tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16307310234283676842024-03-13T21:56:49.047-07:00Mark and Jenny--MPP/PC(USA)Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.comBlogger121125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-91423942189328995712017-03-27T15:30:00.003-07:002018-08-31T09:40:30.529-07:00Best Practices for Growing Vegetables in Used Vehicle Tires<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vhlOZqAEP60/WGPYASo8HJI/AAAAAAAADBY/UWByCY3KqvM8L8UCq-j8cD5kZ-PxcjlnwCPcB/s1600/IMG_0922.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vhlOZqAEP60/WGPYASo8HJI/AAAAAAAADBY/UWByCY3KqvM8L8UCq-j8cD5kZ-PxcjlnwCPcB/s640/IMG_0922.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption">René Pierre (right, red cap) from Demòn, in the mountains of Bayonnais, Gonaïves is leaning on a vegetable tire bench that he re-built and re-planted after Hurricane Matthew knocked his tire garden down, along with important bits of his family's home.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Over the years, people have raised the concern with me that growing vegetables in old tires can lead to heavy metal contamination of the plants,</span></b> and therefore would represent a health risk to the very people we are trying to help. I have struggled to get clear information about the risks, which has included an ongoing dialogue with several people related to Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization [<a href="https://www.echocommunity.org/" target="_blank">ECHO</a>].<br />
<br />
<h3>
<i><b>So that you can skip the discussion of about the articles that I have read and tried to summarize, I am putting right here at the beginning what I consider to be the best practices for growing vegetables in used tires.</b></i></h3>
<div>
<i><b><br /></b></i></div>
<h2>
<b>Best Practices for Growing Vegetables in Used Vehicle Tires</b></h2>
<div>
<b><br /></b>
<b>1) Choose healthy soil to start with</b>. Unfortunately, there are many sources of heavy metals that can create hazards much more rapidly than the tires you are using. Soils in urban zones may be particularly suspect. One huge advantage that I have found with vegetable tires is that I can start out with a mediocre soil and create my own soil using compost, mulch and redworms directly in the tire system. Sandy soils are the least likely to retain most contaminants. Mixing sandy soils with manure and then building the soil up over time with organic material may be one option that reduces external contamination. </div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>2) Choose tires that can be turned inside out</b> so that the soil medium is exposed to the tread. Turning the tire inside out assures that water will flow <i>through</i> the soil, rather than puddling at the bottom of the soil profile, full of potential leachates. I know this is hard for many people to understand without seeing it. Check out the videos on YouTube.The link is below.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In addition, the tread is the part of the tire that has been studied the most, so any additional information that comes out will probably be most applicable.</div>
<br />
To test a tire, lean lightly on the top of a tire standing straight up. If it bulges in easily, it should turn inside out easily.<br />
<br />
<b>3) Avoid tires that are retreads</b>, or that have any kind of significant damage to the tread or the sidewalls. If the rubber has worn in any part of the tread to the point that wires are sticking out, do NOT use the tire for growing vegetables. This is especially important for tires made in China. In the Nepal study, the brand tested from China had much higher lead concentrations. Why that would be is not clear. Most companies do not use lead as part of the tire.<br />
<br />
The importance of avoiding direct contact between soil and the wire structure of the tire is that the zinc used in tires is primarily found in these wires. Cadmium and chromium may also be concentrated in the wires.<br />
<br />
<b>4) If possible, choose tires that are less than 10 years old.</b> Tires in the States have the date they were manufactured printed on them...in very small print. Good luck with that part.<br />
<br />
<b>5) Wash the tire</b> before using it to get any accumulated hydrocarbons and carbon black out and off the treads. A couple of good rains should also do the job, once the tire is prepared and turned inside out so that the water flows through the tire and does not puddle.<br />
<br />
<b>6) Use a soil mix high in organic matter.</b> This is obviously best for the health of the plant. Also, the organic carbon will bind readily with any offensive metals. If you have the means to measure the pH, make sure it hovers between 6.0 and 6.5. This is best for most vegetables and it seems to avoid the extremes that could promote either the leaching of heavy metals or the activation of the hydrocarbons. High organic matter will tend to keep the pH within this range.<br />
<br />
<b>7) Include biochar in your soil mix.</b> We have seen that biochar helps increase vegetable production AND it also helps bind any offensive metals. Biochar also helps create a sponge texture in the soil mix which will keep your moisture supply more consistent and your roots happier and healthier. For more explanations on biochar, with links, you can check out my post (<a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2015/05/biochar-for-soil-mix.html" target="_blank">Biochar!</a>)<br />
<br />
<b>8) Use 4-6" of mulch around the plants. </b>It conserves moisture, reduces soil temperature and provides a slow and steady supply of nutrients. I mix our kitchen waste with sawdust from a local furniture maker and periodically apply this half to three-quarters rotted mix as a thick mulch to the tires. In my experience, this helps maintain and even increase the organic matter in the soil over time, resulting in healthier and more productive vegetables and flowers.<br />
<br />
<b>9) </b>If you have the resources,<b> paint the tires on the outside</b>. It adds to the aesthetics and is a fun part of making a tire garden with young people. It will also help protect the outer part of the tire from degradation from the sun. It will also reduce temperatures for the layer of soil just inside the tire wall.<br />
<br />
<b>10)</b> <b>Plant anything you want in the tires.</b> Ben Fisher notes in the ECHO article that root crops are most likely to pick up heavy metals, fruits such as tomatoes or peppers are the least likely and leaf-producing crops are intermediate. On the other hand, I found an article, linked below, where researchers found that Red amaranth absorbs heavy metals in higher concentrations than either carrots or cabbage.<br />
<br />
In terms of the zinc, here is the abstract of another study that looked at the sensitivity of four vegetables to zinc concentration: [<a href="https://www.scientific.net/AMR.1092-1093.613" target="_blank">Zinc Sensitivity</a>]. Let me know in the comments if you find out more.<br />
<br />
<b><i>Despite all of these factors, what I have found in the literature indicates that the exposure to heavy metals leaching out of the tire material is of very minimal concern, regardless of the type of plant you are growing in your tires.</i></b> I have found that for me and for many families, there are two types of plants that are very useful and which can do very well in tires:<br />
<br />
a) Many types of herbs do well. Garlic chives, hot peppers, green peppers, parsley, oregano, basil, rosemary all do very well in many kinds of container gardens. They do very <b>very</b> well in tires with well-cared for soil. If you are living where there is limited space, such as an urban setting, then tires may be too big. Cans and buckets also work well.<br />
<br />
In rural or suburban-type settings, tires are great because most homes have space where they can locate them so that the plants get enough sun AND where it is very convenient for the cooks to slip out of the kitchen and quickly cut fresh herbs whenever they need them.<br />
<br />
In Haiti, it is the women we work with who are most likely to keep the yard gardens going. When they talk about the advantages of yard gardens and the vegetable tires, they almost always mention the 5, 10 or 15 Haitan gourdes they save, every day, because they produce their own herbs.<br />
<br />
b) Several leafy greens do very well in tires. In terms of the tropics and with our experiences in Haiti specifically, these include amaranth, Malabar spinach and Okinawa spinach. Our experience with garlic chives is that they can be used in sufficient quantities that they might also be considered as a leafy green.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdsxS9niTdtIN_SSrO7BMO1KWKkD5sklqx8j2rVkKP9XtR_F6xK5Ijc6eGcWIrGmRGit93Fg3e6wHpauN3uaJwN95tMS6nD4yyi0M3joohIZJf5zwDo7VAMTlJfL70VBlbTKtUUOp-QJj/s1600/2017+08+28+Abundancia+del+Huerto+Comunitario.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdsxS9niTdtIN_SSrO7BMO1KWKkD5sklqx8j2rVkKP9XtR_F6xK5Ijc6eGcWIrGmRGit93Fg3e6wHpauN3uaJwN95tMS6nD4yyi0M3joohIZJf5zwDo7VAMTlJfL70VBlbTKtUUOp-QJj/s400/2017+08+28+Abundancia+del+Huerto+Comunitario.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Malabar spinach growing in vegetable tires. Batey 7, Dominican Republic. 2014.</td></tr>
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<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is a link to YouTube videos that demonstrate how to get started with a vegetable tire garden:</span> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL4dgMzl_HU&t=2s" target="_blank">How to start a tire garden--MPP, Haiti</a></div>
<br />
And NOW for the discussion addressing the question:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i>Does using old tires for producing vegetable represent the risk of contamination by heavy metals?</i></b></span><br />
<br />
In January 2016, ECHO published an article in their ECHO Development Notes titled "Tire Contaminants from a Container Gardening Perspective" which reviewed a number of articles, particularly one from the United Kingdom and one from Nepal. The one from the UK, "Environmental Health Implications of Heavy Metal Pollution from Car Tires" by J.M. Horner (1996) cannot be downloaded online but the abstract can be found at [<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/14130725_Environmental_Health_Implications_of_Heavy_Metal_Pollution_from_Car_Tires" target="_blank">Environmental Health Implications of Heavy Metal Pollution from Car Tires"</a>] and a request can be made for the full article.<br />
<br />
The article from Nepal, "Studies and Determination of Heavy Metals in Waste Tyres and Their Impacts on the Environment" by P.R. Shakya et al (2006) is downloadable from the following link [<a href="https://inis.iaea.org/search/searchsinglerecord.aspx?recordsFor=SingleRecord&RN=39003561" target="_blank">Nepal Tire Contaminants Study</a>]<br />
<br />
You can download the ECHO article directly from a Google search using the title, "Tire Contaminants from a Container Gardening Perspective." Look for the [PDF] initials right before the title. Other avenues for the article require you to be a member of the ECHO Community (which is free and an excellent thing to be).<br />
<br />
I have a whole lot of other downloaded articles related to contamination, some of which I have worked through somewhat thoroughly, others that I just read the abstract. There is a study from the 1990's commissioned by the Ontario government that tested the effects of tires soaking in fresh water. The researchers generally found very little toxicity to trout fingerlings [<a href="https://archive.org/details/aquatictoxicityo00ontauoft" target="_blank">Ontario study of Aquatic Environments</a>]. I found another study today that also had a focus on the aquatic effect of tires, but with a more negative result, "Rubber Tire Leachates in the Aquatic Environment" by Joyce. J. Evans in <b>Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology</b>. The following site will sell you the chapter for $29 and the whole book for $99. You can look at the first couple of pages for free: [<a href="http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4612-1958-3_3" target="_blank">Rubber Tire Leachates in the Aquatic Environment</a>]. The difference between the two seems to be that the Ontario study looked at the effect of whole tires on aquatic environments in which the whole tires are submersed. The second study looks at what happens when the rubber is ground up and water leaches through the concentrated, ground up tire and then flows into the local aquatic system.<br />
<br />
The two most recent studies that I have looked at a little more thoroughly both come from Sweden. "Metal Emissions from Brake Linings and Tires: Case Studies of Stockholm, Sweden 1995/1998 and 2005" by David S.T. Hjortenkrans (2007). You can download it at [<a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es070198o" target="_blank">Swedish Article</a>]. The title looks complicated but the basic information about concentrations is simple and clear and found on page 5227, 2nd paragraph under the tables. I just found the 2nd Swedish article today. The title is great, "When the Rubber Meets the Road: Ecotoxicological Hazard and Risk Assessment of Tire Wear Particles" by Anna Wik (2008) [<a href="https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/17762" target="_blank">When the Rubber Meets the Road</a>].<br />
<br />
If I told you I had read <b>all</b> of these articles, even just the ones I have downloaded and printed out, from front to back, I hope you would not believe me. If I told you that I have understood at least three-quarters of what I have read, you might believe me, but I would still be lying. I guess I've gotten maybe half of it all at best. This is NOT my area of expertise. Chemistry, and especially Biological Chemistry is fundamental to understanding soils and growing plants. I think I am solid enough when it comes to understanding pH, Cation Exchange Capacity and at least the basics of the whole Nitrogen:Carbon relationship. But tires are complex. They are not just natural rubber. In fact, the excerpt from the Rubber Tire Leachates study includes the observation that tires today are mostly made of synthetic substances rather than from natural rubber. The Swedish Doctoral Thesis ("When the Rubber Meets the Road"), lists the following materials for the <b>tire tread</b>: synthetic and natural rubbers (40-60%), Carbon black and silica (20-35%), Mineral oils (15-20%), Sulphur (1%), Zinc oxide (1.5%). There is something like 2% of three or four other types of substances as well.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Here's what I think I do understand.</span><br />
<br />
None of these articles are actually looking at the way we use tires. <br />
<br />
In the ECHO arcticle, Ben Fisher and other ECHO staff members had to
struggle with the same thing. They had to
extrapolate from the information provided, applying it to the vegetable
tire scenario as best they could, without knowing exactly how
everything fits within a very different context.<br />
<br />
The article from the UK used fragments of tire leached with solutions with a pH of 2.5. That study was simulating the conditions of a pile of waste tires exposed to acid rain.<br />
<br />
The Nepal study actually burned the tire samples and measured the heavy metals in the ash. That simulated very well what happens in Nepal where many families use cut up tires as a fuel source for warmth.<br />
<br />
"When the Rubber Meets the Road" looked at the bits that come off the tires and contaminate the environment. Like the Nepal study, they measured the<b> </b>total concentration of heavy metals in the <b>tire treads</b>. I like the fact that they look at the treads, but we are not rolling our tires on the ground to grow vegetables.<br />
<br />
The Ontario study was similar to using tires for vegetables in the sense that they looked at the impact from the whole, un-fragmented tire. It was also similar in the sense that they looked at the direct impact of potential leachates from water flowing over the intact tires on living beings--trout fingerlings instead of spinach, carrots, peppers and tomatoes. This study models our situation more closely than the others because it measures real time, direct impact on living things, while the others destroy the tires in ways that do not in any way represent how we use the tires.<br />
<br />
Perhaps most convincingly for me, the absolute amounts of heavy metals potentially in the tires is actually very very low.<br />
<br />
HEAVY METALS<br />
<br />
I understand that there are four heavy metals that are of concern which have been found in tires. They are lead, cadmium, chromium and zinc.<br />
<br />
The following examples are given in <b>grams</b>. A gram is smallish unit of mass, so obviously fractions of grams are even less. There are about 450 grams in one pound. There are about 28 g in one ounce. Medicines are almost always measure in milligrams, which is 1/1000th of a gram. PPM stands for "parts per million." What that means is that 1 ppm is 1/1,000,000 (one one-millionth) of a gram of heavy metal for each gram of tire material.<br />
<br />
LEAD<br />
<br />
In all of the studies, the lead that was found in the tires did not come from the manufacturing. It accumulates on the tires as the roll along the road, picking it up from other sources. Brake linings, for example, have a significant amount of lead.<br />
<br />
The UK study found concentrations of between 8.1 and 22.33 ppm (parts per million) lead in the liquid leached from the tire fragments.<br />
<br />
On average,<i> <b>a truck tire weighs</b></i> about 40 pounds, or <i><b>about 18 kg</b></i>. Using the higher concentration, this gives a total of 0.40 g potential lead that would be leached out of a whole tire.<br />
<br />
The Swedish study actually found less lead in their tires. They got a concentration of 1.1 ppm, the equivalent of a total of 0.0198 g in the whole pickup tire. Again, the Swedish study focused on the <b>tire tread </b>because they wanted to know what was coming off the tire and dispersing as a contaminant into the environment.<br />
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<b>Note: Because different studies examined different parts of the tire, I am assuming that the concentration of heavy metals remains constant for the whole tire in order to try and get a sense of the range of the heavy metals in a whole tire.<i><br /></i></b><br />
<br />
CADMIUM <br />
The UK study found up to 3 ppm of cadmium, the equivalent of 0.054 g per large pickup-sized tire. The Swedish study found 1.1 ppm of cadmium, the equivalent of 0.040 gram in the whole tire.<br />
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CHROMIUM <br />
The UK study did not look at chromium. In the Swedish study, they found 8.6 ppm in the tread, which extrapolates to 0.155 g per tire, if concentrations remain constant for the whole tire.<br />
<br />
(Ben Fisher in the ECHO article notes that at Redeemer University College they tested a tire sample and found 0.9 ppm cadmium, about the same as the Swedish study).<br />
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ZINC<br />
Zinc is a nutrient for both plants and animals, but in excessive concentrations, it can cause damage to both. If the soil is highly contaminated with zinc, it will probably kill the plants. On the other hand, if humans cease to be exposed to or to consume excessive Zinc, the symptoms will generally disappear, according to the information presented by Ben Fisher in the ECHO article.<br />
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In the UK study, they found as much as 6012 ppm, the equivalent of 108.2 g in an entire truck tire. The Swedish study found as much as 12,000 ppm, the equivalent of 206 g in the whole tire.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>DISCUSSION</b><br />
<br />
When we create vegetable tire gardens in the Yard Garden program, or in my home yard, for example, we are not shredding the tires, we are not completely submerging them in water and we are not exposing them to highly acidic conditions. We do cut off one sidewall, but the soil is not exposed in any way to that area that we slice. We also turn the tires inside out, so the soil is exposed to the <b>tire tread. </b>In this sense, the numbers from the Swedish study are the most applicable. On the other hand, once the tires are planted, the rubber in our tires is no longer "hitting the road" so we are not contaminating our soil with bits of tire that rub off from friction.<br />
<br />
One of the article notes that biological action will continue to degrade the tire. Our goal is to create soils that are extremely biologically active, so this type of degradation will continue to occur inside along the <b>tire tread</b>, <i><b>but</b></i> it will occur without the aid of constant saturation with water, abrasion by wind, exposure to ultraviolet rays, or mechanical friction. The<b> outside</b> of the tire will continue to be exposed to sun and wind and that <b>will</b> result in certain levels of degradation but should not effect the soil <b>inside</b> the tire for many years.<br />
<b> </b><br />
<br />
<b>So,</b> given that these articles suggest that the TOTAL amount of lead, cadmium and chromium is less than one gram in the whole tire each, AND that those fractions of grams are not generally exposed to being released from the rubber, it seems highly probable that <b>these heavy metals do not pose any serious health risk.</b><br />
<br />
Zinc is present in much higher amounts but it may not pose any serious risk either because 1) the zinc is also bound up into the tread and while it can leach out as the tire degrades, the whole amount present in the tire will never enter into the root zone all at once; it seems reasonable to assume that it will in fact always leach out at very slow rates and 2) if for some reason the zinc concentrations do build up to lethal levels, the zinc may kill the plants rather than render them poisonous for consumption.<br />
<br />
Here is one article that looks at absorption trends for some of the key heavy metals, including Zn: (<a href="https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/heavy-metals-contamination-in-vegetables-and-its-growing-soil-jreac-1000142.php?aid=54210" target="_blank">Heavy Metal Contamination in Vegetables</a>). The article compares heavy metal concentrations in the soils with heavy metal concentrations in the vegetables being grown in them. If I understand the math correctly, Zn has a coefficient of between 7.7 % (0.077) and 13.8% (0.138), depending on the vegetable. The researchers found that Red amaranth absorbed zinc (and also lead), at higher rates than other vegetables such as carrots, cabbage and tomatoes. I zeroed in on the red amaranth because amaranth is one of the crops Haitian families commonly grow when they use tires for production.<br />
<br />
The coefficient of 0.138 for zinc means that for every 100.0 mg of zinc per Kg of soil (a concentration of 100.0 part per million), the red amaranth tended to absorb 13.8 mg per Kg of green plant mass. So, if you ate one Kg of the red amaranth in one day, you would absorb 13.8 mg of zinc.<br />
<br />
Is that a dangerous amount? On the Mayo clinic site (<a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/zinc-supplement-oral-route-parenteral-route/description/drg-20070269" target="_blank">Mayo Clinic: Zinc Supplements</a>), zinc supplements of between 5 and 10 mg per day are sometimes recommended for children between the ages of 0 (just born) and 3 years of age. Dosages for adults are around 15 mg per day. Red amaranth is good stuff in terms of its Vitamin A content, the protein, the iron and some other nutrients. But you do not need to eat a Kg a day to benefit from all of those. A normal serving would be more on the order of 100 g of red amaranth leaves.<br />
<br />
By the way, the soils in the study mentioned above were heavily contaminated from a combination of re-using water from urban areas and from the use of agro-chemicals. The lead in these soils was very high. The soil that had the lowest concentration of lead had 21.29 mg of lead per Kg of soil (the equivalent of 21.29 parts per million). We have approximately 79 Kg of soil in our tires (65 cm radius, 20 cm depth, so approximately 0.066 m3) so we would have an estimated 1.694 g of lead if our soils were as contaminated as the least contaminated soil from the above study.<br />
<br />
As noted above, my estimate for the total lead in a whole tire comes to 0.4 g of lead. Therefore there is not enough lead in any vehicle tire to come even remotely close to the concentrations of lead in the agricultural soils in the study, even if all of the lead from the tire suddenly leached into the soil.<br />
<br />
<b>The cocktail of other chemicals that make up a tire are still a potential concern.</b> One major problem with figuring out how much of a concern is the fact that tire ingredients are viewed as proprietary information the tire manufacturers do not make them readily available, or available at all.<br />
<br />
A brief e-mail conversation that I had with the Dr. Edward Berkalaar at Redeemer University College suggested that some hydrocarbons in tires can be taken up by plant roots. On the other hand, a note in the ECHO article cited information demonstrating that potentially toxic hydrocarbons would be a high risk for contamination only at a high pH. Ben Fisher does not mention the cut-off pH that the article thought the hydrocarbons would become more active, but "high" in terms of pH would normally start at 8.0 and above.<br />
<br />
The Ontario study that looked at the effects of submerged tires on fish fingerlings found essentially that the old tires soaking in their water did not
effect trout fingerlings in any measurable way. However the researchers did find that
new tires soaked in water could cause significant mortality. They were eventually able to narrow the element causing fish mortality as one of the
hydrocarbons--one or more of the "mineral oils" mentioned above.<b><br /></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>SUMMARY</b><br />
Tires on the whole pose serious environmental risks. Disposal of them as trash where hundreds and even thousands are dumped in one relatively small area clearly is likely to cause a serious environmental disaster. Grinding the tires up and then exposing them to sun and rain understandably creates conditions for significant heavy metal contamination as the small particles degrade even more, releasing toxic substances into the rain water that flows through them.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b><i>Based on the information currently available, using a tire intact for growing vegetables is not a risky way to use old tires.</i></b></h3>
<br />
PLEASE SHARE ANY IDEAS OR OBSERVATIONS. I have been breaking my brain over this contamination issue for a long time. Conversations with Martin Price at ECHO and others kept me fully in the game of creating tire gardens, not to mention the beautiful production I've seen again and again in other yards and in our own. But I feel like I have finally got things really clear. I think I have read Ben Fisher's EDN article at least a dozen times, but finally today, with all of the other information I've digested, I really feel like I have a handle on it all.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Tires are by far the best option for container gardening. They are cheap, durable and can be transported long distances on the backs of pack animals.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is a link to Youtube videos that demonstrate how to get started with a vegetable tire garden: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL4dgMzl_HU&t=2s" target="_blank">How to start a tire garden--MPP, Haiti</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sack gardens are also an incredible idea, but that is another blog.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5xV2i657KzwRwLJM1H-ngkNSrJzk1pkPNiuZp97JRyp96CSTu1uPrq87RWyzRtUCT2r13xyh3LcdThkVcVDB0fjxxJFRsvuJKhpvTmRkUTBglKmyXef1xNuCQfq69OjofWvS3kEMiCxtV/s1600/IMG_0525.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5xV2i657KzwRwLJM1H-ngkNSrJzk1pkPNiuZp97JRyp96CSTu1uPrq87RWyzRtUCT2r13xyh3LcdThkVcVDB0fjxxJFRsvuJKhpvTmRkUTBglKmyXef1xNuCQfq69OjofWvS3kEMiCxtV/s640/IMG_0525.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jenny, Keila, Annika and my tire garden in Barahona. We had green peppers, tomatoes, Okinawa spinach, basil, garlic chives and eggplants, not to mention the flowers. May 2015.</td></tr>
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-39868297054472056992017-03-21T16:29:00.003-07:002017-03-21T16:52:16.874-07:00Hurricane Matthew--How you can help the farmers of Haiti<span style="font-size: large;">"Hurricane Matthew destroyed their crops in the middle
of the growing season. And they will need the most help <b>NOW</b>, as the new growing season begins."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><b><span style="font-size: small;">October 4th through the 6th, Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti head on.</span></b> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It was the worst natural-human caused disaster that Haiti has suffered since the earthquake of January 12th, 2010.</span></span> Hurricane Matthew's greatest impact was in Haiti's southwestern peninsula. Grand Anse, including the capital of Jeremie, was devastated. The report on the hurricane's impact on Haiti from Wikipedia [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Matthew_in_Haiti#cite_note-75" target="_blank">Effects of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti </a>] suggests that virtually every tree in Grand Anse was knocked down. I avoided looking at many photos, but I did read a few accounts from folks on the ground who confirmed that that land looked like it had been bombed. Cindy Corell, one our colleagues in World Mission shared some of what she saw in her blog from November 2016 [<a href="https://thelongwayhomeblog.org/2016/11/" target="_blank">Cindy Corell: November 2016</a>]. All crops were lost and at least half of the farm animals. The departments of Sur and Nippe were also exceptionally hard hit, as was the northwestern peninsula. The first map below demarcates the wind levels suffered. The second gives actual rainfall. Links in the captions lead to the original sources.<br />
<br />
From twenty years now of experience with tropical storms and hurricanes, I know that rainfall causes much more widespread damage than the wind in mountainous terrain such as Haiti and the Dominican Republic, although with winds of 145 mph in the southwest, the winds that smacked southwester Haiti certainly were the initial source of the utter devastation. After Hurricane Matthew had passed, however, rains continued to fall for three weeks throughout the country; they fell most heavily in the south and the northeast. In part due to the continued heavy rains, a new round of cholera has added to the misery [<a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/12/cholera-haiti-disease-hurricane-matthew/" target="_blank">A Photographer's Journey Into Haiti’s Cholera Crisis</a>].<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBQ3-BWDBUgD3rjElm69Bc-IWFDaPUFSKoVTGOVZrTSsRrNRAJ8ZImOjwTiWBbuYm9zTXkFlytQWK7X4HRZhCxzPlwe49z38z5Ji8PEfYpJ9RYHSCB1JeswNfG7CATf8nCQapuqFh5jXw_/s1600/Hurricane+Matthew-Haiti+Reference+Map+edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="451" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBQ3-BWDBUgD3rjElm69Bc-IWFDaPUFSKoVTGOVZrTSsRrNRAJ8ZImOjwTiWBbuYm9zTXkFlytQWK7X4HRZhCxzPlwe49z38z5Ji8PEfYpJ9RYHSCB1JeswNfG7CATf8nCQapuqFh5jXw_/s640/Hurricane+Matthew-Haiti+Reference+Map+edited.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://reliefweb.int/map/haiti/haiti-hurricane-matthew-general-overview-and-track-6-oct-2016" target="_blank">Overview of track and wind forces</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSH-9mGZN3S9SbFSJd7GBWaK0haeMwIgF2ppkl6YzfnKBbNwSn0C4zvAQUycfXCtcSYjx5-pyrnoMRK6AlpHbQlicrUCxy0PXZAF92CTUTvlFItKWVgksQkvbMw4vZ0tQ8uU3v-qYMkkCS/s1600/matthew_imerg_28sep-10oct2016_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSH-9mGZN3S9SbFSJd7GBWaK0haeMwIgF2ppkl6YzfnKBbNwSn0C4zvAQUycfXCtcSYjx5-pyrnoMRK6AlpHbQlicrUCxy0PXZAF92CTUTvlFItKWVgksQkvbMw4vZ0tQ8uU3v-qYMkkCS/s640/matthew_imerg_28sep-10oct2016_0.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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This image shows the amount of rainfall dropped by
Hurricane Matthew over the life and track of the storm. IMERG real time
data covering the period from Sept. 28 through Oct. 10, 2016 show
rainfall from Hurricane Matthew before and after its interaction with a
frontal boundary. Matthew caused extreme rainfall in North Carolina
resulting in over 20 inches (508 mm) of rain. Credits: NASA/JAXA, Hal Pierce</div>
<div class="credits">
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/matthew-atlantic-ocean" target="_blank">Rainfall from Matthew-NASA</a> </div>
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<br />
The Haiti Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is working to link people throughout the denomination engaged with Haiti. You can check out the Facebook page:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=haiti%20mission%20network%20%E2%80%94%20presbyterian%20church%20(usa)&filters_rp_author=friends(me)" target="_blank">Haiti Mission Network-Presbyterian Church (USA)</a><br />
<br />
If you want to check out the posts most pertinent to the situation with Hurricane Matthew, you will need to select (upper left hand corner) "2016", rather than "Recent." October and November have the most posts.<br />
<br />
This past March 12th, 13th and 14th, we had a major Mission Network Get Together in Asheville, North Carolina. Buzz Durham from outside of Asheville coordinated a host of volunteers to make it happen. His congregation, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church was one of the main hosts. Our colleague Jo Ella Holman worked with Buzz, Cindy Corell, and me to think through some of the logistics. Cindy and I, together with Cindy's Haitian colleague from FONDAMA, <b>Fabienn Jean</b> participated in the event, which included between 35 and 40 people representing more than a dozen mission engagements. Our focus was how can we be effective and respectful partners of the work that Haitians are already doing.<br />
<br />
Cindy Corell [<a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/missionconnections/cindy-corell/" target="_blank">Mission Connections</a>] has some excellent posts on Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cindy.corell?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf" target="_blank">Cindy Corell: Facebook</a> <br />
<br />
I had the pleasure of translating for <b>
Fabienne Jean</b> as she described to the participants how FONDAMA is responding to the crisis in the south as well as other areas hit by the subsequent flooding.<br />
<br />
I visited FONDAMA's office in December during a quick family trip and saw the initial stockpile of vegetable <span class="highlightNode">seeds</span> that they had purchased to send out to the farmer organizations working in departments of <span class="highlightNode">Haiti</span> most affected by Matthew. <span class="text_exposed_show"> Most of these <span class="highlightNode">seeds</span>
were sent to Grand Anse, Nippe, Sur and L'Ouest, as well as the
Nordest. They had cabbage, lettuce, tropical spinach (amaranth), okra
and black-eyed peas, all crops that can be ready to eat and to sell in
less than three months. The spinach can be ready for the table in 30
days or less from the planting date.</span><br />
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Farmers in <span class="highlightNode">Haiti</span>
are durable people. Knock their house down, they will find a way to put
it back up. But Hurricane Matthew destroyed their crops in the middle
of the growing season. And they will need the most help <b>NOW</b>, as the new growing season begins. As many of you know, FONDAMA
is a <span class="highlightNode">network</span> of grassroots farmer organizations led by people who understand their constituency--because they are farmers themselves.</div>
<div class="text_exposed_show">
<br />
Their focus in December were vegetable seeds--fast growing food. Now, Fabienne explained, they are working with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to provide seeds for staple crops--beans, corn, pigeon pea. Along with the seeds they will train trainers in agroecological techniques that can help farmers recuperate their land, even as they grow the food that will sustain their families. The trainers, Fabienne explained, come from throughout the remote rural areas of the mountainous Southwest. They live near the people with whom they will be working. In each community they will also establish seed banks, where farmers will repay their seeds, plus interest. The goal is for these seed banks to serve as buffers, to create resilience, so that farmers have greater security when the time to plant comes.<br />
<br />
Fabienne explained that the work also include providing simple systems for treating water, the main source of cholera infections.<br />
<br />
If they can find the funds, the leaders of FONDAMA hope to include a second stage to this program, helping families recover their farm animals, especially the goats and pigs.<br />
<br />
Thank you to all of you who have already donated through PDA and other funding sites. Thank you also for your prayers and your concern. If you or your congregation feel called to donate now, PDA is still a great way to go. <br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Funds can be sent to PDA, (<a href="https://pma.pcusa.org/donate/make-a-gift/gift-info/DR000193/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://pma.pcusa.org/donate/make-a-gift/gift-info/DR000193/</a>) which is working hand in hand with <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100008156376050" href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008156376050">Fondama <span class="highlightNode">Haiti</span></a> to help provide <span class="highlightNode">seeds</span> and tools to the mountain farmers of <span class="highlightNode">Haiti</span>.</span></span></b></div>
<br />
It is unfortunate that my first Haiti blog after so long is about a disaster. But it was probably the burning need to do something that brought me back here again, finally.<br />
<br />
In my next blog, I want to share stories from the communities where Herve Delisma and I worked from April 2012 through April 2016 with yard gardens. MPP (Farmer Movement of Papaye) was able to send Herve and a small team to each of the three farmer organizations to visit with people who were also hit by the hurricane. The winds, even though much less, tore off a lot of roofs and destroyed homes throughout the mountains of Léogâne, Verettes and Bayonnais. Crops were lost as were the farm animals. Many of the yard gardens, however, survived. <br />
<br />
But that is the next story! <br />
<br />
P.S. <b>The mission of FONDAMA and all of the Joining Hands organizations throughout the world is to address root causes of hunger</b>. In Haiti, in addition to responding compassionately to the situation in the south, <i>FONDAMA is gearing up to confront large corporations and the Haitian government itself as these entities move to grab land from small holder farmers for the creations of industrial parks, mega-plantations of bananas and other export crops, or for mining gold and other minerals.</i>Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-11642866159256142132015-09-21T14:36:00.002-07:002015-09-21T14:36:57.642-07:00Moringa oleifera--an NPR reportHere is an NPR report online about moringa.<br />
<br />
"One doesn't need to do very much to prove that if you are hungry or
nutritionally replete, then eating moringa as a source of vegetable
protein in a varied diet is a good thing to do. We're beyond the need to prove that."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.jhsph.edu/faculty/directory/profile/5178/jed-fahey">Jed Fahey</a>, a nutritional biochemist<strong> </strong>at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has been studying the plant for 20 years.<br />
<br />
Thank you, Gordon French, for the link.<br />
<br />
NPR: Moringa<br />
<a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/21/441496768/the-marketing-of-moringa-is-this-the-new-kale?sc=ipad&f=1001" target="_blank">NPR: Moringa</a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fvACcLPFUw_G1x0Cl0cjncn7V_91Kn1IbUdAdUIyMaBzpV6ocUSiyU7MStp77oyO0qIUUbVh_nv-NDYl3mfbGNDRbHxAHxDriOlFXGNHTQI66pWOXQO2jyWiqR09z2Kqzl4ElVd9xCqu/s1600/IMG_2630.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fvACcLPFUw_G1x0Cl0cjncn7V_91Kn1IbUdAdUIyMaBzpV6ocUSiyU7MStp77oyO0qIUUbVh_nv-NDYl3mfbGNDRbHxAHxDriOlFXGNHTQI66pWOXQO2jyWiqR09z2Kqzl4ElVd9xCqu/s640/IMG_2630.JPG" width="480" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tesilia Desilus, with moringa leaf powder she produced at her home in Salas, Dofine (Verettes)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-88915911505828392602015-09-08T10:45:00.000-07:002015-09-08T10:48:09.358-07:00Making Vegetable Tires: Some Links<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Here is a link to a great blog on how to choose a tire that can be turned, and how to turn it.</span><br />
<br />
Making a Tire Planter: <br />
<a href="http://www.felderrushing.net/makingtireplanter.htm" target="_blank">Making a Tire Planter</a><br />
<br />
The best advice is at the end:<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"Practice arching one eyebrow and staring haughtily back at the ignorant critics."</span></span></i><br />
<br />
<br />
Also, here is the link again to the series of videos created by UUSC, Unitarian Universalist Social Committee:<br />
<br />
How to Build Tire Gardens<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL4dgMzl_HU" target="_blank">How to Build Tire Gardens</a><br />
<br />
I think I shared this link already, but just in case.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-65318572232052152882015-05-15T16:05:00.000-07:002015-05-15T16:13:25.707-07:00Follow up to Ferrocement cisterns in the mountains of VerettesA quick follow up to the original blog. I spoke with Andre yesterday, Thursday May 14th. Ricot Joachim and Exode returned to Dofine this week to finish the project. They put the top on the cistern at MRPST's school/center, then went up into the mountains, and according to Andre, had already finished the second cistern and were headed toward the third. They are working with the same MRSPT masons, hopefully letting them do more and more of the work.<br />
<br />
Andre had worked with Herve to get him up the mountain so that he can take photos and continue documenting the work.<br />
<br />
Three or four days after the original workshop ended, Herve, Lucien and I sat together and wrote down all of the steps, and all of the measurements, for building a cistern. Hopefully I can get that document put together with the photos to create a manual that MPP can use in their training workshops.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-11986999821886204062015-05-15T15:58:00.000-07:002015-05-16T04:37:39.176-07:00Ferrocement workshop in the mountains of Verettes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">Starting the workshop. We held the theoretical sessions outside the center, because primary school was in session. Participants are: civil engineer, Junior Lapaix (facing, green and grey polo shirt) in Dofine, a
beautiful, fertile zone in the mountains of Verettes (Artibonite
Department). Junior is sharing technical information about cement and
cement construction with a group of Haitian masons from the farmer
organization, MRPST. The masons are, from left to right, Fanord Toicius,
Renaud Segné, Samuel Antoine, and Clermius Pierre-Louis. Also
participating were (continuing from left to right): Exode Pierre (red & white striped shirt), a
mason from the farmer organization MPP (Peasant Movement of Papaye);
Mark Hare, PCUSA Mission Co-worker; and Lucien Joseph, a member of MPP
and part of the team helping carry out the activities of the MPP-FONDAMA
Yard Garden Program. The
workshop was held at MRPST's primary school and training center in Dofine from Tuesday, April 21st through Friday, April 24th. <b>Coordinates for the center are: N 19.00151º, W
72.48059º</b>. Photo by Herve Delisma.<i> Note the Toyota Landcruiser enclosed truck in the background. It was purchased for the MPP-FONDMA Yard Garden Project with funds from the Presbyterian Hunger Program.</i></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On Monday, April 20th, we arrived at MRPST's center, at the end of a long, rough road, well after dark. <span style="font-size: small;">We were an interesting crew.</span><b> </b></span>I am from Ohio, but I have been a Mission Worker with PC(USA) for over fifteen years, working with rural families in Nicaragua and, for the last eleven years, in Haiti, with the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP, for its initials in Haitian Creole).</div>
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<b>Junior Lapaix</b>, born and raised in Haiti's Central Plateau, is a civil engineer who was in his last year of the University in 2010 when the earthquake brought the University crashing down. Since the earthquake he has been a member of MPP's technical team, helping execute the organizations' water projects that are part of the organization's program to make safe water available to rural communities.</div>
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<b>Carel Sainfinis</b>, our driver, was originally from Port au Prince. He and his wife lost their two-story house in the earthquake of 2010 and nearly all of their other material goods. That led them as refugees to MPP in the Central Plateau. Carel eventually become a driver for the organization and last year the family settled in a home of their own, in one of MPP's five eco-villages, built with funds from Presbyterian Disaster Agency (<a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/global/takes-village/" target="_blank">MPP Ecovillages</a>). Carel frequently drives the Toyota Landcruiser for me, as part of my work coordinating the MPP-FONDAMA Yard Garden program. The work of the Yard Garden takes Herve, myself and our ad hoc team members all over the mountains of Verettes, Gonaïves and Léogâne.</div>
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<b>Herve Delisma</b> is originally from Cité Soleil, in Port au Prince, but as a teenager, his mother sent him to live with his sister in the city of Hinche to get him away from the Cité Soleil gangs. Now he lives in an even more rural setting on the outside of Hinche near the community of Papaye. Herve and his wife, Kekèt, and their two children do a good job of producing food in their yard--when it rains.Herve also works as my assistant in the PDA-funded Yard Garden Program.</div>
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<b>Lucien Joseph</b> is a young man who left high school due to a vision problem that can't be corrected, with lenses. He was apprenticed to a furniture maker, but now works part time with his brothers in Port (au Prince). Lucien always returns home during the rainy season to plant and care for his gardens, and to work with Herve and me when we need him. With a beautiful plantation of moringa at his parents' home outside of Papye, Lucien is an effective promoter of yard garden systems.</div>
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<b>Ricot Joachim</b> is the head of MPP's security team, but he is also a farmer and a mason. He learned to build ferrocement cisterns (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrocement" target="_blank">Ferrocement</a>) when MPP selected him to participate in a series of workshops led by MPP agronomists (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agronomy" target="_blank">Agronomist</a>) and masons; these instructors received their training in a permaculture (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture" target="_blank">Permaculture</a>) program in Brazil sponsored by European donor organizations.</div>
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Like Ricot, <b>Exode Pierre</b> is also a farmer and a mason, and a member of MPP. He has been Ricot's assistant in a series of ferrous-cement cistern projects throughout the Central Plateau. When I asked them how many cisterns they've done together, Ricot said "Huh. I can't even begin to count."</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">MRPST, the organization that welcomed us late in the evening on April 20th, was founded in 1998</span>. MRPST (Peasants Without Land Revindicating for their Rights--Mouvman Revandikasyon Peyizan San Tè) began with half a dozen friends meeting clandestinely at the home of George Ulus, next door to the school where we held the workshop. The goal of the movement was to take back land that had been, in one way or another, stolen from them, their parents and their grandparents by a man named Marc Etienne. Through a local farmer who served as his agent, this landowner made a lot of money from the land he appropriated by renting it back to the original owners. Cindy Corell, the companionship facilitator in Haiti for Joining Hands (<a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/missionconnections/cindy-corell/" target="_blank">Cindy Corell</a>) is collecting stories of MRPST's struggles which have, all in all, been successful thus far. </div>
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Since 2012, Herve, Lucien and I have been working with the leaders of MRPST, helping them establish their own yard garden program. After a series of ups and downs, this year the organization's program has really begun to take off.</div>
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Now the leaders of MRPST had also been blessed to receive funds from the Hunger Program of the Presbytery of the James in eastern Virginia and some addition funds from the Water for Life Campaign, based in Portland, Oregon. In total, the organization received about $8,000 to build three cisterns, each with a capacity for about 3,500 gallons of rainwater. The first was to be built at the organization's center as part of a workshop that would introduce the four MRPST masons in both the theoretical concepts and their practical application. Junior was responsible for the theoretical and Ricot, with the help of his assistant, Exode was responsible for the practical. Herve, Lucien and I were along to learn as much as we could, and to document. We were also able to direct funds from the Yard Garden program to help pay for the food for the workshop.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After three days of intense work, starting around 7:00 AM each day and finishing between 4:00 and 5:00 PM, the workshop came to a successful conclusion.</span> The icing on the cake was the arrival of Valdir França and Jo Ella Holman from PC(USA) World Mission. Valdir França is the area coordinator for Latin America and Jo Ella Holman is the regional liaison for the Caribbean. Cind Corell, the companionship facilitator for Joining Hands, had coordinated their visit as part of sharing with them an on-the-ground look at her work coordinating the Joining Hands ministry with FONDAMA. FONDAMA is a network of Haitian grassroots organizations working to renew Haiti's environment and establish food sovereignty. MRPST is a member of FONDAMA through their relationship with MPP.</div>
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Countless personal stories that brought a dozen and a half or so individuals together, supported by the joint efforts of half a dozen organizations, projects and agencies (MPP, MPP's Techncial Team, MRPST, FONDAMA PDA, PHP, World Missions, Presbytery of the James). If any of us had tried to intentionally bring all of these pieces together to make this workshop happen, we would have been called fools.</div>
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We would have been fools. </div>
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"For the <b>foolishness</b> <b>of</b> <b>God</b> is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."</div>
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"<span class="text 1Cor-2-4" id="en-NIV-28399">My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power,</span><span class="text 1Cor-2-5" id="en-NIV-28400"><sup class="versenum"> </sup>so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.</span>"</div>
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I Corinthians 1: 25, 2: 4-5 (NIV)</div>
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<b><i>Amen!</i></b></div>
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<b>Now for the pictures.</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Photos by Herve Delisma and Mark Hare, unless otherwise indicated)</span></div>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Most of the tools you need for the cistern. From left to right: Shovel and pick and an iron bar for digging the base of the cistern. The bar is for cracking rocks or hard pan. Two sheets of aluminum with handles for holding the mortar onto the frame and a cement trowel. A wood "float," used as a palette to hold the mortar you are adding to the structure, and to work the final layer that seals the cistern. Two sieves. The one above to get a sand that is slightly coarser--for the structure. The one below for finer sand that is used to seal the cistern. A sledge to help with the rocks when we were digging the base. Pliers for working with the binding wire. Bolt cutters (behind) to cut the metal framework. A hacksaw for whatever the bolt cutters can't take out. </span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Ricot Joachim, in the read shirt, starting to pick the soil for the base. After choosing a site close to the school/center, Ricot measured a diameter of 3.5 m and put a stake in the middle. Then he tied a string to the center stake, measure 1.75 m along the string, then tied another stake which he then dragged all the way around the center stake to mark the base. Ricot was an excellent teacher for the practical component of the workshop. He would work with the team until we understood what we were doing, then he would step back and watch, to see if we were really doing it correctly.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Renaud, from LaCroix, picking out the mark that Ricot had made, all around the center stake.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Laying a base of gravel in the base. We dug out something like 5 cm at the shallow end. Bondyebon is to the left, Exode to the right.</span></td><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Ricot and Samuel (green shirt) with the pipe that will feed the water from the cistern into a faucet on the lower end. Fanord is to the left.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">If I couldn't find something else to do, I made myself useful by dipping water from the canal that runs by the school and filtering it through a t-shirt into one of the two plastic barrels. Carel the driver helped me.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Pouring the base. The concrete base was 2 parts cement, 4 parts coarse sand and 6 parts gravel. You can see the 2" pipe that leads from the lower end of the base underneath and out.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Preparing the mesh for the base. Ricot cut two pieces, approximately 5 meters long. The mesh is made of 1/4" pieces of iron reinforcement bar welded together into a framework of 15 X 15 cm squares.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Then Ricot overlapped the two pieces and tied them together with binding wire (#16)</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Then Ricot repeated approximately the same process he used to line out the hole. He measured a diameter of 3.5 m in every direction, then put a stake in the ground in the center. With a string that measured 1.75 cm, he walked around the center stake, but instead of using another stake, he borrowed a black Sharpie marker from me to mark where the mesh would be cut. As Exode continued to mark, Ricot began cutting with the bolt cutters.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">When they were finished with the mesh, they laid it on top of the concrete base. The base was already mostly dry, so it was not embedded into the concrete. You can see they lbits of rebar, about 5 cm long, sticking up.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">The next piece was for the sides. Ricot had us roll out the iron rebar mesh, 11.2 m long (the rolls of mesh are about 2 m wide).</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">On top of this, they lay one width of good quality chicken wire, also 11.2 m long. You can see that the width of the chicken wire was about 45 cm less wide than the rebar mesh.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Then they wove the two materials together</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">With almost everyone helping, they stood the framework up and walked it down and around the base, forming a nearly perfect round cage.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Then they tied the framework to the rebar mesh base. In four our five places, they also put in stakes and tied the stakes to the framework with binding wire, to help assure the framework would keep its shape. We finished all of this around 1 PM on Wednesday, April 22nd.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Early in the morning, Thursday April 23rd. Mixing the mortar for the first layer of plaster. The next morning, early, we all got up and began the process of
plastering on the first layer of mortar. The mix for the mortar was 2
parts cement and 4 parts of the coarser sand. For more strength, the
mortar needs to be only as wet as it has to be.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">The team also invented a double ladder that went up and over the framework. This is because for every person plastering on the outside, someone has to be on the inside holding up an aluminum sheet with handles.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption">Lucien Joseph on the inside, holding up the aluminum sheet while Herve plasters. This is not a perfect process. A lot of times, the cement would fall instead of sticking to the framework. Ricot taught us to use our mistakes. The mortar falling around the edges, he explained, help in sealing the cistern's base.</td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Around and around, up and up. A look at what the plaster looks like from the inside.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">After the cistern had its first layer, and the mortar had stiffened somewhat, Ricot showed us how to go around and fill in the holes. After the holes were filled in, we went and ate lunch.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Around 3:00 PM, we came back and kept going, adding two or three more layers of plaster all around on the outside, and one really thick layer of plaster on the inside.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Renaud, finishing up with the final layers on the outside.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Friday morning, April 24th, Ricot had us mix up a batch of mortar using the finest sand. This mix was to seal the cistern, and they did a layer on the inside and the outside. The mix was 1 1/4 parts cement and 2 parts fine sand. when this layer was starting to dry, they used the wooden floats to finish the sealing process. You can see Clermius with a piece of plastic bottle. He would throw a little water, then pass the float. Inside the cistern they did not use the wooden float; instead, they used a hard sponge.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Lucien and me, working on the gutters. The organization purchased 4" drainage pipe, which we cut on one side, then slid the pieces onto the tin roof. Herve and Lucien fixed the pipe using the #16 binding wire, wrapping it around the pipe and through any convenient spaces under the tin roofing. They are more confident on a home made wooden ladder than I am.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j80AMyjUFJw/VVNu1l7Kv6I/AAAAAAAACRs/qyTAvWzRXew/s1600/liftingcement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j80AMyjUFJw/VVNu1l7Kv6I/AAAAAAAACRs/qyTAvWzRXew/s640/liftingcement.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Local kids helping with the construction. Mario is on top of the double ladder, Anel is handing the mortar up. There are three or four masons inside to receive the mortar, which was for sealing the base of the cistern. On the roof you can see the PVC gutter, with the elbow just over the cistern. Herve, Lucien and I had to leave the final piece of the pipe for the folks from MRPST to put in, because the cistern was still too soft for us to lean a ladder from the inside.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Left to right: Samuel, Clermius, Renaud and Exode, sealing off the base with a thick coat of the mortar made with cement and fine sand (1 1/4 parts cement to 2 parts fine sand).</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">The almost finished cistern with the outlet for the water, ready to be connected to whatever type of faucet the organization wants. The top of the cistern has to wait until the cement has cured, at least 5 days, according to Ricot. The cistern also needs to be kept moist, sprayed with water at least twice a day. Or, Ricot explained, if it rains, you can start filling it with rainwater, as long as it has had 5 hours to harden. The team was finished by 10 AM Friday. Ricot and Exode were packed, bathed and dressed to head back to Papaye by 11 AM.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3-55aIgTN5Y/VVNvyKTu7sI/AAAAAAAACR8/xcYkCHCJt78/s1600/marktalkstorico.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3-55aIgTN5Y/VVNvyKTu7sI/AAAAAAAACR8/xcYkCHCJt78/s640/marktalkstorico.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Valdir França (black shirt, far left) and Jo Ella Holman (beside him) listening to Mark Hare (blue shirt) translate for Ricot and the other masons. Valdir and Jo Ella arrived Thursday afternoon and listened to the masons as they explained what and why they were learning to build this type of cistern. Then later in the evening, they listened to the members of MRPST's executive committee tell the story about how MRPST came to be. Photo by Cindy Corell.</span></td></tr>
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<tr align="justify"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">Mark Hare and Herve Delisma resting from working on the gutter, and frustrating Cindy Corell's efforts to get a decent picture. Photo by Cindy Corell (even if she won't admit it).</span></td></tr>
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-3589310904699987362015-05-13T12:02:00.001-07:002015-05-13T12:02:33.131-07:00Biochar for Soil Mix<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buzz Durham (from Grace Covenant PC in Asheville, NC) in Léogâne, providing some ideas to workshop participants about using charcoal dust to create a biochar mix for vegetable tires. Buzz recommended starting with adding about 1 part charcoal powder to 6 parts "regular" soil mix. Our normal soil mix is 3 parts soil, 2 parts dried crushed manure (cow, horse and burro) and 1 part sand. So now we recommend 3:2:1:1, soil:manure:sand:charcoal powder. The exact proportion of soil and sand will depend on how heavy the soil is (how much clay it has) and also how fine the sand is. For example, I have a sand that is so fine, I just use it as soil, mixing it with the dried animal manure. The next step is to fill the vegetable tires with the mix, wet them thoroughly, cover them with some type of mulch and leave them for a week to ten days. This give the charcoal time to convert into biochar--biologically active charcoal. Photo by Mark Hare</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Biochar</b> is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal" title="Charcoal">charcoal</a> used as a <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_amendment" title="Soil amendment">soil amendment</a>. Like any charcoal, biochar is created by burning </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass" title="Biomass">biomass</a></span> of some type in the absence of oxygen (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis" title="Pyrolysis">pyrolysis</a>). Biochar is under investigation as an approach to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration" title="Carbon sequestration">carbon sequestration</a>.</span> (From Wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar" target="_blank">Wikepedia: Biochar</a>).<br />
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As a soil amendment, we have started using charcoal powder in the soil mix we make for our vegetable tires. Because charcoal particles are extremely porous they can absorb water and nutrients. The tiny holes in each particle also create good places for beneficial microbes to live and develop.<br />
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All charcoal is not equal in terms of benefits, it turns out ("Gardening with Biochar"<a href="http://biochar.pbworks.com/w/page/9748043/FrontPage" target="_blank"> Gardening with Biochar</a>). Some types of charcoal provide more nutrients ("bio-oil condensates") for the little beasties. More beasties (micro-organisms) means more life in the soil. Healthy soil means healthy plants. In addition to making nutrients in the soil more available to plants, a healthy soil micro-biology also provides plants a better defense from diseases caused by viruses and other pathogens.<br />
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In the mini-workshop that Buzz Durham led in Léogâne, September 2014, we used charcoal powder that had accumulated in the area within the local marketplace where charcoal merchants sell their product. The powder comes from the bits of charcoal that fall out of the sacks and then get crushed into powder by the weight of the sacks of charcoal sitting on it and by people constantly walking on it. The coordinator for farmer organization ODEPOL, Luxène Sommervil, collected two sacks of the powder there for free, and I brought one of them home to use in my family's vegetable tires here in Barahona (Dominican Republic).<br />
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If you don't have a local marketplace that sells charcoal, there are ways you can make charcoal in your backyard. Here is a youtube.com demonstration of a simple way to do this, developed by Amy Smith from MIT: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqI63IEg3MM" target="_blank">Amy Smith: Agricultural Charcoal</a>. Commercial charcoal briquettes are not good because the material used to bind the charcoal may not be good for the soil.<br />
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One of the most important characteristics of the charcoal added as a soil amendment is that it is durable. We can add it once to our soil mixes and it will keep providing benefits for a very long time. The charcoal residues in the terra preta soils of the Amazonian rain forest are hundreds, possibly thousands of years old (<a href="http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehmann/research/terra%20preta/terrapretamain.html" target="_blank">Terra preta soils in the Amazon</a>).<br />
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In terms of carbon sequestration, what this means is that by using a biochar system, we are capturing the carbon in the carbon dioxide (CO2) and storing it in ways that there is a net decrease in CO2 in the atmosphere.<br />
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<b>Turning charcoal into biochar is something like learning to put the petroleum back in the ground, and then growing food with it.</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buzz detailing the benefits of using charcoal dust in soil mix. Photo by Mark Hare.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An experiment with biochar. The pot to the left has no biochar, the one in the middle has about 10% and the one to the right has about 20%. Photo from PowerPoint presentation by Larry Sthreshley, PC(USA) mission co-worker in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Used by permission.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tire with tomatoes at our family's home in Barahona. The tire is filled with a mix of sandy soil, manure, compost and charcoal powder from Léogâne. Photo by Jenny Bent.</td></tr>
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-23486900714245588012015-05-01T11:26:00.000-07:002015-05-02T07:46:10.389-07:00What does El Niño feel like?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A vegetable tire with wilted green pepper plants<br />
in Herve Delisma's yard. Photo by Herve Delisma.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I came home to my family in Barahona (Dominican Republic)Wednesday, April 29th, after about eleven days working in Haiti.</span> The last four days of those, I was working in Papaye-Hinche. When I am in Papaye I stay with Herve Delisma and his family. I lived in Papaye full-time from 2004 through 2010 and into 2011, working with MPP's "The Road to Life Yard and Moringa project." In 2012 I was given the opportunity by MPP and the Presbyterian Church (USA) to share yard garden ideas with other farmer organizations, including one in Léogâne (ODEPOL), one in Verettes (MRPST) and one in Gonaïves (MPB). Herve, usually known as "Tiga," became my assistant in that endeavor and in January 2014 he also became my host for the times when I am back in Papaye.<br />
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Tiga, his wife Keket and their two children, Kedou (a springy eight-year old boy) and Tália (a shyly mischievous 3 year-old), plus a long term guest, Gary (a reserved boy around 6 years-old) live in a community called Ti Do, in a three-room and large porch cement block house about twenty-five minutes from a source of potable water. They live a seven-minute walk from the nearest stream that normally provides the families around water for bathing, and in Tiga and Keket's case, water for their vegetable tires.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiga and his family. Behind, left to right: Kedou, Keket,<br />
and Gary. In Front: young neighbor, Tiga and Talia.<br />
Photo by Herve Delisma </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<b>I have a particular interest in Tiga and Keket's vegetable tires for two reasons.</b> The first is that as my assistant in promoting the concept of yard gardens, I need Tiga to speak from his own experiences--from the realities that he and his family deal with as they apply the ideas they have learned to their own yard. I very much want Tiga and Keket to feel successful and encouraged by what they do. The second aspect of my interest comes from the fact that when I am at their homes, I try to provide some value to my presence by hauling the water for the tires. So in December and January, for example, every day that I was at their home, I took two of the family's jugs down to the stream ("Ravin Papay"), filled them with about 2 1/2 gallons of water each, and lugged them back to the house to water the tires. Those five gallons, with occasionally an additional 2 1/2, I was able to calculate, kept eleven vegetable tires, planted to cabbage, parsley and garlic chives, well watered. It took me twenty-five minutes to lug the water, counting the walking and the filling. It was a good feeling--providing useful labor and being part of the family's production system.<br />
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<b>In March when I arrived, the cabbage was harvested and the tires were planted to Haitian spinach (amaranth) and green peppers, as well as the bit of parsley and the garlic chives.</b> The problem was, the Papaye stream was gone. Dried up. First time in at least ten years, Keket told me, that the Papaye stream had dried up like that. She and Tiga had another source of water, though; there was a mud hole some where behind the house that provided enough water to keep the vegetables in the tires alive and producing.<br />
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It turns out the stream has a hidden life, though. My friend Lucien, from the same neighborhood,
demonstrated to me that water still flowed under the surface.
Lucien had dug out a hole in the stream bed close to his house that made that water accessible; he took me down there most mornings to collect enough water for each of us to bathe. Lucien and I each used almost a whole bucket to bathe--about five gallons each.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hole Lucien dug out to access the Papay stream<br />
that has gone underground. Photo by Herve Delisma.</td></tr>
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When I got to Tiga's home Friday, April 24th, though, I found the tires full of wilted vegetables. The amaranth had given the family a good crop, but Tiga and Keket had to abandon the plants before they could provide the seeds for the next planting. The mud hole had finished drying up, and even though Tiga had dug his own hole into the sub-surface Papaye stream, there were too many families depending on that water; Tiga and Keket just don't have time to wait an hour or so to get water for tires when they don't even have all the water they need for bathing. The holes in the stream have had to get deeper as well--about twice as deep as when I was there in March.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiga and Keket's wilted amaranth. The got one good crop from it before the lack of water forced them to let the plants go. Photo by Herve Delisma.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: small;">The source of potable water, for drinking and cooking, is also drying up.</span></b> The source for that piped in water is set of springs about four miles up the mountain, outside of a set of communities globally known as the Bassin Zim zone. The series of reservoirs and pipes that brings the water down the mountains has had its good and bad moments ever since I moved to Papaye in 2004, but with recent improvements--at least one additional spring capped and added as a source to the system--most of us assumed the problem had been resolved.<br />
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None of us counted on the "El Niño" period that started this past October. "El Niño" is the warm end of a cycle of climate variability caused by changes in surface temperatures of the Pacific Ocean. The cool end of the cycle is called "La Niña." Although the focus of the changes in temperature are in the tropical belt of the Pacific Ocean, centered around the equator, the effects of the cycle are global. "El Niño," for example, may bring some hope to drought-stricken California. Often the rainfall increases dramatically in southern California during an "El Niño" cycle.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>In Central America and the Caribbean, "El Niño" brings drought.</b></span><br />
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The last "El Niño" phase before the current one started in July 2009 and lasted through April 2010. In Haiti's case, it ended just in time for farmers to successfully plant extra corn and bean, bananas and yucca to help feed families flooding into the countryside from Port au Prince after the January 12th, 2010 earthquake. With two cycles of crops each year, one ending in July and the other in November, in 2010 most Haitian farmers were able to get two decent harvests and then again in 2011. 2011 had particularly good rains related to two short cycles of "La Niña." Check out this site: <a href="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml" target="_blank">El Niño and La Niña cycles</a> (El Niño and La Niña cycles) to see the data. Red numbers indicate periods that were hot and dry for Haiti (and Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic), blue indicates periods when the weather was cooler and wetter for the Caribbean and Central America.<br />
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In Haiti, the first crop cycle of 2014 was a "neutral" cycle with temperatures hovering around the "average." But many areas in Haiti still suffered drought and the farmers did not get good crops. The second crop cycle of the year, ending in November, ran hard into the beginning of the current "El Niño" phase. End of the year crops were poor throughout almost the whole country. Even more significantly, with less rainfall for the whole year, the underground water reserves are being drawn down with minimal recharge--i.e. still no heavy rains. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"></span><b>In Papaye, Haiti, and specifically in the small community of "Ti Do," El Niño feels hot and dusty and dry.</b> It feels exhausting. Every morning I would go for a run and I would meet women and children, and sometime men, walking with gallons or buckets of water on their heads. "Where did you get the water?" I would ask. "A long way away," they would respond. Tiga and I were less exhausted. We had access to a truck that we used every evening to go up to MPP's training center, where we filled three or four 5-gallon containers and took them home. When the truck and I are not there, Tiga has a motorcycle he uses to carry two buckets at a time. Kedou and Tiga's adopted boy, Gary, use their time, too, at the scooped out water holes, filling their gallons with Papaye water to take home.<br />
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<b>"El Niño" also feels complicated.</b><br />
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For four days, while I was at Tiga and Keket's home, I felt blessed to be part of people's lives, to be sharing the limitations they experience every day, adapting to those limitations with at least some measure of the grace that they demonstrate continuously. For example, I have always thought that 5 gallons was my personal limit for bathing--ten gallons a day with a bath in the AM and one in the PM. But living in a family of six, with exactly fifteen gallons of water between us for bathing, drinking and cooking, I was able to drop my limit to 3 gallons a day. And usually, after each bath, I had three or four cups worth left over to feed to the parsley or the garlic chives.<br />
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Yesterday Jenny, Keila and Annika and went to the beach. We live very near the ocean. The water was warm, much warmer than I remember it from other years. That could be, though, from looking too much at charts of ocean surface temperatures: <a href="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/sstanim.shtml" target="_blank">Sea surface temperatures</a>. In any case, it was a pleasant afternoon at the beach and we had a lot of fun. When we got home, I took Keila and Annika's sandals, and my water shoes to our laundry sink out back. I turned on a huge stream of water to wash off the sand from our footwear. That made me pause just a bit. Then I got in the shower and I turned on the water, and another huge stream of water poured out that I used to bathe and to wash out my bathing suit.<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> When I was done, I realized that in less than fifteen minutes I had used enough water to bathe all of us at Tiga's house, twice.</span><br />
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<b>The weird feeling that gives me, even right now as I write, is why I am sharing this blog.</b><br />
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But what exactly would I like to accomplish by sharing it? I would not like people who read this to feel pity for the folks living in Ti Do--I am sure of that. Rather, I would like this story to give people a sense of admiration for that community's toughness, and for their ability to share common resources with minimal friction, even when the resources are very limited.<br />
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<b>Probably what I will most pray for is that somehow this contrast between those who have and those who don't could change your and my perspective on what may be our common responsibility for what is happening in Ti Do.</b><br />
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The most severe El Niño cycles recorded occurred in the last thirty years of the 20th century, in 72-73, again in 82-83 and then the very worst in 97-98. One article I worked my way through (<a href="http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/07/el-ninos-and-la-ninas-and-global-warming/" target="_blank">http://judithcurry.com/2014/05/07/el-ninos-and-la-ninas-and-global-warming/</a>) demonstrated that the El Niño phase of the cycle correspond consistently with the biggest jumps in the global temperatures. Historically, global temperatures that increase during El Niño phases are reversed during the La Niña phase. But not in the last fifty years. What went up, in terms of temperature, did not come back down. The Earth seems to be using the Niño/Niña cycle to process the increased energy that is being captured as we increase the CO2 in our atmosphere. That is not good news for Tiga and his vegetable tires.<br />
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<b>So when you hear about Global Climate Change, think about what it means for all of us</b>.<br />
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And please open your "all" to include the families in Ti Do.<br />
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In Christ,<br />
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Mark<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A resident of the Ti Do/Saintville communities scraping out water from Lucien's water hole. Photo by Herve Delisma.</td></tr>
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Check out this article from the online "Nature" for more information about the relationship between "El Niño" and Global Climate Change: <a href="http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n2/full/nclimate2100.html" target="_blank">El Niño and Global Climate Change</a><br />
<br />Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-3965844481846451512015-02-22T16:23:00.000-08:002015-02-22T16:23:10.157-08:00A Micro-catchment Workshop in Léogâne--September 2014<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Mark (left) and Luccène, working Sunday AM on digging the 2 meter by 2 meter hole for the first micro-catchment, a preclude to the workshop starting on Monday, September 22nd.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Saturday, September 20th, Buzz Durham, Herve Delisma, Lucien Joseph and <span style="font-size: small;">I headed down the highway from Papaye, through Port au Prince, to Léogâne, to lead a workshop there on in-ground cisterns, a technique for capturing rainwater (micro-catchments) that I had learned from members of COSECHA, a non-profit rural development organization located in southern Honduras. COSECHA does not appear to have a web-site, but here are a couple of links to articles about their work:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">COSECHA-microcatchments </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/desertification/farmers-developing-technology-the-researchers-role" target="_blank">COSECHA-micro catchments</a> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">COSECHA-what we have learned in five years</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/magazines/global/using-every-drop-of-water/what-we-have-learned" target="_blank">COSECHA-What we have learned in five years</a> </span></span> <br />
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The workshop was hosted by the Organization for Development in Léogâne (ODEPOL for its name in Haitian Creole), one of our partners in the FONDAMA Yard Garden Program since April 2012.<br />
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Here are pictures and a rough idea of the process: <br />
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Sunday afternoon, as we were frantically getting the first hole ready, we got help from neighbors, both tools and labor.</div>
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Monday AM, the workshop begins. Buzz Durham (green shirt) from Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC, told me later that he could follow the general ideas, without speaking a word of Creole, because of my hand gestures and the drawings. There are many kinds of intelligence; Buzz has the kind that makes it easy to integrate him into pretty much anything we are doing.<br />
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The finished first hole, with a healthy slope on each side. The top measurements were slightly more than 2 m and the bottom was about 1.6, 1.7 width and length. The total depth was just at a meter.<br />
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Lucien Joseph helping me peg in the 3/8" rebar at the top of the hole. We had to go down from the top because one side of the hole was up against cultivated land and the first 6 inches were loose. The soil for this kind of cistern needs to firm and undisturbed as much as possible. If we had thought about this clearly when we marked out the hole on Sunday, we could have moved it over a foot or so away from the cultivated soil. But then as it turns out, we would have hit a mine of rocks and more rocks.<br />
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Lucien (right) guiding workshop participants in weaving the mesh that will give the internal strength to the thin layer of cement we will lay over it. Lucien became my assistant because he built his own cistern in his family's yard several years ago, in the community of Saintville, as part of a Hunger Program Project.<br />
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Weaving the mesh. Luccène, the coordinator for ODEPOL is on the left, red hat. Ullia Augustave, red shirt, is watching and waiting to get her hand in on the work. Ullia started with the Yard Garden Program in 2012, one of the very first participants. She is smart, hard working and faithful. She is rarely absent from any of the workshops or meetings.<br />
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Because we had 12 or 13 participants, we committed to digging a second hole and doing a second cistern, to give everyone a chance to participate in every step of the work.<br />
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After finishing the mesh from top to to bottom of the hole, we put in a second 3/8" re-bar at the bottom and tied off the mesh, nice and tight. We used pieces of 1/4" re-bar, about 40 cm long, doubled over, to create what Buzz called "earth anchors." Then we plastered the sides. We typically use 3 parts sand to 1 part cement. If I remember correctly, Buzz would have used more cement and less water. The difficulty is getting the mix so that you can plaster quickly and efficiently so that you finish all four sides well before the first section gets dry.<br />
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You can see that we have cut out all around on top and laid some gravel down. You cut out the extra soil on top to lay a border and you do it carefully so that you do not disturb the 3/8" re-bar on top. The gravel was because we had it as what was left after sieving the sand.<br />
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The ideal is to use river sand, well washed, without sediment. What we were able to get by Tuesday AM was white sand, from a nearby quarry. I have been led to understand that the white sand corrodes the metal embedded in the mortar more quickly and reduces the life of the structure.<br />
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In any case, my original instructors came from the countryside where river sand was very accessible.<br />
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After the first plastering, comes the "finishing" a rich mix with more cement than sand, and the sand sieved very fine. At the bottom left you can see the border, made from rocks we scavenged from all around ODEPOl's meeting site. Families doing the cisterns tend to want the border to be big, so that the cistern will hold more water. But with this type of cistern, the border needs to be as simple as possible so that we are not putting any extra strain on the side walls. The border is simply to protect the walls, not to augment them.<br />
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The depth came to just over half a meter (0.6 m) in part because we
lost some depth from the top, but also because we poured a good thick
base--at least 5 cm (2 inches) thick of cement, sand and gravel. After
pouring this, we capped the base off with the same rich cement mix we used to finish
the sides. This mix seals the cement so that water is not lost through the base or the walls.<br />
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Merandieu Ceus (left) from Verettes, works with Mireille Domingue to weave the mesh for the second cistern. Buzz works in the far corner. With this cistern we had so many rocks we had to do crazy things to create the inner structure. That turned into a good exercise for the group on problem-solving.<br />
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The reality is that I have never been part of building one of these cisterns where we had an easy time of it. There is always something off with the sand or the hole, or something else.<br />
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Plastering the second cistern. The participants who did not get a chance to do much the first time get a feel for it in the second. It was a bit insane, but we did it.<br />
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The criteria for one of these cisterns to work, including the type of terrain, the tools and the material.s<br />
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Step by step, how to do the cisterns.<br />
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The "Rules and the Principles" of micro-catchment systems.<br />
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The actual costs for the materials for the first cistern. We ended up using 2 pieces of 20' lengths of 3/8" re-bar; 5 pieces of 20' lengths of 1/4" re-bar; about 14 pounds of binding wire (fil aligati) #18; half a sheet of "siloteks", a pretty cheap material usually used for paneling ceilings (to mix up the mortar in the hole, to keep dirt out); 6 wheelbarrows of sand; and 4 sacks of cement. Total cost HTG 3,625--around $US 80.</div>
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The actual capacity of the cistern, when we did the final measurements, was 1.9 m3 or 1,900 liters (about 500 gallons).</div>
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We compared the cost to buying plastic barrels, which hold 60 gallons. Our cistern holds the equivalent of around 8 plastic barrels, each of which sells for HTG 1,500 in Port au Prince. Eight barrels would cost HTG 12,000. So our cistern is considerably cheaper than buying the equivalent in plastic barrels.</div>
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If we were to pay for a skilled mason to build the same cistern, and pay for the hole to be dug, we would probably lose most, if not all of the difference. The serious advantage of this type of water catchment system is the fact that pretty much anyone can learn to do it, and then pass it on.</div>
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That said, with Buzz's experience in pretty much everything, we were able to offer quite a few points on how to improve the success of this type of cistern. One simple but tedious point we discovered from Buzz is that to acquire maximum strength, the cement should be maintained humid for at least a week, preferably two. That means splashing water on the sides four or five times a day or more.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you would like more information, please contact us. You can (try to) leave a comment on this page, or you can contact me through my Mission Connections e-mail address. Click on Mark and Jenny-Mission Connections: <a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/missionconnections/hare-mark/" target="_blank">Mark and Jenny-Mission Connections</a></span></span></div>
Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-39916815964167570392014-12-08T06:39:00.002-08:002014-12-08T11:09:56.438-08:00Friends from First Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama Celebrating Yard Gardens in Bayonnais<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Becca Montgomery, an elder from First Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, singing "Amazing Grace" for the farmers in Bayonnais gathered for an end-of-the-year celebration of their yard garden program.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">“She gave from her
heart. Now we need to give back from our hearts.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">That was the response of
Viljean Louis to a group of about 60 Haitian farmers after Becca Montgomery, an
elder from First Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa, Ala., had provided them a
beautiful rendition of “Amazing Grace.”</span></span></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Together with Kristie
Taylor and Liz Hubbard, Becca had spent three intense days with the folks from
Bayonnais. The three tested their own limits, and some of their assumptions about
what mission work really is. The culmination of the group’s visit was a joyful
gathering organized by Viljean and other leaders on Wednesday, November 12</span><span style="font-size: large;"><sup><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">th,</span></sup><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> to celebrate the organization’s yearlong work with the
MPP-FONDAMA Yard Garden Program</span></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">I have been working
with the yard garden program of the Peasant Movement of Papaye (MPP) since
being sent to serve with MPP by PC(USA) World Missions in 2004. In 2012, I was
offered the opportunity to extend what we had learned in MPP to other groups of
organized farmers. The Bayonnais folk represent the fifth and latest
organization where we have begun training and providing follow up through home
visits. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">With funding from
Presbyterian Disaster Agency (PDA), MPP created this extended yard garden
program in conjunction with FONDAMA (Hand in Hand Haiti Foundation), a network
of Haitian grassroots organizations working together to address the root causes
of hunger — mostly through campaigns of advocacy. FONDAMA is affiliated with
the Presbyterian Hunger Program initiative, “Joining Hands.” Cindy Corell, from
Staunton, Va., is the PCUSA mission co-worker serving with FONDAMA and she led
the group that came to Bayonnais.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Most development
projects involve some type of material input. That has become a fundamental
expectation throughout most, if not all of Haiti. When a project begins, the
first question “beneficiaries” normally ask is “What are we going to get from
this?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">But leaders of Mouvman
Peyizan Bayonnais (MPB) and the new participants accepted a different paradigm.
Instead of them asking us what the project would give them, we were the ones
who challenged them. We asked “Are you committed to taking everything we share
with you and pass it on? When you do ask something from us, are you willing to
limit what you ask to the things that you can then pass on to others?” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">They said, “Yes” and
these past 12 or 13 months have shown to me that they really meant it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When we provided ideas
for finding their own seeds, rather than providing seeds, they said “thanks.”
When we brought them red worms, instead of wheelbarrows, they said “thanks.”
When we provided prizes for the participants who had transformed their yards
the most, Notaire Philippe said, “We should be giving you the prize.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When we asked them to
define their vision for the program the other week, this is what the Bayonnais
crew came up with: <b><i>“We, the participants in the Yard Garden Program, want
to produce an abundance of food in order to be healthy, so that we are not
dependent on other people and so that we can live our lives where we were born.
We also want to share our knowledge so that everyone in our communities can be
part of the Yard Garden Program. In this way, there will be more people who
trust the [Bayonnais] organization and they will support us when we need to
make changes at every level of our society.” </i></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When the Yard Garden
team asked the Bayonnais participants how we could support them in their
vision, they did not ask us for wheelbarrows, for seeds or even for watering
cans. They asked us to simply keep working with them, helping to train new
participants. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">When Becca finished her
beautiful song and Viljean challenged all of the Haitians gathered to respond,
from their hearts, they did. They sang Becca’s song back to her, in Haitian
Creole, and in four-part harmony. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">It was electrifying
beyond understanding. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">World Missions, the
mission-sending body of the Presbyterian Church (USA) talks about what they
call “the community of mission practice” and that defines as well as anything
who we were that Wednesday. The visitors from the First Presbyterian Church of
Tuscaloosa, the Haitian grassroots organization, Cindy Corell and me, present
together, defining and celebrating our common vision and our common pursuit of
God’s Kingdom come, here on Earth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Jenny and I want let
you know how grateful we are to all of you who have been such active members of
our particular community of mission practice, some of you for more than ten
years. It is your prayers and your financial support that have allowed us to be
part of such incredible work, serving together with the partners of PC(USA). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Please continue to be a
part of our mission through reading our letters and our blogs, through your
prayers and through financial support. And if any of you think you would like
to be part of something like what the Tuscaloosa folk experienced, let us know!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In addition to the
prayers that we covet for ourselves and especially for our daughters, Keila and
Annika, we ask you to pray for my fellow team members working with the
MPP-FONDAMA Yard Garden program in Haiti — for their health and for the
well-being of their families. Even more than myself, they are frequently gone
from their homes for extended periods, and they take real risks traveling on
bad roads and walking up into remote mountains.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">And in all things, give
thanks with us for God’s abundant blessings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">In Christ,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: large;">Mark, Jenny, Keila and
Annika</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNoC7WUR5Fad5FYMxXZ1NtinoUz-X0madecZhD51iNkvbqv4csflXMXxFnCwEMekxOQPwO9t4MpfvdZ7tesxZ0HPyZnbdLzv6_otT3DQnyitV9iJz9z4nwkzfXCGI6zU60wLYuXjIcKQVQ/s1600/02+Crew+at+Silvenie.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNoC7WUR5Fad5FYMxXZ1NtinoUz-X0madecZhD51iNkvbqv4csflXMXxFnCwEMekxOQPwO9t4MpfvdZ7tesxZ0HPyZnbdLzv6_otT3DQnyitV9iJz9z4nwkzfXCGI6zU60wLYuXjIcKQVQ/s1600/02+Crew+at+Silvenie.JPG" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Doing home visits with participants in the Bayonnais yard garden program. Left to right, Mark Hare (project coordinator), Kristie Taylor (member of 1st Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa), Lucien Joseph (member of MPP and team member in the MPP-FONDAMA yard garden program), Silvenie Desantus and her mother, Rosalie Sineas (members of Bayonnais farmer organization and participants in yard garden program) and Liz Hubbard (member of 1st PC).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 8.0pt;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Notaire Philippe, member of Bayonnais farmer organization, in his yard with a patch of moringa (<i>Moringa oleifera</i>). In addition to cooking with the tender shoots, Notaire has begun drying and pulverizing the mature leaves to make a nutritional supplement which his wife is using in their food. The family also shared some of the leaf powder who could not afford the vitamins prescribed by their doctor.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Aladie Colin, Notaire's wife with their seven-month old son. Aladie has been able to produce abundant milk without losing weight herself and their son got top marks from nurses in the clinic where she took him for vaccination at six months. Notaire and his wife credit this to the addition of moringa in their diet.</span></div>
<br />Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-7444416340164648012014-10-08T17:48:00.000-07:002014-10-08T18:11:42.510-07:00Hydraulic Ram Pump Workshop at Sant Lakay, MPP (Farmer Movement of Papaye)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>All in all, I guess it was worth spending the five hours in
customs.</i></span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Dieu-la Joseph, agronomist in charge of MPP's Road to Life and Moringa yard garden project, creates a sipper valve as part of the Hydraulic Ram Pump Workshop offered by MPP at their national training center in Papaye, Hinche (Haiti). The workshop was led by Buzz Durham from Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Funds for the project came from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). All photos by Mark Hare and Herve Delisma. Used by permission.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Buzz Durham came back to Haiti in September as part of Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church's ongoing commitment to explore with MPP (Farmer Movement of Papaye) the potential of hydraulic ram pumps as tools for rural families to produce more and live better. This time, Buzz came to give a workshop.</span><br />
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This was Buzz's third trip and, as always, it was an adventure. It started this year as it did last year--in the Dominican Republic. Thursday, September 11th, the day after Jenny, Keila, Annika and I picked Buzz up at the Santo Domingo International airport, Buzz went by himself (with a friend of ours driving him) to an irrigation supply store in the capital to check out the supplies of polyethylene irrigation pipe. He came back from the store with a 300 foot roll of approximately 2" pipe (4 Atm) and a roll of 600 feet of approximately 3/4" pipe (also 4 Atm), together with two essential fittings. Both rolls, together with the fittings, cost a total of around $US 230. That is, on average, less than $0.30 a foot. This was articularly impressive since Buzz speaks only very basic Spanish.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Here are three previous posts related to the work with hydraulic ram pumps in Haiti:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">2012 Installing the hydraulic ram pump in Léodiagüe </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2013/04/hydraulic-ram-pump-leodiague-hinche-4th.html" target="_blank">2012 Installing hydraulic ram pump in Léodiagüe</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">2013 Looking at problems with the pump in Léodiagüe</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2013/04/hydraulic-ram-pump-leodiague-hinche-4th.html" target="_blank">2013 Looking at problems with hydraulic ram pump in Leodiagüe, Hinche</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">2013 Checking out possibilities for the pump in Verettes and Léogâne (Pump and Biochar workshops) </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2013/06/buzz-durham-hydraulic-ram-pumps-and.html" target="_blank">2013 Hydraulic Ram Pump work</a></span><br />
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Also:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Clemson plan for hydraulic ram pump</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/equip/ram.htm" target="_blank">Clemson plan for hydraulic ram pump</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">With that accomplished, Jenny, Keila, Annika and I headed home to Barahona Thursday PM, with Buzz and our pipe.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Saturday morning, Buzz and I loaded up the project Landcruiser with our luggage and the pipe. Buzz's luggage consisted of a few clothes, an inflatable mat and lots of spare plumbing parts for all of the contingencies that he had been able to imagine.</span> We got to the border with Haiti, Jimaní on the DR side, Malpasse on the Haitian, and got through the Dominican migration procedures pretty quickly. And then we hit Haitian customs.<br />
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We started the Haitian customs procedures for the pipe around 12:30 PM. We left customs with the necessary paperwork by 5:20 PM. We were not the last ones out the door. I have no words.<br />
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On our way to Croix des Bouquets, about two hours west from the border, we had those papers checked twice by Haitian authorities. It may be my imagination, but at least one of those times, I thought the officer was disappointed that the paperwork was so clear. (I know for sure that on the Dominican side some of the officers on the border are disappointed. The time before last, as I was moving on out from the border, one officer said "Your paperwork is always perfect. Can't you give us something to keep us happy?")<br />
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After turning north at Croix des Bouquets, there were no more checks, and we arrived in Hinche with no glitches. Just very late.<br />
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On Sunday, after resting in the morning, we parked the vehicle at Basen Zim (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwHpvnyTEwU" target="_blank">Bassin Zim</a>) and walked up to Leodiagüe to talk with the brothers Wilner and Wilus about re-installing the pump on Palma "river," the stream that flows near their respective homes. All of the parts for the pump we installed in 2012 were still available, but the PVC pipe that brought the water to the pump had gotten beat up too much by the rainy season flash floods. And Wilner, who had been keeping the pump functional, now works in another part of the country--down the road from Malpasse, in fact. So part of our discussion was whether Wilus, who would participate in the workshop, was willing to take full responsibility for maintaining the system. The big advantage with the new installation, we hoped, was that we would be using the polyethylene flexible pipe, that can flow with the movement of the water, rather than the original rigid PVC pipe, which had to absorb the force of the water every time the stream flooded. Wilus was willing to commit to that responsibility. Wilner said that he and Wilus had already talked about it.<br />
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On Monday, Buzz and Carel, an MPP driver and I headed to Port au Prince. In Mirebalais, we picked up two MPP civil engineers--Junior and Markendy. Together we went to Eko Depot (<a href="http://ht.geoview.info/eko_depot,1250350198n" target="_blank">Eko Depot-Web site</a>) and picked out all of the parts for a 1" pump. Eko Depot had all of the parts. Below is an image of the purchase.<br />
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Then we ate lunch and checked out another well-stocked hardware store, MSC Plus (<a href="https://plus.google.com/100970835875282576403/about?hl=fr" target="_blank">Google Maps-MSC Plus</a>). A random check of prices indicated that the parts were actually cheaper at MSC Plus.<br />
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Finally, we picked up some #18 wire for building cisterns in Léogâne, and we drove home.<br />
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Tuesday morning, Buzz and Junior added some valves to the large open fish cistern that was to serve as our water source for the pump, so that the water could either go to the pump, or drain out into the banana field across the way. I worked with Herve ("Tiga") to put together a packet of materials for the participants.<br />
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The valves that Buzz and Junior added to the system to make it useable for the hydraulic ram pump demonstration. Photo by Buzz Durham. Used by permission.<br />
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By 4 PM Tuesday, most of the participants had arrived. They were an interesting mix. We had two folks from the farmer organization ODEPOL in Léogâne (Serge and Esterne), three participants from two farmer organizations in Verettes (Mario, Givenson and Mathurin) and two from the farmer organization MPB in Bayonnais, Gonaïves (Merladette and Lechenn). We had a missionary working with agriculture in Petit Gôave (Clint Bower) and his family, a mission worker for Christian Veterinary Misison (Rhoda Beutler), two farmers from MPP (Herve and Wilus), an agronomist from MPP (Dieu-la Joseph) and the two civil engineers (Junior and Markendy). That would be a total of eight different organizations, counting Buzz and myself from the Presbyterian Church (USA) and four or five different professions, depending on your definitions. <br />
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With the day just about finished, we gave an introduction to the workshop by way of a role play. We divided folks up and asked them to imagine they were visiting a farmer in a remote community who was worried about declining production (which he mostly blames on lack of rain), problems making the water safe for his family--one child in particular was sick almost continuously. "Ti Pyè" also was worried about bad roads. His wife had almost died of cholera the year before because he had to take her down the mountain on a horse.<br />
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The challenge to the three groups we formed was to come up with some long term recommendations for MPP as an organization as well as some medium term ideas or recommendations for the local animators (or community development workers/advocates). Finally, although we said it wasn't the real reason for their visit, we asked them to imagine what ideas or hope they might provide for the family before they left--something that could make some difference in their lives right now, however small that difference might be.<br />
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We were not so concerned with the answers that the groups came up with. Rather, our hope was to stimulate their imaginations and put them in the right frame of mind for the workshop. The pumps can be a resource in certain kinds of circumstances, but what is most important about working with farmers is learning to look at all the resources a family or a community may have, and help people find ways they can use everything they have more effectively to produce more and live better.<br />
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Buzz going through the parts of the pump before turning participants loose.<br />
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Wednesday AM we began in full measure working with the pumps. Buzz began by going through all of the parts. Then each team of five participants got parts to put together their own pump. They were free to put it together and take it apart as many times as necessary until each person was comfortable with the ways the parts go together. The team that put together the 1" pump eventually added Teflon tape and screwed everything down completely. About 11 AM we all headed down to the zone of big fish cisterns and started putting the parts together--the drive line, the pump and the feed line. The feed line was 1/2" irrigation tubing that Buzz had gotten as a donation from a greenhouse supplies store in the Asheville area. Every single other part or piece was purchased in Haiti, off the shelf.<br />
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Buzz helping Mathurin from Belé, Verettes assemble a pump.<br />
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Mario, from Dofine, Verettes, helping Lechenn assemble the pump.<br />
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All put together. From top right to bottom left: impulse valve, sipper valve, one-way valve, nipple, T junction. The air chamber (3' long 4" pipe, sealed) will screw into the top of this T-junction. The end (bottom left) will lead to the feed line, taking the water to where you want it to go.<br />
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Installing the pump. Clint is tightening the junctions while Lechenn stabilizes the air chamber. The green cistern in the back is the fish tank that provides the water for the pump. The feedline will be the red coiled pipe to the bottom right. Buzz got this as a donation from a nursery supply business in Asheville. Every single other piece was purchased in Haiti, off the shelf.<br />
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Everything except the feed line. No standpipe yet.<br />
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With everything put together, Buzz started the pump. And it worked! Wilus climbed up a tall Leucaena tree and the water went up and up! But then the pump would stop. Pump, pump, pump, stop. Start it again: pump, pump, pump, stop. By then it was time for lunch and we agreed to start again at 3:00 PM to brainstorm what was going on.<br />
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At 3 we did come together and Buzz asked us to think together to make a list observing everything they had seen. One thing we saw was that the pump DID work, but it would stop. We also saw that there was a pipe in the fish tank that kept the fish from going down the pipe, which was mostly good, but it also seemed like it might be restricting the water flow. And on. Everyone participated, everyone had something they observed. Tiga observed that we had talked about putting in a standpipe, which keeps the return shock wave from blocking water flow.<br />
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With all of the ideas down on paper, we split up into the three teams and each team was given two or three things they would do. One idea that came out was to try a larger pump--1 1/4", rather than 1". I worked with that team. Another team took the pipe protecting the fish and cut more holes in it, to let the water flow through more freely. The third team went to work installing a standpipe.<br />
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By the time my team got down with the larger dimensions pump, the standpipe team had saved the day! Just putting more holes in the vertical pipe in the cistern that keeps the fish out had not worked, although it kept the pump pumping longer before it stopped. The standpipe, on the other hand, solved the problem entirely. The pump pumped and pumped and pumped.<br />
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Now everyone wanted to see how high the pump could pump. They asked Wilus to climb up MPP's radio transmitter tower. And he agreed, the nut. Eyeballing the height, from down by the pump up to the highest point the water would still come out the workshop participants estimated at least 80 feet elevation. The drop from the cistern to the pump was between 7 or 8 feet, so 80 feet of height is plausible. In general, the standard hydraulic ram pump is supposed to be able to push water ten times higher than the drop of the water that propels it.<br />
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Wilus with the end of the feed line, around 80 feet above the pump. This pump is a resource for MPP at their training center, to provide them with a demonstration point for folks interested in the technology.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thursday, September 11th</span> the workshop moved out into the field, up to Léodiagüe and Palma River. Buzz went with the 1 1/4" pump freshly put together on Wednesday and his team removed the entire original pump, reinstalled the drive line and repaired the standpipe. My team rolled out 300 feet of flexible black pipe (after removing with a great deal of caution, a full-grown mesquite tree that had been cut and left right in the stream bed). We also re-built the sand sack dam. Together we all installed the feed line (the 3/4" polyethylene pipe) and worked most of the air out of the supply line pipe. Then, we started the pump. Buzz and I felt much trepidation as we did, because we had worked very very hard the first time, with Wilner, Wilus and their cousin, Julien, to get a tiny trickle of water out of that first system. We were happily astounded, to say the least, when on the first try, the new system started pumping water, a small but steady stream, rather than a trickle. Ecstatic would be a good description. Dumbfounded might also work.<br />
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Buzz supervising while Rhoda connects the supply line to the standpipe. Julien, Wilus's cousin and neighbor, keeping things stable. The galvanized pipe leading out (down) from the standpipe is the drive line that feeds the water with all its force to the pump.<br />
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Installing the new pump.<br />
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Unrolling the flexible pipe, about 300 feet of supply line, upstream to the source.<br />
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Wilus got hold of about 3/4 sack of cement to add to the sand/dirt. We mixed it all up and filled about seven large sacks.<br />
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Givenson from Desarmes, Verettes, putting the last sand-dirt-cement filled sack in place.<br />
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Esterne from Orange, Léogâne with a piece of pipe lined with screen, put on the end of the supply line to keep junk out.<br />
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Turning the Palma River pump on. The valve spilling out the water is the impulse valve.<br />
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Buzz congratulating Wilus and Lechenn on a beautiful job.<br />
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Herve and Wilus, farmers from MPP, evaluating the workshop Thursday PM.<br />
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Markendy Labady (white t-shirt) and Junior Lapaix, the two MPP civil engineers evaluating the workshop.</div>
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With plenty of time to pat ourselves on the back, we ate dinner at
Wilus's home, then most of the crew trekked down the hill to bathe in
Bassin Zim. Carel, the MPP driver had already left to drive around and
pick up the team by the water. After bathing in Palma river, I drove the
second of the two vehicles back around, doing an errand or two along
the way. By the time I got back, we were ready to have a final meeting
to review everything we had learned, and to do evaluations. All in all
it was kind of an amazing workshop. All in all, I guess it was worth the five hours in
customs.</div>
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-88445108383129005782014-09-29T08:30:00.000-07:002014-09-29T13:56:02.814-07:00Herve Delisma and Team--Leading Home Visits in Léogâne and Workshops in Bayonnais, Gonaïves <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Bayonnais, Gonaïves. Herve, far right, sharing some of the technical information related to yard gardens before beginning practical experiences. Herve led a team to the mountains of Léogâne to do home visits in July, and then in August, organized and led four on-site workshops in Bayonnais where the farmer organization, MPB (Farmer Movement of Bayonnais) is working with local families. Givenson Laurent, from Desarmes, is writing.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This past July and August Herve Delisma was busy.</span> Herve, more commonly known as "Tiga," is my associate in the MPP-FONDAMA yard garden program. After getting home at the end of June from working for around two weeks with me, Herve hopped in the project truck on July 6th and the driver took him and two assistants to Léogâne, to begin an eight day intensive visit to the homes of yard garden participants in the mountains of Léogâne, helping the families plan the work in their yards, and doing mid-year evaluations of their work. The team, made up of Lucien Joseph (Papay, MPP) and Mathurin Sainté (from Verettes) finished on Monday, July 14th and headed back to their respective homes.<br />
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The last week of July, Herve began preparing for a series of on-site workshops in the mountains of Bayonnais, Gonaïves. On Sunday, August 3rd, he headed out again with the project truck, this time with three additional team members, Marimaud St Amour, Givenson Laurent and Lucien Joseph. The workshops that this team presented were partly to reinforce the capacities of members of MPB (Farmer Organization of Bayonnais) already working with yard gardens, but their main focus was to introduce neighbors and family members of the current practitioners to the yard gardening ideas in a formal context--reinforcing the work current practitioners are doing as they reach out to share their new knowledge.<br />
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Tiga and his crew taught the participants how to build vegetable beds, create soil mix for the vegetable tires, care for African red worms and make organic insecticide from sour oranges, onion, garlic, neem leaves (<i>Azadirachta indica</i>), vegetable oil and laundry soap. The team traveled from site to site, carrying red worms and some of the insecticide ingredients as they went. The local MPB team members had to provide tools, manure, tires and space for the workshop, as well as coordinate food preparation. Each of the local team members was also responsible for choosing the family members and neighbors who participated in the respective workshops.<br />
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The fourth and final workshop was on Friday, August 8th. When I arrived early morning on Saturday, August 9th to meet with Herve's team and MPB's yard garden team, I was astounded by how positive each and every one of MPB's team members were as they evaluated the workshop facilitators. I had had every confidence that Tiga would do the best job he could and I also had a great deal of confidence in all of the team members he chose. But, being an odd sort of pessimist, I assumed that nearly everything would go badly anyway. Instead, nearly everything went exceptionally well. Viljean Louis, the coordinator for MPB, was pleased as well and that was the final and the best result. Our work with this yard garden program only makes sense if what we do helps the farmer organizations with which we work become stronger. Because these are the groups through which our Creator is winding and weaving, working to lead Haiti into a new future.<br />
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Photos by Herve Delisma and Givenson Laurent. Used by permission.<br />
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Visiting yard gardens in Léogâne. Herve (white shirt) talking with Esterne Joseph (middle, green shirt) and Libren (far left, striped shirt) about the excellent work that Libren and his family are doing. Libren is one of the second generation yard gardeners, introduced to the ideas by Esterne. Libren has a patch of medicinal herbs to his right. He also has the area planted to flowers. In the tires there are hot peppers and eggplant. The community is Kabwach in the Léogâne municipal sector of Orange.<i><b> N 18.43998, W 72.51151</b></i> <br />
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A new patch of yard garden at Enite Greffin's house. Enite's mother, Madanm Jean, received Herve and his team. Enite is now studying in Port au Prince, but her mother and father and keeping the garden she started going, and expanding it. This patch has basil, amaranth, eggplant and hot peppers. Enite and her family live in the community of Demye in the municipal sector of Sitronier.<i><b> N 18.40741, W 72.54566.</b></i><br />
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SALT hedgerows coming up in Luxène Sommervil's field behind his house in Bwa Nèf Matye (municipal sector Orange). <i><b>18.43483, -72.48634</b></i><br />
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Workshop at Rosemarie Joseph's home in Jn Charles. Teaching participants to turn tires inside-out. Marimaude St Amour, from MPP in Papay is in red shirt on the right.<br />
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Lucien Joseph (far right) from MPP in Papay, teaching how to prepare a topnotch soil mix.<br />
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Givenson Laurent (far left, red shirt) from the yard garden team in Verettes, teaching how to build a raised bed for vegetables.<br />
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Marimaude showing how to put together materials for African red worms.<br />
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Herve (white shirt, far left) leading the group in putting together an organic insect control.<br />
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Givenson (front, center) leading the MPB Yard Garden team in part of the evaluation of the week of workshops. One of the MPB team members responded to my inquiries,<b> "Mark, you thought we couldn't do it without you, but now you know that we can." </b><br />
<br />Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-65980908893759998262014-06-17T15:30:00.002-07:002014-06-18T07:43:54.346-07:00Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) in the mountains of Léogâne--Part II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">... the best thing you or I or any of the team I work with can do that will
make a difference is to find and keep the faith. Part of that is the
faith that these communities already have the answers for their
challenges today and their children's challenges tomorrow, deep inside
of them.</span><br />
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On Tuesday, May 27th, the day after we finished the workshop at Luxène's home, we walked down, up, over, down and around and around to
Serge's home, about four hours of hiking. The
project mule, "Patience" carried our luggage and some tools. We carried the A-level and a pick handle.<br />
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When we reached Serge's house, after resting an hour or two, we walked out to the field where we would be doing the workshop.<br />
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This is Serge's first
choice for a field to install the SALT system. It was land so steep, it
terrified me just to try to stand there, let alone swinging a hoe or pick. This is Herve coming down from
that field, on his bottom.<br />
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This is Serge's second choice for a field. Can you see any difference? Perhaps not, but this field actually did not scare
me to stand in it. However, walking across this and an adjacent field to get
back to Serge's house after the initial visit did pretty much terrify
me. At one point the next day, while crossing the adjacent field to get to where the participants were waiting, I nearly froze up. As in, "Send in a
helicopter because I am not/cannot take a single step." Having my
"students" watching from the next field, I believe, is what kept me
putting one foot in front of the other.<br />
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As I told
Chavannes, the director of MPP when I saw him briefly the day after we finished the workshop, "When you work with rural farmers in
Haiti, and you let them lead you, you really never know where exactly
you are going to end up."<br />
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Aside from the steepness of the field, the work progressed more or less in the same way. Cutting bamboo stakes....<br />
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....staking out the distances between the hedgerows. One difference the steepness made here was that the hedgerows were much, much closer. We got to that one meter drop in less than four meters from the last hedgerow.<br />
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Preparing the seed bed...<br />
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Serge (white and brown shirt) working with Luxène (red shirt) to lay out the double furrows to plant the two lines of trees. One other difference was that we soaked the seeds overnight to give them a head start. Since we were at 300 meters above sea level, rather than the 1,000, moisture is less predictable. We also covered the beds with stalks of pigeon pea to help maintain moisture and give the seeds the best chance possible for proper germination.<br />
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As we did in the workshop at Luxène's home, the second day we worked on building our own A-level from bamboo. This time the participants used an old battery with a nail in it instead of the rock.<br />
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Calibrating the A-level.<br />
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Another difference in the second workshop was that we had three young women participate, Mireille (sitting) and Enite, as well as Ullia (not pictured). The were full participants, wielding hoes and planting seed up in the mountains alongside of the six or seven men. Mireille participated together with her husband, the first time he has been a visible part of the yard garden work.<br />
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We also had Andre Ceus, from MRPST (Farmer's without land calling for their rights), a farmers organization from the high mountains of Verettes. All told, counting PC(USA), we had folks from five different organizations, including four different farmer organizations--MPP, ODEPOL, ODEVPRE and MRPST.<br />
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Two young boys being raised by their grandmother, Merina, down the hill from Luxène's home in Bwa Nèf Matye.<br />
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In the end, what are we about? Was this workshop really about starting a new agricultural revolution in the Léogâne mountains? Not really. What it was really about was about transforming lives, starting with my own.<br />
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Part of that transformation is recognizing the enormous gifts present among the farming communities in places like Bwa Nèf Matye, or Yeye. There is strength there, and a great deal of good humor. And skills--so many skills. What do I have to offer than can compare with what they already have? Not much, actually.<br />
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As a team coming out of MPP's long history and tradition, we can share a good idea or two, maybe a key scientific principle that turns some things around. With the training I have from CHE, we can offer honest and sincere Bible-based reflections that will shine a new light on what being a Christ follower is all about. But in the end, the best thing you or I or any of the team I work with can do that will make a difference is to find and keep the faith. Part of that is the faith that these communities already have the answers for their challenges today and their children's challenges tomorrow, deep inside of them. Believing too, without doubt, that God the Creator has always been present and has never abandoned them, nor ever will.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-55772459588386750072014-06-17T13:36:00.002-07:002014-06-18T07:13:10.388-07:00Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT) in Léogâne-Part I<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I told Chavannes, the director of MPP, "When you work with rural farmers
in Haiti, and you let them lead you, you really never know where
exactly you are going to end up." </span><br />
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Hey Friend, <br />
<br />
My two weeks of Yard Garden work in May were spent in the mountains of Léogâne. The first week, the team and I spent visiting homes, drawing yard designs, doing the registrations for 2014 and just generally getting a feel for how the yard garden is developing, and what the next steps might need to be to help assure that the Léogàne farmer organization, ODEPOL, has a self-sustaining yard garden program.<br />
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During the second week, we did something pretty much completely different.<br />
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Rather than focusing on the area around peoples' homes, I led two workshops introducing an integrated system for soil conservation and soil rehabilitation called Sloping Agricultural Land Technology, or SALT. In Creole, we have translated the name as "Sistem Pwodiksyon an Pant", the system for production on slopes, or SIPWOPANT.<br />
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What is SALT/SIPWOPANT exactly? <br />
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"SALT is a package technology of soil conservation and food production,integrating differing soil conservation measures in just one setting. Basically, SALT is a method of growing field and permanent crops in 3 meter to 5 meter wide bands between contoured rows of nitrogen fixing trees. The nitrogen fixingtrees are thickly planted in double rows to make hedgerows. When a hedge is 1.5 to 2 meters tall, it is cut down to about 75 centimeters and the cuttings (tops) are placed in the alleyways to serve as organic fertilizer."<br />
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(From the document, <i>How to farm your hilly land without losing your soil. </i>Here is the link to that: <br />
<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/20585238/Sloping-Agricultural-Land-Technology-SALT-Farming-System" target="_blank">The SALT "how to" site</a> )<br />
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Here are some other links that I just checked out that provide some insight into what SALT is about and what its impact has been:<br />
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1) A detailed description of SALT and its history: <a href="http://www.fao.org/ag/AGP/AGPC/doc/publicat/gutt-shel/x5556e0y.htm" target="_blank">Description of SALT</a><br />
2) Adoption of SALT in Asia & Africa: <a href="http://www.agrowingculture.org/2012/12/a-review-of-sloped-agricultural-land-technology-salt/" target="_blank">Adoption of SALT in Asia & Africa</a><br />
3) Viability of SALT in the Himalayas: <a href="http://www.icimod.org/?q=1650" target="_blank">SALT in the Himalayas</a> <br />
4) The birthplace of SALT as an Eco-tourism site: <a href="http://www.gaiadiscovery.com/latest-places/bansalan-a-town-of-sustainable-farming-methods-with-sloping.html" target="_blank">Birthplace of SALT</a><br />
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My own history with SALT goes back to 1998, during my first year as a PC(USA) mission worker at Rancho Ebenezer in Niquinohomo, Nicaragua. Hurricane Mitch had just devastated northern Nicaraguan, most of Honduras and parts of El Salvador and Guatemala. A man named Harold Watson came to Nicaragua from the Southern Baptist Convention to evaluate how they might best address both the immediate needs for relief and the longer term needs for recovery. Harold, as it turns out, was the missionary in the Philippines who, together with the local farmers in the mountains of Davao, had developed this system. My boss, Rev. Franscisco Juárez, the director of Rancho Ebenezer, agreed that the center should incorporate the technique in its soil conservation and recovery work.<br />
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We did try out SALT at Rancho Ebenezer, under Harold's tutelage, and most everyone was impressed with the results. When I became a PC(USA) Mission Co-worker in Haiti, serving with MPP (Mouvement Paysan Papaye), it was one of the techniques we incorporated in working with the land MPP provided to develop the integrated diversified yard garden system. So technically, SALT, or SIPWOPANT, has been part of the yard garden system since we began developing that within MPP. But it really is a technique aimed at farmers' fields, not their yards.<br />
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After two years of working in the mountains of Léogâne, and after being encouraged by two of the key leaders of ODEPOL, I felt I had enough knowledge, and stamina, to give the system a try there. So Herve Delisma , my assistant in the FONDAMA Yard Garden program, and I organized two hands-on workshops in Léogâne. We held the first workshop at Luxène Sommervil's home in Bwa Nèf Matye, in the high part of the municipal sector, Orange--about 1,000 meters above sea level. We held the second workshop at Serge Trezye's home and in a field about twenty minutes up the mountain from his home. Serge lives in the rural community of Yeye in the municipal sector of Citronier which is between 200 and 300 meters above sea level.<br />
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Here are the pictures (photos by Herve Delisma, Lucien Joseph, Givenson Laurent and Mark Hare. Used by permission):<br />
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Givenson Laurent, from the farmers organization, ODEVPRE (Verettes)
is helping us carry the A-level that Herve had made bye a carpenter near
his home in Papaye, Hinche.<br />
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The first step was getting ourselves and the material up the mountain. Materials for SALT are simple. Hoes and picks, a rake if you have one, an A-level, stakes and seeds. In our case, we used<i> Gliricidia sepium</i>.<br />
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To get the seeds, Herve Delisma, my assistant in this project, had to drive about 45 minutes (one way) from his home, on his motorcycle, out into a remote community, to purchase the seeds from a spry but elderly woman we call Toun who used to work with the Road to Life Yard team.<br />
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There is nothing I do in Haiti that I could do without the people who surround me.<br />
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Givenson on the colonial era cannon that marks a mountain crossroads, and is about forty-five minutes before getting to Luxéne's home.<br />
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Luxène Sommervil showing a sweet potato he dug up while we working the land to plant the SALT/SIPOWPANT hedgerows. Luxène was one of the main instigators for this workshop. He hopes to use SALT system to rejuvenate a spring very near his home. The spring used to last all through the dry season, but since a neighbor began cutting the forest above the spring, it has begun to dry up near the beginning of the dry season. Luxène, his wife and their two sons housed the three of us who were visitors and organized all of the meals for the workshop.<br />
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Herve and myself, checking out the land where we would be doing the practicum. It had been a year or more since I had set up a SALT hedgerow, and I also needed to get a feel for the land. This field was about three minutes from Luxène's house.<br />
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Starting the workshop with a bit of theory. We had a total of nine participants over the two days, plus me as the instructor. I wanted to make sure we kept it small, partly to make sure that everyone got a lot of hands on experience, but also just in case it turned out to be a total disaster.<br />
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Getting into the field. Herve is showing Luxène's son how to measure the distance between the hedgerows. Laying out the field is the first step in establishing SALT/SIPWOPANT.<br />
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A diagram from <i>How to farm your hilly land without losing your soil </i>that
explains how you can use your hand and your eyes to define the
distances between the double lines of trees that protect the slope.
Every time you sight past your hand to the base of the last hedgerow,
you are creating a vertical drop of approximately one meter (3 feet).
One vertical meter of drop is about all the force of rainwater running
down the slope that you should ask a SALT hedgerow to tolerate. Any more
and the coursing rainwater will continue to strip soil from your slope.<br />
<img class="absimg" src="http://htmlimg2.scribdassets.com/8y103wvwsgdmzrt/images/11-10b65d0d7d.jpg" style="clip: rect(1px, 639px, 467px, 1px); display: block; height: 468px; left: 130px; top: 348px; width: 640px;" /> <br />
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From our experience, the distances defined by the one meter drop are
often too confining, and we prefer to keep the hedgerows farther apart.
To inhibit erosion we combine SALT with some other soil conservation
technique, such as green manures.<br />
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Lucien, far left (from MPP in Papaye), together with Lexène (middle) and Bruno (far right) marking out a contour using the A-level. We marked everything with bamboo stakes, which Luxène prepared the day before.<br />
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Herve and Remy clearing off the weeds of a 1 meter wide swath, following the contour marked out by Lucien, Lèxene and Bruno.<br />
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Givenson (right) is picking out a shallow trench above the area where we will plant the two lines of trees. The trench is an addition by us because the slopes are so steep, just to slow the water down. Luxène is also committed to leaving this field fallow at least until 2015, so the grasses between the hedgerows will also help protect the young seedlings until they can develop.<br />
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Bruno and Lexène following the same procedure. The soil only needs to be loosened up to a depth of between 4 and 5 cm (about two inches), just enough to create a nice medium for the seeds to germinate.<br />
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As Bruno and Lexêne advance, I come behind and smooth the soil out, keeping the soil along the same plane as the slope. We used a rake because Luxène (far right) had one, but normally we would just use the flat of the pick.<br />
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Using pieces of bamboo, Luxène and his crew trace out the furrows to plant the seeds. The swath of land prepared for the tree seeds is about one meter in width and the two lines of seeds are planted about 50 cm apart in the middle of that 1 m swath.<br />
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It is worth noting that all our measurements were based on the Haitian "gwo pous." That is the distance measured by extending your thumb and middle finger as far apart as possible. Five of these is usually about a meter. Five of my "gwo pous" is almost exactly 105 cm. For the distance between lines of trees, I measure two and a half "gwo pous."<br />
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The importance of using non-standard measures is to create an environment where any farmer will feel comfortable with the technology, whether or not they have sophisticated, expensive tools such as tape measures. In general we are trying to help set a path where the technology can become "ours" rather than "theirs."<br />
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Merina and Givenson planting the seeds, <i>Gliricidia sepium.</i> Merina (pink shirt) did not wield a hoe or a pick, but she helped with all of the rest of the work. <br />
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The second day of the workshop, before going out to the field, we built our own A-level from Luxène's bamboo.<br />
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Nailing on the mid-bar. An A-level needs two legs that are exactly the same length and when spread to 1.5 m to 2 m apart, will still be comfortable to work with. The mid-bar needs to go across exactly half way from top to bottom of the two legs. Nails are handy to hold everything together, although I have made these tied together with string. You need string and a rock to create a pendulum that hangs from where the two legs join at the top.</div>
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Calibrating the A-level. Carefully stake out the position of the two legs and then mark where the rock and string hit the mid-bar.<br />
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Turn the A-level around, putting the legs in exactly the same spots. Then mark where the rock and string hit on the mid-bar.<br />
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The "sweet spot" where the A-level marks a true level, is exactly in the middle of those two points.<br />
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Remy and Herve putting the A-level we made to work. They liked it better than the one we brought in!<br />
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By the second day, we were all working well together and we finished planting eight or nine hedgerows on Luxène's quarter acre of field, between fifty and sixty meters of double lines of nitrogen-fixing trees.<br />
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We finished the hands-on experience by marking out the future hedgerows in the field right above Luxène's spring. We left enough seed for him to get a good start on that field.<br />
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We finished the first workshop by forming two teams and having a quiz show-style review, where each person got a chance to answer a question on a topic of their choice (but still related to the workshop). Team members who can't answer can get help from fellow team members, but if no one gets the answer, the other team gets a shot at "stealing" the question.<br />
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This is obviously an artifact of me having watched too many TV game shows when I was a kid, but the rules have evolved over the last two years based on participant reactions and suggestions.<br />
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In general, farmers in Haiti seem to have about the same level of competitiveness as I do. Meaning, they like to compete, but they don't really want anyone to feel bad. Nobody complains when I lob a softball question at someone who isn't getting any of the answers, or when I give the team that is down an extra chance to make up points.<br />
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Usually I am only one of several trainers providing the questions, but this workshop everyone, including Herve, was learning from scratch.<br />
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We ended our time with a brief evaluation, which was very positive, and an excellent meal. And then team and I rested. <br />
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-4419799853941057252014-06-14T11:56:00.002-07:002014-06-14T11:57:48.074-07:00How to build tire gardens: a series of short videos from MPP, UUSC and PC(USA)Here is a link to a series of videos, produced by Evan Carter with the Unitarian Universalist Social Committee (UUSC), interviewing me and with footage from the work that MPP is doing.<br />
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You will need to find the link with your pointer. It is nearly invisible: <br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL4dgMzl_HU" target="_blank">Series of videos on creating tire gardens.</a><br />
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Evan did an excellent job of making me sound smarter than I am.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-53144652706171499292014-04-27T17:12:00.001-07:002014-04-27T17:14:49.116-07:00Mouvman Peyizan Bayonnais (MPB)--Farmer's Movement of Bayonnais<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lucien Joseph (middle) giving advice to Rose Marie (right) with respect to her bed of Moringa trees. Lucien is a former member of the Road to Life Yard crew and frequently works with Herve Delisma and myself, providing technical assistance to the yard garden participants in the various organizations. Ovilien, another member of MPB's Yard Garden team led us to Rose Marie's house, about a two hour walk away from his home, where we had just provided similar advice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I returned this past Saturday, April 26th to my home in Barahona, Dominican Republic</span> after two weeks in Haiti. The first week, Holy Week, I spent catching up on some administrative work in Papaye-Hinche. The second week, I went with the Yard Garden team to continue our introduction of the program to the Farmers' Movement of Bayonnais (MPB) in Bayonnais, Gonaïves. (The organization's center in the community of Quatto is located at 19.425440, -72.513220)<br />
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It was, as always, an intense week of work, but very good. Only three months after we held the first formal workshop, we found participants applying the new techniques to small, well-protected areas of their yards.<br />
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Perhaps what is most special for me is the people we work with are becoming more and more real to me. This was our second round of visiting people's homes, one by one, sharing food and in two homes, spending the night. The hope there is in this crazy work is when people start feeling like friends we are going to visit and share with, rather than "beneficiaries" who need us to solve their problems.<br />
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MPB is the most recent of the organizations with whom we have started working. The work continues in Léogâne and Verettes, where I also managed to spend time between Friday, April 18th and the 25th.<br />
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The Creole name for this flower is "Yam Zombi", the Zombi Yam. It has an inedible white bulb which vaguely resembles the edible root crop called tropical yam (genus <i>Dioscorea</i>, not the North American yam). It would seem to be seasonal (a "Spring" flower) and perhaps found only locally in the Bayonnais area (???). In ten years of working in rural Haiti, it is the first time I had seen it.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-90962649326260886072014-04-04T08:57:00.002-07:002014-04-05T04:03:21.685-07:00Celebrating Yard Gardens<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="userContent" style="font-size: small;">Bruno
Sene, one of six participants in Léogâne who receive a certificate of
excellence for their achievements in their yard gardens. Each
participant shared with the audience the significance of the yard garden
for them.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> On the display table for the yard garden celebration of ODEPOL (Development Organization of Pâque-Orange, Léogâne). Behind, from left to right: squash ("joumou"), plantains, mangoes (in bowl), coconuts. Middle: vermicompost (compost from red worms, in bucket), papaya, moringa leaves (draped over plantains). Front: moringa seeds, green peppers, hot peppers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Last year in November we finished out the year of yard garden work with celebrations.</span> We also did evaluations of the work with the participants and planning for 2014. We held a set of meetings in Léogâne (30 mile west of Port au Prince) the third week of November and in Verettes (about two and a half hours north of Port au in the Artibonite Valley) the fourth.<br />
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With funding from the project that paid for the food and some of the extras--a generator for loudspeakers and a deejay, for example--the participants planned their programs to recognize the work that the participants had done and to present that work to a larger community. In Léogâne the participants decided to hold one large celebration near the urban center, with between 70 and 80 guests, including visitors from three major non-governmental organizations. In Verettes, the participants chose to hold three separate and generally smaller celebrations, with most participants coming from the surrounding communities.<br />
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The first celebration in Verettes was held for the participants and their invited guests from the low-lying communities of the municipality, mostly members of ODEVPRE (Organization for the Protection of the Environment and Development of Verettes). A second was held by the organization MRPST (Movement of Farmers without Land Calling for their Rights) in their base community of Dofine, about 600 m above sea level. The third celebration was organized by an ODEVPRE farmers' group high in the mountains in a community called Dekonb, about 1000 m above sea level. Getting to this particular celebration was interesting--the road was worse (!!!) than I had remembered. But once we were there, it was definitely the most fun.<br />
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Here are some photos and a conclusion at the bottom. Unless otherwise indicated, photos by Herve Delisma and Mark Hare.<br />
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Léogâne. Boston Jn Gilles (right), the coordinator for ODEPOL, introduces the program. Father <span class="userContent"> Goursse (left, standing) from the Haitian Diocese of the Episcopal Church also helped lead the program</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">Father Goursse shared a Biblical reflection based on
Genesis 2:15, "The LORD God put the man in the garden of Eden to
cultivate it and care for it." Cindy Correl, fellow PCUSA mission
coworker provided the contact that made Goursse's participation
possible and attended with him. Photo by Cindy Correl.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">You know you are in Haiti when the impromptu dancing starts. This was the celebration in Dofine, organized by the leaders of MRPST. Katelyn Leader (far right) is a friend currently working in Port au Prince who asked to be part of this craziness. She bravely trouped along with the rest of us, sleeping in three different beds in as many nights, as we moved from celebration to celebration in Verettes.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">The display table in Dofine, Verettes, with the main organizers arranged behind. The buckets on each side contain sugar cane and tayo. The table has hot peppers, green bell peppers, grapefruit, eggplant, papaya and a coconut. It should also have had rice, beans and water cress, three of the main crops produced in the intricate irrigation system the community of Dofine has developed.</span><br />
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The final celebration during a crazy two weeks was in Dekonb, a five hour, hair-raising drive up a unmaintained "road."The display table for Dekonb had, from left to right, green pepper, coffee beans, an orange, carrots, cooking bananas,
squash (auyama), leeks, a small branch with coffee beans still attached,
cabbage (behind), "militon" and eggplant. Eventually they added a humongous beet.<br />
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Dieulissaint Ermeus, one of the two original participants from Dekonb. No visitors from other organizations in Dekonb. Just the participants themselves giving testimony to what they see as the importance of their work, sharing their insights with their neighbors. We didn't get any good pictures of the dancing, but in this ceremony, it was out of control. And they did have their deejay with his generator, CD player and speakers, transported there on motorcycle.<br />
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Alexander Placide, B.S, giving Elsenou Louicius, our host in Dekonb, pointers about his beets. Alexander is an agronomist for MPP and came to Verettes to provide the keynote presentation for each of the three celebrations there. Alexander always gives a good talk, but in Dekonb, he was inspired, encouraging the farmers to recognize the dignity of their work and their lives. Elsenou is a lay leader for two churches in the area and the main man leading the program for yard gardens in Dekonb and Remonsen, a neighboring community.<br />
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<span class="userContent"></span>Dofine, Verettes</div>
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<span class="userContent"><span style="font-size: large;">The yard garden program is not about making
huge changes in peoples' lives.</span> It is about making small, daily changes
that are consistent, persistent and positive, without being intrusive.
The program is about helping people recognize the power they have to learn to do
something useful with what they already have at hand, and about sharing
their knowledge with the people around them. It is also about learning to celebrate the small successes, while praying and struggling for the big ones.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">Mireille Domingue, in her garden, next to her moringa leaves. Gros Morne, Léogâne.</span></div>
<span class="userContent"><br /></span>Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-70696979657756349552014-02-07T10:28:00.001-08:002014-02-07T10:35:35.260-08:00Happy New Year! And happy Vegetable Sacks!Hey Friends, <br />
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I got home from Haiti about a week ago with my brother, Keith. Went with
Keith to the airport yesterday, and spent some time in Santo Domingo
buying prescription medicines for Keila and Annika and a little bit of time in the main office of the IED (Evangelical Dominican Church) planning a curriculum
workshop with our Methodist mission worker friend, Adele Graner.<br />
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I am so far behind in the stories I want to share. Celebrations of the work in November. An exchange in December between yard garden folks in the Hinche area with folks just starting in "Ti Rivye Bayone" outside of Gonaives. And in January, two workshops, one with the folks of Bayone and another that Rhoda Beutler (of Christian Veterinary Mission in Haiti, <a href="http://www.cvmusa.org/" target="_blank">Christian Veterinary Mission</a> ) helped me organize. The second workshop was on "Moringa Production in the Yard Garden Context."<br />
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For now, here is an excellent YouTube video on sack gardens. Got the link from Grace
Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, NC. They are helping develop a
World Garden in the Global Village at Camp Grier.<br />
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Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church has a super community garden. Here is more information:<a href="http://www.gcpcusa.org/#/our-community-garden" target="_blank">Grace Covenant Community Garden</a><a href="http://www.gcpcusa.org/#/our-community-garden" target="_blank"></a> <br />
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Here is some information about the Global Village at Camp Grier: <a href="http://www.campgrier.org/#!staff/c13dq" target="_blank">Camp Grier Programs</a> <br />
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And here is the YouTube Vegetable Sacks link: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMv72yQFbvI" target="_blank">Vegetable Sacks</a><br />
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I just watched this video and I will be taking it back to Haiti at the end of this month to try it out. I think the trick would be the same as for tires--getting the soil mix right so that roots can penetrate and take advantage of every cubic inch of soil.<br />
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Blessings to all and please don't give up on the blog. There WILL be new pictures soon.<br />
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In Christ,<br />
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Mark Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-52639433268889820622013-11-05T13:47:00.001-08:002013-11-05T13:47:02.858-08:00FONDAMA Yard Garden progam going to the Mouvman Peyizan Bayone--Farmer Movement of Bayonnais<div class="aboveUnitContent">
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The third week of October, Tiga (Herve Delisma) and Marimaude St Amour, from Papay,
and I put together a darn good presentation about yard gardens for a
farmer's organization outside of Gonaïves, in a municipal sector called
Bayonnais (19° 25' 0" North, 72° 29' 0" West), in Haiti's Artibonite Province. The organization is Mouvman Peyizan Bayonnais (Peasant Movement of Bayonnais--MPB).</div>
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We started by discussing<span class="text_exposed_show"> the knowledge and resources that farmers have already in each of
their zones, and the fact that what we have to offer is very small compared to all the knowledge and resources the already have. We followed this up with a Biblical reflection comparing God's abundance as encapsulated in texts taken from Genesis 2:15 ("The Lord GOD took the man and put him in the garden...to till it and to care for it.") and Revelation 22: 1-3 (see caption below).</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">After this, Tiga presented our garden story using a PowerPoint presentation
and then Marimaude witnessed to her own yard's transformation at home in Papaye. We started with our first presentation Monday afternoon, October 21st to MPB's executive committee. We
did two each on Tuesday and Wednesday, going into the mountains, sometimes by vehicle and sometimes on foot.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">For each presentation, our host
Viljean Louis, the coordinator of the organization, weighed in with
his own take on the power that the farmers have to change their own
lives.<br /> </span></div>
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Thursday morning, October 24th, fifteen people chosen by the participants in
each community we visited to represent them in FONDAMA's Yard Garden
program, came together with the members of MPB's executive committee to
receive their first workshop. We used Matthew 10:5-10 as our Biblical
text: "These twelve Jesus sent out...." </span></span></div>
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">We
also explored the difference between addition and multiplication.
"Addition" is the result of projects that purchases things for people.
"Multiplication" can result when you provide people skills that they can share
with others. Our goal in this program is to provide skills and resources
to people that they can then share with others,
within their grassroots organization and within their communities. See core values of CHE (Community Health Evangelism): <a href="http://www.chenetwork.org/files_pdf/che_core_values.pdf" target="_blank">Multiplication as a core CHE value</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">By Thursday afternoon we were on our way. An intense, productive, Spirit-filled four days. </span></span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show"> Our colleague, Cindy Corell, the PC(USA) mission
co-worker serving with FONDAMA (Haitian Foundation of Hands Together)
came with us to Bayonais as part of her work to understand the work that
the farmer organizations of Haiti are doing on the ground. Cindy is the
companionship facilitator for the Presbyterian Hunger Program's Joining
Hands: <a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/hunger/haiti/" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/hunger/haiti/</a> These are her photos.</span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show">Photos by <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=647856264&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/cindy.corell?directed_target_id=0">Cindy Corell</a>, all rights reserved.</span></div>
</span><span class="userContentSecondary fcg"> — in <a data-ft="{"tn":"P"}" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=110503768969698&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3Anull%2C%22viewer_id%22%3A1453093926%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gona%C3%AFves-Haiti/110503768969698?ref=stream&viewer_id=1453093926" id="js_179">Gonaïves, Artibonite, Haiti</a>.</span> <a class="_5i18 uiLinkSubtle" href="https://www.facebook.com/hareamark/posts/10201877118356948">(8 photos)</a></div>
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Talking with our first group about the importance of what they already know and the resources they already have.</div>
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One of the participants sharing the reading from Revelation 22:1-3. "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, brights as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb....On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there anymore...."</div>
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Tiga (Herve <a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100005653445511&extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/herve.delisma.1?directed_target_id=0">Herve Delisma</a>), doing the PowerPoint presentation for our first group of farmers, Tuesday the 22nd, AM. I got to be the IT person who advanced the slides.</span></span></div>
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Marimaude St. Amour giving testimony to how</span></span><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption"> she has made the yard garden techniques work for her in her yard in Papay.</span></span></div>
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Viljean Louis, our host and coordinator for MPB, </span></span><span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">
sharing his vision of the power that the farmers have to change their own
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<span class="fbPhotosPhotoCaption" data-ft="{"type":45,"tn":"*G"}" id="fbPhotoSnowliftCaption" tabindex="0"><span class="hasCaption">Two women listening as Viljean preaches the Good News of their own power and dignity.</span></span><span class="fbPhotoTagList" id="fbPhotoSnowliftTagList"><span class="fcg"></span></span></div>
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-61197948303536564892013-10-09T15:08:00.001-07:002013-10-09T15:08:18.210-07:00Reaching Women with Good Agricultural Technology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Here is an excellent article on the problems, and some possible solutions, for reaching women who farm.<br />
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Thank you Cindy Corell for sharing the link: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/sep/25/women-agriculture-access-india?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487" target="_blank">Reaching Women with Agricultural Technology</a>Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-89781513781993887582013-10-07T16:10:00.001-07:002013-10-09T15:10:13.188-07:00A time for workshops--Léogâne<br />
All of the workshops in August, in Verettes and in Léogâne had two main
objectives. One was to refresh the minds of the main technicians from
each area, to help make sure they really have some of the basic
information down pat. The second main objective was to include new
people from each of the communities represented by the local
technicians, especially individuals from the respective homes of the
technicians themselves.<br />
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Before sharing the pictures, I want to share some of the basic information about where we went to hold the Léogâne workshops. I have at least two reasons for sharing some of these walking
numbers. One is what among friends I would call "bragging rights." But
the more important point is to share with you a sense of the enormity of what
everyone we work with does every day. Wherever you go in the mountains of Léogâne, once you leave your yard, you are either going up a mountain, or down. Our friend Luccéne has one daughter who lives in Port au Prince and was visiting back home when we were there. We asked her if she walks a lot in Port. She said with a great deal of energy, "Yes! I walk a lot!" And her younger brother replied scornfully, "Flatland walking. Flatland walking." The people with whom we work in the FONDAMA
Yard Garden Program are not your average person. They are Haitians who live
in and love the mountains. And they do miracles on a daily basis. <br />
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After driving to Léogâne from Verettes on Friday, August 24th, Tiga, Wilner and I spent Saturday organizing and resting in Darbonne (about 5 miles east of Léogâne). Then on Sunday morning, August 26th, Tiga, Wilner and I headed up the mountains to Luccène Sommervil's home.<br />
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From the community of Jan Jan (N 18.47308º, W 72.53545), at the base of the mountain by the side of the river "Grand Rivière de Léogâne" (The Grand River of Léogâne) to Luccène's home (N 18.43483, W 72.49342) is a 10.6 km walk, going from about 150 meters above sea level to about 980 meters (a climb of about 2,400 feet, walking around 6 miles). This time we did it in about 4 hours. This particular stretch is why I have become more serious about trying to exercise on a regular basis. <br />
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Our first Léogâne workshop was on Monday at Luccène´s house, with 8 or 9 participants.<br />
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Tuesday we walked most of the day to get to Serge Tresier's home in lower Citronier, passing by the Catholic Church and Technical School in Bosejou (N 18.42083, W 72.50700). Serge's home is located at N 18.41245, W 72.55061.That was a walk of 13.4 km, going from 980 meters above sea level down to 252.<br />
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We held a workshop at Serge's home on Wednesday, August 27th, with twenty participants. Half of that workshop we held under a torrential downpour, half protected by tarps that Serge had wisely stretched over his yard. Did I mention that we work with miracle workers? Half-drowned by the rain, our workshop participants were laughing, joking and responding to our questions about what they had learned before the rain started.<br />
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Late Wednesday afternoon, after the river by Serge's house had subsided, we made our way down the river to the Miton crossroads ("Kafou Miton")--actually a crossroads of footpaths, not what you would normally consider roads. There Tiga, Wilner and I caught a taxi (motorcycle taxi) driven by Serge's son, Breque back to our base in the community of Darbonne.<br />
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Thursday morning we drove (!) three or four miles to the home of Gladis (N 18.47107, W 72.57529), where we held our third and final Léogâne workshop, with about sixteen participants.<br />
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Here are some of the photos from our time in Léogâne (Photos by Herve Delisma, all rights reserved):<br />
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A beautifully laid out field of yam, corn, pigeon pea and beans. As I walk through the mountains, I am continually reminded that my ministry is not to teach people how to do good agriculture. It is to help them recognize what they already do that works very well, identify practices that are destructive and bring resources to them to help develop alternatives that can effectively replace bad practices.<br />
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Workshop participants Rodrigue and Merina at Luccène's house preparing the soil mix for vegetable tires. Rodrigue came to the workshop with Esterne, the local technician who lives about four kilometers down the mountain from Luccène. Merina, a widow who is raising several children and grandchildren, lives a hundred yards or so down the mountain from Luccène and his family.<br />
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Mark preparing the manure and water mix to feed the red worms. Esterne (left), looks on.<br />
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Mark and Merina preparing the tire for the California red worms. Esterne's wife (yellow shirt) looks on.<br />
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Wilner (red hat) teaches workshop participants to prepare the organic insecticide made from sour oranges, onions, garlic, neem leaves and laundry soap. He also taught me. After seeing this insecticide prepared dozens of times, I finally decided I better learn it straight from a maestro.<br />
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Peeling, grating, crushing and pounding to make the insecticide.<br />
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Wilner shares about the value of moringa (<i>Moringa oleifera</i>) with workshop participants.<br />
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As we ended the workshop, we asked participants to provide an evaluation.<br />
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Luccène (front) leads Patience down the mountain to Serge's house. Herve, my multi-talented assistant, follows behind. Patience has made our walks through the mountains much much more pleasurable, carrying our clothes and materials and allowing us to walk unencumbered. Patience also helps carry tires up to the yards and will, we hope, help us get materials up for hydraulic ram pumps.<br />
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Luccène explained her name more clearly to me this last visit. He said her name is Patience because when she decides to try to go her own way and do her own thing, we have to maintain our patience until she finally decides to go where we want and do what we need her to do.<br />
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On our way down Beausejou mountain, going to Serge's house, we cam across these neighbors preparing the grave for a friend who had died the previous day. A three hour walk away from his house, Luccène recognized at least one of the men working here.<br />
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Off of the steepest slopes, we walked the rest of the way by and in a series of streams/rivers. This is a Mapou tree (<i>Ceiba pentandra</i>), an example of the original forest that once covered the mountains and valleys of Haiti. </div>
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Starting to cross the rivers.<br />
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Working on soil mixes at Serge's home.<br />
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Me, as always, preaching the good news of red worms.<br />
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Sharing the good news of God's abundance during the last workshop at Gladis's home, Thursday August 29th, exploring the texts from Genesis 2:15 and Revelation 22: 1-3. We used these texts in all of the workshops, using the CHE system of participatory reflection.<br />
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Third Léogâne workshop, mixing up the soil.<br />
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Wilner working the insecticides. Then the moringa component and finally, the quiz game to help participants review what they had learned. Finally, after six full days of workshops over two weeks, not to mention a bit of walking, Herve, Wilner and I were done and ready to head towards our respective homes.<br />
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Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-31293869784457063592013-09-20T14:57:00.000-07:002013-10-09T15:09:26.906-07:00A time for workshops-VerettesAugust was a month of workshops for Herve Delisma ("Tiga") and me. We held one three day workshop for over 30 participants in a Catholic center in the foothills outside of Verettes and three one-day workshops in the mountains and plains of Léogâne, for a total of some 40 participants. In addition to Tiga and myself, Wilner Exil, from the hills of Hinche-Papaye, worked with us, along with various local technicians from the respective farmer organizations in the two municipalities.<br />
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Here are some of the pictures from the two and a half day workshop in Verettes. Participants arrived Tuesday, August 20th and left at the end of the day Thursday, August 22nd. Photos by Herve Delisma, all rights reserved.<br />
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Every day we started with prayer and singing and sometimes dancing.<br />
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In this training, the participants learned to make this mix, using sour oranges (grate the rind, mash the seeds), onions (grated), garlic (crushed), neem (<i>Azadirachta indica</i>) leaves (crushed and soaked in water), vegetable oil and laundry soap.<br />
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Wilner Exil (far right) led this session for three of the groups. Fabiola (to the left of Wilner) worked with Wilner the first day and then led three practical trainings the second day.<br />
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After twenty-four hours of letting the various ingredients "ferment," the participants mixed everything together, passed it through a sieve to remove most of the solids and stored the liquid in clean gallon jugs. To apply to vegetables, one gallon is diluted with four gallons of water.<br />
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The second practical training we taught was making the soil mix for the tires. In soil mixing the participants learned to pass the soil, sand and animal manure through screens, then mix it in proportions that make a friable texture. Alexis Paul Louinord (far right, orange shirt) taught two sessions of soil mixing, then worked with me on red worms. Paul is one of the leaders in the Verettes farmer's movement, ODEVPRE.<br />
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Givenson Laurent (far right) taught participants the techniques for making a top-notch raised vegetable bed. Givenson does a fine job of growing vegetables in his own yard, a long narrow piece of land in the town of Desarmes, east of Verettes. Givenson is also a member of the Verettes farmer's organization ODEVPRE.<br />
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Red worms! Marimaude St. Amour (right in red shirt) led this workshop showing participants the particular techniques for working with African red worms (<i>Eurdrilus eugeniaie</i>) in old tires. The process Marimaude was using involved creating something like a nest, using weeds and tree leaves, then covering that with water-logged manure. To make sure that we would have enough animal manure for all of the practical trainings, we filled 18 sacks in the hills of Papay-Hinche, tied them onto the roof rack of the project's Toyota Landcruiser ("ambulance" style, versus pickup) and hauled them for two and a half hours to Verettes. People along the roads we travel are often amused by the things we haul. Marimaude came from the Road to Life Yard crew at MPP (Peasants' Movement of Papay) to help us with the workshop.<br />
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Here participants are getting experience with a new technique we have just recently invented, using pieces of 4" drainage pipe filled with mortar (rough sand and cement), instead of wood posts, to make the benches to hold the vegetable tires. Tiga worked with folks on this for three sessions, then Marimaude took over.<br />
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Here are participants learning to make "fuel from the fields charcoal." This is a technique developed by the D-lab at MIT. In this process, we use scrap bits of organic material, such as dried leaves from breadfruit trees, cornstalks, dried banana leaves, coconut husks, etc., to make lightweight charcoal pieces. These pieces are then crushed into a fine powder, mixed with a binder such as cassava starch and two or three other ingredients, then pressed into a mold to form them. Finally, they are left to dry for a couple of days before using them. Here is a link to a .pdf file explaining the process: <a href="http://d-lab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/Charcoal_BG.pdf" target="_blank">Fuel from the Field Charcoal</a><br />
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In the yard garden context, we taught participants how to use fuel from the field charcoal to create biochar. To turn the charcoal dust into biochar, we mixed it with red worm manure (vermicompost) and urine.<br />
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I (far right--white guy) led this workshop twice, then Lucien Joseph (left, black cap) took over. Lucien Joseph is another member of MPP's Road to Life Yard crew who came with us to help lead the workshop. Lucien also travels with Tiga periodically when I cannot be present to help monitor the project and provide technical assistance. <br />
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Marimaude (far right) leading the cement bench post workshop.<br />
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During the afternoon sessions, we worked on more theoretical information which included studies of three different Biblical texts. These sessions were based on my training in Community Health Evangelism that I am receiving in the Dominican Republic as part of Jenny's community health work in Batey 7. Check out the Batey 7 blog: <a href="http://jennybent-pcusa.blogspot.com/2013/08/trash-clogged-drainage-ditch-in-batey-7.html" target="_blank">Batey 7</a><br />
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Our wrap up for the workshop included a game we've invented as part of this yard garden program. Participants sit in a circle and we go around, one by one, and offer them a choice of any of the different workshop themes. Then the leader for that particular workshop asks a question worth 3 points. The respondent gives their best answer and the particular leader decides if the answer was worth 0, 1, 2 or 3 points. If the first respondent doesn't get the answer quite right, the questioner opens it up to anyone in the group who thinks they can complete the answer, and that person gets whatever points remain. In the end, each person gets a special applause, like the applause of the rain, or the train applause, etc. Also something we learned from our CHE trainers in the DR, Flor and Hiran de Leon.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-23845772440589066672013-08-07T17:06:00.002-07:002013-08-07T17:06:33.487-07:00Mining: A huge issue in HaitiMining is a huge issue in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is hard to imagine how it can be anything but devastating for the farmers with whom I work. Here is the link to a comprehensive look at the issues and how grassroots organizations are organizing: <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/haiti-grassroots-groups-afraid-attractive-mining-law-could-open-country-up-to-systematic-pillage/5345211" target="_blank">Mining in Haiti</a>Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-61712294097464799862013-06-11T11:41:00.003-07:002013-06-11T15:40:40.381-07:00Buzz Durham. Hydraulic ram pumps and biochar.<b>Heads up: the first part of this post has technical information and a lot of basic details from the trip in May. To start with scroll past the details and enjoy photos and thn check the text for more information as you need to.</b><br />
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<i><b>All in all, it was an incredible trip. Thanks, Buzz! And thanks to the folks of Grace Covenant for supporting him.</b></i><br />
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The last two weeks of May, Buzz Durham, from Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church in Asheville, North Carolina, came and worked with us on the hydraulic ram pump (<a href="http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/equip/ram.htm" target="_blank">Clemson design</a>) and on biochar (<a href="http://www.biochar-international.org/biochar" target="_blank">What is biochar?</a>) in Haiti.<br />
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Our work actually started in Santo Domingo, DR, where Buzz and I spent two half days looking for polyethylene irrigation pipe. Around 11 o'clock during out second half day, we finally found what we were looking for, at an irrigation supply store (and not at the plumbing supplies places where we had been looking). For your edification, what we found that was clearly what we wanted was 4 Atmosphere pipe, 63 mm (the closest in metric to 2") black polyethylene flexible pipe, at about $US 0.75 a foot ($RD 90.00 a meter). This pipe is half as expensive as PVC SCH 40 2" and has much better potential for surviving the ups and downs of Haitian water systems. They also had available the equivalent of 1/2" poly flex pipe for $RD 15.00 a meter. That would be maybe $US 0.12 a foot. We are talking exciting prices here. This is one of at least two places in SD that supply this pipe. Word from our handler at the supply company was that the pipe is now being producing in the Dominican Republic. Details, however, were not forthcoming. Tantalizing.<br />
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The trick will be, of course, to purchase in the Dominican capital and get the pipe to the border and into Haiti. A large truck and all sorts of contacts would be helpful here. Put those issues on your prayer list. We did get a 100 m of 6 Atmosphere pipe as far as Jenny and my house in Barahona. How will I get that to Wilner's house? No ideas yet.<br />
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Crossing the border, Sunday, May 19th, was a chore. Buzz can tell you about it some time.<br />
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You may remember that during Buzz's first trip to work with us, we set up a pump at Wilner Exil's home (<a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html" target="_blank">Installing Wilner's pump</a> in Leodiague. On <b>Monday PM, May 20th</b>, we headed up to spend the afternoon with Wilner looking at his system and evaluating how we could improve it, given we did not actually have the flexible pipe that would have resolved most of Wilner's problems. After working with Wilner on figuring out those issues, we headed back down the mountain and home to Bassin Zim.<br />
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<b>Tuesday AM, May 21s</b>t, Buzz did a workshop for the Road to Life Yard and Moringa project crew on the pump, on making alternative charcoal using a system developed by MIT's D-Lab, and on turning that charcoal into Biochar. We had about 15 participants.<br />
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In the afternoon, we headed back up to Wilner's house and worked on his system, going with a decent group of volunteers from the Road to Life Yard crew.<br />
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<b>Thursday AM, May 23rd,</b> we headed to Verettes, to work with ODEVPRE, OGAD and MRPST. Papay, Bassin Zim, Leodiague, all these areas are part of the Central Plateau, where MPP (Peasant's Movement of Papaye) is organized. ODEVRPE, OGAD and MRPST are farmer's organization working in Verettes, a municipality in the Artibonite province.These are also the three farmer organizations with which I am working in Verettes, as part of FONDAMA's yard garden program. FONDAMA (Haitian Foundation of Hands Together) is a member of the Presbyterian Hunger's Joining Hands program (<a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/joininghands/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/" target="_blank">Joining Hands</a>). Alphabet soup, I know.<br />
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Thursday PM we went to Doublet, a community just outside of Verettes, to take measurements for possible hydraulic ram pumps. Playing with water ranks right up there with working with soil.<br />
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<b>Friday AM, May 24th</b>, Buzz did his second workshop, with about thirty participants coming from all three organizations. It was a grand success, due in no small way to the dynamic leaders that kept the group singing and moving and generally alive and alert. It was a lot of fun.<br />
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Friday PM, I did administrative work with the local technicians from ODEVRPRE, OGAD and MRPST whom we are training in yard garden techniques..<br />
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<b>Saturday AM, May 25th</b>, we headed to Léogâne to do everything all over again, but even more so. We had the great good luck to be able to go with two young men from ODEVPRE, Alex Paul and Givenson Laurent. All of us stayed with two leaders in the Léogâne organization, ODEPOL. Boston Jn Gilles was our main host, but Prezime helped out as well. Both live just outside of Léogâne in the sugarcane community of Darbonne.<br />
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<b>Sunday AM, May 26th</b>, we crossed the Grand River of Lèogâne and headed into the mountains with Luccène Sommervil. Luccène is the local technician who works with us as we monitor the progress of the other local technicians. Ask Buzz sometime about the first crossing that day. The mule helped on the second one.<br />
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Our stop for the night was at Luccène's house, about four hours up, going from less than 300 feet above sea level to over 2700 feet. Buzz observed that in his annual hikes on the Appalachian trail, 1,000 feet elevation difference was the most he had done so far.<br />
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<b>Monday AM, May 27th</b>, we took measurements for a possible pump at a spring 150 feet downhill from Luccène's home. In the PM, we dropped about 1,000 feet to the home of Esterne Joseph, where we spent the night.<br />
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<b>Tuesday PM, May 28th</b>, we took measurements for a possible pump at a spring some 750 feet from Esterne's house. In the afternoon, about 1:00 PM, we began the epic climb down the mountains, back to our hosts' homes in Darbonne.<br />
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<b>Wednesday, May 29th</b>, we were supposed to head back up a mountain to check out Serge and Enith's homes for pump possibilities, but fatigue had gotten the best of us, and we stayed at Boston's home and did wash and prepared for the workshop on Thursday. We also sent Alex Paul and Givenson Laurent on their way back to Verettes.<br />
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<b>Thursday AM, May 30th</b>, Buzz held his third workshop on the hydraulic ram pump, MIT D-lab charcoal, and biochar. We had about fifteen Haitian participants, and a group of 17 or so North Americans visiting as part of an MBF (Medical Benevolence Foundation) vision trip. In addition to Buzz, we had Berrique from Verettes who came down to talk with workshop participants on using the charcoal powder to make briquettes. Briquettes was the original design for the MIT D-lab charcoal. Berrique came into Darbonne Wednesday PM to help us on Thursday.<br />
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Thursday PM, we headed to Port au Prince to rest. Buzz traveled with Rhoda Beutler, who had come from north of Port au Prince to attend the workshop and talk with Buzz about rocket stoves (<a href="http://vuthisa.com/2011/03/21/what-is-a-rocket-stove/" target="_blank">What is a rocket stove?</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com.do/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CEEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.mit.edu%2Fats%2FDocuments%2Flesotho%2520refresher%2520oct%252005.ppt&ei=b2y3UY3BPLO40gGRqoCQBQ&usg=AFQjCNH4sxDPFYIQaRoJ3LnTDm8ln2gKpw&sig2=caO1cOjI-p6rZTksmrI9BA&bvm=bv.47534661,d.dmQ" target="_blank">Power Point demonstration</a>).<br />
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<b>Friday AM, May 31st</b>, we went looking for polyethylene irrigation pipes in Port au Prince. We found two sources for plumbing polyethylene pipe and they both said they would send us quotes for getting the kind that we are looking for. But that has not yet panned out. So as of now, we are back to looking to Santo Domingo.<br />
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<b>Saturday, June 1st</b>, we back across the border and home to Barahona. Buzz spent Sunday with us and went to Santo Domingo in Carbie Tours and then in taxi to the airport on his own <b>Monday, June 3rd.</b> Late in the evening he sent me an e-mail that said, "Home."<br />
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And that is the textual summary of the trip with Buzz. Next, the photos, which should be far more interesting.<br />
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Photos by Mark Hare, Herve Delisma and Buzz Durham, all right reserved. <br />
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<b>Monday, May 22nd</b><br />
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Buzz Durham checking out Wilner Exil's pump. Using an eye level and a metric tape, Buzz, Fedlens, Wilner and Herve determined that we have a fall of 5' from Wilner's dam to the pump, and 50' of elevation from the pump to Wilner's barrel just inside his yard. So this pump is working at its theoretical maximum. Even more amazing that Wilner has been able to keep it pumping.<br />
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<b>Tuesday, May 23rd</b><br />
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Mark Hare and Buzz Durham, presenting the hydraulic ram pump to MPP's Road to Life Yard and Moringa project crew.<br />
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Crew members (to the left) stuffing the first barrel for the "Fuel from the Fields" charcoal burn. Buzz priming the second barrel, the first step in the process. We used mostly dried coconut fronds and dried coconut husks for these two burns.<br />
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First barrel is going and second is nearly ready to light up.<br />
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Moccène Joachim sealing off the second barrel which had lighter materials and was ready to seal sooner.<br />
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The first, heavy smoke is mostly moisture. Eventually the moisture gets burned off and the gases ignite. From our experiences with four or five burns we did over three days, using coconut fronds and coconut husks, you need to let this flame go for a while until there is almost no smoke. Then you seal it as you see Moccène doing in the previous photo.<br />
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Pounding the charcoal from the barrel into dust. This step is required when doing briquettes as well, but for briquettes, the charcoal must be completely pulverized to make briquettes that burn well.<br />
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Adding vermicompost (worm compost) to the charcoal to inoculate it with a plethora of healthy soil organisms.<br />
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Diamène Jean (left) helping to mix in the worm compost (vermicompost) to inoculate the charcoal powder, converting it into biochar. Based on his readings, Buzz recommended that the crew maintain the charcoal and vermicompost mix humid for two weeks before adding it to the mix for the vegetable tires. Check out photos from Marimaude's yard garden to see what we mean by vegetable tires (<a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2010/06/marimodes-tire-garden.html" target="_blank">Marimaude's Vetgetable Tires</a>). Buzz suggested adding about 1/2 a bucket of this mix for every two buckets of soil.<br />
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Helping rebuild Wilner's dam that powers his hydraulic ram pump. Buzz and Wilner also replaced connections that Wilner had jerry-rigged to keep the pump going after each flooding of Palma stream. For a list of those problems check out the posting: (<a href="http://markandjenny--pcusa.blogspot.com/2013/04/hydraulic-ram-pump-leodiague-hinche-4th.html" target="_blank">Problems with the line</a>)<br />
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<b>Thursday, May 25th</b><br />
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All Thursday afternoon we measured the fall of the Grand River of Verettes to see if we could theoretically pump the water up to the nearest yard that is part of FONDAMA's yard garden program in Verettes. Together with a crew of five or six folks from ODEVRPE and MRPST, we measured this site for a fall of more than 3 meters, starting above this set of drops down to a relatively secure place we could mount a pump in the solid rock. Height (rise or elevation) from there to the Nesly Voltaire's home, where we could construct a cistern, was about 27 meters, which makes the pump technically feasible based on those two factors. For each meter of fall, we can elevate the water ten meters, so with three meters of fall, we could get the water up around 30 meters. The devil is in the details. This stream is volatile when it floods, so Buzz was thinking about how we could use rock climbing technology to drill into the rock and clamp everything in place. After about a week of contemplating, and seeing other sites in Lèogâne, Buzz asked me to keep looking in Verettes to see if there might not be another site with fewer complications.<br />
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<b>Friday, May 26th</b><br />
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Buzz held his second workshop in Verettes with about thirty participants. Here he is explaining the pressure chamber as the final and most critical piece of the ram pump.<br />
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This workshop was fun. We had four dynamic group leaders who led us in singing, and dancing, and generally just kept all of us charged up. It was a huge lesson in how to create an environment where people can absorb information relatively easily, even when the information is fairly complex.<br />
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Once Buzz finished with a brief explanation of the theory of biochar (a technique from the Amazons, thousands of years old, developed by farmers), he moved quickly to the practical. Every single workshop participant began preparing the material for the burns.<br />
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Scrounging around on Thursday PM, after finishing our measurements in the Grand River of Verettes, we had found corn stalks, some corn husks and the ever available coconut fronds and coconut husks.<br />
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We did two burns. After sealing them with soil, our friend Berrique, talked with the group about how to turn the "Fuel from the fields charcoal" into briquettes, which he makes for his own use.<br />
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We used charcoal we brought from Papay to demonstrate turning the charcoal into Biochar. We used urine donated by workshop participants as a starter, with Buzz noting that they still need to add fresh cow manure for the transformation. Healthy urine is very limited in terms of micro-organisms.<br />
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For wrapping up, we held a game show. The participants divided into five or six teams, and then successively chose Buzz if they wanted a pump question, Mark or Herve for a Biochar question, or Berrique for a briquette question. The person who gave the question then decided how many points the answer was worth, from 1 to 5. Other teams got the opportunity to complete the answer, so everyone had to listen to everyone else as they gave their answers. Fueled with the energy from the singing and the jokes, the game turned out to be a good ending to a good workshop.<br />
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When we asked the teams to work together to provide evaluations, they made excellent suggestions, most of which were related to the next time we should provide hands on practice with the pump, the same way we had with the charcoal and the biochar.<br />
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<b>Sunday, May 26th</b><br />
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This trip Luccène Sommervil had a mule to carry our backpacks, sleeping mats and the food up the mountain. We walked over 10 kilometers, climbing over 900 meters to Luccène's house at about 980 meters. <br />
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Definitive proof that Buzz was really in the mountains. Alex Paul (far left), from Verettes also has proof that he made it up these mountain. The revolutionary-times cannon near the top of Orange mountain. The cannon is said to have been carried up the mountain by an woman recently freed from slavery and determined to keep her freedom against the intents of the Napoleon army to retake the island and reinstate slaver in the early 1800's. As the story is told, the woman's heart burst just as she reached this site to place the cannon.<br />
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Just after I had told Buzz that we were over the most difficult part of the climb, when we got to the cannon, we hit this slope. I'd forgotten the steepness of the final 45 minutes before we reached Luccène's home. We actually hit just over 1000 m at the top of this slope. From there it was mostly downhill.<br />
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These small, steep streams are the reason for our climb up into these hills. They seem to me to be exactly the kind of resource for which the hydraulic ram pumps were designed. They are small volume, but fast falling with a lot of energy that can be captured and used to send the water where you need it.<br />
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Luccène's yard garden. This is a significant part of the "why" for the pumps. Luccène already does a good job. What if he had water at hand most of the year round?<br />
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<b>Monday AM, May 27th</b><br />
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Monday morning, after a good long night of rest, we began making measurements for Luccène's spring. Alex Paul is holding the transparent tube in the spring while Buzz and the rest of us find a good place for the potential pump. Buzz's recommendations include building a small impoundment, or dam to assure a constant flow of water into the delivery line.<br />
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Luccène (right) and his associate, Bruno (who arrived early Monday morning from across the mountain) cut a bamboo to measure the height of the fall, so to speak.<br />
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Bruno holds the bamboo up with the transparent tube tied to it and Buzz measures to the ground. Only ten meters from where Alex Paul was holding the tube in the water, we had three meters of fall, and this position for the pump was out of the stream bed, providing some extra security, although Luccène says that since this is a spring, it never floods.<br />
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Using an eye level, Buzz does a second measure of the elevation from the potential position of a pump to the source.<br />
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Luccène, Bruno and Alex Paul learn to use the eye level, calculating the elevation from the potential position of the pump to the house. With only thirteen meters of rise, there is plenty of energy in the stream to get the water up to Luccène's house, a distance of about 50 meters. Luccene had an interesting observation. As we talked about installing the pump, we also mentioned that he needed to really protect the spring. His comment was something like, "Oh yeah. I'm going to plant the head of the spring with a bunch of trees." Maybe adding value to water sources can increase the impulse to replant the slopes.<br />
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Luccène has close to 150 trees, "kapab"(<i>Colubrina arborescens</i>), in a tree nursery that is part of his yard garden space.<br />
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<b>Monday PM, 27 May</b><br />
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Buzz admiring the beauty of the traditional mountain agriuclture, which includes a great diversity of fruits and staple crops. After lunch at Luccène's, we headed down towards Esterne's neighborhood, at some 600 meters of elevation (a mere 380 meters drop).<br />
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<b>Tuesday AM, May 28th</b><br />
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Buzz and Esterne (right) looking at possible positions for a pump. Tuesday morning, we began measuring a potential site near Esterne's home. Esterne has one huge stream that floods violently and he has a smaller stream that flows into the larger one across from one of his fields. To avoid problems related to flooding, Buzz suggested working on the smaller stream. Esterne approved that idea because he is good friends with the owner of the land that the stream flows through.<br />
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Alex Paul tracking the time to measure the water flow. The hydraulic ram pump needs at least five gallons a minute. This stream was flowing at at least four times that, at about twenty gallons a minute. Esterne observed that during the dry season, the stream drops at most to half of the current flow, still well above the minimum.<br />
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Buzz talking with Esterne about how we might jump the supply line from the pump over the larger stream by passing a cable through the mango and tying it on the other side to a large rock. We would then tie the 3/4" polyethylene to the cable using something like carabiners. It was about 250 meters from the potential pump site to Esterne's house. Fall from up stream, about 50 meters, to the potential pump site, was 14 meters. Elevation to Esterne's house was 52 meters, close to a third of our potential pumping power of 140 meters. Tantalizing!!!<br />
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<b>Tuesday PM, May 28th</b><br />
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After finishing the measurements and eating lunch, we headed down the mountain. We got to the main route before the rain hit, which was a relief. But it kept getting more complicated as we got farther down the mountain. When we got to the Grand Rive of Léogâne, it was in flood, and we had to climb back up part of the mountain and ease our way through some new hills to find our way out without having to cross the big river. How was all that? As my brother Keith says when we ask him how his flight was, "We made it, so, it was good." <br />
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<b>A shout out to Herve Delima and Givenson Laurent</b> </h2>
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Givenson Laurent (far left) registers Maurice (middle (white shorts and shirt) in FONDAMA's yard garden program. Givenson, together with Alex Paul came with us from Verettes, ostensibly to get redworms from the folks in ODEPOL. But they decided to experience the mountains of Léogâne for themselves. While Alex Paul, Buzz and I (Mark) were doing exciting things with streams, Herve and Givenson were working with Maurice and his family on beginning to establish their official yard garden.<br />
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Maurice's daughter, Ilia, mixes up soil, sand and manure for the vegetable tires. Givenson (yellow shorts) helps build the bench to hold the tires.<br />
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<b>Thursday AM, May 30th</b> <br />
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Mark (front left) translating into English for Berrique as he explains the process for making briquettes to the Léogâne folk. This was Buzz's third and final workshop and he was pleased that Berrique was willing to come from Verettes to add the briquette component. Haitian workshop participants were about fifteen. Visitors from the MBF vision trip were about 17, and represented all major geographical areas of the US, east, west, midwest, south.<br />
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Polyethylene pipe for potable water--at least three times the price per foot (or meter) of what we are looking for. This pipe is part of an MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) project in Desarmes, about ten miles east of Verettes. It came from a supplier called H2O. Address: Delmas 42 Lechaud #2, toupre lycée, 29432020, 34109446. We are still waiting for a quote from them on the type of pipe we are interested in.<br />
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<b>What next???</b><br />
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<b>1) Find the funds and, hopefully, people who want to be part of this adventure.</b><br />
<b>2) Find the pipe, hopefully in Haiti.</b><br />
<b>3) Figure a way to get the supplies up the mountain to the remote communities where Bruno, Luccène, Esterne, Maurice, etc. live.</b><br />
<b>4) Build and test the pumps with Bruno, Luccène, Esterne, Maurice, etc.</b><br />
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If you have actually read this whole post, you may be hooked. Get in touch!</h2>
<br />Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1630731023428367684.post-62601964413111937562013-06-11T08:49:00.001-07:002013-06-11T12:33:58.053-07:00"St. Marguerite," a mountain school in Léogâne, in the community of "La Tourmelle"Here is a school in the mountains of Léogâne that needs rebuilt. The earthquake of January 12th, 2010 destroyed the church (Ste. Marguerite) and school, in the mountain community of "La Tournelle". Funds from the United Nations paid to get rid of the debris. Now they need funds to rebuild. Would love to help make the connections with a consortium of churches interested in funding and sending folks to rebuild.<br />
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This school is between six and ten miles up into the mountains and is only accessible by foot and pack animal. It serves preschoolers through the equivalent of 9th or 10th grade ("Troisième, Secondaire"). The Episcopal priest responsible for the school is Père Dejardin Wisnel.<br />
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The school has a limited partnership with an Episcopal church in the States named "St. Mark's." Gotta love that. Specifically, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, in Altadena, CA. Here is a picture from the school program that they support at the Latournelle school:<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=524167390949689&set=a.479795552053540.115771.212255842140847&type=1&theater" target="_blank">St. Mark's Episcopal School--Compassion for the World</a><br />
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Leave me a note on this blog, or write me via the Mission Connections site: <a href="http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/missionconnections/hare-mark/" target="_blank">Mission Connections</a><br />
if you think your church might be interested. It would without doubt be a unique mission experience, including seriously physically challenging.<br />
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Pre-school teacher helping a student form her letters.<br />
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Area where former church-school stood. This area has been cleared, flattened and slightly enlarged with help from a United Nations program.<br />
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One of the older classes in a bit of a building that remained.<br />
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The main building that remains, where the administration is located and, I would estimate, three classroom areas.<br />
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Photos by Mark Hare, all rights reserved. Denera Lemoine, a school administrator, provided information about the school and the relationship with St. Mark's in Altadena.Mark Harehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05853597345799043852noreply@blogger.com6