sometimes Gilto can drive you nuts. But when he gets an idea, he gets it "nèt", completely.

Maxius Exil is a working mother and farmer in Leodiague. When we visited her house, she told us offhandedly that these pepper plants sent her children to school this past September. She sells the peppers every Saturday, and was able to sell enough to buy new clothes, shoes, notebooks and pens for her three children. She is one of the families in Leodiague planning on enlarging the space where they practice this type of yard gardening.

Julien Dorcin (left) began developing his yard garden space two years ago. The soil was terrible, and when we did follow up with Julien and his wife, we told them, frankly, they should pick a new space. Julien and his wife ignored that part of our advice, and kept putting manure into the soil, again and again. Together with learning better ways of mixing up the soil for the vegetable tires, Julien and his wife's persistence has allowed them to turn that small, horrible sandy space, into a productive piece of yard, producing cabbage and tomatoes and spinach in the ground and in the tires.

Elismene François benefitted from a cistern project put together by an association of farmers within MPP called Association of Planter's of Bassin Zim. When I did follow up at Elismene's house in the community of Gwanit. soon after her cistern was built, she and her husband were doing nothing with the water. We grumbled at them quite a bit about that. Not too long after that, Elismene purchased four or five tires. This season, she produced what must be hundreds of eggplants in her tires. She sold and gave away a number of them to her neighbors, but she kept several hundred that she planted in carefully prepared soil around her house. Now, she told us, she goes to market every Saturday with a burro load of eggplants to sell. Her bench that holds the vegetable tires off the ground recently fell down, but she has already erected a new one with posts that her husband cut for her.

Wilner Exil (second from left) and his wife Tesil (far right) were among the first famlies in Leodiague to create a space for their yard garden. Their example has become a model and a challenge for other famlies in their community. Building the spaces with what they have at hand, applying new ideas to what they already know, they are creating places for God's abundance to burst forth, in their own yard and in the yards of their neighbors.

Praise God for his presence, shining forth in so many ways here, but especially through the strength and persistence of these people and the organization that supports them, MPP--Farmer's Movement of Papaye.

Dad's Garden in Amesville, Ohio

2011-10-21T04:49:00.000-07:00

When Jenny and Keila and I ended up arriving in Amesville, Ohio at the end of March, right as spring began, there were at least two advantages. We got to experience a southeastern Ohio spring in all its glory, and I got to get into Dad's garden at the very beginning, and help see it through to the harvest. It was good to be working with the soil, and good to help produce our own food, for the house. And it was especially great to be able to get Keila involved--whenever I could convince her to work with me, which wasn't all that often. But you have to start wherever you can when you're forming a future farmer.

Weeding and hoeing, I felt like I was being true to my vocation. But just as importantly, I felt I could look my fellow crew members in the eyes when I got back to Haiti.

Jenny took all of these photos.

Two varieties of sweet corn, one earlier and one later. The later variety was better tasting and more productive. I learned a lot gardening in Ohio this year. Among other things, it is so much easier to get a decent crop in the temperate zone. The heat and humidity of Nicaragua and Haiti during the wet season make a huge difference. Oh my, do they ever. Crops have to be tough tough to make it here in Haiti. Which is one reason, at least, no one here in Haiti as ever heard of "sweet" corn.

Keila exploring the rhubarb.

Bed of beets, carrots, broccoli and tomatos. The cabbages and cauliflower succumbed to the heat wave of July

Dad planted the beets, but I did the weeding and I fertilized them--with organic compost, of course.

Beets, tomatoes and potatoes. Mom and Dad both said the potato crop was particularly good this year.

Tomatoes!!

The wheelbarrow ride is is the best part of gardening.

Asparagus and rhubarb, potates, green beans, beets, cucumbers and potatoes. I realized once again and now, I think, for always, how important it truly is to know where your food comes from. I believe that producing your own food, or some part of it, is part of the calling that God has for every single one of us. It's part of what we call food sovereignty, and that is what MPP here in Haiti is about.

RELUFA

2011-10-03T18:36:00.001-07:00

Wanted to highlight the RELUFA site. Very cool slide show showing the effect of Dole banana and pineapple plantations on local farmers, and the ways that Fair Fruit is working to change the equation:

http://www.relufa.org/programs/economicjustice/trade/fairfruit.htm

Vote! A Fair Fruit Project supported by PC(USA) Mission Worker Christi Boyd

2011-10-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

Friends!

Below is a note from our friend, Christi Boyd, a fellow mission worker in the Cameroon. Christi is advocating here for a local organization in the Cameroon (West Africa)--RELUFA, which is part of a larger organization called Joining Hands, a project of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Hunger Program. Joining Hands works on uniting grassroots organizations in developing countries, helping them to work together to change underlying causes of hunger in their own countries. RELUFA, the Cameroonian "branch" of Joining Hands has been advocating for the transparent reporting of payments received by the Cameroonian government from Transnational Corporations for national resources, such as gold, oil and diamonds. Normally, such payments have gone into the national treasury without public knowledge, and from there, to who knows where?

Please vote for RELUFA's Fair Fruit project!

From Christi Boyd:

Dear friends,

RELUFA's Fair Fruit project(http://www.relufa.org/programs/economicjustice/trade/fairfruit.htm ) is through to the second - and last - round in an online competition to win the 2011 Public Prize "For the World of Tomorrow". The 10,000 Euro prize will be used towards implementing our "Farm to Market" strategy to ensure longterm sustainability of the project and a better assured income for our marginalized farmers. For you all it's an opportunity to support our project and its producers without any costs or special offering!

In this last round it really comes down to rallying all our fans, and set through them into motion a chain reaction for an exponentially increasing number of voters. Will you participate (again)? Deadline for voting is the 9th of November.

This round voting is much simpler:

1. Go to http://voordewereldvanmorgen.nl/project/fair-fruit ,

2. click on the green (stem) button

3. fill in your e-mail address

4. do the simple math problem (it's probably a verification method)

5. and forward this call to your family, friends, colleagues, social circles and networks, mission committee, church members, youth group etc.

You can follow the score on http://voordewereldvanmorgen.nl/acties/wereldprijs/tussenstand?thema%5B58%5D=58 .

As it goes with these online competitions, it is from the start to finish a fierce battle, a matter of giving it all with a last sprint to come through the finish line as first. Thank you in advance for your cheering and please let me now if you have any questions!

Christi

Plastics

2011-09-28T11:11:00.001-07:00

There are places in the US that are recognizing the blight that plastic represents in terms of the landscape.

Check out this article:

http://www.marinij.com/marinnews/ci_18987419

Plastics

2011-09-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

A beach near Leogane, Haiti, about 40 miles west of Port au Prince. Some of the trash is local, most washes in from Port au Prince

I've heard a number of reports in the last several months about the pervasiveness of plastics in our lives, our ecosystems, and our bodies. There is no question that in Haiti, plastic waste is a huge disposal problem. To find out that besides the obvious problems, plastics are being implicated in cancers and immune disorders terrifies me.

Here is a link to one article:

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2209

The NPR report I heard can be found online at

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/19/135245835/our-toxic-love-hate-relationship-with-plastics

and an article by the same researcher can be found at

http://www.susanfreinkel.com/books_Plastic.html

From article:

"Freinkel’s conclusion? We cannot stay on our plastic-paved path. And we don’t have to. Plastic points the way toward a new creative partnership with the material we love to hate but can’t seem to live without."

Arrived in Nicaragua

2011-09-07T09:36:00.000-07:00

Jenny, Keila, Annika and I arrived in Nicaragua last night around 8:30. Jenny's younger brother, Michael came to pick us up with one other car, and incredibly, the two drivers were able to get all our luggage, and us, in the two cars and make it in one trip.

It was a long trip yesterday. My brother, Keith, his wife, Priscilla and their son, Keegan, came to see us off. So did my sister Nancy, her daughter, Leah and two sons, Zachary and Seth. Mom and Dad drove up from Amesville to spend the night near the airport and came to see us off as well. It was a huge help to get all our luggage, a boxed up bike, strollers, car seats and, oh yes, Keila and Annika, to the ticket counter. They allowed Keith to go through security to help us get settled at the gate, with all our carry on. When I asked American Airlines for help, an American Airlines authority told us we should only be taking on the plane what we could actually carry ourselves. I pointed out that we had two very young children who can't carry on their own carry on.

In any case, we made it. We were delayed in Miami due to heavy rains and we arrived in Nicargua over an hour late, but we made it. Keila fell asleep last night immediately after her bath. Annika took longer to settle into a new house with new noises.

Word has it that a piece of luggage that didn't quite make it last night will be delivered to the Bent's house today.

It is a great privilege to be able to move from family in Ohio to family here in Managua. Thank you to all of you who have also become part of our family, who hold us in your thoughts and prayers. Please keep us in those prayers as we continue to transition from the States to Nicaragua and from one job to another. We are still waiting final word for what comes next in 2012. I will be returning to Haiti the second week of October to finish out the year with MPP's Road to Life Yard project. Jenny and the girls will stay with Jenny's family here in Managua.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika

Note: Cisterns Blog

2011-09-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

Please note, on August 24th, there is a blog explaining the type of cisterns we are using in MPP's Road to Life Yard project. The blog is an ongoing project, so check it out periodically to see the new additions. My next step will be to add captions to the pictures to explain the process.

I have finished, I believe, listing all of the tools and materials. Anyone who has worked with this system that has some critique, please feel completely free to make observations.

To see all of the blogs mentioning the cisterns in the blog, do a search of the blog site using the key words "cisterns rainwater" I've been checking and there are at least four blogs that refer to the cisterns.

Annika Estela Hare's Baptism

2011-09-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

Sunday, August 14th family and friends gathered at the New England Presbyterian Church, in the rural community of New England six miles from Amesville, to celebrate Hymn Sunday, and to join with Jenny, Keila and me in baptizing our second daughter, Annika.

It was a very special time. Almost all of my brothers and sisters and wives and husband and nephews and nieces were present, along with friends and neighbors. Jenny's brother, Norman, was also able to come from Detroit, with his frirnd Marifer and Marifer's daughter, Henrietta. All told, over sixty people attended the service and the coffee hour afterwards. We were very concious of our Creator's presence with us that Sunday. We felt filled with God's grace.

Arriving at New England Presbyterian Church Sunday AM. From left to right, Rachel and Zachary, two of my sister Nancy's children. Nancy is holding Keila, and my niece Emily, one of my brother Keith's two daughters, is right behind us.

The Baptism. My father, Rev Frank Hare (second from right), officiated. Gary Gould (far right) represented the New England session. Marcia Burchby (far left), our long time friend and supporter, agreed to become Annika's Godmother. Norman (second from left) became Annika's Godfather.

Presenting the new member of the church Family

COSECHA-style cisterns in Haiti

2011-08-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

COSECHA is a grassroots development organization working in southwester Honduras. One of the techniques they've developed is a ferro-cement type below ground-level cistern which we have been using extensively as part of MPP's Road to Life Yard project. MPP (Mouvement Paysan Papaye, or Farmer's Movement of Papay) where Jenny and I have been serving, also does a more traditional above-ground type of ferro-cement cistern. I'll try to describe that system in another blog.

The COSECHA-style cistern, as we generally promote it, requires the following materials:

1) A well-dug hole. We usually recommend that folks do 3 meters by 3 meters. The depth should be not much more than 1 m deep.

2) 3 lengths of 3/4" rebar. I have no idea if this is the world-wide standard, but what we purchase in Haiti and in Nicaragua are always 20' long.

3) Six to seven pounds of #18 "smooth" wire. In Haiti I've only ever seen is galvanized wire, but our teachers from COSECHA taught us with non-galvanized which is cheaper. The wire if for weaving the mesh for plastering the cement.

4) Three to four wheelbarrows of stones for the border.

5) Ten to twelve wheelbarrows of clean river sand. The sand available to families where we work in Haiti is rarely particularly clean. We do what we can with what people have available.

6) Ten to twelve bags of cement. When everything works out nicely, you can do the work with less.

7) Between seven and eight 1/4" rebar, also purchased in 20' lengths in Haiti and Nicargua. These are for making hooks that hold the rebar in place and help peg the mesh to the sides of the dirt walls.

8) At least four lengths of 4" drainage PVC for making the gutters.

9) Two 55-gallon drums of water. You may need just over one drum.

10) A medium sieve to remove pebbles from the sand.

11) A fine sieve for sifting the sand that will be used in the fine plastering of the cistern walls.

12) Shovels, picks, 18-20 liter buckets for measuring the sand and cement and carrying water, two to three cement trowels.

13) Mason-quality string for marking out the cistern and helping check levels and twelve stakes (cut from whatever tree is most common in the area).

14) A string level and a carpenter's level are helpful.

I need to go get breakfast for Keila and finish getting ready to leave the US. We head to Nicaragua tomorrow morning. I will continue to work on this blog entry to explain the pictures below. As you will note from the materials and the pictures, this is not an exact science. Folks who work with these cisterns are constantly adapting them and sometimes improving the technique. The beauty of the technique is it is easily learned and applied, and they are a very cheap and durable way to collect rainwater and they use materials that are available in most localities.

Annika Estela Hare

2011-07-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

Keila came for a quick visit this afternoon, with our niece, Rachel, who has been watching Keila for us since around midnight, Friday July 8th.

Jenny's and my new daughter, Annika Estela Hare, was born this morning at 9:28, weighing 7 pounds and 10 ounces. Labor began Friday morninga round 3:30 and was more or less continuous until the final pushing that brought Annika into this side of the world.

We will be headed home to Amesville, Ohio in two days. We were blessed by an excellent team at the Marietta Memorial Birthing Center. A wonderful place, truly.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika

Jenny, Mark and Annika

Grandmas Hare, Mark and Annika

By the way! I have been pretty active on this blog recently, so check out the recent blogs below!

Altene Estelot's House

2011-07-04T11:25:00.001-07:00

A full view of one of Saintville's home gardens--Altene Estelot's yard. Tires to the left and to the right, including several with red worms. The cistern is on the other side of the house. Moringa is planted throughout the area in front of the house. Mata has passion fruit and several other fruit species planted in the yard, as well.

Saintville Home Garden and Rainwater Catchment Project

2011-07-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

October 20th, 2010. Agronomist Alexander Placide (center, by the table) leads APS in a reflection on the value of good yard stewardship.

On October 20th, 2010, the farmer's association APS (Asosyasyon Peyizan Senvil--Farmer's Association of Saintville) met to mark the start of a new project to improve production in their home gardens. The project, which they titled Home Gardens--Cistern Construction, was put together by members of the community, with technical assistance from crew members of MPP's Road to Life and Moringa project. APS's project was approved by the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) and funds came from three church communities--Second Presbyterian Church of Newark, Ohio, the 2010 Vacation Bible School of the Amesville-New England Cooperative Parish (Amesville, Ohio) and White Memorial Presbyterian Church (Raleigh, North Carolina).

The project was originally inspired by Agame Elfraïs. Agame is a member of MPP and works on the crew responsible for the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project. Agame began growing vegetables in his own yard in 2006. In 2007 and 2008, Agame began working with community members who saw what he was accomplishing, and wanted to try some of the techniques out themselves.

Most of the community members had already received training from MPP in vegetable production, and many were producing vegetables during the dry season in small plots of irrigated land located below an artificial lake. Working in their yards was a way to take what they'd learned already and apply it together with new techniques that could increase their total production. They asked for more training in March 2010, and that workshop led to them developing the current project, which they submitted in August 2010.

Walter Estelot, Chrisla Felix and Agame (left to right), three of the leaders in APS, Saintville's community group.

The project that the group designed included funds for more training, and for tools. The group purchased watering cans, one for each family. They purchased five sets of tools, one set for each of six families. Each set of six families is helping each other build their cisterns and install their gutters.

Agame and other group leaders take advantage of a work day to hand out the watering cans to a member from each of the families.

When I visited Saintville on June 11th, this year, fifteen of the cisterns had been completed and were full of water. The project is changing people's lives. People have more tires in their yards, and the tires are producing more. Several families have begun working with red worms, to produce their own high quality compost. The most impressive changes are in Chrisla Felix's yard.

Agame and Chrisla work on her cistern. One huge advantage of this type of cistern is it is very easy to learn. Home owners can learn the process from building their own rainwater catchment system, which means they can take responsibility for repairing the cistern as needed.

I remember three years ago, when I first visited Chrislat's yard with Agame, she had three or four tires with some scrawny hot pepper plants surrounded by thorns stuck in the soil to try and keep the chickens out. Now Chrisla's yard is an abundance of food growing all around. Tires in the front with vegetable beds in between, and a separate patch of eggplants behind the house, with Moringa trees scattered throughout her corn field.

Chrisla with her completed cistern and gutters, and a bench of five brand new vegetable tires that weren't there six months ago when Jenny and Keila and I left Haiti. (Photo by Agame Elfraïs)

During my visit, I purchased a handfull of peppers and parsley from Chrisla, a total of HTG 50.00 (about $1.25).Walter, who was visiting houses with Agame and me, noted that it would have taken selling 14 pounds of corn to earn the same amount of money. Walter said it was time for the farmers to focus on crops like vegetables for selling in the market, instead of depending on corn.

Agame and Altene Estelot, Agame's associate in providing technical expertise, are working hard together with the families to get the next fifteen cisterns built before the dry season starts in October or November. With some luck and a good deal of sweat, all thirty families will start out this dry season with between 2000 and 2300 gallons of water for their yard production systems.

Chrisla with her original vegetable tires, filled with sweet peppers, parsely, garlic chives and radishes.

Chrisla with tires, and egglplant growing in a vegetable bed she prepared underneath. Photo by Agame Elfraïs.

Agame (in front) and Walter (at right), checking out the cistern at Walter's son, Altene Estelot's house. Altene and Agame together are providing the technical expertise for building the cisterns, as well as providing advice on problems with the production.

Orimène Cadet, another member of the Association of Farmers of Saintville, dipping out water from her cistern to water her vegetable tires. Photo by Agame Elfraïs.

Jean Rony and me checking out his cistern behind his house. Jean Rony is also starting to work very productively with red worms. Photo by Agame Elfraïs.

If you would like to help communities like Saintville continue to improve their lives through good yard stewardship, here are some things you can do:

First, continue to read this blog and contact me if you want more information. I do eventually always read comments on the blog. If you want to leave me an e-mail address, but don't want the address published online, you can let me know that. I monitor all comments before publishing them.

Second, keep the work of MPP, and specifically the Road to Life Yard crew, in your prayers.

Finally, if you want to help financially, here is what you or your congregation can do:

1. Make out a check payable to: Presbyterian Church (USA).

2. On the subject line of the check, please write the account number: H000007 (H, five zero’s, 7).

3. Include a memo or short note that the donation is for the “MPP Road to Life/Cisterns, Tools and Training” in Haiti.

4. Address the envelope to PC(USA), Individual Remittance Processing, PO Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700.

5. Send a copy of the memo to: Eileen Schuhmann at 100 Witherspoon Street,
Louisville KY 40202.

6. Leave a note on this blog to let me know about the donation so that I can help provide follow up.

Thanks for checking us out!

Interpretation Assignment

2011-06-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been something of a whirlwind five months, but the first phase of our time in the States is done and we are now in the waiting time

Between February and the first of June, I presented stories of the work of the PC(USA) in partnership with MPP (Farmer's Movement of Papaye, for its title in Haitian Creole) in at least 49 different venues, including approximately 30 different churches. I have traveled in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan and all over southeast Ohio, with one trip to Cleveland, Ohio. I have had the opportunity to speak to young children, adolescents and adults, which includes one speaking engagement that was at a retirement home in Virginia.

My biggest hits were always when Jenny and Keila were with me, particularly when Jenny spoke about her work with MPP's rural health clinic. But people have receive me well wherever I've gone. So many families have welcomed me into their homes, some for several days at a time. It has been an amazing experience. Exhausting, but amazing.

The first part of June, I was also invited to spend ten days in Haiti with a team from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, helping coordinate their work of interviewing refugees from the earthquake, and the families who hosted them. They were very full, very intense, but very good days. It was good to be in Haiti, to see and be with friends and work partners, and to spend some nights at home in Bassin Zim. I had a chance to visit the ongoing Presbyterian Hunger Program project in Saintville, and I got to show the Road to Life Yard crew the Power Point presentation that I have been sharing with church communities. The crew members appeared to appreciate the slide show. I was impressed, but not terribly surprised, to find that I knew the presentation well enough that I could translate it into Haitian Creole, on the fly, as it were.

But now the time of running around the country, and the world, is over. Jenny, Keila and I have entered into a time of waiting, the beginnning phase of the next chapter, when we will become a family of four. Jenny feels huge, and it has to be said, yesterday someone asked her if she was expecting twins. She is definitely ready for this part to be over, so that we can welcome our new daughter into our world, get to know her and begin the crazy time of night feedings and diapers, diapers, diapers!

Looking beyond, as hard as that is to do, right now, Jenny and I and our daughters will be going to Nicaragua the first week of September. (Oh yes, did we mention that Jenny has received her green card? God is gracious in deed). Jenny and the girls will be staying with Jenny's family in Managua, and I will return to Haiti at the beginning of October. I will be back in Nicaragua for Christmas, and sometime in January, we will all be together again, with the expectation that we will both be officially serving as mission co-workers for the international ministry of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Starting in January, although my work will continue to be with farmers in Haiti, I will begin sharing my skills and expertise with a network of farmer-focused organizations, rather than serving just with MPP in Papaye.

A heartfelt "THANK YOU!!!" to all of you her shared your homes, helped arrange for the speaking engagements and provided so many encouraging words about the stories I/we shared. these past five months. For those whom I met for the first time, I hope that this experience was the beginning of a long term relationship. It is good to go back and visit people we already know. For those with whom I have already had an ongoing relationship, a special thank you for being the kind of people I can enjoy seeing again and again.

A special thanks to Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Zanesville PC and my own home town and home church, Amesville and the Amesville-New England Cooperative Parish. You are without a doubt, the people who are absolutely the closest to my heart.

In Christ,

Mark (and Jenny and Keila and the Almost Here One!)

Below are photos from a number of the places we've visited. I will provide captions the next chance I get.

Presentation at Amesville Presbyterian Church, Community Dinner (June)

Jenny and Keila with our friend, Buz Durham, outside of Asheville, NC. Jenny and Keila and I were hosted by Buz and his wife, Pat, as part of our visit with the people of Grace Memorial PC, and Warren Wilson College (my alma mater). Buz and Pat were two of the people we met on our travels who are directly involved in agriculture, with many useful ideas and perspectives to share.

My nephew Keegan, niece, Emily, sister-in-law Priscilla and brother, Keith after the presentation at First PC of Newark, Ohio. Keith has now made multiple trips to Haiti, visiting Jenny and me, as well as working with a rural clinic outside of the city of Croix de Bouquets (Healing Arts Mission).

Jenny, Keila and Jenny's brother, Norman, who works with a consortium of self-development programs in Detroit, Michigan. The office is located in the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation offices on Trumbull.

The best visits were combinations of sharing stories, learning new things, visiting family and catching up with friends.

Keila with our friend, Nancy McGilliard, in East Lansing, Michingan.

Face painting, at the Eastminster Presbyterian Church in East Lansing, MI. Our visit there coinicided with the church's annual picnic.

At the Eastminster Presbyterian Church in East Lansing, MI. My Haitian family, Remy Naval (far left) and his sons and children. I got hold of them Saturday, the day before I was to speak at the Eastminster service, and they all made it to hear me speak, except for Jenord, who was in Haiti at the time.

Remy and I became friends when I was doing my Masters in Forestry at Michigan State. Remy and his family were forced to flee to the States after the ouster of President Aristide in 1991. Catholic Refugees Services helped the family settle in Lansing, Michigan, in a home about three blocks from my house. Spending time with Remy and his kids helped keep me focused on the vision I was developing of working in Haiti.

There is evidence that suggests that the CIA was involved in the 1991 coup that removed President Aritistide from office (see for example, http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0218-08.htm, http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/5120)

ECHO--Sharing ideas and experiences

2011-03-25T06:44:00.001-07:00

ECHO (Educational concerns for hunger organization) is a non-profit, faith-based organization whose vision is "to bring glory to God and a blessing to mankind using science and technology to help the poor." One of their main goals is provide access to documents and other information for those who are working in agricultural development. Jenny and I were blessed to be present at ECHO's campus in North Fort Myers, Florida, from February 3rd through March 18th. We had great fun sharing stories and experiences with ECHO interns and ECHO staff members. I have been benefitting from the resources that ECHO offers since my first experience with them at their annual agricultural conference in 1996.

http://www.echonet.org/

Below are photos and explanations of some of the ways we were able to share information and ideas in very practical ways.

Cistern made from tires, as part of the Haitian house "yard" at ECHO. Noah Elkhart (see explanation below) agreed to try out a modification of a technique I learned from folks at COSECHA (see, for example, article, http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/using-every-drop-of-water/what-we-have-learned)

The tires are smaller than the ones I learned to use from the COSECHA technicians, but the principle we used are the same. The four tires have part of the two inner walls cut out, then they are sealed together with roofing tar and 3/4" nails. Noah made the base from cement blocks and motar, with a spigot built in. I still need to hear from Noah as to whether the cistern leaks or not.

Beth Doerr from ECHO, showing Keila (and Mark and Jenny), a pump system that is simple to make, easy to use and quite durable. This one is applicable when the water table is fairly close to the surface, wtihin 20 feet, I believe. One of Beth's multiple duties is to organize the work of the interns and assure that they are learning and sharing what they learn to the maximum. Beth also manages ECHO's appropriate technology pavillion, which is an extensive, hands-on resource for straightforward technology that farmers with limited resources can apply in many contexts.

A rural kitchen in Haiti. This is the image the ECHO intern, Noah Elkhardt and I used to develop a plan for a Haitian rural-style house in the area of ECHO called the Global Farm, which showcases agricultural systems from a number of different climatic zones in the tropics. http://www.echonet.org/content/globalFarm

Noah (green shirt inside the house) working on the Haitian house, an example of common construction techniques in rural Haiti. Noah is responsible for the roof-top gardening area of the Global Farm. Ruth Portnoff (middle, green shirt) is another ECHO intern, responsible for the Rain Forest area.

Rather than native Haitian woods, which are not available in the swamp forests surrounding ECHO, we used treated lumber. Species used for the corner posts used in Haiti for this kind of house would be 4-6" diameter logs of mesquite, or "bayawonn" (Prosopis juliflora), blackwood, or "kanpèch" (Haematoxylum campechianum) and possibly for the corner posts, simarouba, or "Bwa blan/Fwenn" (Simarouoba glauca). Wood for the main pieces of the roof would often be 4" eucalyptus logs (Eucalyptus spp., but most comonly E. camaludensis). "Bwa blan" (S. glauca) logs might also be used for the roof cross pieces.

The 2-3" slats used for nailing on the tin roofing would normally be cut from mango (Magnifera indica) boards. In ECHO, Noah used bamboo because bamboo is readily available on the Global Farm, and because ECHO staff has access to electric drills, that can drill through the bamboo without splitting it. In rural Haiti, this part of the roof, together with doors, windows and the framing for the doors and windows, would be the lumber components that would have to be purchased. A typical house might require approximately 2 1/2 dozen mango boards, about HTG 4,500 (haitian gourdes), or $US 112.00.

The base, rather than using cement blocks, would be made from rocks, mortared with cement, when possible, but they could also be mortared with clay and sand. This border would hold fill dirt, raising the floor of the house up out of the extreme wetness during the rainy season. When the family has some additional funds, they would cover the dirt with a thin layer of cement to seal off the dirt floor and make the house easier to clean.

The walls of the house are woven bamboo. In rural Haiti (Hinche, Central Plateau), the walls would be woven like this, but farmers would split small chunks of 1-2" logs, such as leucaena or "lesena" (Leucaena leucacephala). If the structure is something like a kitchen, the walls would not be plastered, but the main house would be, using a special soil of heavy clay, preferably a white clay, when possible.

Outside the house, to the right, are benches for vegetable tires, old tires turned inside out that folks in the Central Plateau of Haiti, and some other areas, are using to produce vegetables. Getting the tires up off of the ground keeps animals away from the valuable plants, makes it easier to weed them and check them for insects, and makes it possible for small amounts of water to be used effectively. Using the tires also allows family to gain total control over the productivity of the soils, adding relatively small amounts of manure to improve production, as they see the necessity. The vegetable tires are also an excellent way to make use of the family's urine, which is almost always collected during the night inside the house. Diluted betweenn 5 and 10:1, the urine can help double vegetable production, depending on the type of vegeble being grown--leafy vegetables respond more than "fruits," for example, spinach or amaranth watered with urine will generally show a more dramatic response than green peppers or tomatoes.

Noah was planning on using at least two of the tires for redworm production, which is another excellent way for households to make use of kitchen and animal waste to produce low-labor compost that is highly effective in increasing vegetable production.

Keila at the beach with Claire, the daughter of the Global Farm's Mountain Intern, Matt, and his wife, Anna. The ECHO interns made our stay at ECHO a lot of fun, as well as providing a lot of information and ideas that I am starting to share with the Road to Life Yard and Moringa production crew members in Haiti, via internet.

In the States

2011-03-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Eating a meal together with the interns at ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization). Jenny and Keila and I served at ECHO in North Fort Myers, as missionaries in residence.

Jenny and Keila with Jenny's parents, in Managua, Nicaragua over Christmas.

Hey Friend,

It has been a whirlwind period since Jenny and Keila and I were in Nicaragua over Christmas, spending time with the Nicaraguan part of the family. That time was pretty relaxed, and even included a few days in one of my favorite places in Nicaragua, Pearl Lagoon, on the southern Atlantic Coast.

But once we got back to Haiti, January 18th, we had just two weeks to finish dotting i 's and crossing t's before heading to the States for at least seven months. Somehow we got the most important things done, and ourselves and Keila packed, and we headed north on February 3rd.

It was a long trip, but made a bit easier by the fact that this flight we had a seat of her own for Keila.(That also allowed us to carry more luggage, which was fortunate. Keila's ticket may end up paying for itself.) Our destination was not my parents' home in Ohio, but rather Fort Myers, and specifically, an organization called ECHO (Educational concerns for Hunger Organization: http://echonet.org/). A longtime friend from ECHO, Danny Blank, picked us up at the airport and delivered us to our temporary home, where we were welcomed as missionaries in residence for a month and a half.

Arriving late, with no food in the house, the young men and women working as interns at ECHO welcomed us into their homes for dinner. It was to be one of many meals we shared with the interns, and was particularly special because we found other guests from Guatemala, who spoke Spanish, as well as one of the interns with experience in Haiti, who could speak Haitian Creole with us. We were far from family, but at least linguistically, we felt immediately at home.

We got to cross the sunshine skyway bridge over Tampa bay on our way to speak at Hope Presbyterian Church in Clearwater, Florida

The next six weeks were full, and for me, included ten days of speaking to a multitude of folk in Presbytery of the James (including Richmond, Virginia) and Presbytery of the Peaks (mostly in Blacksburg, Virginia). We also had the chance to visit as a family with folks at Hope Presbyterian Church, in Clearwater, Florida, near Tampa, that has supported us for two years now. It was an all round good trip and a very beautiful drive along the coast to and from Clearwater.

One day, Jenny and Keila and I had the chance to go to a beach south of Fort Myers, with friends from ECHO. Keila was thrilled. Jenny and I were quite happy as well, although the water was not yet terribly warm.

The time at ECHO seemed to end extremely abruptly, although not without signs of our having been there, which we'll mention in the next blog. Now Jenny and Keila and I are home in Ohio, with our family family, versus the folks at ECHO who in a short time became very good friends and something much like family.

There is still much to do, not the least of which is getting ready for the new addition to our family. Jenny is due the beginning of July. And no, we do not yet know the gender, although as my Dad says, there is very nearly a 100% chance of it being a boy or a girl. We have also applied for residency for Jenny, which was tedious and complex, right from the start, and will involve a number of additional steps. And of course, there are many churches to visit and friends to catch up with.

Thank you, all of you, for all of your prayers and your support. In December, Mom compiled a list of all the churches and individuals who are part of our mission. I wish it were possible to make a personal connection with each one of you. Please know, at least, that we are overwhelmed by your generosity and grateful for your presence in our lives.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny and Keila

One year later: re-edited

2011-01-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

Septembere 2010. A team of MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papaye) members put together sacks of basic food items for families in the Central Plateau area who were still caring for relatives who fled Port au Prince after the earthquake in January. The food was purchased with funds MPP received as part of a comprehensive response and recovery program financed by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA).
It's easy for Jenny and me to remember where we were one year ago today at 4:45 PM. We were in MPP's cyber center, working on e-mail, together with Mulaire Michel, my Haitian supervisor, and one or two other members of MPP (Farmer's Movement of Papay--Mouvman Peyizan Papay). Jenny was the first one to identify the shaking we felt. "It's an earthquake" she said. Jenny lived in Managua, Nicaragua for over half her life, where minor to moderate quakes are common. Managua itslef was hit in December 1972 by a 6.2 quake that destroyed much of the city and killed over 5,000 people.

Before the earth stopped shaking, Jenny and I told Mulaire, "God help us if the center of that was near Port au Prince." More than once we'd looked at the houses built on houses in Port and wondered how they would ever stand up to the earth moving that happens in Managua. "Thank God," I had said to myself, "there are no earthquakes here in Haiti."

Working in Nicargaua for six years, I was impressed by the quality of construction that is required by law there. All buildings have at least the minimal requirements for surviving a quake. In Haiti, construction workers do amazing things with very limited resources. The house Jenny and Keila and I live in in Bassin Zim is a wonderful example of this. But earthquake resistance requires good building materials and solid engineering, not just ingenuity. In Haiti, professional expertise is hard to come by and quality materials are extremely expensive. People flocking to Port au Prince looking for a better life, for health services, for jobs and for decent education, live where they have to and build however they can. And the Haitian government has never cared enough to enforce any type of building codes, whatsoever.

December 23rd, 1972, 5,000 were killed in Managua, Nicaragua, 20,000 were injured and over 250,000 were left homeless from the 6.2 quake. January 12th, 2010, after less than 50 seconds of a 7.0 quake, over 200,000 Haitians had died or would perish under the rubble, at least 300,000 people were injured and over one million left homeless. During the next three or four months, approximately 800,000 refugees would migrate away from Port au Prince, looking for homes and some kind of security. Many came to the Central Plateau area, where MPP has been working and growing for more than 35 years.

In Papaye-Bassin Zim, we started hearing the stories Wednesday morning, January 13th. Lele, the brother of Moceline, the woman who has been working with Jenny in MPP's health clinic, was on his way out of Port when the quake struck. He was in a pickup truck that serves as public transportation, and everyone in the truck, including the driver, thought something was wrong with the truck. So the driver stopped, and everyone quickly got off. Some ran into a nearby building. Lele was blocked by other folks running past him, and didn't get into the building. Seconds later, he told me, pieces of the building collapsed and some of the passengers were killed.

Fenes Louis was in Port when the quake hit. Fenese is the MPP driver who always brings Jenny and Keila and me to Port for errands, or to catch a plane out. Fenese often took naps in an alcove under MPP's former office on Delmas 39. He usually parks whatever MPP truck he's driving in that space, but this time a truck from another organization was parked there. Fenes thought about just climbing in the other truck for his late afternoon siesta. But in the end, he didn't. He left to do some other errands. Half an hour later or so, the MPP office building collapsed and crushed the other vehicle. No one working in that office died, and only one or two suffered minor injuries.

Most of the stories we've heard have been from the friends who survived, and all the stories seem miraculous. But some stories have imbedded in them the anquish of the tragedy. Veline Saintilmond, the assistant coordinator for the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project, told me about her niece, Shelley, who was at school in Port when the quake hit. Shelly is in 8th or 9th grade, and she and her classmates always received their classes on the third floor of the three-story private school building. When the shaking finished, Shelley told her aunt that she came to lying on the floor, with an aching head. The building had collapsed completely, but somehow, she says she doesn't remember how, she mader her way out of the ruins of the building, into the street. There were no stairs left, but she didn't need them. The "third" floor was now at street level. Only those on the third floor surived at that school.

People ask us if we were affected by the quake. In the sense they mean, no. We felt the shaking, but even our house, built of crumbly blocks, weak cement and little rebarb, suffered no damage. When Jenny and Keila and I drove home that Tuesday evening, I fully expected the house to be in shambles. It wasn't, though, and no one else in Hinche, Papay or Bassin Zim lost their homes, either. But for the last year, we have had to live in a country where over 3% of the population perished in less than one minute. Just for comparisons sake, if something like that happened in the States, it would mean somewhere around 8,400,000 men women and children. That is inconceivable to me and to you, and so is Haiti. When I'm asked to talk with people about the situation in Haiti, it is still very hard for me to get the words out, "Over 200,000 people died."

In Nicaragua, with a fraction of the mortality and homeless, the earthquake of 1972 is still seen as one that country's defining moments. I have worked in Haiti for a total of over eight years, and been involved with Haitians in one form or another for some seventeen years, since grad school at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. But I have no idea how exactly the tragedies of this past year will work themselves out. Besides the earthquake itself, Haitians suffered from hurricane Ike in November, and a cholera epidemic that began at the end of October. At last count, over 3,800 people had died from that scourge. Elections in December offered some hope of change, but only brought new despair when current government officials cynically twisted the results in their own favor. And now, one year later, in Port, Léogâne, Petit Gôave, Jacmel and other communities clustered around the quake's epicenter, there are over 1 million people still homeless, or with totally inadequate housing, i.e. a house with a tin roof, but with walls made from the original tarps provided by the international agencies.

As this day ends, and the people of Port au Prince, and all of Haiti, look to the new year, things do look pretty grim. But we can count on at least three sources for hope. One, is the strength of the Haitians themselves. They are the descendants of the a people who threw off the yoke of slavery and declared for themselves the right to live free, in a country of their own making. The people we know are deeply affected by what is happening in their country, but they continue to live their lives with love and laughter. We have often seen our friends and neighbors at their best when they are dealing with the worst.

The second source of hope I see are organizations like MPP, working at the grassroots, helping farmers and their families, providing them with tools to build better lives, including the ability to demand that political leaders act with integrity. Members of MPP voted heavily in December, and it is their witness, together with resistance from many other sectors of the society and the country, that has so far prevented the government from completely and unabashedly stealing the elections.

Finally, and most importantly, I find hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, who died to create a holy space for our salvation, our total salvation, mind, body and soul. Christ's miraculous resurrection calls us to live our lives free from despair. Christ conquered death and we are promised that death no longer has any power over us. Haiti's resurrection will be no less miraculous, and is no less certain. Our friends, our neighbors and our work partners are already witnesses to that reality.

Here are a couple of websites I found that had clear information about the exact location and the extent of the quake.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php#maps

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake

Jenny, Keila and Mark

2010-12-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

Jenny, Keila and I reached Managua, Nicaragua last night around 7:30 PM. We had an uneventful trip from Managua, except for the family sprint we had to make in Panama city to get from the arrival gate to the departure for Managua. By the time we stepped off the plane, they were announcing the last call for passengers for the Managua-Guatemala City flight, and we still had to wait for Keila's baby carriage which was still stashed under the plane. Jenny walked a fast walk with Keila while I waited for the carriage, then I took off running after them.

If by chance, the two people I knocked down as I ran by loaded down with two laptops. a medium-sized carry-on and Keila's carriage are reading this, I'm very sorry.

In Managua, when immigration deterimined that we were flying from Haiti, they had members of the well-organized Nicaraguan Ministry of Health pull us aside in order to give us prophylactic medication to make sure that we are not carrying the cholera bacteria. The medical personnel that treated us noted that one mother said her son would never take the pills. "But he did," our doctor said, "I had to take the pills, too, but, hey, it worked, you know?"

Jenny and Keila and I are well. Our friends and work partners in Haiti are also generally doing well, which is amazing. We've made a number of hospital runs with the crew truck, but crew members and close friends are doing all right.

But cholera has hit people hard in the whole area around Hinche-Papay-Bassin Zim, where we live and work. Please do keep Haiti in your prayers and especially, pray that there will be fundamental changes in the government. It has been a government of the wealthy for a very long time. It continues to be so. Preval, the current president, went to great lengths to make sure his people won the elections this past November 28th. The hope of Preval and his fellow party leaders was that there would be few contenders. But there were many valid contenders, and they were all far more popular than Preval's candidates (the "Inite" party). So, when the partial results indicated that almost all of the Inite candidates were frontrunners, the fraud was evident and the response was immediate, with protests and riots just a couple of weeks ago. This past Monday, the government was supposed to announce the final results, but they chickened out. Now? Who knows.

In terms of the cholera epidemic in Haiti, my sense is that many people consider the cholera epidemic to be a result of the thousands of refugees without adequate sanitary conditions in Port au Prince, Leogane, and other cities near the epicenter of the quake. That is not the case. It may not have made the mainline news, but the epidemic started in the Artibonite valley, which is a region north of Port au Prince where there was not heavy damage to the houses and there have not been large camps of refugees in tents at all. As my friend, Robert Morikawa notes, the cholera epidemic didn't start until 10 months after the earthquake, and it started far away from all of the most heavily affected areas.

In fact, there are many good reasons to suspect that the source of the cholera epidemic in Haiti were United Naitions troops from Nepal,stationed in Mirebalais at the head of the Artibonite valley. Sanitary conditions at the UN military base in Mirebalais became abominable, based on several news reports, and as a result, raw sewage began seeping into the Artibonite river watershed. The worst seepage began in late September or early October, just weeks before the first cases of cholera were identified in St. Mark, where the Artibonite drains into the Caribbean sea.

Two additional notes about the cholera. First, in March 2010, concerns for a cholera epidemic in Port au Prince were minimized by world health organizations, noting that cholera had never been present in Haiti and was considered unlikely to show up, because the vast majority of the aid workers coming to help with earthquake relief were from countries with good sanitation. Second, CDC (Center for Disease Control), out of Atlanta, Georgia, has positively identified the type of cholera present in Haiti as the southern asian cholera, endemic to such countries as India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

There were protests against the UN forces in early November, which the UN passed off as politically-related. There may have been political implications, but the fundamental source of the anger was the fact that the UN is a foreign military presence which has now caused the death of over 2,500 Haitians. Biological warfare, or simple incompetence, it has made Haitians victims yet again.

Flooding, earthquakes, cynical and self-interested political leaders, and cholera spread by the United Nations foreign, troops. Violence in all its forms is unproductive, but what can people in Haiti do to get the world to really listen"?

If it takes burning tires, I do wish the tires they burned would be the ones we can't turn inside-out anyway.

Many blessings.

Some links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12021400

http://fiusm.com/2010/12/03/united-nations-refuses-to-accept-responsibility/

Haitian Elections 2010

2010-11-28T14:39:00.000-08:00

The Toyota Landcruiser that normally serves MPP's project, The Road to Life Yard, provided tansportation for voters during elections yesterday. Voters were enthusiastic, walking hours to get to polling stations and then waiting hours more, at times, to get the chance to vote.

Polling station, Los Palis (Third Section, Hinche, Central Plateau)

Elections in the municipality of Hinche went fairly smoothly and without violence. I hung out with Fenese, the MPP driver who used the project truck to help transport voters to and from polling stations, and to help deliver food to MPP election observers who were stationed inside the polling stations to help make sure that the voting was done fairly.

MPP carried out an incredibly intense and well-organized process of motivating rural farmers and their families. MPP also helped train and motivate election observers. The results were very apparent yesterday. The ill and the elderly, women with nursing babies, made their way down the mountains to cast their ballots.

It is possibly the most exciting thing I have had the privilege to be part of in my nearly seven years of serving with MPP.

While many of the political parties literally paid voters to vote for their candidates, MPP leaders and organizers held rallies and talked, sometimes community group by community group, explaining their ideas, as well as listening to the hopes and dreams of the rural participants. It was not democracy as we know it in the States. Exposure to television is mostly limited to the World Cup and newspapers in the rural areas don't exist at all. An illiteracy of 49% is also, of course, a huge factor. How do you get a message across when people don't read and don't have television? Even radios are limited by the batteries that people can afford to buy.

In the end, many people decided that as members of the Farmers Movement of Papay, they are first and foremost members of an orgainzation that is truly working to make a difference in their lives, and they voted in faith that the candidates that MPP endorsed would work with the same vision.

It was an experience. There were many reports of relatively minor fraud in the polling stations in Hinche where Jenny and I had Haitian friends who were working as election observers. In part due to their vigilance, in most of those stations, the voting remained under control. Unfortunately, word is that their was widespread fraud throughout most of the rest of the country.

One report that I just found on Internet (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/11/haiti-election.html) suggests that the turmoil was related to the problems of the country, the chaos related to the cholera epidemic and the after-effects of the earthquake. But that is not the analysis of the leaders of MPP. Together with all of the leaders of the main opposition parties, they point the finger at the party of the current government--Inite (Unity). Fanfan (Philefrant St. Nare, MPP's candidate for the Haitian Senate) told me that the government thought they would be the only participants in the elections. When they saw that they could not slide back into power without a struggle, and then found out that they could not buy the people's vote, they decided to win the elections through fraud, or cause enough chaos that they would have to be annuled.

What will happend next? Only God knows.

As you pray for Haiti, please pray for the poor farming families who voted with their feet and with their hearts. Pray that their efforts may not be in vain and they will find new hope, beyond, perhaps, all expectations.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny and Keila

Cholera Update

2010-11-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

Hey Friend,

Just a note to let you all know that Jenny and Keila and I continue to be blessed with normal health. We continue to take normal precautions to prevent intestinal problems, including, and especially, to prevent a close-encounter with cholera. Please continue to hold us in your prayers, and all Haitians, as they struggle to deal with yet another tragedy.

Cholera, floods, the earthquake, all of these tragedies are caused or affected by poverty and poor governance.

The current cholera epidemic has been magnified by the lack of clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing, as well as inadequate sanitation. The response to stem the epidemic is hampered by poor infrastructure and inadequate medical facilities. The reported death toll may, in reality, be as much as twice as high, according to a conversation Jenny and I had with Chavannes Jean Baptiste, the executive director of MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papaye). Because roads are bad, public transportation in many places non-existent and public health centers few, many of the victims never receive any medical assistance and their deaths remain unregistered.

Many efforts are being made to spread information that can help stop the spread of the disease. Messages and information are being broadcast via cell phones and via radio stations about how to prevent and how to treat the disease. But lack of basic education is a problem. With over 45% of the population over the age of fifteen unable to read or write (google: haiti literacy), there are many basic concepts that don't translate easily. What does hand washing mean to someone who knows almost nothing about microbes, viruses and bacteria? Without solid understanding of disease mechanisms, it is also easy for many diseases to be understood as the effects of witchcraft. And witchcraft of course, can only be treated by witchcraft.

A Haitian friend I was talking to yesterday asked why the government wasn't organizing health brigades to go out into the countryside to share information and resources. Wilfrid asked why groups of young people couldn't be going house to house to really give people a sense of the urgency and effectiveness of the methods for keeping themselves healthy--providing, house by house, packages of powdered chlorine for treating the water, and packages of mineral salts for making rehyrdation fluid. National and international agencies are working with the government to treat the sick, but really, only a national effort, coordinated and energized by the national government can have the kind of extensive and profound impact needed to change the underlying causes feeding the epidemic. Haiti does not yet have the kind of people in government that are willing to make that happen.

National elections are a week from Sunday (November 28th). This may not be a good time for elections, but it may be, too, that they will offer the country hope for real change. Keep us in your prayers, keep the people of Haiti in your prayers.

Thank you.

Mark, Jenny and Keila

News about Interpretation Assignment 2011

2010-11-19T08:54:00.001-08:00

Jenny, Keila and Mark, in Managua, July 2010. Photo by Hypatia Bent

Hey Again,

Another note to let you all know that Jenny, Keila and I will be in the States from February through, approximately, June, 2011. For those reader who are members of churches who provide support for our work with MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papaye) we would be happy to work on scheduling a visit to your church or your presbytery.

Please contact us through our PC(USA) Mission Connections website:

http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/missionconnections/hare-mark

We will also be trying to put together an updated address list of supporters. Once that is put together we will mail you all information about possible dates you could host us, or me. We will be working on getting residency in the States for Jenny, so she will not be readily available for travel.

We will be serving as missionaries-in-residence at ECHO during February and March, so during that period, we would prefer to focus on churches in the vicinity of ECHO's center in North Fort Myers, Florida (southwest Florida, just north of Naples). We currently have an engagement from February 19th-February 25th.

We look forward to hearing from you!

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny and Keila

Some time by the ocean

2010-11-09T16:11:00.001-08:00

The view from the deck outside the CODEP guesthouse, second floor. The view is to the northwest and you can just catch the outline of the island of La Gonave across the bay. Click on the photo to see the details more clearly.

Clements Jean and Keila checking out a mango tree (Janmari variety) at the CODEP guest house and fish production center in L'Acul, Haiti, about 18 miles south of Leogane. Jenny, Keila, Clements and I are here for a few days while the Toyota Landcruiser gets some repairs in Port au Prince. Clements is Keila's "nanny" when Jenny and I are working at our respective jobs with MPP in Papaye and she graciously agreed to help us out on this trip.

John Winings and his wife, Debbie, are hosting us at the CODEP guest house. CODEP is an integrated development project associated with the Haitian diocese of the Episcopal Church. It receives support from Presbyterian and Episcopal churches in the United States, which coordinate their efforts through the non-profit organization, Haiti Fund, Inc. John is HFI's executive director.

This is Keila's second trip to the ocean.

Map coordinates for L'Acul are 18º 26' 32.43" N, 72º 41' 21.57" W.

Colladère Cooperative and Farm

2010-11-09T11:10:00.000-08:00

Colladère cooperative and farm, established on land provided to MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papay) to manage and care for. This is one of the areas of the farm where the Road to Life Yard crew is establishing some of the same techniques that they've worked with at MPP's training center in Papaye. In a small, fenced in area, approximately 45' X 60' (about 15 X 20 meters), the crew, led by Wilner Exil, has a compost pit (1 X 1 X 1 meter), five vegetable beds (1 X 4 meters), approximately six banks of over 30 vegetable tires and one bank of six tires with african redworms (Edrilus eugeniae). The structure painted black to the right is a drying shed that the crew uses for drying moringa leaves to make powder.

Above is one of the areas at the Colladère farm where the Road to Life Yard crew is producing moringa leaves and processing them into moringa leaf powder.The Road to Life Yard crew recently cut back the trees to increase leaf production and to provide light for the pigeon peas growing amid the trees. We used the cuttings to feed our goats at the center in Papaye.

During the five years since we began experimenting with moringa production at the farm, the crew has tried a number of different techniques for improving soil fertility and increasing leaf production, including the use of Canvalia (Canavalia ensiformis) planted under the trees. Canavalia improved soil fertility when we cut it back and hoed it under, but while growing, it significantly and negatively affected the trees' development.

All of the land where we are working with moringa at the farm had soils degraded by over farming and erosion.

The map coordinates for the Colladère farm are: 19º 13' 00.48" N, 72º 01' 38.7" W. On Google

Earth you can zoom back to images taken in 2003 and see some of the changes as the crew has planted hundres of moringa trees. Click on the photos to see more detail.

Cholera in Haiti

2010-10-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Just wanted to drop a quick note to you all to let you know that Jenny and Keila are fine. There have been two confirmed cases of cholera in the Hinche area as of Monday or Tuesday. Jenny and I are taking more precautions than normal to assure our hands are clean, especially when we are feeding Keila, etc.

The last figues, as of Sunday, were 3,015 cases, most in the area around St. Marc (about two hours north of Port au Prince) with some in Mirebalais (about one hour south of us). There were also five cases confirmed in Port au Prince. My understanding is that those were people who had come from the area around St. Marc (the Artibonite valley). In the brief time I had to check internet just this PM, that was still the only information I found. You all may know more than me.

Thank you for your prayers and please continue to keep our health in your prayers, as well as the Haitian government, in its response to this particular crisis.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny and Keila

Saintville's new garden project

2010-10-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, October 20th, the farmer's association APS (Asosyasyon Peyizan Senvil--Farmer's Association of Saintville) met together to mark the start of a project sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP). The project, which they titled Home Gardens--Cistern Construction, which will help the families construct rainwater catchment systems.

APS, an association that is part of MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papaye) consists of about thirty families working together to improve their community. One of their successes has been constructing a hand-built road into the community, which was recently improved and extended through the assistance of funds from Mercy Corps. Nevertheless, one of their biggest challenges is to "...end hunger in our community."

Working together since November 2008, in 2009, the group began focusing on integrated, diversified systems of yard production. With the technical advice from MPP's Road to Life Yard crew, the families began experimenting with producing vegetables in their own yards, using a variety of techniques, including old tires which are turned inside out and filled with a rich mix of soil, sand and organic material. Impressed by their success, the group requested a workshop in spring this year to help them improve their skills. Soon after, the group's executive committee requested assistance from Mark Hare and Alexander Placide, the two agronomists coordinating the work of MPP's Road to Life Yard-Moringa project. Together, Mark and Alexander and the group's leader put together a project which will help each family construct their own cistern and install simple gutters made from 4" drainage PVC. The funds from PHP will also help the group purchase six kits of tools that the six groups of five families each will share. The project will also allow the group organize a serivies of workshops to assure that each family has at least two members who have received intensive training in integrated, diversified yard production.

The executive committee put together a set of criteria that each group of families must meet in order to participate in the project. Among these, each family must have at least ten tires producing vegetables and each family must have at least one plot dedicated to intensive moringa production. Moringa (Moringa oleifera) is one of the key components of the work of the Road to Life Yard. It is a fast-growing tropical tree that produces highly nutritous, very edible leaves. Most Haitians know of moringa, but few realize how important it is and how highly productive it can be.

In addition to hearing the criteria they need to meet to participate in the project, the group yesterday talked about the importance of working together, about the work they have accomplished so far, together, and some of the dreams they have for the future of their community--they want all their children to have a good education, they want access to good health care and they want a healthy environment, including clean water and good food. They joked that what they want is for their community to be a new example of the land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey. As the committee stated in the project proposal, "...we were here before this project and we will be here after it is finished. We will be here until we have accomplished all of our objectives."

Funds for Saintville's rainwater catchments project were generously provided by a number of PC(USA) congregations as well as several individuals.

MPP Youth Camp

2010-10-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

A youth camp at MPP's national training center, August 15-21, 2010, brought close to 600 youth together to learn about personal health, and about food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is the right and ability to produce your own food. In addition to lectures, all of the your participated each day in practical work, learning to turn tires to grow vegetables. making compost and preparing vegetable beds for maximum production.

The march against Monsanto seeds

2010-06-19T04:37:00.000-07:00

June 4th, Jenny, Keila and I participated in the march and demonstration against Monsanto's donation of hybrid corn seed to Haitian farmers. Monsanto's hybrid seeds do not breed "true" and therefore cannot be saved year after year as farmers normally do. Although the seeds would be "free" this year, farmers would have to purchase the seeds each year after that. This has already occurred in many developing countries and has been one factor in causing farmers to lose their lands, when, for example they lose a crop and can't afford to pay back the purchase of the seed. Becoming dependent on Monsanto seeds also carries the huge risk of farmers losing the native varieties that Haitian farmers have been saving year after year for, in some cases, generations. Photo by Eileen Schumann, all rights reserved

The march against Monsanto was sponsored by farmer organizations throughout Haiti, as well as international farmer organizations, such as Via Campesina. Besides MPP, another of the local organizations that participated was FONDAMA, the Haitian counterpart of PC(USA)'s Joining Hands Haitian network (google "pcusa haiti joining hands"). MPP's official count is more than ten thousand participants in the march and the demonstration held in Hinche's central park. Photo by Mark Hare, all rights reserved

For more information about the march, google "monsanto hinche march"

Marimode's Tire Garden

2010-06-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

Marimode St. Fleur and her daughter, Belinda, in their tire garden.

Crops include hot peppers, sweet peppers, tomatoes, amaranth and eggplant

Marimode and Belinda with a handful of their vermicompost.

Marimode wasn't willing to work with the worms at first, more or less

because of the "squiglliness" factor. We made fun of her and eventually she

gave it a try. Mariomode uses the worms specifically to produce the

high quality compost that makes her vegetables really take off.

Belinda's (left) first communion celebration, Sunday, June 6th. Jenny and Keila and

I were able to help Marimode with the celebration--and we participated!

Hey friend,

Just putting out a few images of the work that Marimode St. Fleur is doing in her yard where she rents a few rooms in a small house, together with her three youngest children. Marimode had been a member of the Road to Life Yard crew for about two and a half years now, but she was working with vegetable tires before that. Now she also works with red worms and she has a goat that she ties up and feeds much the same way we do with the goats in the project. Mariomode collects the goat manure in a shallow hole and waters it with organic uric acid they collect each morning from their chamber pots. I don't remember now if she then feeds that mix to the worms, or uses it more directly in the soil mix for the tires themselves.

Marimode and her kids have been building their own house and Marimode was concerned that she would have to leave the soil from her tires behind, but I'm sure we can find a way to sack up the soil and take it along with the tires to her new yard.

Simple Rainwater Catchment Systems

2010-06-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

A rainwater catchment system being built at the home of a member of MPP (Decil Exil, far left). The Road to Life Yard crew has been involved in building around 40 of these systems throughout the Papaye-Bassin Zim area over the last five years. Recipients provide most of the labor. This includes digging a hole approximately 9 feet X 9 feet X 3 1/2 feet deep . Recipients also provide all of the sand, gravel and rock and water for mixing cement.

When we first started building these systems six years ago, they cost around $US 150.00 for all purchased materials. We recently made new calculations based on current prices and it looks like purchased materials now cost around $US 277.00 for one system, which includes around twenty-five feet of gutters and a cistern which holds around 9 cubic yards of rainwater. Folks are using the stored water in numerous ways, but in particular, for producing vegetables on a continuous basis. Owners add tilapia fish to control mosquitoes.

We have at least two new MPP community groups interested in working with this technique (which comes from an organization in southern Honduras called COSECHA). The Road to Life Yard crew is beginning to help them put together project proposals which they will submit to the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

If you or your congregation is interested in knowing more, please let us know.

Missionary Retreat

2010-05-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

Missionary Retreat--Brazil. The group seemed to mostly enjoy Keila's

shenanigans in the middle of the presentations.

Participants praying for the life and mission of Sherron George (center, red and blue blouse),

mission co-worker of PC(USA) for more than thirty years, and

regional liason for southern South America for the last five

years or so.

April 30th, Jenny, Keila and I headed out of Papay to spend a week in Brazil with fellow PC(USA) mission workers serving in South America and the Caribbean. It was a long trip. We left Papay on Friday, April 30th. After one night in Port au Prince, we took a flight to Miami on Saturday and arrived in the Sao Paulo airport around 6 AM, Sunday. It was the longest trip we've attempted with Keila, who, by the way, has now visited five countries in the ten months since she's joined us here on Earth. Keila was a bit tired and grumpy by the time we reached the hotel around 2:00 PM, but maybe less than Jenny and myself. And she definitely doesn't enjoy being grumpy, because eventually she found something to laugh or giggle at, which, of course, whatever it was, made Jenny and me laugh, too.

For me, it was a great pleasure to see folks again, some of whom I had met for the first time almost four years ago. For Jenny and Keila, it was a bit like meeting cousins and aunts, folks you hear stories about, but only really meet in person only once in a great long while. PC(USA) mission workers are, on the whole, truly amazing people. For example, here is the blog site of Kristin Hamner, a mission worker based in the Dominican Republic (DR) who worked with twelve brigades in less than five months since the earthquake in Haiti, many of them serving refugees from the earthquake who moved to areas near the Haitian border with the DR.

Kristin's blog is: http://kristinspeace.blogspot.com/

Blessing and being blessed was an important part of the retreat, but even more than that, it was being part of a community of believers, blessing and being blessed, praising God for God's grace, sharing and receiving that grace in concrete moments of fellowship.

Blessings to you all. I finally had a chance to connect and publish this blog, after nearly ten days. ARGH.

Lots of Visitors!

2010-04-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hey Friend!

Check of PC(USA) moderator, Bruce Reyes-Chow blog.
http://www.reyes-chow.com/ Bruce was one of a delegation of some seven folks from PC(USA) visiting Haiti this week, bringing a word of solidarity to PC(USA) partners here in Haiti as well as working to develop the dialogue with them about how best folks from the USA can participate in Haiti's resurrection the most effectively.

The delegation also included Doug Welch, assistan director of missions, Ruth Farrell, Coordinator for the PC(USA) Hunger Program , Maria Arroyo, Coordinator for Caribbean and South America, and Pix Mahler, liaison for PC(USA) partneres in Haiti.

We also had two folks from the Dominican Republic with us, including Kristin Hamner, the Mission Co-worker in Haiti helping to coordinate mission trips to both the DR and to Haiti (!).
Carlos Cardenas and Jessica Maudlin, here with us in MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papay) as part of the assistance PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) is providing in Haiti through MPP.

The group spent a day and a half with us, Wednesday evening and all day Thursday, meeting with my local boss, Chavannes Jean Baptiste, and seeing the work of MPP on the ground. It was a good visit.

Today, I am in Port au Prince waiting for my two brothers, Bruce and Keith Hare, to come in. Bruce and Keith are here to work on installing a solar-powered electrical system for a clinic in Dumay, near Croix-de-Bouquets which is part of Healing Arts Mission, based out of Granville, Ohio. Keith will be going straight to the project, but Bruce will be headed home with me to spend a day with Jenny, Keila and me in our home in Bassin Zim.

This makes our third "group" of visitors this month! We had a friend visit at the beginning of April, named Cosimo Storniolo, a doctor from Corvallis, Washington.
Cosimo was here for a lightening quick trip as well, coming for the weekend from work he was doing in Leogane as part of a medical missions trip to help serve communities affected by the quake.

Bruce and Keith come in in about an hour. In the meantime, I am trying to catch up on old e-mails. I will soon stop, though, and may have to simply ask you all to give me a chance to declare an electronic "Jubilee." Meaning, forgiving me my debts as of today, in terms of responding to your notes, and writing me again if you truly need me to respond.

Many blessings on you all, and please know that your prayers are very much appreciated. Our daughter, Keila, is doing very well, which is at least in part, due to your thoughts and prayers of support!

In Christ,

Mark

Grace and beauty

2010-03-31T14:40:00.000-07:00

Grace and beauty--

Not because of poverty.

Not exactly in spite of poverty.

Maybe, out of poverty, out of simplicity,

Using only what is absolutely essential

To form beauty that is powerful and elegant.

It is, perhaps, something like the elegance and beauty of old age.

Years and experience wearing away all that is non-essential,

Until what is left shows,

no,

Shines through, blazes out,

Making utterly transparent any superficiality that might attempt to shroud it.

A solid reality you can count on,

And take pleasure in,

With nothing left--nothing extra--

To regret.

MPP's Road to Life Yard and Moringa Project

2010-03-21T16:53:00.001-07:00

Alexander Placide (center) is a welcome new addition to the Road to Life

Yard crew. Alexander is a recently graduated agromist who spent three month with

the crew last year as an intern. One of Alexander's main responsibilities is helping

provide follow up and monitoring for farmers who are trying out new techniques. A generous

donation from a PC(USA) church in Oregon made it possible for us to hire Alexander this year.

Fedlin Joseph (far left), one of the crew members, is providing technical assistance to

Solone Jn Etienne (far right), helping him with new ideas for producing vegetables and fruits.

Hey Friend,

I hope you don't mind if I take a break from the earthquake and focus on some of the details of the work of MPP's Road to Life Yard and Moringa project. Since Jenny, Keila and I returned to our work and lives here this past November, I have been trying to find ways that our work in the Road to Life Yard crew could become even more effective and more far-reaching. Some of the ideas I'm trying out are inspired by a book I found at a bookstore in Managua while Jenny and I were there waiting for the birth of our daughter, Keila. I'll share the exact title and the author in a future post, but the approximate title is "Flight of the Buffalo--Learning to let employees lead."

One of the things we've done as a crew is define what our big objective is. We may change it or adjust it based on our ongoing experiences, but as of now, we have defined our crew's job as finding ways so that every single family, in the respective communities where the crew members live, is producing food in their yard all year round. Our methodology is to learn new technics and technology. We learn (and help create) new technics and technology and then we share them with the families in our communities. This information that we share has three important aspects. 1) The technology can help rural families produce more food with less work, 2) The technology respects God's creation and helps recuperate its natural abundance and 3) The techniques, as much as possible, can be learned and applies by rural farmers using their own resources, without being dependent on outside funding.

This third aspect is essential if we are truly serious about our big objective. Ultimately there is no way that we can reach every single member of all of the communities represented if we are dependent on funding to help people acquire particular technology. Our goal has to be to find ways that people can do things themselves, with what they have available. Does this mean that all of the support so many of you are so generously providing is ultimately unnecessary? Not at all. What it means is that MPP and the Road to Life Yard crew is dedicated to using the funds you all provide in the most effective ways possible, particularly by providing training and follow up (monitoring). Training and monitoring are two aspects of our work which allow farmers to apply and adapt the ideas we help provide effectively and with significant results in their own, individual contexts.

In a nutshell, that's what we are about in the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project. It is what we have been doing for the last six years. The only change now is that we are defining what we want to happen more clearly and looking for the most effective ways to make it all happen. I hope to provide more details and examples in future postings.

In Christ,

Mark

MPP--PDA proposal and seeds initiative, health center

2010-03-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

MPP members uloading food donations from the French government

for rural families who are hosting refugees from Port au Prince

Hey Friend,

Two or three observations about MPP and the earthquake, and then I'm on to a new posting with some updates about the work of MPP's Road to Life Yard and Moringa project.

In January, in partnership with PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papaye) submitted a proposal for earthquake recovery in the Central Plateau, the Artibonite and the Northwest departments of Haiti. This project has been approved and MPP will begin receiving funds at the end of this month, or the beginning of next.

MPP's decision to focus on three departments that were not directly affected by the catastrophe in Port au Prince, is based on the large numbers of former residents of Port au Prince who have left the city and fled to the departments less affected. The problem is that the Central Plateau, Artibonite and the Northwest, where as many as 500,000 refugees may ultimately settle, are the same areas most heavily affected by the hurricanes less than two years ago. Most families in these areas, particularly the farmers, have not yet fully recovered from that disaster, which makes it extremely difficult for them to respond to the new challenge of receiving thousands of refugees. In some cases, the refugees are family members who were previously sending at least occaisional financial assistance from the capital to their parents and siblings in the countryside.

The main thrust of the proposal just approved is to help farmers in the three departments find resources and training which will help them increase food production while protecting the environment. The project will also help some families near Mirebalais (about 45 Km northeast of Port au Prince, on the main highway to Hinche) rebuild their homes. The project will also provide scholarships for over 500 high school students who had to flee Port au Prince continue their education in the provinces where they have taken refuge. Women in some of the cities will also have access to small loans to recover and/or improve their small businesses. Some of the women targeted lost their merchandise in the hurricanes of 2008 and have not yet been able to restart their businesses. Other women targeted by the proposal will be those who lost their homes and merchandise in Port au Prince in the earthquake in January, and are now refugees in new cities, without adequate resources to begin again.

Led by Chavannes Jean Baptiste, MPP's director, and guided by Carlos Cardenas from PDA, I was one of the two members of MPP's technical team who helped put the initial project together for submission. It took most of four days to do it, and it was tedious and mind-numbing. It also seemed at times unlikely that the project would ever be accepted. But now it has been and now it seems like it truly was worth every minute lost to the other work we do in the Road to Life Yard.

Praise God for that. And praise God for the many many people who have given so generously to PDA, as well as to other organizations who are faithfully working to meet the many needs in Haiti.

I also want to give recognition to folks who have provided donations for the Seeds initiative sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program. This initative will provide thousands of dollars to purchase seeds for farmers looking to increase production this year to meet the increased need of their newly enlarged families.

Many thanks also to those who have sent funds to help support MPP's Integrated Health Center, "Mironda Heston." Those funds are on their way here and will help supplies, materials and salaries to help the center increase its capacity to meet the needs of the rural families in Papay, Bassin Zim and surrounding areas.

Please continue to keep MPP in your prayers, particularly as they receive funds through PDA and other organizations. MPP is made up of many concientous, dedicated people working to serve people with minimal resources. Good hearts and good intentions do not, unfortunately, guarantee perfect results. Please pray for MPP as they begin putting in place all of the mechanisms for a transparent accounting of the use of funds, and as they begin assigning the personnel who will oversee the implementation of all of the activities in the projects for which they are now responsible. The people of MPP have enormous capacity. Please pray for our Lord to bless that capacity with the Holy Spirit so that MPP may continue to work with one heart and one mind.

In Christ,

Mark

Folks continue to come to the Central Plateau

2010-01-31T16:33:00.000-08:00

Loading the truck with goods and people, Friday, January 15th, the first trip from Port with quake victims

Some quick observations from Papay-Hinche.

More and more folks are coming into the area from Port au Prince. Today, Fenese, the MPP driver who works a lot with us in the Road to Life Yard-Moringa project, brought back fourteen more folks who will be staying here at MPP's national training center. I'm not sure of exactly how many folks from Port are hear right now, that MPP is directly supporting, but it is around 50, at least. This was the project truck's second trip from Port with quake victims, since January 12th. The first was Friday, January 15th. Other MPP vehicles have also been making sporadic trips.

Food is becoming a problem. Port is obviously not the easiest place to find food, and it was our region's main source for dry goods (rice, sugar, flour, oil, tomato paste, etc.), prior to the quake. The problem is also, of course, money. As more and more people in the area accept people from Port into their homes, their limited resources will get stretched beyond the normal impossible.

Chavannes noted in some observations that he made, that families will be forced to use the seeds they've saved for this year's growing season, to feed the extra mouths. This will lead to a second famine, when farmer's find it impossible to get the seeds they need for the this year's growing season.

MPP has a number of organizations waiting to send some funds to help, but there is also a bottleneck. Available dollars in the country are limited, at least in the private sector. Fonkoze is, an international organization which helps provide small loans at the grassroots level. It is apparently one of the best options right now for getting money transfer through. MPP has had an account with Fonkoze for several years now.

For those who have written me asking about Bigonet, just outside Leogane, in the mountains, friends there indicate that the loss of life in that area was minimal, thanks be to God. But most of the houses were flattened, or severely damaged. The Bon Nouvel Church was flattened, the Bon Nouvel School was severely damaged. Folks in general living in the Cormier area have almost all lost their homes and are living in any available open area, under sheets and tarps, when they can get them.

If you have a heart for this area, please check out http://haitifund.org/ . They have been working in the Cormier area for over twenty years. Mike Carlin, the director, was not in Haiti at the time of the quake, but he was able to make a lightening fast visit, to get pictures and some idea of the situation. He is back in the States working with Haiti Fund to put together a strategy that can help get folks back on their feet in the best way possible, as soon as possible.

I had the incredible opportunity to work with CODEP and the folks in the Cormier area of Leogane for about a year in 1997. There are people there who will be friends for the rest of my life.

Please continue to check out the PCUSA Haiti site for information about what's going on in Haiti

http://pcusahaitinetwork.ning.com/

Carlos Cardenas, a PCUSA mission worker stationed in Nicaragua, came to work in Haiti these last two or three weeks, as a representative of PDA--Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. He spent two days working with MPP team members putting together a proposal for immediate assistance to at least 5,000 victims located throughout the Central Plateau, the Artibonite and the Northwest. The project also includes a request for funds to address the longer term recovery problems--increasing food production, helping students to get back to school, helping women who've lost their investments begin their small businesses again, and, always, always, working on protecting and improving Haiti's natural resources by planting trees.

Many of you already understand that disasters such as this do not create poverty, but they uncover it, lay it bare, impossible to ignore.

Plese continue to keep us in your prayers.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny and Keila

MPP Delmas 39

2010-01-23T14:15:00.001-08:00

This is the MPP office on Delmas 39th.

Dear Friend,

Jenny and Keila and I are doing well. Thank you for your many e-mails, and for your prayers.

Here are some observations about how you can help, in addition to your prayers:

Please consider checking out Presbyterian Diaster Assistance. They are the arm of the Presbyterian Church which focuses on disaster situations. The do an excellent job of not only providing immediate emergency relief through dependable in-country organizations, they also focus on the longer term recovery effort. The website is:

http://www.pcusa.org/pda/

Also, for ongoing news and information about relief work related to specific PCUSA partners in Haiti, as well as more general information, please check out the Haiti Network:

http://pcusahaitinetwork.ning.com/

Finally, for individuals and churches who would like to support the work that Jenny and I are involved in, working with the PCUSA partner MPP--Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Farmer's Movement of Papaye), there are two options.

For the agricultural work I am involved in, which will not provide immediate relief, but will address the longer term issues of exacerbated hunger throughout the country:

Write the check for Presbyterian Church (USA)

Write the account number H000007 (H, five zeros, 7) and MPP-Road to Life Yard-Moringa project on the check.

Send it to PC(USA)

Individual Remittance Processing

P.O. Box 643700

Pittsburgh PA 15264-3700

To help support the work that Jenny is involved in, with MPP's health center follow the instructions on the website for MBF (Medical Benevolence Foundation):

http://www.mbfoundation.org/

The account number for MPP's health center is 530-445

Please include the reference: MPP's Integrated Health Center, "Mironda Heston"

Jenny's work with the health center directly affects the immediate needs of many of the folks streaming to the countryside from the devastated areas around Port au Prince, Leogane and Petit Goave. Hundreds are leaving Port au Prince daily, returning to their homes. Pressure on the fragile resources in the countryside will be heavily affected.

Please know that the best of what you have to offer are your prayers and your concerns. Knowing that we are not alone, that the world is willing to share part of the grief, is a relief.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny and Keila

Hinche

2010-01-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

Folks leaving Port au Prince on the highway going northeast, towards the Central Plateau. These folks are on their way up "Mon Kabrit"--Goat Mountain, east and a bit north of Croix de Bouquet.

People are pouring in to the Central Plateau from Port au Prince. The local public hospital is reportedly full of folks wounded in the quake, who one way or another made it here. There is a call for donations of blood, which I hope to answer tomorrow. Employees of MPP took up a collection yesterday to help the wounded. There is a call for food as well. The hospitals here are not generally set up to provide meals on a large scale, so families usually fill in the gaps. But these patients have no families.

Banks here are still closed, which is complicating things a bit. MPP's cash funds have been depleted, so they are running on gas fumes, as we used to say when Mom's car showed Empty on the gas gauge. Fortunately, MPP, and Haitians in the countryside in general, have had years of practice running on very little.

The two main cell phone services here are now working, more or less. Both have provided their users free minutes to help them make connections with their loved ones.

Jenny and I are running a little low on readily available cash, but this morning, a neighbor let me know that he can help us out when our supply is really gone.

In general, Jenny and I are doing well, but we are trying to know how to react. We still have our regular work, which definitely is important, but that's not easy to measure right now, on the scale of what has happened.

We also talk with friends, ask what news they have. Many folks do have news. It is a difficult question to ask, but a joy when the answer is "they made it!" Hard to deal with when the answer is "we don't kow."

The people of Hinche, Papay, Bassin Zim, are grieving.

Probably the best we can do is do what we can wherever we can, and whenver we can, pray hard and pray often, and hope that our simple presence can somehow be part of our witness.

Food is not yet a problem, and the supply will probably not be a problem. Food and gas is making it over the border from the Dominican Republic. We put 8 gallons of Dominican diesel in the truck on Saturday. It cost us what we normally would pay for 16 gallons, but we were grateful for the security of having a bit of fuel.

The police are reportedly working on keeping food prices from skyrocketing. Word is that this past Saturday, they went around the marketplace and closed down shops who were charging exhorbitant prices.

That's the news for now. Please continue to keep all of Haiti in your prayers.

In Christ.

Mark, Jenny and Keila

Ti Jak, MPP, Port au Prince

2010-01-17T16:33:00.005-08:00

"Ti Jak", a member of MPP who lives in Port au Prince. Ti Jak is a mechanic at the garage where most of MPP's vehicles are serviced. When I visited with him on Friday, he told us stories of using one of the vehicles being serviced at the garage to carry load after load of injured neighbors to the local police station, where they hoped to find medical aid.

Ti Jak also was responsible for saving one of the neighbors in a house next to MPP's office on Delmas 39.

The office was completely destroyed, but Ti Jak and several other members of MPP were able to get computers, chairs, printer, inverter, solar panels and some other office equipment out of the house a few days after the quake.

We've heard from friends from Leogane about 40 miles southwest of Port, where the situation is particularly bleak. Word is that most of the buildings in the city were destroyed. Outlying communities were also heavily affected, all up and down the mountain, although loss of life in the Cormier area was less than I feared. Friends up near the top of the mountain and other down in the valley all survived, although many lost their houses.

In Christ,

Mark, Jenny, Keila

The Haiti Quake--MPP and the Central Platuea

2010-01-14T04:10:00.000-08:00

Hello again, friend.

The news about the earthquake here in the Central Plateau, where MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papay) is located, the news is, in the short term, considerably less dire than in Port au Prince. Here in Papaye-Bassin Zim, where Jenny, Keila and I live and work, there was no damage whatsover. We very much felt the quake Tuesday afternoon, a little before 5:00, as well as the four or five aftershocks during the night. But as far as we know, no houses and none of the MPP building were damaged at all. Nor have we heard of any landslides.

Chavannes, the director of MPP, was not in Port on Tuesday. He is here, leading a workshop on community development for community promoters who will become leaders within the organization. Chavannes wife, Nini, his daughter, Agathe and his grandchild were in Port, but reports are that they are fine. The house where Nini lives was apparently unaffected.

Moy, the director of operations for MPP in Port, was also uninjured, and the office off of Delmas 83, where he lives and works, was also undamaged.

MPP's other office which they share with the national farmer's organization MPNKP (Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay--the National Farmer's Movement with Congress in Papay) was totally destroyed. That is the Delmas 39 office, where I have sometimes stayed when I need to be in Port. It is also the home for a number of MPP-sponsored students studying in Port. Miraculously, there were no serious injuries. However, Caseus Chavanes, one of the leaders of a farmers organization outside of Les Cayes, lost his organization's truck, when it was crushed by the falling building. MPP also lost computers, printers and other office supplies, as well as supplies purchased in Port for projects with farmers in the Central Plateau. Caseus's organization does not have the funds to replace the truck. It is also unlikely that MPP will have the resources to replace the computers and printers lost.

Other issues for MPP and all of us here in the Central Plateau are many. The first and most important is the grief. Every single family in the Central Plateau has one or more family members living, working, studying in Port. Almost no one knows exactly how any one is doing right now. Cell phone service (the only reliable phone service we have), was knocked out shortly after the quake on Tuesday. This morning there are signs that the service is becoming operational again. As people begin getting the news, there will be a lot of grieving. Along with the grief, is the complication of how to get their people back home--those who have perished, to bury them, those who are injured and are homeless, to care for them.

The second issue which will soon be acute is one of food and fuel. All of our fuel and much of our food comes from or through Port au Prince. This is true for most of the country, in fact. As the supplies available right now are used up, where will we get the next batch? And how much will we have to pay for it? The growing season in 2009 was very short and complicated by too much rain at the beginning, and not enough at the end. Farmer's resources are already minimal. If one of the results of this disaster is that food prices shoot up again, as they did in 2008, there will be severe hunger, throughout the country.

There is a Haitian proverb that goes something like this: Dwet la blese, tout ko pran ve. A toe is wounded, and the whole body is attacked by worms.

Port au Prince has been deeply wounded. The whole country will be deeply affected.

Jenny and I have no answers for any of these problems. Just the reminder, that I felt, again, this morning while reading the Yearbook of Prayer, that our God is a God of hope, that despair has already been defeated, and now is the time to face what has happened and to act, act out of that hope and not out of despair. I don't have any idea what that will mean. But our God is up to the task. Pray for us, that we will also be up to the task.

Earthquake News

2010-01-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

Friends,

Thank you for your e-mails and notes of concern. I haven't even begun to read most of them, but I know they are there. And thank you especially for your prayers.

First of all, Jenny, Keila and I are fine. Keila is as cheerful and funny as ever, and more so every day.

As many of you know, Tuesday afternoon, Haiti was hit by a 7.0 quake, centered just west of downtown Port au Prince in the area called Carrefour. Based on reports on the radio, the images we are seeing on Internet, and the observations of some friends who were there, much of Port au Prince has been destroyed. Report after report has come in of major primary and secondary schools destroyed along with several Universities and some of the hospitals. The national palace, the parliament and several ministries have all collapsed or been heavily damaged. The center for the UN peacekeeping mission also collapsed, killing, among many others, the special envoy, a well-known leader from Tunsia. The national cathedral and many other churches were also destroyed or heavily damaged.

Carrefour, one of the many areas of Port au Prince where houses are built on top of houses, and alleyways are no wider than your two arms stretched out on each side, was, according to radio reports, completely destroyed.

Obviously, no one really knows the number of casualities. Many people remain trapped, alive, but with no access to water. I do not know the extent of heavy equipment available to begin removing debris and opening the way for rescue teams to enter, but I suspect that it is not enough. Even with heavy equipment readily available, so many of the neighborhoods are so tightly packed with houses, it would still be a monumental task. Without some saving grace, many of these folks may also perish.

That is the news as I know it of the situation in Port au Prince. You can probably find out much more from CNN and the internet.

It is unfortunate that I have let this blog sit with no news until now, when the news is so very sad. Thank you again for your prayers. Please continue praying for all of the families of the many victims, especially for those who are now waiting for resucue. Pray for everyone in Port au Prince and for all of Haiti.

I will post again in a few minutes with what I know of the situation with MPP.

In Christ.

Mark

Bassin Zim cave

2009-07-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

Tracey King (right), a fellow mission co-worker stationed in Nicaragua, was at the Joining Hands meeting that MPP hosted at it's national training center in Papay, June 2nd, 3rd and 4th. After the meeting ended Thursday, Tracey stayed an extra couple of days with us. Friday, June 5th, after helping us lay out one cistern for the group, APB, Tracey spent the rest of the morning working with us on the cistern at Diamene's house. In the afternoon, we visited Bassin Zim waterfall and caves, with a couple of local friends, Frank (left) and Roger (middle).

A Great Trip--St. Vincent, St. Barnabas, MPTR, Caracol, SOIL, Limbe, Pix and Jayne

2009-07-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

View of mountains and beach from the beach community of Phaeton, our first beach visit, this one courtesy of Paul Jean

Hey Friend,

Wanted to provide a the final installment of the trip six members of the Road to Life Yard* crew made in May and June (May 29th-June 2nd).

The main objectives for this trip were 1) Expose crew members to new ideas, new faces and other organizations; 2) Open up the possibility for other organization to connect with MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papay) in general, and the work of MPP's Road to Life Yard-Moringa project in particular; 3) Improve the sense of solidarity among crew members. This was an incredible trip, and we managed to do well with all three objectives.

The Road to Life Yard crew consists of ten men and three women, of which five could go on this trip. Veline Saintilmond (the assistant coordinator for the crew) and I made two. In addition, we selected three crew members based on both the quality of the work they are doing as part of their job, but also based on the quality of work they are doing in their own yards. We selected Wilus Exil, Marimode St. Amour and Agame Elfraïs (see photo 1).

We had been talking about the possible itinerary for this trip since last year, but the timing and impetus for doing the trip at the end of May was in order to connect with Pix Mahler and Jane Carney while they were visiting some of the same places and faces as us. Our first stop, after leaving Papay-Hinche at around 4:00 AM Friday, May 29th, was Fundation Vincent (St. Vincent Foundation) in Cape Haitian, about four hours more or less straight north (Google Earth Coordinates: 19°44' 32.80" W, 72°12'58.58").

Photo 1

The crew, together with friends from Papay who are currently students in St. Vincent-Don Bosco Agricultural School in Cape Haitian. Behind: Veline Saintilmond (assistant coordinator for crew), Raymond (friend and student at St. Vincent), Marimode St. Amour (crew member, responsible for marketing production), Renel (friend and student at St. Vincent), Agame Elfraïs (crew member, assistant for data entry for crew), Fenes (MPP driver, assigned to the Road to Life Yard's truck). In Front: Wilus Exil (crew member, member of committee responsible for crew's chicken production), Janack (friend and student at St. Vincent).

At St. Vincent, we were met by friends from Papaye studying at the institution--Raymond, Renel and Janack. They introduced us to the director of the agricultural program, who was expecting us. We spent around two hours with the director, who explained the goals and objectives of the program, and also showed us the installations. It was good to make the connection with St. Vincent, and learn about some of their requirements for the students--they are pretty strict. The program seems to have a strong focus on both practical and theoretical aspects of agriculture, but based on what we saw, they are not as strong as they could be in practical application of the techniques they teach.

Photo 2

St. Barnabas agricultural school, Terrier Rouge

After eating lunch in Cape Haitian, we headed east towards the Dominican border, stopping about half-way, outside of Terrier Rouge, at another agricultural institution, St. Barnabas (Google Earth coordinates: 19°38' 46.66" N, 71° 58' 41.57" W). St. Barnabas is run by the Haitian Episcopal Church and has traditionally received a lot of support from a number of PC(USA) congregations. Veline Saintilmond, my assistant coordinator, is a graduate of St. Barnababs, along with quite a few of other agricultural technicians working with MPP. In 1997, I had also spent a month at St. Barnabas, learning Haitian Creole from the students, before moving to Bigonet in Leogane (Bigonet Google Earth coordinates: 18°25'50.52" N, 72°37'47.06" W). I was looking forward to seeing one or two of the teachers at St. Barnabas who I had gotten to know fairly well during my month there. Veline was also excited to have the chance with a number of friends she hadn't seen for several years now. In addition, St. Barnabas has recently gotten a new director, and one of the goals of our trip was to meet with Hans Pierre, the new director, together Pix Mahler. Pix is a PC(USA) mission co-worker responsible for helping to facilitate relationships between PC(USA) congregations and their partner organizations in Haiti.

Friday afternoon, when we arrived at St. Barnabas, the director had already left for Cape Haitian, and Pix was not expected until Saturday morning, but Veline was able to begin visiting with old friends, and I got to begin renewing friendships with two professors who remembered me pretty well, including things that made the rest of the crew members laugh. One of these memories was about the way I tend to jump into the work with little regard for the effect on my clothes, even my "good" clothes. As my brother Keith noted in January when he visited, Haitians are usually either laughing with me, or laughing at me.

After visiting for about an hour at St. Barnabas, we continued our journy to the other side of Terrier Rouge, where we were met by Paul Jean, the leader of the farmer's organization, MPTR (Mouvman Peyizan Terrier Rouge--Farmer's Movement of Terrier Rouge). Paul had agreed to host us at their facility where they hold meetings for the cooperative associated with MPTR and where they have workshops and training programs, usually in close association with MPP in Papay. For at least the second time, our crew experienced direct benefits from our position as members of MPP, as Paul Jean received us with open arms, providing us with comfortable bunk beds, safe water and lights each night. Perhaps the clearest indication of Paul's sense of solidarity with us was the time he sacrificed to simply be with us and keep us feeling welcome and safe. Besides sleeping with us each night, Paul spent the whole day Sunday with us, going to church and afterwards to Caracol (see posting "An Afternoon at the Beach--Caracol," below).

Photo 3

Paul Jean, at Carcol beach, with us. Paul is the leader of a cooperative working with MPP, located just east of Terrier Rouge. Paul is also one of the leaders of MPTR, the Farmer's Movement of Terrier Rouge

Saturday morning, we headed back into Cape Haitian to meet Pix Mahler and Jane Carney at the Cape Haitian airport. After they got settled into their room at the Roi Christophe hotel, we headed out to St. Barnabas to meet with Hans Pierre, the new director. Veline also took the opportunity to show the rest of the crew the garden beds. Wilus, Marimode and Agame observed that St. Barnabas may be doing fewer things than Fundation Vincent, but what they are doing they are doing better. Veline and I took the opportunity to encourage Hans to come visit us in Papaye to see first hand the kinds of work we're doing in the Road to Life Yard-Moringa project, as well as get to know more about the work of MPP.

Photo 4

St. Barnabas agricultural school. The new director, Hans Pierre, is to the right. Agame Elfraïs is on the step to the left of Hans. Higher on the steps, left to right: Wilus Exil, Marimode St. Amour, Mark Hare and Veline Saintilmond

After sending Pix and Jane on their way back to their hotel in Cape, together with Hans, the rest of us took a break the rest of the afternoon at the cooperative. Then, late in the day, all of us, together with Paul Jean, headed to the Roi Christophe hotel in Cape Haitian. Pix had agreed to meet with Paul and Veline, to get a better idea of what MPP is all about and how MPP and the Episcopal Church of Haiti, two of PC(USA)'s official partners in Haiti, might benefit from each other's strengths. It was the kind of meeting that, for me, tipifies what is best about how PC(USA) does mission. It was not about Pix telling Paul and Veline what PC(USA) could or could not do for their respective organizations, or even what Pix hoped that MPP might do for the school. Rather, it was a sharing of visions, what MPP is about and what PC(USA) is about and how the commonality in their visions can provide moral and spiritual stamina for the very difficult tasks that remain before us, on the path to the Kingdom land, and as part of being on that path together, how MPP and MPTR might be able to strengthen the mission, in every sense, of St. Barnabas.

Photo 5

"Meeting of the minds" at Hotel Roi Christophe. Left to Right, Paul Jean (director of MPTR),Mark Hare (PCUSA Mission Co-worker and coordinator of MPP's Road to Life Yard-Moringa project), Pix Mahler (PCUSA Mission Co-worker) and Veline Saintilmond (Assistant Coordinator for MPP's Road to Life Yard Project)

While Pix and I and Veline and Paul talked, the rest of the crew enjoyed the hotel pool. Then we headed home. Sunday we went to church with Pix and Jane, then headed to Carcol, to fried fish and rice and the beach. Monday we visited SOIL (http://www.oursoil.org/) and then went to see our friends in Limbe--see post below. The three posts that I published prior to this one provide pictures of those adventures. On Tuesday, early in the morning, we loaded up, delivered Paul to his home in Terrier Rouge, picked up Jane and Pix at the hotel in Cape Haitian, along with three or five other folks catching a ride with us to Hinche, and then we headed South to home. And a whole set of new adventures.

Loading up Pix and Jane and their luggage, to head down to Papaye-Hinche. Pix was headed to a conference at Sant Lakay (Home Center) of MPP, together with half a dozen organizations working to form a common vision that will allow them to advocate more effectively on specific issues that affect farmers other members of the very poor in Haiti. This effort is part of the work of the Presbyterian Hunger Program, facilitated by Lionel Derenencourt.

*For a little more information about this blog, check out the first blog, December 27th, 2008. Also, check out the Wordpress blog: http://hareamark.wordpress.com/ and the official site for Presbyterian Church (USA) World Missions: http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/profiles/harem.htm#

If you liked this post, please feel free to leave a comment. Also, let me know if you'd like more information about MPP, The Road to Life Yard-Moringa project or MPP's Integrated Health Clinic. Suggestions about ideas you'd like me to write about are also welcome.

Remember the other blog

2009-07-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to check out Jenny and my other blog, on Word Press. I'm using blogger to catch up on old news, and to publish some of the bigger photos (you can click on the photos to see them closer to full-size), and I'll use the wordpress for "new" news (like the birth of Jenny and my child, when that happens), as well as for background information about MPP, what MPP's Road to Life Yard-Moringa project is all about, what we do, exactly with Moringa and what Jenny's work is all about in MPP's Integrated Health Center, "Mironda Heston."

Here's the link:

http://hareamark.wordpress.com/

An afternoon on the beach--Caracol

2009-07-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

Cersine Louis (left), Agame Elfraïs's godmother and Agame (right),

on the beach where we spent pretty much all afternoon, swimming and playing.

On Sunday, May 31st after we attended the Episcopal church service in the morning in Cape Haitian, Agame Elfraïs, one of the crew members on the trip, took us to visit his godmother, Cersin Louis, who lives in the community of Caracol, on the beach, east of Cape Haitian (Google Earth coordinates: 19º 41' 41.80 N, 72º 01' 26.22 W). Before heading to Caracol, we picked up five friends from Papay studying agriculture at Fundation Vincent in Cape. (Unless otherwise indicated, all photos are by Mark Hare, all rights reserved)

Agame's godmother and her family put together a feast of fried fish, rice and salad. When we met Cersine on Friday, May 28th, we asked her if they could make a meal for all six of us. She said, "Sure!" Saturday, when we asked if it might be okay to invite another five people, she said "Of course!" When we showed up with one more extra person, nobody even blinked. There is a Haitian proverb, "Manje kwit pa gen mèt" which more or less translates to mean, "Once food is cooked, no one person has dibs on it." We did provide some funds from our trip budget to help pay for the ingredients of the feast. Photo by Agame Elfraïs, all rights reserved.

Paul Jean (left) and Cersine's father (right). Cersine's father borrowed a neighbor's fishing boat and took us out a few hundred meters out into the sea, then some of us swam back to shore. Paul Jean was our host from Terrier Rouge, where we slept the whole time we were in the north and northeast. Paul spent all Sunday with us.

On the raft--Marimode St. Amour, with two other guests, enjoying the ocean for the second

time in her life. Maridmode is one of the hardest workers on the Road to Life Yard crew.

The Road to Life Yard in Limbé

2009-07-12T15:38:00.000-07:00

Fritzner, a member of the Limbé "Road to Life Yard" crew with his African redworms. Fritzner learned about raising worms during his internship with us in February this year. We provided the group their starter worms when Fritzner and Marimerci left at the end of February. Photos by Agame Elfraïs, all rights reserved.

One of our stops, during the crew trip to Northern and Northeastern Haiti, was to visit a youth group in Limbé (Google Earth coordinates: 19º 42' 24.61 N, 72º 24' 14.82 W). Two of the key leaders in the group are Agricultural Technicians who worked with MPP's Road to Life Yard-Moringa project crew for fifteen days this past February. Frizner and Marimerci's time with the Road to Life Yard crew was part of their post-graduation internship.

We visited the Limbe group on Monday, June 1st, after visiting the organization SOIL in Cape Haitian. After leaving SOIL in downtown Cape Haitian, it took us about an hour to reach Lembe going south on National Highway #1. When we arrived, we were all astounded by the amount of work Fritzner and Marimerci have initiated in their home community. I thought the visit would be a quick, social visit, a couple hours at most. Instead, we spent over four hours visiting house after house where Fritzner and Marimerci and the crew they have put together (which they have named the Road to Life Yard crew #2) have helped women put in vegetable gardens. Fritzner and Marimerci also had arranged for a simple meal--boiled breadfruit and vegetable stew made from production from their own gardens. Afterwards, the Road to Life Yard crew participated with members of the community group in a brainstorming session, talking through some of the problems they have encountered as well as what form future collaborations between MPP and the group might take, which at the very least, could mean two or three crew members going to Limbé for a few days to lead a workshop for the group. We were also able to connect the group with the organization we had visited in the morning--SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods: http://www.oursoil.org/

Top photo: Fritzner with one of the women who have started a home vegetable garden.

Middle photo: The garden the community group does together.

Bottom photo: Fritzner in his own home garden.

Note: Clicking on photos will show an enlargement of each one.

The Garden Under the Cliff--Rainy Season

2009-07-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

This is Agame's uncle's garden by the Papay creek (left), during the rainy season. The piece of land which Else Elfraïs planted to bananas, sugarcane and tayo (a rootcrop), is in the background, hugging the base of the cliff. The land planted to bananas late last year is towards the front, with the creek (left and in front) forming the boundary. Else hoed the bananas and planted corn between the plants at the beginning of the rainy season, so he will get a harvest from this land, even as he waits for the bananas to begin producing.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Agame's uncle is using his land and water resources incredibly well, and is making a decent profit. He has had no technical training and is working with small amounts of money for investment, as he can get it, from his own or his family's resources. For more information about this garden, check out the April 10th posting.

Agame and his uncle took Danny Blank and Nathan Lehmkuhl to see the garden the second week of June. Danny and Nate spent ten days with MPP as part of a technical exchange, sponsored by a number of friends and supporters of the work of MPP's Road to Life Yard project. (Photo by Mark Hare, all rights reserved)

A new blog service

2009-05-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

I am trying out Wordpress to see if it works better than "Blogger." Check out the new site there:

http://hareamark.wordpress.com/

Wilus's vegetable garden

2009-05-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

Wilus Exil (far right) in his home vegetable garden. The line of amaranth-spinach stretching out to Wilus's left is all in a series of tires. Wilus also has eggplant, garlic chives, hot peppers, green peppers and parsely, in a total of some sixteen tires. The leaves you can see at the bottom left of the picture are from Moringa trees. Wilus has three vegetable beds planted to Moringa.

Wilus has been a member of the crew responsible for the Road to Life Yard-Moringa project for three years. He lives in the community of Leodiyag.

Fedlens (left) and Wilner installing a gutter on Wilus's house. The 4" PVC pipe that we use for gutters in our rainwater collections systems, is sliced open on one side and slides in over the tin roofing. We attach the guttes to the roof with binding wire.

Wilus with the PVC pipe that directs the rainwater into the in-ground cistern that Wilus constructed. A few hours after we finished helping Wilus install the gutters, a downpour came, one of the first of the rainy season here in the Central Plateau.

Six of the eleven members of the Road to Life Yard crew have completed, or nearly completed, rainwater collection systems at their houses.

Some changes in format

2009-04-14T06:29:00.000-07:00

A note just to check out if some changes I made in the format of the blog turned out. One change I made is to hopefully make it easier for folks to make comments about the post.

Would also like to know if Blogger has a way of keeping track of "hits."

Many blessings.

Mark

Garden Under the Cliffs

2009-04-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

Caption A garden by Papay Creek, vibrant and extremely productive even five months into the dry season. To the far left are mango trees, in middle are bananas and sugarcane. A field of newly planted banans is in the foreground. To the botom right you can see a conservation canal which cuts across the base of the slope to the right of the photo. The cliffs are between 60 and 80 feet high. The land occupied by the producing bananas and sugarcane is around an acre and the newly planted bananas in the foreground occupy another acre or 3/4. Looking onto the garden, we are looking in a generally westerly direction. Double click the photo to view it more easily. The creek, not visible, is to the far left, beyond the mangos.

Approximate location (for Google Earth users): 19 09 20, -71 58 38

The Garden Under the Cliffs

Agame, one of the workers in MPP's Road to Life Yard/Moringa project, invited me to visit his uncle's garden this past Tuesday, together with his uncle. The garden is planted on land his uncle rented from a neighbor. It's nestled between Papay creek (not in the picture) and the cliffs you see in the photo above (you can double click on the photo to view it more easily). Agame's uncle has bulit a very simple earthen dam to backup the flow of the creek which provides enough water that he can rent a pump occaisionally to keep the bananas and sugarcane well watered. In addition,, the garden has two "seeps" at the base of the cliff. "Seeps" are like springs, but with a very slow flow of water. At least half of the irrigation comes from the two seeps, which he carefully directs into canals, then plastic pvc pipes and then into a simple garden hose that he uses to water bananas and sugar cane on a daily basis.

This farmer has also dug a meter deep, 10 meter long canal cutting across a slope that leads from the top of the cliffs down to the area newly planted to bananas. The canal catches soil washing down the slope in the heavy rains during the five to seven month rainy season (approximately May-October). Agame's uncle explained that the importance of catching this soil before it washes into his fields is because the soil from the slope is of much poorer quality than the riverine silts he has by the creek. If he lets that poor soil cover his good soil, production will be reduced. The canal also serves a secondary but equally as important function. As soil and rainwater flows into it, the canal helps conserve and concentrate the water, forcing it to seep into the ground, rather than running into the creek and being lost downstream. The water which is absorbed into the soil then becomes available during the dry season to bananas and other crops he plants downslope.

Based on his experience with the bananas which are in production right now, Agame's uncle can expect to harvest some five hundred banana "racemes" from his new banana plot this year, with a potential gross profit of some HTG 125,000, or around US$ 3,000. (About 50% of Haitian live on less than $US 1.00 a day, a total of less than $365.00 a year). This farmer has also produced vegetables and field beans on this small piece of land. In January he harvested a good crop of black beans which he is looking to sell in order to buy a small pump of his own. He didn't give us a total amount for the bananas he's harvested this year so far, but he did note that the sugarcane provided around HTG 2,500 (about $US 60.00) in one recent harvest.

Agame's uncle has never studied agronomy and has had very limited access to any kind of extension services. Agricultural credit is also extremely rare in Haiti. Everything this farmer is accomplishing is with resources he has had access to from within his own family together with his own ingenuity, driven and guided by his inherent love of farming. Despite impressions and declarations to the contrary, Haiti is not poor because it lacks resources, but because the resources it has are poorly used, often as a result of bad policies at national and international levels. One of the most important resources Haiti has is the know-how, ingenuity and strength of its own farmers.

MPP is working at the local level to help farmer's such as Agame's uncle find technology and resources that can they need to protect the land and to produce more food. But it is also working to change national and international policies which limit and undermine the hard work of these same farmers.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) has resources to provide information about how people in the US can help affect decisions made by the US government which in turn affect farmers such as Agame's uncle in Papay. Check out the Presbyterian Hunger Program site: http://www.pcusa.org/hunger/what.htm

Many blessings.

Mark

Waiting for the rains

2009-03-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

Guilto Orne, a member of the group "Tèt Ansanm" or "Head's Together", by his vegetable tires near his home just up from the Samanà river. Guilto is one of the "agricultural promoters" helping providing monitoring and follow up for the yard production projects sponsored by APB--Association of Planters of Bassin Zim.

Just a brief note to keep the blog a bit "fresh." Jenny and I are doing well, settling more and more into the new routines of a new house in a different community. We moved up the mountain about three miles from the community of Papay, where I had lived for four and a half years. We now live in Bassin Zim, where there are fewer roosters, fewer dogs and less traffic on the country road in front of our house. Each morning, around 5:30, I ride my bike, together with two or three other crewmembers, down the mountain to MPP's training center, where most of our work is going on. Around 8:30, Jenny drives down in the crew's Toyota Landcruiser to go to work at MPP's integrated health center, working in the medical lab.

In the lab right now, besides her regular work, Jenny is training a young woman, Moceline, in some of the basic lab techniques, so that Moceline can keep the lab going while Jenny is in Nicaragua during maternity leave. In order to help Moceline learn as quickly as possible, Jenny invited members from my crew to provide "free" stool samples, which Moceline will examine as part of her training. Ten days ago, or so, Moceline made the leap to being able to identify parasite "eggs" in the scope.

After several days of rains a few weeks ago, we have had nothing here in the Central Plateau, although I understand it is raining in Port au Prince. Those rains were apparently just a taste of what it might be like to finally move into the rainy season. After a week or so of no dust, and even some mud!, we are back to clouds of it--even the motorcycles raise them.

I need to get up home, so will sign off for now. If you see fit to offer prayers for us, please pray for Jenny's pregnancy to continue to be without serious problems, and continue to pray for the leaders of Haiti, and throughout the world--for wisdom in looking for ways to protect God's creation, and provide opportunities for all of God's children.

In Christ,

Mark

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade--The party

2009-03-11T11:14:00.000-07:00

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade, continued.

These are more photos and descriptions from the trip my brother, Keith Hare, and three friends made January 22nd-1 February, 2009.

The party was the night before the group returned to Port au Prince and was a partly a celebration of Jenny and my marriage--the first time we publicly celebrated with friends from Haiti and specifically from MPP. The party was also a celebration of the first time I had family and friends come together to visit our work in Haiti.

Note: All photos are by Keith Hare, Bill Gettys Tim VanFleet. All rights reserved.

Friday night, the party. Fanahème Joachim, farmer, leader of MPP and now Jenny's and my new neighbor. Fanahème was the "MC" for the party, which included speeches, dances and a skit.

The entertainment was organized by the dance and theater group, Ibolele (ee bo lay lay) and included traditional, "folkloric" dances.

The skit was written by Dificil who plays a stock character he calls "Jokoy," a cantankerous old farmer who suffers high blood pressure, "sugar" (diabetes), "salt" (who knows) and "brak," which is a unique Creol word which means the food has no flavor at all. Jokoy is lying on the floor, his "wife " is by his side asking the Cuban doctor (played by me) what to do.

The feast. When Haitians put on a feast, it is a true expression of God's abundance. Jenny and I have been guests any number of times to these types of celebration, so it was nice to be able to finally be the hosts. Coordinating the meal was Elise, the woman who is in charge of MPP's kitchen, and of all of the organization's events. This was not an official MPP event, but MPP lent us all of the facilities and Elise agreed to put together the budget and take complete responsibility for cooking the food.

The party got high marks for being well-organized, for the quality and quantity of food and for the entertainment. Participants were generally disappointed, though, that after the meal, there was only limited dancing, and because the music ended at 11:00.

We moved in!!!

2009-03-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

Jenny and I moved into the new house Friday, March 6th. We had a work day ("konbit") with over twenty friends and neighbors on Sunday, March 1st, cleaning the yard, weaving the mesh for the kitchen and porches, painting inside, finishing and improving the fence around the yard, and maybe two or three other chores. We started moving some of the furniture Tuesday, March 3rd, especially some furniture that had to be "re-configured" by two carpenter friends in order to fit the dimensions of the new rooms. Finally, Friday, we got most of the rest of the furniture up the mountain. Saturday, Sunday and Monday we gradually got the rest of it up, and now we are fairly well established. We still depend on our neighbors on the north side (Fanahème and Ygenia) for water and I still needs to move our vegetable tires up to the new house. I need to make a plan for the rest of the yard,too. The details are not all clear, but I hope to have a goat shed, a chicken shed, at least one simple cistern to collect rainwater, a filter system for bath and dish water and a lot of tires.

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade

2009-03-11T09:36:00.000-07:00

Back to the visit from my brother, Keith together with three friends--Bill Gettys, Tim VanFleet and Mary Beth Poland, 22 January-01 February. More pictures. (Note: All photos by Keith Hare, Bill Gettys or Tim VanFleet. All rights reserved)

Jezilio, one of the four carpenters who worked on Jenny and my new house. Bill Gettys was impressed with the quality of the craftmanship, particularly given the total lack of any sophisticated equipment.

Reno (left) talking with Mark about the purchases necessary for the new house. Reno was the master carpenter for the house.

South side of the new house. The new tin roofing covers the new porches that Jenny and I had built. The older tin is the original house. We have paint for painting the old tin roofing and we will have a roof painting "konbit" ("barn building" type activity) with friends and neighbors to prepare and paint the roof.

The two 50 Watt solar panels are at the very top of the house, one towards the right and one towards the left.

The controller, connecting the solar panels to the batteries and the batteries to the breaker box distributing the electricity to the lights, which are all 12 Volt DC bulbs. The box also send current to the inverter which turns the 12 Volt DC current into 120 Volt AC.

The breaker box which distributes the 120 Volt from the inverter to the receptacles in Mark's office. The inverter is screwed into the plywood below the box.

The six Volt batteries, two tied together for 12 Volt capacity. The batteries and the inverter were stolen before Jenny and I moved into the house. We replaced the batteries (although we still owe for the original ones) and we are using an inverter which Mark purchased for the Road to Life Yard project. The "blessing" of the theft was that we've found considerable ways to increase the security for the house.

Visit to Bassin Zim, Friday, the last day before the road trip back to Port au Prince.

Inside looking out from one of the caves up behind the waterfalls at Bassin Zim.

Inside the Bassin Zim cave

Madanm Vernal (right), Friday afternoon (January 30th), preparing food for the festival. Jenny and I decided to organize the party in order to celebrate our marriage, for the first time together with MPP friends. It was also a party to officially welcome and celebrate the first visit to MPP by a group of family and friends.

More photos of the party will be in another post.

Tire Garden Zone in the Road to Life Yard Project

2009-02-21T15:57:00.003-08:00

"Site Kawoutchou." One of the areas managed by the Road to Life Yard Crew. Octave Justime (center of photo) is responsible for managing this area. Octave has something over 100 old tires in production.

Photo by Agame Elfraïs, all rights reserved

Information on ladybugs and aphids

2009-02-19T16:10:00.001-08:00

This post may not interest many folks, but it is really important for the work we're doing in the Road to Life Yard.

We have a problem in our Moringa plantings with aphids. We've discovered that ladybugs control them, but it often takes a good bit of a while for the ladybugs to get the upperhand. So, I sent the question to ECHO in North Fort Myers, FL (ECHO stands for Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization), and bingo! I got this information.

So read and enjoy, if this kind of thing interestst you. Or, just marvel at the kinds of connections that exist.

From a Grad student at UFL

My research interests are in enhancing natural enemies through habitat manipulation so I was excited to get your email [from the technial team at ECHO]. I would recommend starting with intercropping a nectar and pollen source or planting hedges along the perimeter of the growing area —You could interplant an insectary hedgerow or ground cover when the Moringa is coppiced to so the insectary species gets a good start.
Sunflowers are often used as an insectary hedgerow in Florida and California in vegetable production systems—In Cuba , I visited a farm where individual sunflower plants were planted throughout the garden to serve as an attractant for coccinellids in particular. I am not sure how well this worked in Cuba , but I know that (3-6ft wide) hedges of sunflowers have been used successfully to attract a host of insect predators in conventional and organic operations FL & CA. For our local organic growers, sunflowers are a major cash crop as an ornamental (people pay $10 at the Gainesville farmer’s market for a bouquet of Sunflowers)—so the hedgerows are multipurpose and offer significant economic benefit in addition to a their “eco-system service.” It would be great to find a synonymous hedgerow species that offers both economic and ecological benefit for Haitian farmers. I’m coming to Haiti this fall and would be delighted to do some investigating—in the meantime let me know if you have any suggestions. Sunflower seeds could be a secondary benefit as well.
If you google “insectary plant” you’ll get a huge list of plants—however most of them are northern species and only a few will really do well during Haiti’s cool season. The most common hedgerow species promoted to enhance the activity of natural enemies include: dill (Anethum graveolens L.), coriander/cilantro (Coriandrum sativum L.), buckwheat (Fagropyrum esculentum) is used cool season cover crop in FL and Coccinellids like it, sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritime)(definitely northern—we can’t grow this very well in FL, but look at the flower structure), Prostrate Knotweed Polygonum aviculare (a low-growing member of the buckwheat family and present in the Caribbean as a weed), and Phacelia tanacetifolia (native to the southwest).
Several organic websites promote members of the parsley family, Apiaceae; mustard family, Cruciferae (we’ve observed large populations of Ladybirds in wild mustard here), the mint family, and some members of Compositae (such as Achillea & Artemisia—Cory Thede is growing Artemesia spp. near Limbe for medicinal purposes I believe). Sustainable ag folks in California and Michigan seem to have the best resources regarding hedgerows. This is a link to a publication about hedgerows by the Community Alliance with Family Farmers http://www.caff.org/programs/farmscaping/Hedgerow.pdf . They have a long list of hedgerow species and that indicates which plants are best for hosting natural enemies. Some of these plants do well in the tropics—a few may already be present in Haiti .
I would start with sunflowers and additionally look for local flowering weeds that have characteristics similar to these known insectary plants. Small flowered low growing weeds may offer more nectar and resources than showier flowers, so keep an eye out for the more “humble” species. The insectary hedgerow(s) should provide an alternate source of non-pest prey, pollen and nectar for natural enemies throughout the year, so you’ll likely have to plant or selectively maintain a rotation of insectary plants. Ideally the alternate source of prey would be a species that is not interested in your Moringa, but will build up populations of generalist predators and aphid parasitoids that spill over into adjacent crops. Another option would be to intercrop with a known aphid host like beans or cowpea—which would perform well in the filtered shade of the Moringa.
Additional techniques you may want to incorporate into your system to enhance natural enemies include:
Strip harvesting: Alternate rows for harvest, this leaves somewhere for the natural enemies to go when they’re host plant has been chopped down. You may already be doing this, but the more conservation techniques you employ, the more likely you’ll have success.
Alternatively, if you have weedy areas/ nectar sources nearby or interspersed within the Moringa, you can manipulate the movement of natural enemies, by mowing/cutting back weedy resources to encourage the dispersal of natural enemies onto your infested Moringa plants.
Aphids usually occur in clumps and will quickly appear and just as suddenly disappear due to predation, parasitism (parasitzed aphids look swollen and bronze—eventually a minute wasp will emerge), naturally occurring fungal outbreaks, declining host-plant quality, changes in weather, or dispersal etc. They prefer sheltered areas out of the wind, so perhaps even thinning the Moringa as you harvest to get more airflow through the plants would help.
Another option that has been promoted in IPM programs in Honduras and in the literature to some degree is the use of food sprays to attract natural enemies. Water mixed with honey or other unrefined and refined sugars have been demonstrated to attract predatory beeltes, ants, and wasps… The idea is simple—spray a food source for the beneficial insects to attract them to the plot and nourish them while they start looking for prey/hosts. There are some obvious potential problems—1.ants, 2.fungus, 3. Sticky-messy. However, this is a potential low-tech solution that might warrant some investigation…if not for the morninga system, perhaps for a vegetable crop or corn.
Rearing Insects: Ladybird beetles & lacewings to a lesser degree are fairly easy to rear, keeping them fed is the greatest challenge. Because of the ephemeral nature of aphids—and the quantities you’ll need to rear a colony of predators, you should plan to keep a colony of aphids to supply your brooding beetles. Ladybugs will eat pollen, and honey but in my experience they develop much faster on aphids than pollen and honey is a sticky mess that always brings ants. A few tips: We hung pieces of folded black plastic trashbag in the cage to provide a substrate for oviposition; provide ample food—well fed beeltes lay more eggs; keep it clean (get rid of dead insects etc.); from time to time add field collected adults to your colony for breeding—this keeps genetic diversity high & prevents inbreeding problems.
Releasing Insects: If you have the choice, release larvae-not adults. Use an artist’s paint brush to move larvae as they are very delicate. Alternatively you can release eggs. Larvae are voracious and will consume more aphids, mites, whiteflies, thrips etc. during their development than as adults. Additionally, they are unable to fly, so dispersal is not a problem until they become adults. With sufficient prey in the system, (either on the moringa or insectary crops etc.) adults will hopefully stick around, reproduce, and prevent further outbreaks. However, in the absence of sufficient prey, adult coccinellids will disperse. A border crop or intercrop that attracts aphids (preferably aphid species that are not interested in Moringa) may enhance the success rates of a release and establishment.
In Cuba , I observed some small-scale urban gardeners rearing coccinellids and lacewings in homemade cages. It can be done, but requires work that might otherwise be avoided through habitat manipulation alone. I am curious about Wayne Niles’experience. Rearing beneficial organisms certainly has great potential as a teaching tool for students and interested farmers. We did some interviews in the Bohoc-LaJuene area around HAFF in November to find out how farmers manage pests. None of the farmers we interviewed seem to have any knowledge of beneficial insects, although some mentioned that birds picked off caterpillars and snails from their gardens. Most of the vegetable growers were using broad spectrum conventional pesticides and fertilizers. Some were using a combination of conventional and natural pesticides (they learned about them from MPP), but complained that they required too much labor to make themselves.
Other aphid predators to look for: (I experimented with inserting photo links)
Lacewings—their immatures are sometimes called trashbugs because some species carry plant debris on their back while they scour plants, looking for aphids, mites etc. They are voracious aphid predators. Larvae
Syrphid fly/Hover fly: Adults are attracted to nectar sources and worm-like larvae are effective aphid predators. Syrphid fly larvae
Minute Pirate bug—Orius spp. Adults and nymphs are generalist predators of small prey (thrips, whiteflies, aphids, mites, etc.). They are associated with flowering plants especially sunflowers. Here are some links to photos: orius nymph;
Orius adult feeding on whitefly nymphs
Parasitoids: Minute wasps lay their eggs inside aphids. Aphids that have been Parasitized are called mummies and look like swollen, bronze, aphid-sized balls.

I hope this information is helpful. Let me know how it goes!

Work on the House

2009-02-07T09:07:00.000-08:00

This is an unfinished Post, and will eventually have photos of the electrical system that the crew put in at Jenny and my new house.

We're hoping to move in by the first week of March.

The new house

The marketplace in Hince, on market day. Not directly related to the house, but an interesting photo.

This move is typical for market day, but should not be tried in the U.S.

Working with Wilus and Wilner--The Cistern

2009-02-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

Looking out over the cliffs towards Basen Zim on the wayto Wilus and Wilner's homes.

Wilus and Wilner live in a community called Leodigyan (Leo dee yag),

about six miles from the MPP center as the crow flies.

The route we had to take in the truck and then

on foot is closer to fourteen miles.

The View: Saman river flowing from the Bassin Zim waterfall

Wilus's home garden. In the very back are Papaya trees. In front of the papaya are the vegetable tires, with chives, hot peppers and green peppers. In front of the tires are two beds of Moringa trees, which provide sprouts on a weekly basis to add to rice or corn porridge.

Tim and Wilus mixing sand and cement to begin the process of plastering the walls of the cisterns. When all goes well, the walls take no more than three bags of cement, 10 wheelbarrows of sand and about 60 gallons of water for a cistern that is 3 m X 3 m by 1 m deep.

Mary Beth and Alexander are watching. Alexander is an agronomist who recently finished his degree and is spending a month with the Road to Life Yard crew as an intern.

Tim and Alexander keeping the mortar wet while Mark and Wilner finish plastering the walls. Wilus is on the far right, working on former the border for the cistern. If all goes well, this cisternwill hold more than 2000 gallons of water.

Visiting Wilner's house, just down the path from Wilus.

Wilner's home garden. On the far left is a tire with hot pepper seedlings. The tire in the middle has green peppers and the tire on the right has amaranth, a plan used widely as a spinach. Alexander, Wilner and Mark are looking at Wilner's tire with African redworms.

Wilner with a handfull of redworms and redworm compost (vermicompost).

Thanks for dropping in. I'll try to add new postings tomorrow to finish off the trip--the work on Jenny and my new house, Bassin Zim waterfall and the caves, the party and the trip to Port au Prince in the truck.

Peace.

Mark

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade

2009-02-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

Getting Folks to Haiti and to Papay

(Note: Photos in this post were taken by Keith Hare, Bill Gettys and Tim VanFleet)

Dr. Tracee Karaffa, Bill Gettys and me (Mark) at St. Joseph Home for Boys. Tracee and her group were finishing up a week of medical work when Keith and Bill arrived on Thursday and Dr. Tim Van Fleet and Nurse Mary Beth Poland arrived on Friday.

Charlie, one of the boys at St. Joseph Home for Boys, during the dance-theater presentation Friday night.

The crew--Jenny (left), Mary Beth Poland (behind Jenny), Bill Gettys and Tim VanFleet, before getting in the MAF prop plane to fly the twenty minutes to Hinche.

A slight delay while the folks in charge of the national airport figure out how to get a plane with a flat tire off the exit way. NOT an MAF plane.

A view from the air of the highway leading up over the first chain of mountains, on the way to Hinche and Papay, in the Central Plateau. Fenes, the MPP driver and I took this route at around 4:00 AM, arriving in Hinche at 7:00, plenty of time to pick up the crew at 10:30 when they arrived.

Arriving at the guesthouse at MPP's National Training Center.

Part of the welcoming committee, Jenel and Belinda, two of the children of Marimode St. Amour, one of the women working with the Road to Life Yard crew.

Sunday, after the church service at the local Catholic Chapel, the Papay soccer team played a demonstration match, originally organized in honor of Mom and Dad who were supposed to be on the trip. I (Mark) am the "Godparent" of the team, which has been a lot of fun and a good excuse to stop working and go to a game, or take the team in the Landcruiser to where they have a game. Jenny often comes to the games when they are at home.

The Clinic Work

Jenny with our neighbor friend, Laura (in Jenny's arms), and Mark, discussing with Nurse Marie (far right) the best strategy for using the services of Dr. Tim VanFleet and Mary Beth Poland in MPP's integrated health clinic. Jenny suggested to Marie that the pair work two days, Wednesday and Thursday, after the crew had put in some new receptacles and painted the laboratory. Nurse Marie agreed and told us how we would organize the patients. I agreed to be the main translator.

Monday morning's work. Jenny with new receptacles, conveniently located so that she doesn't have to use extension cords, or overextend the cords, on expensive lab equipment.

Monday afternoon's work. The lab is painted a bright yellow, making it a more cheerful place to work, not to mention the lighter color makes everything easier to see. This wall was artistically designed by Jenny and Mary Beth.

The finished product.

Jenny back at work, in the newly painted and electrically improved lab. Just in time for Tim and Mary Beth to see patients on Wednesday and Thursday.

Bill Gettys, finishing up the gallon of paint in Nurse Marie's pharmacy.

Nurse Marie in the clinic's pharmacy and me, after two days of translating. Not pictured are Nurse Tyresiana, Nurse Miriam and Louity. Louity and Mary Beth worked together to take basic data with the patients who came and Miriam and Tim worked together doing the official diagnosis, with me translating. In two days, we saw more than 80 patients. There were no really dramatic cases, fortunately for me. But there were a number of interesting ones, including a "clicking" kind of sound in the chest each evening (Tim thought it might be related to the patients acid indigestion) and a "growth" on one side of the body, just above the hip (Tim diagnosed it as being some extra muscle from the woman carrying her very healthy son always on the same side). The patient I appreciated the most, though, was the older man, over 70 years old, who's main complaint that with age his feet had become sensitive and he couldn't work barefoot in his fields during the hot time of the day. Boots are not an option, so Tim's best shot was that the man would have to learn to work in flipflops.

For folks checking in, plus, a note from Keith

2009-01-23T19:16:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note for people checking in. All four brigade members are here and tomorrow we head up to Papaye-Hinche. The four visitors plus Jenny will fly up with MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship)--a twenty minute flight. I will drive up with Fenes, with most of the luggage and parts and pieces. And the two solar panels and batteries Keith and I purchased today for house Jenny and I will hopefully be moving into soon.

The Google Earth coordinates are 19 12 27.28, -71 58 59.94.

Many blessings.

Mark and Jenny

FROM KEITH

All,Bill left at 7 this morning with Tracee to go to Dumay. Mark, Fenes Louis the MPP driver, and I went shopping this morning. We picked up some supplies for Jenny's lab and then went for electrical supplies. We went to a hardware store where Mark is well known. I was introduced to the owner Gito and his wife Patricia as well as all of the staff. We went through Dad's list. They had 3/4 inch pvc but it is very thin. I think we got enough of the correct fittings. They had the wire we needed in #12 and #10. The ground rods are only 5 feet instead of 8. Then we went to look at solar panels. Turns out that all of Marks batteries are bad so we ended up buying two 12 volt 50 watt Kyocera solar panels and two new Trojan T105 185 amp hour deep discharge batteries. Most of you don't care about these details but Bruce, Dad and I have been discussing them. We had talked about going out to Dumay but by the time we unloaded the supplies at the MPP office it was too late to find Dumay and make it back to pick up Tim and Mary Beth at 4. So we went to a restaurant for lunch. After we ordered, Finnes picked up Jenny so the four of us ate toghether. The main street is pretty smooth but very crowded. The side streets are a bit rough. Tim and Mary Beth's plane appears to be only 30 minutes late. We are leaving shortly to meet them. By the way, my blackberry works in Port au Prince so I can send and receive e-mail as well as phone calls.

Keith

From Keith

2009-01-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

All,I met up with Bill Gettye in the Miami airport. Our flight to PAP was about 90 minutes late but all of our luggage arrived. We went through customs with no problems, maybe because we were the last plane and were late and everyone wanted to go home. Mark met us with the MPP truck and the driver, Fenes, who drove us to St Joseph's home for boys and guest house. Jenny is here as well as Tracee Karaffa's team. We had a decent dinner and are hanging out. Tomorrow, Bill is going with Tracee to Dumay. Mark and I are parts shopping then maybe going to Dumay.

Keith

Waiting for family and friends in Port au Prince

2009-01-21T03:05:00.000-08:00

Mark, working with friends, starting to fence in a small (about 1/2 an acre) piece of land where he will try out farming techniques and grow food for his own household. The land belongs to MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay--Farmer's Movement of Papay). Photo by Jenny Bent, all rights reserved.

The biggest news this week is that Jenny and I are in Port au Prince, waiting for my brother, Keith Hare and three friends, Bill Gettys, Tim VanFleet and Mary Beth Poland. On Saturday, after everyone has finished arriving, we will all head up to Hinche-Papay. Mom and Dad, Catherine and Frank Hare, were also going to be here, but due to last minute difficulties, they won't be able to come at this time.

Work planned for the week includes electrical improvements in MPP's Integrated Health Clinic where Jenny has been responsible for starting an running a small medical laboratory . The crew will also work on installing wires and fixtures in the house where Jenny and Mark will soon be living, up the mountain in Bassin Zim. Also, if all goes well, Dr. Tim VanFleet and Mary Beth Poland will provide one or two days of medical consultation at the clinic, while Keith and Bill do other things. Keith and Bill'specialities lean more towards diagnosing computer code, versus colds, heartburn or typhoid.

Jenny came into Port au Prince from Nicaragua yesterday, around 2:00 in the afternoon. I came in yesterday morning, with Fenes, the MPP driver, as well as a truckload of folks who asked for a ride from Hinche and Papay, along with all of the charcoal, cornmeal and other food supplies folks asked us to take to Port au Prince to their kids who are studying in high school or the University here. Since the folks studying in Port can't work in the fields, they have to buy all of their food, which is an incredible hardship for most. Parents and family in Papay usually don't have money to send, so they send food. The truck was about half people and half food and supplies. Three or four deep cycle batteries as well. As soon as we entered the outskirts of greater Port au Prince (Croix des Bouquets), we began delivering people and goods, one by one, until we got to Delmas 91, up the mountain on the way to Petionville, it was my turn to get dropped off, at St. Joseph Home for Boys and Guest House.

Jenny in the medical lab she has started in the MPP's Integrated Health Clinic, "Mironda Heston." The microscope is a high quality German brand, built to deal with high heat and humidity. We purchased it in Nicaragua with funds from the Mironda Heston memorial fund. Photo by Mark Hare, all rights reserved.

Starting the blog

2008-12-27T08:31:00.000-08:00

This posting's photo is of one of the spaces where we are working within the national and international training center established by MPP (Mouvman Peyizan Papay-Farmer's Movement of Papay). To the left and in the background are examples of how we use old tires to grow vegetables, in this case, tomatoes, parsley, cabbage, eggplant, hot peppers and carrots. Photo by Agame Elfraïs, all rights reserved.

This is my (Mark's) first dip into web technology. The goal is to have some place Jenny and I can post information on what's happening with our work with MPP, including the work of the Road to Life Yard -Moringa project and the work of Jenny with MPP's Integrated Health Clinic, "Mironda Heston."

If you are checking us out, hopefully it is because you want to know more. Please keep checking in. Also, please check out the letters and photo albums on the official Presbyterian Church (USA) Mission Connections website: http://www.pcusa.org/missionconnections/profiles/harem.htm#

Mark and Jenny--MPP/PC(USA)

Headed North

A Celebration of Yard Gardens

Swivi--MPP's follow up in yard gardens

Dad's Garden in Amesville, Ohio

RELUFA

Wanted to highlight the RELUFA site. Very cool slide show showing the effect of Dole banana and pineapple plantations on local farmers, and the ways that Fair Fruit is working to change the equation:http://www.relufa.org/programs/economicjustice/trade/fairfruit.htm

Vote! A Fair Fruit Project supported by PC(USA) Mission Worker Christi Boyd

Plastics

Plastics

Arrived in Nicaragua

Note: Cisterns Blog

Annika Estela Hare's Baptism

COSECHA-style cisterns in Haiti

Annika Estela Hare

Altene Estelot's House

Saintville Home Garden and Rainwater Catchment Project

Interpretation Assignment

ECHO--Sharing ideas and experiences

In the States

One year later: re-edited

Jenny, Keila and Mark

Haitian Elections 2010

Cholera Update

News about Interpretation Assignment 2011

Some time by the ocean

Colladère Cooperative and Farm

Cholera in Haiti

Saintville's new garden project

MPP Youth Camp

The march against Monsanto seeds

Marimode's Tire Garden

Simple Rainwater Catchment Systems

Missionary Retreat

Lots of Visitors!

Grace and beauty

MPP's Road to Life Yard and Moringa Project

MPP--PDA proposal and seeds initiative, health center

Folks continue to come to the Central Plateau

MPP Delmas 39

Hinche

Ti Jak, MPP, Port au Prince

The Haiti Quake--MPP and the Central Platuea

Earthquake News

Bassin Zim cave

A Great Trip--St. Vincent, St. Barnabas, MPTR, Caracol, SOIL, Limbe, Pix and Jayne

Remember the other blog

An afternoon on the beach--Caracol

The Road to Life Yard in Limbé

The Garden Under the Cliff--Rainy Season

A new blog service

Wilus's vegetable garden

Some changes in format

Garden Under the Cliffs

Waiting for the rains

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade--The party

We moved in!!!

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade

Tire Garden Zone in the Road to Life Yard Project

Information on ladybugs and aphids

Work on the House

Working with Wilus and Wilner--The Cistern

The Electrical, Medical, Painting Brigade

For folks checking in, plus, a note from Keith

From Keith

Waiting for family and friends in Port au Prince

Starting the blog

Wanted to highlight the RELUFA site. Very cool slide show showing the effect of Dole banana and pineapple plantations on local farmers, and the ways that Fair Fruit is working to change the equation:

http://www.relufa.org/programs/economicjustice/trade/fairfruit.htm