Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my summit of Mount Katahdin and the end of my four-month hike of the Appalachian Trail. It got me thinking of all the places I've been since then. Here's a five-picture tour, with links to narratives from those days:

July 2007 -- On top of Katahdin. You can read about that day here.

July 2008 -- San Rafael, D.R., post-4th of July festivites. Title of the blog from one of those early July days: Whelmed...over and under.

July 2009 -- Las Galeras, D.R., 4th of July football game with other Peace Corps Volunteers. Reflections on what it feels like to find out about Michael Jackson dying several days after the fact and some pictures of horses on this blog post, from a few days after that.

July 2010 -- The Citadel, Milot, Haiti (this is actually September 2010, but I couldn't find any other pictures). I do, however, have a blog post from July 2010 from three days after I flew into Port-au-Prince to stay for the next two years.

July 2011 -- Mirebalais, Haiti, checking in on some clients. Business as usual.

When I was in the Peace Corps, I celebrated my one-year mark in the Dominican Republic by going to the beach with a couple of friends, enjoying one or eight Presidentes, and generally reveling in all the great things associated with living on a Caribbean island.

This Monday, I celebrated my first anniversary in Haiti by heading down to work, despite some oh-so-typical intestinal issues and an even nastier cold. I took a half day.

On that day in the D.R., I remember contentedly sitting around with my group of friends, feeling like I had come so far, and learned so much. One of those traveling three-man beach bands stopped by our table, playing "La Bamba," looking for tips, and my little group of gringos requested all the best Dominican classics, because we knew all the words.

This week, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on how little I seem to know about Haiti, while at the same time giving myself a little pat on the back for at least being able to speak fluent Kreyòl and being able to navigate the city. In some ways, the two experiences aren't so different. A lot of the same tricks that I picked up in the D.R. -- spotting a helpful person (nearly everyone) versus someone who is looking for trouble (precious few), flushing a toilet with a bucket of water, reading by candlelight -- are useful to me here, too. I also learned that I need to keep blogging or otherwise I'll let this thing sit here for months at a time without updating. So, maybe that's the real point of this entry, to keep a little continuity, although it does coincide nicely with what should be some nicely thought out reflection on all I've learned over the past 52 weeks or so.

It's a cop out, I know, but I recommend reading Steph's blog for more of what we've been up to over the past month. (Oh yeah, Steph and her cat, Mittens, moved in. That's news.)

Mittens in her D.R. days, eating cookie batter or something, because her mom spoils her.

Me and Mittens's mom on Mittens's mom's birthday.

Before I do something crazy like posting more pictures of cats on my blog, I'll finish up this entry with an impromptu list of goals for this next year:Learn more about Haitian culture. It is shockingly easy to live and work in Haiti and have the most minuscule amount of interaction with Haitians. Ask 90% of the expats who live here. While I'm happy that almost all of my coworkers are Haitian, I am going to try harder to make more Haitian friends outside of work and, in addition, try to learn more about the culture.Improve my Kreyòl. It's pretty good, but it could be a lot better. This is closely related to the above point.Attend a voudou ceremony. I've been missing out.Find other interesting volunteer opportunities. There are tons of interesting things that people do that I'd like to get involved in. My friend has a creative writing group for a group of Haitian kids downtown -- it sounds great, and I still haven't gone!Meet more interesting people. Haiti is filled with fascinating people, Haitians and expats alike.Keep learning. Sounds kind of cheesy, I suppose, but I've recently felt how easy it is to get into my routine and stop challenging myself. That's no fun.Looking over the list it seems like I could just sum all of those things up into the general category of "get out more." That I can do!

Three weeks ago, I took a deep breath, composed myself, walked into my boss's office and told her that I was leaving Haiti in the fall.

Today, I told her that I accepted her offer to keep me here for another year or so. So much for composure -- maybe I'll have better luck next year when I try to leave!

In all seriousness, I had started looking forward to going back to life Stateside for a while, but I have recently started to really get into the swing of things here and, as luck would have it, it looks like there is a need for me here for a little bit more time.

In kreyòl, they have a proverb that says N'ap pran sis kreyòl, which is a reference to a hymnal they use in church. Sis kreyòl is "six kreyòl," the sixth kreyòl hymn in the book. One of the lines in the hymn is Pran'm jan ou wè'm nan, which means "take me as you see me." It's a bit of a confusing etymology, but the message is simple: we'll take things as they come. (Thanks, Sam, for the proverb history.) Sometimes, as much as you plan ahead and work yourself up over the future, it's better to just take things as they come. Not to say that a little foresight isn't useful, of course, but sometimes the unexpected solution ends up being the right one.

I meet a lot of other foreigners who are living and working in Haiti, and oftentimes we get to talking. For those unfamiliar with the ritual of meeting another blan in Haiti, the first two questions that every single one of these conversations begins with are: 1) Who are you working with? and 2) How long have you been here? After a couple of months, I found that this conversation was no longer interesting to me, so I started to try to take it in different directions. No matter how hard I try, though, we always seem to end up talking about the same stuff: Haiti and the work that we are doing in Haiti.

People are generally too polite to comment on or criticize other people's work, at least to their faces. I feel lucky because the organization that I work for is generally well respected, and I think that people mean it when they say complimentary things. With that said, I know there are others who want to cringe when I mention that I work in microfinance, which is just fine. I'm not 100% sold on it either. Most of the time, though, we never get into any real conversations about the nature of our work. Each person thinks he or she is doing a fine job and that's the end of it.

When it comes to Haiti in general, however, the story changes. Here is where every person has an opinion, no matter who he or she is working for, no matter how long he or she has been in Haiti. People love to start their sentences with grandiose generalizations, saying things like: "You know what the problem with Haiti is?" Or, "This is what needs to happen to fix this place." There are a lot of different topics that can come up in a conversation like this, but they become significantly limited when the aforementioned unofficial rule of politeness is imposed. By taking away any sort of criticisms of what all the other benevolent foreigners are doing, the blame list gets narrowed down very quickly: Haitian politicians, Haitian elites, the Haitian poor, the Haitian education system, Haitian natural disasters, Haitian deforestation, and all sorts of other "Haitian" problems.

The conclusion that is often drawn, then, is that all of these "Haitian" problems have piled up on top of each other to the point that the country has descended into a quagmire from which it is nearly impossible to escape. It has become the job of the foreign aid and development community to come in and help Haitians (because God knows they can't do it by themselves). Each person and each organization contributes where it can -- with golden hearts, we're all just "doing our part."

What the conversation almost always fails to include, whether it be between two development workers in Haiti or between several supposed experts in the national spotlight, is any hint of historical context. Haiti has existed in a hostile environment from the beginning, always pitted in an unfair fight against the world's greatest powers. The history of foreign intervention in Haiti's affairs is shameful (and, by the way, completely on the record). Here are some examples (a lot of this is taken from a chapter in Noam Chomsky's book, Year 501):Haiti wins its independence from France in 1804, completing the only successful slave rebellion in history. The French immediately levy a debt on Haiti for losses sustained in the war for independence that the government of Haiti does not finishing paying back until 1947. You are reading correctly -- that's 143 years.The United States refuses to recognize Haiti as a country until 1862, when Abraham Lincoln decides that Haiti would be a great landing spot for ex-American slaves to land after the Civil War is won.Between 1849 and 1913, United States Navy ships enter into Haitian waters 24 times "to protect American lives and property."In 1915, the United States begins a military occupation of Haiti under President Woodrow Wilson, who would later win a Nobel Peace Prize (sound familiar?). Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, upon learning about Haiti, shows his respect for the country by exclaiming: "Dear me, think of it! Niggers speaking French."Between 1957 and 1986, the United States supports the Duvalier (Papa and Baby Doc) "Presidencies for Life," under which 10s of 1,000s of Haitians are killed and terrorized, many of whom were accused of being Communists. The list goes on. In some cases, the intervention was direct. In others, such as propping up the Duvalier regimes, it was more tacit. The common theme throughout, though, is that in the last 207 years since Haiti won its independence, it has constantly been used for the benefit of foreign powers.

When we frame the conversation in this way (which, again, is completely factually accurate), we see that the conclusions drawn about all the "Haitian" problems are disingenuous. Haiti's problems are, in fact, the direct result of more than 200 years of foreign meddling, which has bankrupted the country and facilitated the creation of a deeply-ingrained power structure, whereby the great majority of poor Haitians are not granted access to any of the country's resources.

The idea that we are all just "doing our part" to remedy these "Haitian" problems is equally troublesome. By approaching our work in this way, we ignore the root causes of the issues and resign ourselves to the Sisyphian task of palliative care. While it is noble to care for the sick, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless, we must constantly ask ourselves whether or not the work we are doing is helping to change the structures of power that are keeping people sick, hungry, and homeless. If our work is not doing that (or, worse, if it is in fact helping to maintain or strengthen those structures), we need to re-think what we are doing. If not, we are all just "doing our part" to keep the Haitian people down.

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Now that I got that out of my system...

Another random note: The band Arcade Fire, recent Grammy winners, played a surprise show at the Hotel Oloffson in Port-au-Prince on Tuesday (here are some pictures from Rolling Stone). It would probably be cooler to say that I loved the show and that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I showed up 45 minutes late and only caught the last song. RAM, the local band who have been on a hiatus from their weekly show for the past few months, came on after them and were great.

...in picture form.

It seems I've been quite negligent when it comes to the old blog. Personally, things are going very well. I'm enjoying work, staying quite busy, liking the new house and, overall, feeling good about things.

I've had an eventful month or so since I last posted, which has included: some client graduations, a trip to the beach town of Jacmel for Haiti's version of Carnival (Kanaval, in Kreyòl), and a week spent hosting students from American University as well as a photographer who is working for us. I've spent a lot of time running around and have been thankful for the last couple of days I've been able to just spend being boring in the office.

Things may be returning to the exciting side, though, as former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide landed in Port-au-Prince after seven years spent in exile in South Africa. I've already gotten in trouble around here for spouting some opinions about the matter, but here goes anyway. In my opinion, whether or not you agree with Aristide's politics and whatever he has done (or not done) in the past, he is a Haitian citizen and has a right to be in Haiti. I'll leave it at that, mostly because I think that taking any argument further than that starts to delve unproductively deep into the realm of subjectivity, at least for this here blog. He is without question the most polarizing figure in Haiti and one of the most polarizing in the hemisphere. At any rate, it's not my decision to make as to whether or not he comes back to Haiti (nor is it, by the way, President Obama's, despite his apparent effort to keep Aristide from returning to Haiti by calling the President of South Africa and asking him to prevent Aristide's departure).

Anyway, he's here now, so we'll see. Or, as we say in Kreyòl, n'ap gade pou nou wè (literally, we'll look for us to see). Or, simply, n'ap swiv (we'll follow).

Oh yeah -- and the run-off round of presidential elections is scheduled for Sunday. It pits Michel Martelly vs. Mirlande Manigat. Tèt kale vs. Ban'm manman'm. "Bald head" vs. "Give me my mom" (actual campaign slogans). N'ap swiv.

Here are some photos of things I've been doing in the past month.

My team.

Getting down at a client graduation in Lenbe.

A skit at a client graduation in Lenbe.

Panoramic view from Tit Montayn, a five-hour walk from our closest branch.

Tit Montayn again. Can you see the market nestled down at the base of the mountains?

Kanaval in Jacmel. This particular guy, like many others, is sporting a mean pair of wooden wings that make an alarmingly loud sound when smashed together with a mechanism he has rigged up to his arms.

More wing devils.

Turkeys!

As promised, here are some pictures of the new place! Nothing too exciting, but it'll help you to have an idea of how I'm living.

Bedroom

Kitchen

Balcony (with easy access to the roof!)

Living room

Bathroom (not a closet - just drying some clothes)

My beautiful (and terribly dirty) 2003 Nissan Sentra

Neighborhood view to the left

Neighborhood view to the right

It's a work in progress - and every time we make a little progress we just seem to find more work. Slowly but surely, though, it's becoming home.

I haven't felt particularly inspired to update the blog in a couple of weeks, but in the interest of continuing a good thing I thought I'd post a little update. Overall, though, tout bagay anfòm - all is well. Here is some what's going on with Haiti and with me:

Elections:Or selections, depending on your perspective. Here's a quick recap of the events up until now:

On November 28th, the first round of Presidential elections was held, where very few voters showed up and those that did were faced with widespread fraud. On December 7th, the results of the first round were announced: 1) Mirlande Manigat, 2) Jude Celestin, 3) Michel Martelly. The first two candidates were to go on to a run-off election, scheduled for January 16th. On December 8th through December 10th, nationwide protests forced the organizers of the election to go to a recount. This was due to the fact that Jude Celestin (the incumbent President's party's candidate) came in second, a fraction of a percentage point ahead of Michel Martelly, and most Haitians agreed that this should not have been the case.

On January 26th, the results were re-announced, with a slight change: 1) Mirlande Manigat, 2) Michel Martelly, 3) Jude Celestin. The incumbent's candidate was out, and the run-off election was reschedule for March 20th. There were no protests, which gave the impression that the people got what they want.

Democracy, right? Not exactly. As I've elaborated on before, the elections were fatally flawed from the beginning. With political parties arbitrarily excluded from participating and hundreds of thousands of unregistered voters unable to cast their votes, it was far from a democratic election. It appears now that the run-off election between Manigat and Martelly will still take place on March 20th, but it's a far cry from a democratic result when they received 6.4% and 4.5% of the registered voters' support, respectively, in the original election (see this CEPR press release).

Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc):Haiti made it back into the headlines with the return of Jean Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier a couple weeks ago. It's widely agreed that Baby Doc and his father were despots and killers, with the blood of thousands of Haitians on their hands. What isn't so clear is why he came back. The hypothesis that seems to have become the top rumor is that he was broke and needed to come back to Haiti in order to clear up some legal problems so that he can access some overseas bank accounts. Seems plausible, I guess. I'm happy enough just to ignore the guy, although if he's brought to justice for the crimes he's committed against his own people I wouldn't object.

Jean Bertrand Aristide:Duvalier's return has opened up the door to another one of Haiti's Presidents of the past, Jean Bertrand Aristide. As this great post points out, though, it is almost a crime to even speak about the two in the same sentence. While a lot of news sources are wrapping their respective returns into one story, the two men have very different legacies. If you'd like to read more about Aristide and why many (including me) think that his return would be a positive thing for Haiti, read this article. It's got one of my favorite two-faced U.S. diplomacy anecdotes:

Regarding Duvalier's return:

"this is a matter for the Government of Haiti and the people of Haiti." (from State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley)Regarding Aristide's return:"today Haiti needs to focus on its future, not its past." (Crowley again).You can't make this stuff up.

Dominican Republic:In personal news, I just spent a great weekend with my dad, our friend Jeanne, and Stephanie in the D.R. We went to the beach, ate fresh fish, drank a bunch of Presidents, repeated the previous activities a few times, and watched the Super Bowl. It was a great getaway for the weekend (probably more so for the two who came down from Minnesota, but it was still nice for me, too). It's been a few months since I've lived in the D.R. full time, but it still feels like home in a lot of ways.

My trip back to Port-au-Prince was delayed by a day as Haiti's current president, Rene Preval, decided not to step down from power even though February 7th was originally supposed to be the last day of his five-year term. The bus company canceled the Santo Domingo - Port-au-Prince route for the day because there were some half-hearted protests in the Haitian capital and I guess they didn't want any trouble. Anyway, the protests only lasted about a day and things have calmed down.

New house:I moved! I'll post pictures of the new luxury pad soon so you can all bask in its glory, but suffice it to say it's a great place and I'm very happy. It's got two bedrooms (one for me, one for my friend and colleague, Mor). a bathroom, a nice kitchen, living room, and a balcony. We're on the second floor, but the people who live on the first floor are hardly ever there (I think they live in the States). It's in a great location, in a nice neighborhood and, maybe best of all, cuts down my commute to and from work in half. It's a work in progress, and I've spent the better part of the past week and a half trying to finish it up, but it's definitely home, which is a good place to be.

Dear friends,

The one-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince has come and gone. As you might imagine, Haiti was a busier place last week, filled with journalists and others who were interested in commemorating the event. If, as I was, you were alarmed at the velocity at which Haiti disappeared from the news only weeks after the earthquake hit last year, you probably won't be surprised too hear that the exodus of journalists out of Port-au-Prince was significantly quicker this year. After a smattering of articles and op-eds lamenting the essentially failed efforts to reconstruct over the past year, Haiti has once again faded from the headlines.

There is, however, another story that is still happening here. The presidential elections of November 28th, by nearly all measures, were a failure. All of you who are receiving this letter are original signers of a petition to postpone those elections until certain criteria were met. Well, the criteria were not met, the elections went on as planned and the end result was not very surprising. The Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR) released a report detailing all of the irregularities of the elections and reasons for which they should not be legitimated. (The report itself is a bit of a long read. For a quick, yet thorough, overview of the problems, please see CEPR's press release as well.)

While the actual election-day irregularities are enough to call into question the validity of the elections, it is important to remember that the elections were flawed before the first ballot was even cast. While you, as an original signer of the petition, will be familiar with some of the fatal flaws, we have been continuing to fight to get the word out. The latest step has been the publication of an op-ed by RPCV Keane Bhatt in the St. Petersburg Times, the hyperlinked copy of which is pasted below. (We, too, were a little confused at the life-sized portrait of Keane at the head of the article, but I'm sure he's got plenty of fans in the Tampa Bay area now.) It highlights the reasons for which the elections were not legitimate and describes the Unites States' moral duty to insist on and fund a do-over election. It's a worthwhile read.

As concerned U.S. citizens who, like so many, have a place in our hearts for Haiti, it can be terribly frustrating to stand by as Haiti is continually crippled by things both natural (earthquakes, cholera) and unnatural (political unrest). However, while we may not be able to do anything to prevent hurricanes from arriving on Haiti's shores, we do have an influence in other ways. We are fortunate to be able to express ourselves openly, to be active, and to influence our political affairs. These are things that I, at least, have taken for granted in the past. After several months of living in Port-au-Prince, I see a different reality for many Haitians, who are prevented from practicing these most basic democratic activities for many reasons, not the least of which are economic hardship and political exclusion. We should use our great influence, as U.S. citizens, in service of those who do not have those same rights.

This story is not over. The election review is still in process, and nobody is quite sure which direction the Haitian government and international overseers will take. In a shift, the U.S. government has announced that it could reject the original election results, pending the results of the review. This means that there is still a chance that the elections could be re-done in a way that is fair, free, and inclusive, which is what we have been fighting for from the very beginning.

What can you do to help?Add your name to this petition, which asks Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and the U.S. State Department to withdraw their support of the fraudulent elections.Call or write your Senator or Representative.Write your local newspaper. As RPCVs, we are respected members of the communities where we live. Give it a try, I think you'll be surprised at the positive results.Ask your friends and family to support the petition.At a University? Hold an event, start a discussion group, start an on-campus petition.Together we can make this happen. Thank you for your continued support and, as always, for standing with Haiti.

All my best,David

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Hyperlinked copy of Keane's op-ed:

Only new, fair voting can help Haiti now

By Keane Bhatt

It is bad enough that, by delaying reconstruction aid to Haiti, the United States has failed to give adequate assistance to our neighbor, which was struck by a devastating earthquake one year ago. It is far worse that we have also actively cooperated in its deeply flawed election. Our government helped impose an election process upon the Haitian people that gave rise to foreseeable human rights violations, and is therefore complicit in the resulting harm. Having helped fund and organize the elections, the United States should support a fair and inclusive do-over, if only to rectify its wrong.

Three fatal flaws in the electoral process were known well in advance of the fraudulent Nov. 28 elections. First, Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council, the organization tasked with supervising the elections, was hopelessly compromised by conflict of interest. President Rene Preval, who championed his "hand-picked successor" Jude Celestin during the elections, had also hand-selected the nine members of the council. Second, the council banned the participation of 15 political parties—including Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular party in the country—without offering a valid reason. Third, it was obvious the government would fail to provide all internally displaced people with identification necessary to vote. This much was already clear when the United States enthusiastically invested at least $14 million into the election process. By cooperating in an enterprise that guaranteed exclusion, the United States implicated itself in the violation of Haitians' human right to fair elections. This infringement was the root cause of the uproar that followed. Human decisions—not nature—led to the predictable injuries and deaths. The United States had a moral obligation to demand the implementation of inclusive and democratic policies in exchange for its decisive support. It did not do so. For months before the elections, the State Department stalled and equivocated in the face of prominent objections and appeals. Forty-five members of Congress signed an urgent letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling for her to address the three flaws. Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, ranking member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, criticized the exclusions and warned of potential chaos. Paul Farmer, U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, expressed his concern that "all Haitian people and parties be allowed to participate."

More than two dozen nongovernmental organizations and church groups with intimate knowledge of Haitian politics and society sent Clinton a letter with detailed prescriptions to mitigate the disaster. As a group of over 120 returned Peace Corps volunteers who served in the neighboring Dominican Republic, my colleagues and I also petitioned her. The State Department studiously ignored such pleas. On Nov. 7, President Obama eloquently denounced the sham elections that occurred in Burma, which suffered from similar failings. In contrast, Obama made no appeal to resolve the Haitian electoral defects despite the moral responsibility arising from having funded an election that would predictably trigger political crisis and violence. The United States failed to use its uniquely influential position as the election's largest financier. The media, with few exceptions, followed Obama's lead. They missed the intrinsic defects of the election preparations and were therefore shocked by the ensuing catastrophe. While clearly documenting widespread ballot stuffing, outdated voter lists, and other irregularities, the media hardly mentioned the elections' structural fraudulence: the exclusion of both voters and parties. Most reporting has focused on the maneuverings of three preapproved candidates as they dispute minuscule percentages of the votes of less than one quarter of Haiti's eligible voters. This attention falsely suggests that recounts and runoff rounds can somehow produce a legitimate president. Further invalidating the process, the United Nations threatened to withhold resources if the elections are not accepted. It also inveigled two front-runners into withdrawing their principled calls to annul the elections. Despite this, over half of the candidates still demand annulment. Our failure to refrain from causing foreseeable harm obligates us to undertake remedial efforts. The United States, along with the other underwriters of the elections, should finance a do-over that includes all political parties and voters, headed by a new, credible Provisional Electoral Council. While $30 millionfor new elections may seem costly, the Haitian government must have a democratic mandate to manage issues like public health and the investment of billions of dollars of aid. Furthermore, this price tag amounts to less than two weeks of the U.N. security force's proposed budget for 2011. Only new, fair elections can lead to a just outcome. Let's insist that our government take responsibility for its moral failure and offer logistical and financial support to carry out inclusive elections in Haiti.

Keane Bhatt served in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2008 to 2010. He helped organize the returned Peace Corps volunteers' petition to Hillary Clinton. Please add your name to the thousands demanding that the U.S. support inclusive elections in Haiti at http://bit.ly/fairelection.

It seems a bit obvious, I suppose, to write about the earthquake on its anniversary. Although I am currently in Haiti’s central plateau, a good distance from Port-au-Prince, I imagine that the city is bustling with a few more foreigners than usual, paying a sort of twisted homage to an event and a day that took away and changed so many people’s lives.

In many ways, I’m no different than any of those other blan (foreigners) who have fit Haiti into their lives’ itineraries for a brief time. In the months after the earthquake, it felt only right to try to help, whether by donating my money, my time, or, in the end, finding an opportunity to come work in the country itself. In June, I arrived with droves of other would-be do-gooders, anxious to try to do my part. By chance, I ended up working with one of Haiti’s very best organizations and have had, despite many frustrations, a remarkable personal experience. These have been, without a doubt, the seven most difficult months of my life, but I am lucky to have spent them as I have. I have no doubt that there are hundreds, probably thousands, of other people that could share a similar story.

I went to an event today with employees from several of our rural branches. There were maybe 50 people gathered and, as it normally works with my organization, I was the only foreigner. It was a nice ceremony – the branch directors said a few words, we sang songs, said some prayers, had a moment of silence for those that were lost a year ago, and planted a few trees as a group. At one point, the director who was running the ceremony asked if I’d like to say a few words, and I obliged.

My kreyòl, although not perfect, comes pretty naturally now. Despite that, I had a difficult time finding the right words to communicate what I was trying to say. In some ways, my speech felt out of place. I, after all, was not in Haiti when the earthquake hit last year. I did not lose friends or family, as nearly every other person in the room had. Although I know it’s irrational, it was difficult not to feel a little guilty, as if I am somehow undeserving of my good fortune. I talked for a couple of minutes about something or other, and I finally realized my point (after it had already come out of my mouth, of course). I told them, “I wasn’t here with you all on January 12th, 2010, but I’m very happy to be here with you all on January 12th, 2011.”

I meant what I said. I have good friends here, Haitian and otherwise. Most of my Haitian friends at that particular meeting also happened to be my employees, so I hope they like their boss as much as their boss likes them. Although it has taken some time, I have built a small community of people here that I care for and trust. It’s home.

On a broader scale, too, I am happy to be here. If there is anything I’ve learned about Haiti, it’s that I should have always been learning about Haiti. It is striking to me now that I lived and worked for nearly three years right across the border, on the same island, and hardly paid attention to the place! Not to mention the twenty or so years prior to that where it might have ever crossed my mind only a handful of times.

So, on a day when the world’s focus once again shifts towards Haiti, I’ll add my voice to the chorus. I will do my best to advocate and work for a just and democratic society not just today, but every other day. I, like most others in my position, will probably leave Haiti one day. I hope that it’s only in body, and not in spirit.

I'm back in Port-au-Prince after two fantastic weeks in Florida. Highlights included:

*A college graduation party for Angie, Stephanie's sister.*Bike tours of Gainesville.*A round of golf.*Gator sightings.*Eating good food and drinking good beer every single day (the side effects of which are apparently noticeable, as most of my Haitian colleagues have pointed out a difference in my appearance).*Christmas with Stephanie's family.*Christmas gifts sent from Minnesota.*Going to the movies.*Sleeping in almost every day.*Snow in Gainesville.*Walking around the woods in Fort Lauderdale with a great group of friends.*Going out to eat at delicious restaurants.*Paddling kayaks and seeing a couple dozen manatees.*Spending all day, every day with Stephanie.

As always, the transition back home to Haiti was a little tough yesterday. But, I'm glad I'm here and have had a productive Monday, as far as those things go. Here's to a New Year. And especially a New Year for Haiti.

My friend and colleague recently commented that Haiti is a “frustrating place to work.” His reasonable comment came after learning that the only international airport – his ticket out of the country – was going to be closed on Wednesday and Thursday due to the fact that the airport’s employees were unable to get to work. His observation also came before American Airlines announced all of its flights would be canceled until at least Monday. More frustrating, I imagine. I couldn’t help but feel some of the same sentiments, having taken off from Port-au-Prince on Tuesday with a laundry list of activities to get done in the north of the country, including three client graduation ceremonies. A series of changes of direction and decisions – more easily made by burning tires, giant roadblocks, and some rather intimidating looking crowds – has landed me in Limbe, near Haiti’s second city, Cap-Haitien. I’ve resigned myself to staying here until at least tomorrow, when I’ll make an early morning dash to Port-au-Prince with a half-completed list of activities in my hand. There are no guarantees that I’ll actually make it back to my house without running into more roadblocks, but we’re going to give it a shot anyway. If it’s not possible, we’ll turn around. So, yes, it’s frustrating. I’ve talked about it before. Take your pick of any of those tired platitudes: swimming upstream, running in place, spinning my wheels. My current situation is just another manifestation of one of those, except this time it’s physical: I’m stuck. This, however, is not about me. And it’s not about my understandably aggravated friend. It’s about the thousands of Haitians who have taken to the streets, who have every right to be exponentially more frustrated than we do. It’s about an entire country of people, beaten down by natural disasters, disease, and – more than anything – shackled by constant international intervention for over two centuries. (If you’d like to read more about this from a person who knows much more than me, please read Dr. Paul Farmer’s essay from the London Review of Books.) While I’m immobilized for a couple of days, most Haitians, such as the 54% who live on less than $1/day, have little or no opportunity to ever move forward. They live day to day, meal to meal, hoping that the next hurricane or cholera outbreak doesn’t hit too close to home. This is, of course, part of what my organization tries to remedy, in the form of microfinance (among other services). It tries to give people some traction, a jumping-off point. Other organizations try to help by providing educational training, access to health care, agricultural products. If you can think of a development- or aid-based initiative, you’ll find an example of it in Haiti. You can also find a group of people raving about, or tearing apart, any of these initiatives; nobody can seem to agree on the best approach to alleviating any of the problems associated with poverty. The elections, though, are a different story. Here, there should be no debate. You find a way to give all eligible voters a chance to vote and you find a way to give all eligible candidates a chance to run. Not to pull a George W. Bush, but only people who hate democracy wouldn’t agree with that statement. I’ve seen different numbers thrown around, but $29 million is the one that sticks in my head. That’s the amount of money that was poured into the Haitian elections ($14 million of which came by way of the United States). An election fatally flawed from its inception: a President who handpicked the members of the council charged with overseeing the elections; over a dozen political parties arbitrarily excluded from participating; a woefully insufficient effort to register voters who were displaced by the earthquake. I guess we were all holding our collective breath in the days leading up to the announcement of the election results, hoping that this wouldn’t happen. I admit that, although I knew the elections were far from perfect, I was eager for a resolution that would leave a somewhat large percentage of the population happy. I, despite what I said in the previous paragraph, thought that a somewhat flawed, partly successful election might be good for the country. I thought this mostly because I knew how much people wanted change. I thought this because I knew how much people wanted current President Rene Preval and his Inite party out of power. Twenty-nine million dollars and this is the end result. If things stand as is, Mirlande Manigat (an academic who briefly spent time in the Presidential Palace as the First Lady in the 1980s) and Jude Celestin (Inite and Preval’s candidate) will face off in a runoff election on January 16th. It’s an absolute farce. Anyone who has spent any time in Haiti over the past couple of months can tell you how tired of Preval nearly everyone is. There is no way that the results released on Tuesday reflect the will of the people. (Even the normally Preval-friendly U.S. embassy issued a statement questioning the results.) The protests were entirely predictable and justified. “We’re teaching Preval a lesson,” an excitable young man told me at a roadblock, obligating our car to turn around. “He doesn’t respect the people!” It is unfortunate, personally, that I was caught up in Preval’s lesson and my work was affected for the week. But, as I mentioned to my irritated friend, if it were me I’d be setting up roadblocks and burning tires too. I do not applaud the violence toward other people that is associated with the protests, but I do understand it. For many, they can find no different way to get others to listen. I still contend that a partially successful election could have helped the country move forward. But I was completely wrong to expect it to come out of the constraints that had been set up by the Haitian government and international organizations overseeing the elections. It was set up to fail. Instead, what we have is a complete quagmire, with no real positive options, and a population that finds itself in the same position as always. Stuck. The best idea I’ve come across to mend the situation is to annul the elections and redo them in a few months after a better effort is made to register voters and all parties are included. However, that brings up the problem of who will run the country until then, which could be a real issue considering all of the very strong anti-Preval feelings in the country, especially after the elections.

Make no mistake about it. This was a completely manmade – and preventable – disaster. And cleaning up this mess is going to cost a lot of time and money in a moment where the people of Haiti are as vulnerable as they have ever been. Once again, though, there can be no debate. The situation must be remedied; if not, the people will continue to teach Preval, and the rest of us, a lesson.

I am traveling this week, and far away from the riots in Port-au-Prince. The election results came out last night (see here for the actual numbers), and the people have risen up - rightfully. Check out my friend Frank's personal account of last night's activities and why everyone is so upset.

Anyway, I'm staying safe. Let's hope for a quick, just solution to this very man-made disaster.

I started writing this a few days ago, immediately following the elections. I got busy and sort of lost some steam, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

It could have worked. As day broke over Port-au-Prince on November 28th, nobody knew what to expect, but everybody knew what they wanted. Chanjman, change. The date, on which Haitians took to the polls to elect their next President, had loomed large for months. Despite an increasing number of voices – including some from the candidates themselves – calling for the postponement of the elections, the Haitian government and international overseers refused to acquiesce to their requests. The elections were to go on as planned. Our day got off to an inauspicious start. We rushed out of the house in order to get to the nearest polling station by 6:00 a.m., the scheduled opening time. We were greeted by a mass of people, already waiting in an orderly line outside the door. A good sign, I thought, until we entered the high school-turned-voting center and were faced with a different scene. In each of the voting rooms, election observers were furiously counting out ballots, apparently trying to match the number of ballots in each room with the number of people who would be voting there that day. Interspersed among election officials were mandataires, young men and women who represented each of the political parties whose candidates were running for office that day. They were there ostensibly to keep tabs on each other and their respective parties; most of them didn’t even look like they were old enough to vote. After more organizing, they finally started to let voters in the door; I saw the first vote get cast no earlier than 6:45 a.m. We headed downtown to Lycée Toussaint L’Ouverture, another large voting center. As soon as we walked in the entrance, I was accosted by an old woman, documents in her hand. “I can’t find my name on the list,” she told me, and beckoned for me to look myself. I looked at her voting identification card and the piece of paper that both directed her to come there on election day as well as proved that she had registered to vote. I scanned the list of names on the wall. After coming up empty, I turned to one of the many Haitian election observers and asked what they were going to be able to do for her. After a shrug of his shoulders, I ascertained that this was not the first time that problem had occurred that day. “I voted here during the last elections,” another would-be voter told me, “and now I can’t find my name.” Another group of bystanders surmised that the voter lists were still populated by many of the people who were killed in the January 12th earthquake. Moving on, we came across a sizable demonstration crawling up Route Delmas, one of the city’s largest thoroughfares. They seemed to be heading towards the office of the Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP, Provisional Electoral Council), but were blocked by police before they could reach their destination. Instead, the group, which was increasing in size with each bystander that got sucked up into the high-energy crowd, ended up in front of Building 2004, a voting center located a couple of miles away in the neighborhood of La Piste. Although we never did pinpoint what triggered the ensuing melee, the end result was clear enough. Ballots and boxes were strewn everywhere, on the ground and in the creek behind the building. A pair of intimidating military teams from Israel and Italy restored order and quelled any further uprisings, but the damage was already done.

We heard on the radio that there were some problems in Corail, the sprawling, sun-baked internally-displaced persons (IDP) camp located just north of Port-au-Prince. When we arrived, however, there was nothing more than the remnants of a burned tire and a group of half a dozen local residents stationed by the entrance to the camp. When I asked what happened, they informed me that people had showed up to the voting center that morning to find a sheet of eligible voters with a grand total of 39 names. Thirty-nine names, one man exclaimed, for a camp with a population of between 12,000 and 13,000 people. When I pressed further, suggesting that the residents must have known about the registration problem beforehand, they told me that it was the first day they had seen a voter list.

On the way back to the city, more reports started to filter in. Ballot boxes had arrived at voting centers stuffed with already filled-out ballots. In other places, election overseers, after managing a legitimate voting process, opened the boxes, saw unfavorable results, and promptly destroyed the ballots. All across Port-au-Prince, centers were shutting their doors hours before their scheduled closing time, many before noon. Finally, the dagger. Twelve of the nineteen candidates had joined together for an impromptu press conference to denounce the elections and call for their annulment, citing massive fraud. It wasn’t even 2:00 p.m. That evening, the demonstrations in the streets lasted well past sunset. Although they were peaceful, it would be unwise to characterize the protesters as content. Many took to the streets to support their candidates, but most were there to speak out against the fraudulent elections. Night fell and we headed home, but everybody knew that the story was far from over.

---It was only after a day or two that I really started to formulate some clear thoughts about what I had witnessed. I'm not a journalist, so it was a pretty novel experience for me to be chasing around news like we were doing on Sunday. It was easy for me to get caught up in the excitement of the moments, rather than placing all of the individual events into the larger context of a completely failed election.

The moment where it started to hit all of us was when we were examining the aftermath of the Building 2004 debacle. Once again, it was easy to get caught up in the moment of rock throwing and ballots being strewn all about; what really got to me, though, were all the people who stayed around after the mess to still tried to vote. I had this picture in my head of a middle-aged Haitian woman, caught in the middle of a semi-violent clash with the United Nations, with an empty ballot in her hand and a defeated look on her face. I don't think there was a single reasonable person in the country last Sunday who thought that the elections were going to be perfect, but the point to which they degenerated was, as my friend Frank put it, depressing.

Of course, the elections were flawed from the beginning, which I have elaborated on before. Personally, I would like to see the banned Fanmi Lavalas, the most popular political party in the country, be able to participate in the democratic process. So would a lot of Haitians. I was surprised, however, to hear the opinions of a lot of people who went out to vote. "Yes, we're Lavalas," a couple of young men told me at one of the voting centers, "but we're ready to try something else." They then went on to gush about Michel Martelly, or Sweet Micky, the famous Haitian musician for whom they had cast their vote. At another Sweet Micky rally, protesters began their pro-Martelly chants with the phrase, "Si Aristide pa la..." (If Aristide is not here...), a reference to Jean -Bertrand Aristide, the exiled former President and leader of the Fanmi Lavalas party. If we can't have Aristide, they seemed to be saying, then we'll settle for something else.

These, of course, were isolated incidents. There are thousands and thousands of Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas supporters that simply stayed home and refused to participate in the "selection," as Aristide himself had called the November 28th event not too long before. My point, though, is that there was a movement of people that I witnessed that, although unable to vote for their true desired candidate, were willing to participate in the process for the sake of moving forward.

For me, the story of this past Sunday is about those people, and how most were thwarted. Whether being witness to brazen ballot stuffing, being turned away from polls because of a registration error, or finding themselves unable to vote because of protests, many thousands of Haitian were unable to participate in that simplest democratic act. The Organization of American States (OAS) and other international observer institutions signed off on the elections, citing that the documented irregularities in less than 4% of the voting centers were not sufficient to warrant an annulment. It's a slap in the face to all those citizens who were willing to participate in a process that they knew wasn't perfect for the sake of moving forward and trying to -- just maybe -- build a better future for their country. For many, the elections could have been "good enough;" instead, they ended up being anything but.

The story isn't over. The final results will come out in the next couple of days, which will most likely result in a run-off between the two contenders who got the highest amount of votes (if no single candidate got 51% of the first round votes). Haitians, however, have been taking to the streets almost daily to protest the elections that they know have failed. International organizations, such as the OAS, have a tendency towards recalcitrance, and it's hard to imagine that they'll bend to the wishes of street protesters. However, more and more voices from outside of Haiti are coming out and calling for the annulment of the elections (see this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer or this press release by the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti). Maybe, if each one of us adds our voice, we can further the cause and help to establish a credible election process that is so much better than "good enough."

I am currently working on something a little more polished to post later, but I thought I'd take a couple of minutes to talk about the elections that just took place here.

I spent all of Sunday with my my friends Ben and Frank, chasing election coverage. I'm very glad that I went. On a personal level, it was interesting to be out in the thick of things, when normally I try to stay out of the way of potential trouble. Not to say that we were necessarily looking for trouble, but they are both photographers and, let's face it, trouble often makes for interesting pictures. I've posted a couple of my own below (definitely not a professional photographer).

The elections, from my perspective, were a total mess. Take a look at just about any news update about them and you'll read about the same problems -- polls opening late and closing early, stuffed ballot boxes, people being turned away because they couldn't find their names on lists, sometimes violent demonstrations at voting centers, and more.

By midday, 12 of the 19 candidates had called a press conference calling for the annulment of the elections based on massive fraud. Demonstrators took to the streets as people went home without being able to vote, frustrated and disgusted. It was over before it even started.

The Organization of American States, the Provisional Electoral Council (the Haitian body governing the elections), and other organizations overseeing the process all cited some "irregularities," but were emphatic in saying that they were not enough to merit annulment. I went to a press conference yesterday where Wyclef Jean and Michelle Martelly (also known as Sweet Micky, one of the front-runners) spoke out against the fraudulent elections, calling for a rapid resolution to the problems.

At this point, things have stayed mostly under control, but I'm not counting on it to stay that way. We haven't heard the results of the elections, and probably won't for about another week. I'll be sure to keep the blog updated as soon as we hear more news. And, as I mentioned, I'm trying to finish up a more precise account of what I saw in the next couple of days, and I'll be sure to post that here.

As promised, here are a few photos:

Supporters of Michelle Martelly, "Sweet Micky," take to the streets to root for their man as well as protest the fraudulent elections. I led this march through the streets for a good hour, as Frank and Ben jumped in and out of the car to take pictures.

A voter attempts to find his name on the list. Many people were not successful in doing so.

Voters line up outside of a high school in Petionville, where I started off my day.

Inside the same school, waiting for a chance to vote.

A view from the third floor of that same school. Nothing to do with the elections, but it's a great little shot of Port-au-Prince. A tent city in the foreground; the big, rich houses of Petionville in the upper left; and in the upper right one of the many poor communities that climb into the hills, house on top of house.

Election observers counting ballots before the polls opened. I was wondering if some of them were even old enough to vote.

I bet you thought that election coverage was over. Not so fast! Haitian elections are scheduled to take place two Sundays from now, on the 28th of November. Now, you may be thinking, "Here is another potentially interesting blog entry about something that doesn't necessarily have to do directly with my day-to-day life." Today, though, you might be wrong. Here's the long and the short of it:

National elections are scheduled for November 28th.The CEP (Provisional Electoral Council) has excluded several political parties from the elections, including Haiti's biggest and most popular party, Fanmi Lavalas. This would be like excluding both the Republican and Democratic parties!

Insufficient measures have been put in place to ensure that the 1.3 million displaced earthquake victims will be able to vote in the election, as most have not been properly registered.New disasters, such as the cholera outbreak and Hurricane Tomas, continue to throw Haiti off balance. As the country deals with these challenges, it is ill equipped to actually ensure fair, free, and inclusive elections for its citizens.

So, what does this have to do with you? The United States (with your tax dollars) is supporting these flawed elections. They have offered millions of dollars so that the elections can take place, even in the face of all of the problems I've just listed above. I, personally, would like to see the elections take place, but only if they are implemented correctly.

I was part of a movement of 120 Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who signed a petition and sent it to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a few weeks ago. Recently, the news website Truthout picked up and published our story on its website (I'm quoted in there at some point). A few other sites have picked up the story, too. The article also has a more in-depth analysis of all the problems with the upcoming elections.

What, again, does this have to do with you? You can take the following steps to help support our cause!

1. Go to the online petition and add your name to the growing list. It will send a message to both Secretary of State Clinton as well as your Representative.

2. Call 202-224-3121 to reach the Capitol Switchboard. Ask to be transferred your Representative's office, tell your Congressperson that you want to urge her or him to back the effort as well.

3. Facebook - a time waster no longer! Post the article (easy to remember: http://bit.ly/RPCVs) as well as a link to the petition IN the description (http://bit.ly/haitielection).

4. Send the petition link to five of your closest friends or family and ask them to add their names - it takes less than a minute!

5. Bonus points: Ask if your local paper or other media outlet would be interested in re-printing the article, as it's covered under Creative Commons and there's a version that's designed for print media, too. You can also post this on your blog, or paste the article and petition link into an email to your friends.

That's it! Thanks, as always, for taking the time to check-in and support Haiti.

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In other media matters, my employer was featured in a New York Times article a couple of days ago. The program I direct, Ti Kredi, gets a mention and a link to its website.

I checked the satellite this morning, and it looks like the worst of the storm is past us. Some predictions call for another couple of inches of rain over the next day or two, but there is no longer a tropical storm/hurricane warning for any part of Haiti.

I've been (thankfully) cooped up with some friends over the past couple of days in Petionville, in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Yesterday, during what was supposed to be the worst of the storm, I was questioning whether there was going to be any damage at all. We took a walk to the grocery store, ate breakfast out on the balcony, and generally waited around for an enormous storm that never seemed to arrive. It rained off and on, but where I was there was no wind to speak of. For me it was rather uneventful, which I am thankful for.

As usual, the people who live in the low-lying areas in Port-au-Prince (i.e. most people) struggled quite a bit more with the storm. The heaviest rains came after the hurricane had passed us, arriving early Friday morning. Early morning reports have come out saying that today could be the worst day in terms of flooding. The ground is saturated and the rivers are already overflowing, so another couple inches of rain could be devastating. Seven people were killed yesterday in flooding - let's keep hoping that no more rain falls and that the country can make as quick a recovery as possible.

As always, thank you for checking in, staying informed, and standing with Haiti.

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Here are a couple of links to check out:

My friend Ben's photo gallery from the storm.A good summary of the storm from the Associated Press.A brief look at Haiti's other disaster, cholera, and how it could be exacerbated by the flooding.

Any regular follower of this blog has read my descriptions of the juxtapositions and contradictions (and, due to those, personal frustrations) that I’ve come across while working in Haiti. The contrast between the extremely rich and the destitute poor is stark, exposed, unabashed. The wealthy, seemingly with blinders on, plow through the streets in their large vehicles and build walls around themselves and their families. The poor, who must have missed the message to stay in their place, spread into every nook and cranny of the city – house on top of house, dangerously close to the ocean, impossibly high into the hills. The resulting picture – tent cities next to mansions, homeless children next to ten-dollars-to-enter nightclubs – is a remarkable, if uneasy, equilibrium. I wonder how long it can last.

Last Friday, I went to a typical expat party. It seems that at every one of these parties (seriously), the same topic of conversation comes up. It looks like this:

Aid Worker #1 (slurring his speech): You know, sometimes I feel kind of bad partying like this, with that tent city right across the street. Something about it doesn't feel right.

Aid Worker #2: Yeah, I know what you mean [hiccup]. But, I mean, it's hard here. We need to take care of ourselves, too.

Foreign Government Employee #1: I mean, it's just the way it is. There's nothing we can do about it.

Development Organization Worker #1: You guys want another drink?

All (together): Definitely!

At this most recent party, the conversation carried on a little longer than usual. In an unusually candid moment, one young woman stated the obvious: "Not every person can live the same way. We couldn't live this style of life is all of those people had the same amount of resources that we do." In so many words, their poverty allows us to be wealthy; or, depending on your perspective, our wealth makes a lot of people poor.

We carried on. The same young woman started talking about her Washington, D.C.-based, U.S. government-salaried, development job. Once again speaking honestly, she told me that she didn't think her job was anything special. She agreed that her job wasn't doing much of anything to actually change the general dynamic of the situation. At the end of the day, poor people were still going to be poor, and rich people were still going to be rich. The job paid her bills, though, and allowed her to live a comfortable lifestyle. She said, "Well, at least I'm trying to do something."

Let me say that I have no problem with people having jobs and paying bills in order to support themselves and their families. People have a right to a certain level of comfort and safety, and you should have to work a reasonable amount to obtain those things. However, I found her reaction to the injustices of the world to be particularly uninspired and impotent, considering she is part of an industry that is supposed to help remedy the world's problems. It's one thing to say "I'm going to Wall Street and I'm going to become a millionaire because I want to live an opulent lifestyle." It's quite another to travel around the world with different organizations under the pretense of helping people, only to end every week with a shrug of the shoulders and a hangover. It's fake help. It's colonialism with a nice face, and there should be no room for it in a place where real, deep-rooted problems are irreversibly damaging millions of people's lives.

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Earlier that same day, I had a chance to go to the graduation of a group of our clients. It's the best part of my job. This graduation was really great because I had seen the same women a couple of months before and told them that I'd be back to see them when they finished the program, so it was nice to be able to fulfill that promise. Here is a short video clip of them singing and dancing during the ceremony:

This particular group was from one of the most beautiful places that I've seen in the country, high above the ocean on the top of a mountain. The video doesn't do it justice, but maybe you can get a sense of the ride down the mountain:

I've had the conversation with just about every single foreigner I know in Haiti, and it generally ends in consensus. The day-to-day grind here, most of us agree, can be utterly exhausting. Still, it upsets me to admit it or write about it here on the blog, a place that, for me, is the only written record I have of my experience. I feel like I'm giving in, admitting that they were right all along, saying, "Yes. You're right. It's hard here." I hate it most because, at some point or another, I've wanted to tell all of those people to go home. "If it's so hard and you're so miserable," I want to proclaim, "then why don't you just pack your bags and leave."

Most people do leave at some point. Development workers are imported and exported just like any other product in the Haitian marketplace. My group of expat friends changes depending on which project gets funding, whose contract is up, and who found a "better" opportunity somewhere else. In my experience, most people don't stay for more than a year. There are exceptions, but they are not many.

The whole "stay or go" discussion seems ridiculous, of course, when you compare it to the plight of most Haitians who will never leave the country, despite dealing with more on any given day than I will in weeks or months or years. Yes, every person has his or her problems, but I think it's fair to say that some have a harder time of it than others. Take, for example, the fact that this whole blog post stems from the fact that I had some car problems over the past couple of weeks. Namely, I replaced the struts, my clutch burned out, I got a (ridiculous) ticket for running a red light, and I had a flat tire. All of those things ate alarmingly quickly into my savings, but I know I don't need to explain how minor that is compared to, say, dealing with downpours in a tent or feeding your family.

Still, though, that chain of events left me daydreaming of easier, more familiar days. Unfortunate things happen elsewhere, too, but it's nice to feel like you have a little more control over things that are happening and a more solid support system. I realized how much I missed those things after I got back from the D.R. a couple of weekends ago. A lot of my good friends have since moved on from their D.R. experiences, but there are a few left and, more than anything, it's a familiar place. Consecutive weekend visits from friends (Rob and Barbora, who patiently dealt with my car problems with me) and family (my mom, who took me to the beach!) left me feeling a little better about my ability to fend for myself here, and that's important.

Kenbe la, pa lage. Hang in there, don't let go. Sometimes, no matter how hard you might try to be positive and convince yourself that everything is great, you might just be better off hanging on and weathering the storm.

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On a final note, my friend Elizabeth sent me this quote and I thought I'd share it.

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. -James F. Byrnes

If I listened to all the scary stories that people told me about Haiti and the rest of the world (The War on Terror, anyone?), I'd never leave my house. I think Mr. Byrnes had it right.

Yesterday, an alarming storm ripped through Port-au-Prince, killing five people and destroying thousands of tattered tarps and tents, already on their last collective breath after enduring over eight months of Caribbean sun and rain. Before the rain came, I was on the top level of the building where I work when I looked outside and joked to my co-worker that it looked like the world was about to end outside. After a typically hot, sunny Port-au-Prince day, the sky had suddenly turned eerily black and the the wind started to pick up. Before I knew it, I was running for the window, trying to keep out the buckets of horizontal rain that were intruding in my workspace. After that, I had nothing more to do than watch the hundreds of people down on the street try to find shelter or just give up and get soaked.

Naturally, all the radio stations and people around me started claiming that it was a tropical storm, but a quick check of the National Hurricane Center's website showed nothing of the sort. As the above AP link describes, gusting winds reached an estimated 60 m.p.h. - significant, but not enough to qualify the storm as anything name-worthy, for example. It was, in fact, nothing more than "a standard early-fall Caribbean storm caused by cold and dry conditions in the upper atmosphere." Not comforting.

Of course, as with most things that happen in Haiti, people like me (read: people with money, houses made of materials other than blue plastic and some twine, private transportation, etc.) weren't affected in any sort of meaningful way. My normal half hour commute home instead took me three hours, which I guess was sort of annoying. But my end destination was a dry house, a warm meal, and a comfortable bed with clean sheets.

So, what's the point? Why recount a story about some 45-minute storm that slightly delayed my arrival home on a Friday night?

I remember quite vividly after January 12th how the international community was scrambling to mobilize a few hundred thousand tents for the millions of people who lost their homes in the earthquake, lest they become victims again, this time of a hurricane. Well, here we are eight months later and the tents are falling apart. We have so far been spared from this supposedly "hyperactive" hurricane season, but it only took 45 minutes yesterday afternoon to show the whole city how awful it will be if a big storm decides to cross our path. Many people will die, and many more will be left homeless for the second time in a year.

I, like many people, donated a little money after the earthquake, just like everybody from Paul Farmer to Bill Clinton told me to do. It was the single biggest collective outpouring of resources, well wishes, prayers, and everything else that I've ever been a witness to. And yet, here I am over eight months later, and hundreds of thousands of people are just as vulnerable as they were a few weeks after the quake. Where did the money go? Here is a list of the top 30 donors who pledged aid to Haiti - take a good look. You'll notice that only 35.7% of pledged money has actually been disbursed. Take a trip down here, have a look around, and you'll be surprised the number is even that high.

What can you and I do about this? First of all, call up whatever organization you donated to, and ask them how they've spent your money. It's your hard-earned money - make sure that it's going to the right place. Secondly, encourage your representative (

Last week, I flew up north to Cap Haitien for a nice combination of work and play. While some days are still better than others, I'm prematurely claiming my week in the north as my turn around point. Although I am 100% certain I'll continue to face my fair share of personal challenges, I gained some good perspective about my life here and how I should be handling it.

I flew up on a Friday afternoon, and proceeded to spend a very nice couple of days with the director of one of our rural branches and his family. It was a blast straight from the Peace Corps host family past - relatives filtering in and out of the house at all hours, low budget Haitian movies and music videos, and some old fashioned host mom food. It was a helpful reminder to me of what I do like about living in foreign countries, sharing and spending time with the people who live in them. Although 99% of the people I work with on a day-to-day basis are Haitian, there is a marked difference between a work relationship and a familial one. I had been spending all too much time transporting myself from my house to work and back to my house again, unintentionally shielding myself from most of the Haitians I might otherwise be interacting with.

It is this imposed distance between the people who work in jobs such as mine and the rest of the Haitian people that is the development industry's biggest problem. I would like to think that this separation that I feel in my own life is, as I mentioned, unintentional. It's more of a question of circumstance on most days - sometimes, my day just consists of leaving my house, going to work, and going back home. With that said, I am always happier when I make the effort to get out a little bit (as I imagine most people are, no matter their location). However, there is another kind of separation that unequivocally falls into the category of "intentional." And it is this type of separation that concerns me most. This is the type of separation that looks like armed guards, armored cars, gated communities, curfews, and "red zones" (places that are off limits because they are supposedly too dangerous). Although some organizations encourage their workers to get out in the city and the country, to use the public transportation, and speak the language, it seems that the majority of organizations on the unwieldy list that inhabit Haiti encourage just the opposite. There is an inherent distrust in the development culture - to speak bluntly, an extraordinarily high number of development workers think that Haiti, and Haitians, are dangerous and unpredictable.

While people are certainly entitled to their opinions, however distasteful they might be, this particular attitude is especially insidious in this environment. At some point in the last couple of decades, people realized that the traditional development tactics of the post-World War II era weren't working - the classic example is a World Bank-sponsored mega dam that displaces tens of thousands of farmers in order to provide electricity to run a factory that some multinational corporation wants to build to exploit the cheap labor of the host country. Well, times have changed. Now, the development industry in Haiti and elsewhere loves to use a different kind of language and trumpets certain kinds of words: sustainability, grassroots, local, capacity-building, etc. Now, we are a culturally-sensitive, grassroots type of development industry that focuses on building up local capacity so that people in their own countries can take charge of the decision-making process, thereby leading to long-term and sustainable solutions.

Nice, right?

The question raised, then, is how can you reconcile the fact that many of the development workers sent to work with local populations in order to paint this beautiful picture of cooperation and sustainability are, in so many words, scared of the local population. The answer is simple: you can't. And it's not just the development workers who are distrustful of your average Haitian on the street. On a larger scale, the international community consistently has delivered the message that they don't trust the Haitian government to make the right decisions either. From the U.S.-backed coup to remove the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the international support of non-inclusive Haitian elections, it's the same story: "Haiti, you know, we really, really want you to succeed (seriously we do!), but we don't trust you to do it yourselves. So, just follow along now and don't step out of line."

If we actually want to be helping Haitians to help themselves, then we first need to start trusting them and believing in their abilities. If we can't take those most elementary steps, that we have no business working in Haiti.

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On a completely different side note, tomorrow marks the three-year anniversary of my arrival on the island. Trying to wrap my head around that one...

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And, finally...I went on a little trip to the Citadel last weekend. My friend and colleague Steve and I took along a few members of the aforementioned branch director's family too. It's a remarkable place, and we had a great time. Here are a couple photos!

Me at the top.

On the edge.

Carried this little guy up a good part of the mountain.

Admiring the architecture.

This little one walked three miles up the mountain and hardly said a word.

At some point earlier this year, I started writing about things that didn’t necessarily pertain directly to me. Clearly, everything I write about is at least of interest to me, but I found myself more excited about more general topics (i.e. Haitian agriculture or the earthquake response) than about things that were happening in my life each day. This certainly had a lot to do with the fact that, as I wrote about, I felt like I was in a bit of a slump - I was bored.

Well, here I am, two-and-a-half months after I arrived in Haiti, and I'm once again interested in turning inward. What brought about this sudden wave of Narcissism? Simply put, I'm overwhelmed and I'm having a hard time.

A good friend of mine recently began a stint with Peace Corps in Senegal, and I've enjoyed reading her blog and reflecting on the similar feelings I had at the beginning of my Dominican Republic experience. Cultural mishaps, the struggles with the language, a general what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here-and-what-did-I-get-myself-into feeling. Of course, part of my enjoyment stemmed from the fact that I was so over those things, and that I had everything figured out. It wasn't that I no longer found my little cultural speed bumps to be blog-worthy - they simply weren't happening! I was, in good dominicano, aplatana'o (plantained, Dominican).

Well, those proverbial chickens have sprinted home to roost. I, once again, am wandering a foreign landscape with about as much savvy as your average street dog: I know how to not get hit by cars and I'm fairly adept at scaring up my next meal. I should probably give myself more credit than that, considering that I do have a job and am picking up Kreyòl more quickly than most of the street dogs I've met, but each day feels like an uphill battle.

It's like Peace Corps training all over again, with one enormous difference. Here, I'm doing this by myself. As suffocating as training was in the Dominican Republic, there was a countrywide support system of fellow trainees, volunteers, and staff, all ready to help me succeed. Not to mention I was already quite proficient in Spanish before I got there.

As I've mentioned, Kreyòl has tons of great proverbs. I think my favorite is this one: yon sèl dwet pa manje kalalou. Literally, it says this: one sole finger doesn't eat okra. Now, I know there are a ton of professional okra eaters out there, and I'm sure you are aware that okra is quite slippery. Well, the Haitian that came up with this proverb knew the same thing, and he or she realized the implications that the slimy veggie had toward life in general. That person knew that tasks are mostly easily accomplished when people work together, just as okra is most easily eaten when at least two fingers are used to snatch it up.

I miss the support system. I've met some cool people here, but it's a completely different vibe that what I experienced nearly three years ago when I got to the D.R. And, as quickly as the language is coming, I just haven't reached a level of proficiency conducive to a good talk with my Haitian friends about how I'm feeling.

A little bit of a challenge never hurt anyone too badly, though. Things will come along, as they always do. In the mean time, it's time for dinner. Must be all this okra talk.

I thought that I would share an article I recently wrote regarding development in rural Haiti. I suppose it's a little academic compared to the usual content of the blog, but you might find it interesting.

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On March 10th of this year, a famous United States politician gave a surprising admission to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Can you name the speaker?

Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.

If you said former President Bill Clinton, you’re right. Yes, the same Bill Clinton who tirelessly championed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) until its signing in 1993 has decided that his free trade policies have actually hurt more people than they have helped. It is a stunning admission, but what does it mean for Haiti?

The numbers say it all. In the chart below (click on the image to see it more clearly in a new window), you can see that in 1988, Haiti imported 53 percent of its rice, while domestic production accounted for the other 47 percent. Twenty years later, in 2008, Haiti imported 85 percent of its rice, producing only 15 percent in country. Haiti’s domestic rice production has been steadily strangled over the past two decades, and it is only getting weaker.

Adapted from: CEPR, "Using Food Aid to Support, Not Harm, Haitian Agriculture"

In a country where over two-thirds of citizens rely on the agricultural sector and 80 percent of people live below the poverty line, it is easy just how dangerous this situation is. Despite the giant magnet that Port-au-Prince has become for impoverished rural families seeking better opportunities, the majority of Haitians still live in the countryside. In recent years, development experts and economists have accomplished little in the way of looking for alternatives for those who used to farm. While the moral debate concerning apparel factories (read: sweatshops) can be left for another time, suffice it to say that they are no substitution for agriculture. Legislation has been passed in the United States to give preference to Haitian apparel exports, but they only account for about 10% of Haiti’s GDP and factories only employ a very small percentage of Haitians. For the time being, Haiti is an agricultural country.

So, how do we reverse President Clinton’s failed experiment in free trade and begin to support Haitian agriculture? Although the earthquake was a tragedy that Haiti will be recovering from for a long time, the brief shift in international attention toward Haiti has opened some promising avenues. Moreover, the unprecedented reverse migration exodus of 600,000 people to the countryside has reinforced the importance of rural development. One of the best ideas I’ve seen comes from an article published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), "Using Food Aid to Support, Not Harm, Haitian Agriculture". Briefly summarized, it argues that

…the international community should commit immediately to purchasing Haiti’s rice crop, so as not to repeat the errors of the past. Haitian farmers would then know that they can produce at a price that will cover their costs of production…This is a very small price to pay in order to ensure that international aid actually helps Haiti feed itself, instead of hurting Haitian agriculture as in the past.

It’s a simple idea, but the positive effects it could have on Haitian agriculture and the economy in general are far reaching. It would cost only a small percentage of the total aid pledged to Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake to buy up the entire stock of Haiti’s rice crop, even at the premium price that would encourage farmers to keep farming. After it is purchased, it can be distributed at low cost in markets or at no cost to those Haitians who desperately need food aid. Delivery would rely on domestic distribution chains, giving a much needed push to another important sector of the Haitian economy.

Although the country would still need to rely heavily on imported rice, the domestic rice product would be protected and, moreover, Haitian farmers would be encouraged to keep producing food necessary for the survival of the country. For the first time in over 15 years, the international community would be sending a firm message to Haiti saying that rural agricultural and economic development will be supported. Instead of relying on the principles of free market ideology, the development framework within Haiti would be based on the fact that food is a human right, not a commodity.

While the world’s attention has rightfully focused on Port-au-Prince, the better part of Haiti’s population has continued to scrape by outside the capital with almost nothing. Now, as even more people have escaped the earthquake-affected areas for the countryside, the burden has become even heavier for rural families and the rural economy in general. Despite the difficulties of rural living, the earthquake showed the world just how devastating unchecked rural-urban migration can be. The magnitude of the quake was strong, to be certain, but the devastation was magnified by the fact that Port-au-Prince is a grossly over-populated city that has grown all too quickly as people have flooded in from the countryside in recent years.

The damage to Haitian agriculture has been severe, but it is not irreversible. Now, more than ever, we should be focusing on creating solutions aimed at giving rural families opportunities to have dignified livelihoods in the countryside. The situation can be changed, but it needs to come with a sweeping change in the way we look at development. As President Clinton himself said, "Every time we spend a dollar in Haiti from now on we have to ask ourselves, 'Does this have a long-term return? Are we helping them become more self-sufficient? ... Are we serious about working ourselves out of a job?'"

Sources:

1) CIA, The World Factbook, Haiti

2) CEPR, “Using Food Aid to Support, Not Harm, Haitian Agriculture"

The rain is falling.

Actually, to be fair, at this very moment the rain isn't falling. However, earlier this evening and last night I, and the rest of Port-au-Prince, experienced two veritable downpours complete with an impressive and alarming lightning show. According to the National Hurricane Center, this is not a hurricane or even a tropical storm. This is just one day of the rainy season that everyone has been expecting for the past six months. Unfortunately, it seems almost inevitable that at least one big storm will make its way here by the end of the year.

I can't imagine what it's like to be living through these downpours in a tent. And I once spent four months in a tent through all sorts of bad weather. It was a challenging and fun adventure that was absolutely voluntarily and I knew that I could stop any day and go back home to my warm bed and waterproof house. Here, on the other hand, there is no end in sight for the great majority of people living in tents. Each and every day, for the indefinite future, starts and ends under the same piece of plastic.

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, I did my best to live like others in my community. I liked living in my little wooden, tin-roofed shack in the mountains. I weirdly enjoyed sharing a latrine with my neighbors. I thought it was funny when it would rain and I have to ford a waist-high river to get home.

Here, as I said, I can't even imagine what it's like. I travel from my waterproof office to my waterproof house in my waterproof car. The whole thing is really hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. Let's keep hoping for a solution.

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I flew into Port-au-Prince three days ago. I wish I would have had an aisle seat. I had a truly excellent time in Minnesota these past couple of weeks, and my view from a few thousand feet over Haiti's capital made me miss home as much as I ever have. Steph, a.k.a. The Stranger, does a good job of explaining part of what I was feeling here, but I think that snapshot from the airplane had more to do with my missing home than anything. Port-au-Prince, and Haiti in general, can be absolutely overwhelming. What made me miss home was not actually home, it was the feeling that I was going to be absolutely helpless in the place at which I was arriving. I flew over a giant mass of humanity, collapsed buildings, and tent cities, and I all of a sudden felt very small.

But, I did my usual routine of pretending not to be terrified of flying and casually drying off my drenched palms with the little air vent that are conveniently placed over your head and, as luck would have it, my plane did indeed land and deposit me at the airport. If you've never experienced the nightmare of baggage claim at PAP airport, then you might never have experienced the palliative effects of fighting through two hundred people in a space made for about fifty to get to your bags. By the time I was ready to get outrageously overcharged by a taxi driver, I had forgotten all about my existential crisis at 5,000 feet and was ready to get to my home in the city. Problem solved!

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I liked this commentary about how most reporting is done in Haiti these days.

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Here are some pictures to round out the post a little bit:

The first three are a couple pictures from the top of a mountain in the central plateau and the crew of us who arrived at the top to meet with potential clients.

After that are photos I took from a couple of the Participatory Wealth Rankings that I explained in my previous post.

Finally, Wender, my 13-year-old unofficial Kreyòl teacher. He speaks more slowly and is more patient than just about any other Haitian I know. It's an age old secret for new-language learners - talk to kids!

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Our organization has four different programs, which are diagrammed nicely here. Chemen Lavi Miyò (CLM – Pathway to a Better Life) and TiKredi (Little Loans – the program that I will be helping to direct) are grouped into one department, creatively named CLM/TiKredi. These two programs are different from our other programs for a number of different reasons, ranging from sources of funding to management structure, but the biggest difference between CLM/TiKredi and the others is the type of client we seek out. Our clients fall unequivocally into the category of “extreme poverty,” and the programs are designed specifically to help them out of their current situations.

When the organization was first established, CLM and TiKredi didn’t exist. It was thought that microcredit could reach all members of society, regardless of their economic status. Indeed, the idea of microcredit is to offer financial services to people who are otherwise too poor to have access to traditional services like bank lending. However, after a few years of practicing traditional microcredit techniques, the organization observed that the poorest members of Haitian society were still not successfully integrating into the program.

If you’d like to read more about the specific programs, the link above has all the information you might need. What it doesn’t have, however, is the process we use to select the clients with whom we work in CLM/TiKredi. Besides the fact that it’s what I have been doing for the past week or so, I think it’s fascinating. Here’s what we do:

1) Select an area to work in. Often times this is decided for us, as both CLM and TiKredi are mostly funded by outside sources and the donors choose where they want to work. I am currently working in an area, the central plateau, where the MasterCard Foundation has generously donated five million dollars.

2) Do a Participatory Wealth Ranking (PWR). Here’s what I think is the most innovative part. Once you have an area selected, you divide it up into sections of between 50-100 houses. Then, you invite community leaders (teachers, pastors, priests, mayors) as well as a handful of other local residents to a meeting. Together, with the community members, you draw a map of the area with all of the houses on it. Then, as a group, you go through the map and rank each house according to its level of respective wealth based on criteria you have previously established with the group. There are five possible levels. Of course, depending on the area, the criteria for each level are different. In some areas, the richest family might own a ton of land and 40 cattle (although where I am, this isn’t likely). In others, the richest person might have a couple of cows and a handful of goats.

3) Do housing verifications. After you’ve done a PWR, you make a list of all the houses and their respective levels of wealth. Then, you visit every house that falls into either of the two poorest categories. On these visits, you sit down with the female head of household (i.e. the person that is responsible for giving food to the children) and have a conversation. It is through this conversation that you get all the information you need to establish whether the woman should participate in CLM, TiKredi, or a more advanced lending program. First we look at the house: What is it made of? Do they own a bed? Do they have a radio? Is there a latrine? Then, we talk about their assets: Do they own land? How much? What about animals? After that, we ask about money: Do they make a little money? Does their husband contribute? When they go to the market, how much money do they spend? Do they have a brother in the Dominican Republic who sends them money? We ask about the kids: How many are there? How old are they? Do they go to school? Finally, we ask about food: Do you have enough food to eat? Is there any variety in your diet? Are your kids losing weight?

Here’s what a CLM/TiKredi client looks like: She lives in a mud/rock house, and she and her husband might not own it. If she has a bed, it’s a little twin bed with a metal frame. There’s no radio, no electricity, and no latrine. She gets her water from a stream. If she owns any land, it’s hardly anything at all and at most she has a couple of chickens running around any maybe a pig or a goat. A woman who qualifies for CLM probably has no money at all and doesn’t have any capacity to do business. A woman who qualifies for TiKredi might have a small business of buying up $15 of sugar and rice and selling it in smaller quantities for a slightly higher price. She definitely had her first kid before she was 18, and she probably had at least four or five after that. She probably can’t afford to send them all to school, if any. She has trouble feeding them each day.

4) Do a final verification. After our credit agents and case managers do a first verification, CLM and TiKredi directors do a final verification to make sure that the family does indeed qualify for either CLM or TiKredi.

It’s a meticulous process, and it’s time consuming. We are currently trying to find 1,000 CLM families and 2,000 TiKredi clients, just for this particular project. It takes weeks (months, really) of climbing up mountains and trekking through the mud just to find the families. However, if the whole thing is done right, all three thousand families will be better off than they were before we found them.

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In other Haiti news, here is an interesting article on the state of Haitian rice agriculture and what the international community might to do support it and Haiti as a whole, especially in its fragile post-earthquake state.

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In even more Haiti news, Brazil got eliminated from the World Cup today. Before a month ago, I might have thought this to be a non sequitur. Silly me. Turns out the vast majority of Haitians are either Brazil or Argentina soccer supporters.

**UPDATE: As I am writing this, either Ghana or Uruguay scored. The announcer is having a fit, but there is no way I’ll be able to extract the identity of the scorer from his flood of excited kreyòl.

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I hope to post pictures soon. My current internet situation is not very conducive to anything beyond text. In the mean time, Happy 4th of July!

I am officially a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. The same day that I finished Peace Corps I moved to Haiti, taking a seven-hour bus from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince. I had a big black suitcase, a big blue backpack, a smaller black backpack with a laptop, a set of sweet speakers that I decided to hang on to, and a guitar. I showed up to the bus station where Kaveh picked me up.

"It looks like you'll be spending the next couple of weeks with me," he said.

Considering I got on the bus with no idea of what was in store for me on the other side, that sounded okay to me.

The next couple of weeks, which have led me up to today, have brought me a good way up part of the steepest learning curve I've ever tried to climb.

First of all, Port-au-Prince. It's been over five months since the earthquake, but its effects are still very (too much so) apparent. Tent cities are everywhere (everywhere). Across the street from where I'm staying, surrounding the office where I work, everywhere. The office is about a five minute walk from the remains of the Presidential Palace, which looks about the same as I remember it from the picture coming out of the capital in mid-January. Things are somewhat back to normal, I suppose, but in an eerily inappropriate way. It should not be normal to live in tent cities, and that's what has happened. It's exasperating, really, and I don't even want to get into it because I don't know the first thing to do about it. I guess we all thought the bigger organizations that supposedly know better would have done something by now.

My living situation, on the other hand, is very nice. The house is very comfortable and safe, and I just bought a car. It's harder here than in the Dominican Republic, because it's difficult to live below a certain level of wealth. There aren't taxis and there isn't really much in the way of middle-level affordable housing. The public transportation is certainly manageable, but that only gets you around until a certain hour of the evening. It's an adjustment, to be sure.

Not like I'm suffering, of course. Especially not in comparison to people who have been living in tents for the last five months. But it's an adjustment to change from living in a small community with my Dominican neighbors to moving up into the hills above Port-au-Prince with the Haitians who have money and other foreigners. It's an easy living situation for now, though, and I'm happy to not have to stress about getting my feet under me when I have so many other things to be learning.

Like Kreyòl, for example, which is a challenge. It's supposedly an easy language to learn because you don't have do things like conjugate verbs (to give one example). Gramatically it has a much looser structure than Spanish or English, say. My speaking is coming along, slowly, but my understanding of what's happening around me really depends on the context and who is speaking. Sometimes I'm up around 80-85% comprehension. Sometimes I feel like a one-year-old. I've done this before, though, and I'm not too worried about it. It'll come with time. Pitit, pitit, zwazo fe nich. Little by little, the bird makes its nest. Kreyòl is a language of proverbs, and that one is pretty applicable to me at this moment.

The first week that I was here Kaveh was co-running a training with another one of my future co-workers. The training was for future credit agents who will be out in the field helping our clients by disbursing small loans and giving them training. Day one, all Kreyòl, all the time. And repeat for five more days. It was very helpful, though, because I will one day soon be giving those same trainings. A lot of the techniques that we use in Peace Corps are applicable in this context, too, which is comforting. I ended up participating in the training like the other Haitian trainees, learning a ton about the organization and the particular program that I'll be working with.

The second week we flew up north, to Cap Haitien. We have a few branches up there in surrounding communities, and we went to check out how our credit agents were doing and see a few graduations (I'll explain below). The days were long, as we traveled on motorcycles and in pickups and buses to get all over the northern part of the country. The roads are awful, dusty, and generally exhausting. And, contrary to what I was trying to convince myself of before my move, Haiti is also hot in June. One day we got stuck up at the top of a mountain for two hours because it started raining on the way down and the at one point easily crossable river had turned into Mississippi, Jr. Reminded me of the good ol' days back on top of my mountain in the D.R.

The trip was worth it, though, for everything I saw and learned. Seeing the day-to-day operations of the credit agents whom I'll be working with was eye-opening. They've got a tough job, traveling to all sorts of small, distant communities to meet with groups of clients every day. It was remarkable, though, to see them interacting with clients. The best ones have a relationship with their communities not dissimilar to some of the best Peace Corps volunteers I knew from the D.R. Many of our agents (although Haitian) are not from the communities they are working in, and they need to integrate and earn the respect of their clients just as I did.

The personal relationship our agents have with the clients was manifested best during the graduations that we went up there to celebrate. In total, we saw four groups of between 50-100 women graduate from our program, TiKredi (little loans). To give some background, TiKredi is a program for women who do not qualify to receive our core loans, which start out at $75 to be paid back over three months. In development terms, TiKredi clients fall into the category of "extreme poverty."

Although the program only lasts a little over six months, the change is remarkable. Most of these women live in tiny houses made of mud or wood slabs with a thatched roof. They have many children, and can't afford to send most of them to school. If they have a business (i.e. selling fruit on the side of the road) at all, it barely makes any money. They don't have enough food to feed themselves or their families. They live day to day.

After six months, they aren't millionaires. In fact, the first loan that they qualify after TiKredi is only for $75. However, they have moved forward, and they want to continue to move forward, which is the most important part. They have hope for a better future, and they know that they themselves have the capacity to build it. During the graduation ceremonies, at least five women stood up at each one to giver their testimonies about what the program had done for them. They thanked a lot of people, but it was obvious to me how important the relationship was between them and the credit agents.

So, I got to see almsot the whole process, from training the credit agents to participating in a graduation for our clients. All in two weeks. Now, I just have to actually nail down my Kreyòl and I'll be good to go. That process starts tomorrow, when I'll head up north to spend a few weeks with some of our agents and clients. I'll be there until the middle of July, when I'm heading back to Minnesota for a few days (July 18-28). I'm looking forward to the break after what I'm sure will be a challenging few weeks. In the mean time, though, it's time to hit the books and get settled in.

I realize that this post was a little all over the place, so I appreciate your patience. I'm sure as the weeks and months go by I'll be able to fill in the blanks with my job and everything else going on here. And, as always, you've got a place to stay in Haiti.

Kenbe la, pa lage! (Hang in there, don't let go!)

PS - Wednesday is going to look like this: USA 3, Algeria 0.

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Here are a couple of pictures. Unfortunately, the battery for my camera was low and I ran out of juice before I could get some better shots. I'll try to do better in the future.

This is Kaveh and I pretending not to be scared on the tiny airplane from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitien.

This is a weekly "center meeting" where the women get their small loans (this one was for about $65) and also receive training on things ranging from basic business skills to reproductive health to childrens' rights.

Here is one of 41 (going on 42) branches the organization has outside of Port-au-Prince.

Some pictures of clients graduating from our program to the next one (bigger loans!). Singing, dancing, speeches (including one by yours truly in my terribly broken kreyòl) and an all around good time.

And, finally, a few pictures from my last few days in the D.R. with Steph.

The juxtaposition is jarring. I’ve seen poverty before but never in such close proximity and sharp contrast to wealth. Up in the hills, a tent city, housing hundreds of people, has popped up right across the street from a gated house, complete with a serious-looking armed guard. From the same hill, where I notice that most of the biggest houses are still standing, I look across the city to the ocean. Down below, in the slums, it looks like someone has taken a giant wrecking ball to the houses. In some places, the damage seems arbitrary – I see one house standing while all of its neighbors have been destroyed. In other places, wide swaths of hillside have been reduced to piles of cement blocks and rebar.

What is most surprising, though, is that life seems almost normal. As I walk through one of the tent cities, I greet the residents and a chorus of people responds: “Bonjou!” Mothers watch me, slightly amused, as laughing children run after me and try to hold my hand. Women and men sit on the outskirts of the tent city, hawking their goods – a bowl of freshly-cooked rice, some mangoes, bottles of cooking oil.

In plain view, less than 200 yards away, the Presidential Palace sits collapsed on itself, a somber reminder to most Haitians about the state of their government. I broach the subject of government to my guide, asking whether he likes the current president, Rene Preval. He scowls and points to some graffiti spray painted on a nearby wall: “Down with Preval.” Then I ask him about Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the first democratically-elected President in Haiti’s history, who is currently living in exile in South Africa. He becomes much more animated and emphatically tells me about how popular the deposed leader is. Then he becomes more subdued and motions for me not to mention it again – there are people around, although I’m not sure which ones, who will take exception to any mention of Aristide.

Later that day, the driver of the car I’m riding in revs his engine in order to pass a United Nations tank, filled with blue-helmeted Brazilian troops holding automatic weapons. It doesn’t appear that they are going anywhere in particular or moving with any sort of urgency. They are MINUSTAH (Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti), and they’ve been in Haiti since Aristide was deposed in 2004. I heard once that the Brazilian troops are particularly effective at maintaining order in Port-au-Prince because they have so much prior experience working in the slums of Rio de Janeiro – a depressing anecdote.

It’s not just the UN who has a presence in the city; I’ve never seen so many NGO vehicles. With names like Food for Life Global and Concern plastered on their doors and hoods, they crawl up and down the streets like ants with body armor. There are more than 10,000 NGOs currently working in Haiti – it is the center of the world’s development industry. When I got into Port-au-Prince, I started chatting up a taxi driver and told him that it was my first day there.

“So, which NGO are you here to work with?” he asks.

“Only in Haiti,” I think. I’ve been to a lot of different countries in the world, and in every other one the locals have perceived me, either correctly or incorrectly, as a tourist. The minute I set foot in Port-au-Prince I am immediately classified as a development worker. It dawns on me that I’ve arrived with all the good intentions in the world, just as tens of thousands have before me. I feel helpless.

Over the next few days, I explore the city and try to get a taste for how life is after one of the biggest natural disasters in recent memory. I try to relax, act normal, and be as objective as possible. But there is always something in the back of mind – a whispering voice – telling me to be wary. I realize that I’ve fallen victim to the constant negative media attention that has been showered on post-earthquake Haiti. I am almost waiting for something to happen.

Angry with myself for having these feelings, I stop and take a good look around. I realize that my fears are not justified, even though I haven’t seen one of the supposed hundreds of American soldiers that are patrolling the city. In fact, it is the Haitian police force that is most present. They are in control, at one point stopping our car (filled with foreigners) at a checkpoint and asking to see the American driver’s license.

Really, though, I find most comfort in the strength and warmness of the people, even as I’m strolling through Bel Air, one of the roughest areas of Port-au-Prince. They have gone through more in the last few months than I could ever imagine, yet they will survive. I reach out and hold the hand of one of the laughing children.

Things, as they almost always do, have worked out and I know what I'm doing after Peace Corps!

I'll be heading to Haiti to work with Fonkoze, "Haiti's Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor." Without getting too much into the organization or what exactly I'll be doing (because really I have a ton to learn about both of those things and I'll be able to describe them both better in the future), Fonkoze is an organization dedicated to helping Haiti's poor through giving them access to credit, among other things. This concept, microfinance, was made most famous by Muhammud Yunus and his book, Banker to the Poor, but it's been around for years. Fonkoze has been in operation for around fifteen years, and it's continuing to grow. After I spend a couple of months learning Creole, I'll be hired on as a Regional Director, working with their Ti Kredi (Little Credit) program. The Fonkoze website (hyperlinked above) is full of information - if you're interested, check it out!

I'm leaving for Port-au-Prince on June 6th. That date is going to give me a grand total of zero days of rest between Peace Corps and Fonkoze, but I'm ready to go. My friend and fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Kaveh (here's his blog about Haiti), is going to be helping me out with the transition, as he did the same thing about a year and half ago. He's taking off from Haiti in mid-July, so I want to spend as much time as possible with him in Port-au-Prince to learn everything he's got to teach.

The next two weeks or so will be a whirlwind as I do all of the things I need to do to close up on this side of the island. I'm confident that the transition should go smoothly, though, and I'm looking forward to a fresh start in a new place. I've unofficially signed on for two years - if you're looking for me, you know where I'll be!

The blog has recently been somewhere near the bottom of my priorities lately, as you've probably noticed. A lack of motivation on my part, to be sure, coupled with the fact that I don't feel like I have a ton of new stuff to report. But, for the sake of keeping a good thing going, here's what I've been up to...

1. Work stuff:

The newest group of Volunteers is swearing-in in a couple of weeks, so I've been putting the finishing touches on the sites that are in my region. Not very exciting news on the face of it, but what's amazing to me is that this is a group that I wasn't even ever supposed to meet, had I left after my original time was up. They arrived in early March, nearly four months after I was supposed to leave. Looking back on my blog entries from that equivalent time for me (Fall 2007), it's amazing to see how much has changed.

What's most interesting to me, though, is how all the things that have "changed" have just brought me back to a state of unquiet equilibrium. An oxymoron, perhaps, but the "balance" that I've been feeling in my life these days is bordering on a sort of blase boredom, more than anything. Things don't surprise me too much these days, and I don't really like that feeling. My mood (although perennially a little lower this time of the year, for whatever reason) has kind of stagnated to a mid to low level range. Not to say I don't have the best time EVER when I'm surfing, for example, but I'm not really cut out to be a beach bum for more than a couple days at a time.

Wow, this "work" section sure digressed quickly, eh? Probably a testament to how much work I feel like I'm really doing, which is certainly a contributing factor to how I'm feeling. Although, to be honest, even if I were wildly busy I probably wouldn't that enthused. It's time for something new.

So, I've been thinking about the future, which has involved...

2) Studying for the GRE:

Not exactly the best way to take the edge off, but I've been getting smarter - dusting off the math part of the brain and learning a lot of new words. Going back to school has always been in the back of my mind, and I've had a good amount of free time these days to devote to some studying.

Part of the motivation to return to school is that some of my present-day heroes were and are scholarly types (Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky). There's always a little voice in the back of my mind that tells me that going back to school is just going to further cause me to entrench myself in the suffocating world of debt, but I've been doing alright so far. Plus, I figure if I score high enough on the GRE that maybe some schools will be falling over themselves to let me go there for free (not that the GRE is the only thing, of course, but it can't hurt).

Anyway, knowledge if power, right?

Until that time, though, I've been...

3. Figuring out to do with the next couple of years of my life.

Sometimes I feel like there are no good options. I hate that feeling, and it makes me feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I've got a few different lines out, so to speak, but it's been hard to get any positive responses. I realize that I'm far from alone in that boat, but it's still very frustrating.

But, I have some ideas. I'm going to avoid jinxing myself by listing any of them here, but good ol' Hola Hispaniola will be the first to know if anything comes up.

In the mean time, my GRE is next Friday (wish me luck!), and there's a Medical Mission the following week. One small step closer to figuring out the old future + instant gratification of helping sick people = at least a few days of equanimity.

Happy Spring to those back home! As always, thanks for checking in.

Hi all,

I have about three minutes to post, but I wanted to link to Steph's blog, so that we all might pay our respects to a companion that was special to both of us and a lot of other people (and dogs!).

Fermina Obituary

Hope all is well!

David

Amigos y Amigas,

The Noam Chomsky interview that was first printed in our publication is getting a lot of attention around the internet, so we're in the process of trying to get that positive momentum focused on the publication and its blog.

Feel free to take a look:

¡Reclama! Revista - http://reclamarevista.blogspot.com

Thanks!

Hello!

It's a little late, and I should be getting back to my house before it gets too much later, but I thought I'd drop a line and say hello.

As usual, I'm happy and mostly healthy - I got nailed with a nasty case of the cold this week, but I'm on the mend. I spent the night with a host family in a potential site for a new volunteer last night and, as I thought might happen, at the first sign of my cough the host mom immediately made me a home-made remedy of honey, salt, onion, and lemon. MMMMMMMmmmm...delicious. Beats Robitussin any day.

In other news, I just found out that Steph's cousin is getting married on July 24th in Minnesota - I think I'm going to arrange it so that it coincides with the end of my Peace Corps service and my free plane ticket home. So, unofficially, I know that I'll be done with Peace Corps in mid-July. Weird!!! Just in time to NOT be here for August and September, though, which is alright by me.

Besides doing the usual work, a few friends and I spent some time recently to put together an informal publication. We've covered a wide range of topics from Haiti to Obama to vegetarianism. It was a group effort - it's a little rough around the edges, but we're very proud of it! If you'd like, you can download it as a PDF from the following link:

http://drop.io/progressivecircle/asset/reclamamagv1-pdf

We're also always looking for submissions. One publisher's dad wrote an article, and we happily published it, as we're trying to open it up to everyone. Take a look through the publication - if you think you have something you'd like to contribute, please send it my way and we'll publish it!

Be well!

David

ps - this means last call for visitors...you have four and a half more months!

On February 2nd, exactly three weeks after the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince hit, I checked the news. I scoured the main pages of CNN.com (“The most trusted name in news”) and NYTimes.com (“All the news that’s fit to print”), searching for updates on the situation in Haiti, a glimpse into what was happening only a couple hundred miles away. It turns out that despite the well-documented facts that some Haitians hadn’t even received aid yet and thousands of bodies remained entombed beneath the rubble, the earthquake was no longer front page news. I found one link on the bottom of each of those web pages to something Haiti-related.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but something told me that this situation might have been different, considering the entire world’s generous, heartfelt outpouring of aid to Haiti. Over two billion dollars have been pledged (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/14/haiti-quake-aid-pledges-country-donations); George Clooney organized a telethon, for God’s sake. In a time of crisis in a forgotten country, people from all over actually stood together and did something about it. In a time where people are more strapped for cash than ever, they reached into their pockets and did the right thing.

So, where did their money go? Well, if it were up to CNN or the New York Times, we might never know. After a few days of “breaking news” coverage complete with 50-point font, photo montages, dramatic music, and predictably self-serving “journalism” by the likes of Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Haiti once again faded into the background. Article after article was published, filled with disparaging comments about international aid and fingers pointed at just about everyone, especially the Haitians themselves. “We must do things differently!” the pundits cried, many of whom never having set a foot in the country itself.

Three weeks later, the capricious mainstream media give the equivalent to George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in the form of utter silence. The average American, the same one who donated her hard-earned money to a just cause, ceases to hear anything new at all. Rocked into complacency, she gradually forgets about the tragedy that continues to happen so close to home. The earthquake becomes an event of the past, rather than an ongoing disaster that is all-too-real for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.

Meanwhile, the same members of the media, decriers of previous development efforts and lamenters of the corrupt Haitians, find new stories. If they ever had the intention of “keeping them accountable,” they lose all their credibility by covering some bogus Tiger Woods story or, worse, focusing their “Haiti” coverage on a group of idiotic Americans who decided that international laws did not apply to them and started kidnapping children. Yeah, that’s the spirit! Let’s see how we can possibly manipulate this story into something that has to do with people more like us.

It makes you wonder what makes up the myriad other things that the media don’t deem “fit to print.”

Anyone who keeps up semi-regularly with this blog got a little sense of the frustration that I had been feeling in the days after the earthquake hit last month. Part of it had to do with feeling like I had nothing to personally contribute to the relief effort, and another part of it had to do with the well-documented impotence of the international community (big NGOs, governments, the UN) in the face of such a dire situation.

It's two weeks later. While I still feel that the situation in Haiti is not being handled in the best way (the caveat to that statement being that I myself wouldn't know what to do either), it appears as though there has been some progress. Even though the U.S. continues to basically occupy Haiti (emphasizing security over relief) and warehouses in Haiti sit fully stocked with supplies with nobody to distribute them, my faith has been somewhat restored.

I try not to talk about things that I don't know, so I'll stick to my own personal experience to give my perspective. As of my last update, a truckload of supplies was en route to the church where I was about to spend nearly every waking minute for the next week. That truck was the first of about another 15, filled with a few different things from food items - sardines, beans, oil, water, etc. - to hygienic products - soap, toilet paper, plates, spoons, water purifier, etc.

I arrived at the church that day before the truck. Waiting there, patiently, were four middle-aged women who were there to volunteer. They were the first of about 200 people I saw that week, from 5-year-old boys to 80-year-old women, some of them showing up multiple days to work seven- and eight-hour shifts. It was those four women, and their 200 friends and neighbors, that convinced me to keep hoping.

I do not apologize for my anger and frustration directed at governments and other organizations (although I would be remiss if I did not mention that the products were purchased with government and big organization money - tens of thousands of dollars worth), but I also realize that I would be wasting my time if I just spent my time criticizing them. And this is not because they don't deserve criticism, but it's because their inefficiencies and seeming inability to prioritize can be completely counteracted by the goodness of people. If I learned anything this past week, it's that I believe in people. I don't have very much faith in the world of "development," and I have a grand total of zero faith in government - but I believe in humanity. And, in times like these, when so much seems to be going wrong in the world and even things that are out of our control (earthquakes, for God's sake) are hitting the people who deserve it the least, we need to believe in people more than ever.

We filled six thousand large rice sacks full of things that will truly help some people who need it the most. And 99% of the work was done by people who gave up their precious time to spend the day doing menial work like counting toothbrushes, for nothing more than a couple of pieces of pizza. So, here's to you 70-year-old woman who spent last Wednesday dragging 40 lb. sacks across the floor - you are my inspiration.

Here are some photos of our work:

Loading up the truck with finished sacks.

A sea of sacks, awaiting more products.

Ice cream break.

Hard at work.

2,000 finished sacks.

Couldn't have done it alone.

Luis Felipe - more hours worked than anyone.

Me + Notebook + Sack.

Mateo, the co-coordinator and Me.

We started with a bunch of boxes.

As the crow flies, I am only a couple hundred miles from the biggest crisis that is happening in the world this very moment. Maybe an hour by plane, eight hours in a truck, millions of people are experiencing a horror that I literally could not have imagined a little over a week ago. I'm sitting in a posh office of one of the most well-known international non-governmental organizations in the world, five floors about Santo Domingo, and I'm waiting...

I've been put in charge of a church effort to put together a couple thousand "kits" for Haitian families. These kits are supposedly going to contain a few different necessary items for personal care, basic sanitation, etc. At first, I thought the whole thing sounded great. Now, almost 24 hours after I was first assigned this role, my head is starting to spin. Our first truckload of things was supposed to arrive last night, around 8 p.m. It's 10:16 a.m. right now, and all that I'm hearing from the people in the office is..."later."

What the fuck do you mean, LATER?

Putting aside, for a moment, that I believe that this particular "aid" effort is sort of unimportant in the bigger scheme of things (people are parched and starving to death, minor infections are turning into life-threatening infections because of a lack of basic, easy-to-come-by antibiotics, etc.), I find this to be completely unacceptable. This is obviously a case of too much red tape, too much paperwork, and too much time spent doing things that are absolutely of no importance whatsoever.

Mine is not the only story. Yesterday, a colleague of mine was sent to oversee a $50,000 purchase of more "necessary" items - including, unbelievably to me, DEODORANT. As if a little bit of body odor might be offensive compared to the smell of DEATH that everybody says pervades the city of Port-au-Prince. To make what shouldn't have to be a long story short, the order never went through, and they are still waiting.

Meanwhile, due to the wonders of technology, hundreds of reporters from different organizations and agencies (not just the NY Times and CNN) are able to show the entire world the growing plight of the Haitians. More alarming, perhaps, are their reports of the inefficiency of the entire "aid" process. These messages and graphic images are broadcasted within seconds to the farthest corners of the world - and yet we can't even get a truckload of soap across the border?

My friend tries to console me over the internet: "you're learning what relief work is and how logistics are in this kind of chaos"

Thanks for the fucking lesson.

Here's a lesson for the rest of the world. How about the next time a country throws off the chains of tyranny and oppression to become a democratic state, the honorable international community doesn't keep it under its boot for the next 200 years until its people are forced into situations where something like an earthquake can kill hundreds of thousands of people? History lesson: Haiti was the second country in this hemisphere to gain its freedom (only a couple decades after the United States), and it demonstrated from the very beginning a more progressive type of democracy than anything that had been previously seen.

This guy knows what he's talking about:

Don't be fooled by articles by "experts" who claim that Haiti's culture is "anti-progress" or similar sentiments - these claims are nothing more than veiled racism and bigotry. Maybe if the U.S. government hadn't been pleased to have oppressive dictators (Papa Doc and Baby Doc, anyone?) and deposed democratically-elected populist leaders (Aristide, removed by the CIA), we wouldn't be trying to point our fingers at Voodoo as the cause of Haiti's problems.

Another favorite scapegoat of liberals and conservatives alike is corruption. Yes, corruption is a problem. No, it is not the nature of a Haitian child born into the world to be corrupt. Maybe it is now part of the "culture," but if the international community actually stepped back and realized that it is ITS policies and actions that have suffocated Haiti into becoming a country led by crooks, things might change. On another note, I currently reside in one of the most corrupt countries in this part of the world, and it's doing monumentally better.

Check #99:

I have to go, my truck is getting in. A day late

I have to run quickly to catch a bus, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I am okay (along with the rest of the D.R.) after the earthquake that hit Haiti. I am about as far from Port-au-Prince as you can get in the northeast part of the island, and my house was shaking for about thirty seconds, if that gives you any idea as to the magnitude of the quake. Please keep your thoughts and prayers with the victims in and around Port-au-Prince.

As I usher in my third new year in the Dominican Republic, even the prospects of a new beginning a fresh start seem to hinder my ability to write anything of consequence. When I find a few spare moments to write these posts, I’ve found that my mind sort of instinctively goes back to the same old stuff I usually write about. And now, after more than two years, I guess those topics just don’t interest me as much. It’s not as though I get everything – every day something strikes me in a different way or surprises me – but none of it somehow seems “blog-worthy.” The original intent, I suppose, of this blogging business was to let others know what my life is like here in a different place. What I realized, though, when I went to the United States a few weeks ago was that this different place is as much my home in the present moment as Minnesota is. Of course, I don’t pretend to forget the twenty-some years that I spent in Minnesota before arriving in September 2007, but I’m not currently living that life. I always preach to new Volunteers that they will be happiest as soon as they take ownership of these two years as their own life and live it as such. If, from the very beginning, a person thinks of this as some sort of transient experience – a hiatus from “real life” – it becomes very easy to detach himself or herself from their own day-to-day reality. Obviously, it’s healthy to have some sort of perspective on what the future might bring, but you don’t have to be some sort of corny life-advice postcard creator (“Live every day like it’s your last!”) to carpe diem.

Before I left for vacation a few weeks ago, I was beginning to drive myself crazy thinking about the FUTURE and the path my life was headed, blah blah blah. I was feeling apprehensive because I was fairly certain that I was not going to experience the same level of job satisfaction in 2010 as I did the previous year. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to come back to the D.R.

Now, I’ve decided to give myself a break. For now, I’m letting myself off the hook for not knowing all the answers to life’s questions. Today (and maybe even tomorrow), it’s okay that I’m not entirely sure of what I want to do or how I can affect the greatest change in the world. I’m going to continue to learn from others and about myself and know that, sooner rather than later, I’m going to have a clearer picture of my place in the world. Oh, and I’m going to keep learning how to surf and speak French.

Thank you to everybody who made my last few weeks in the U.S. so great. It was a bit of a slow recovery after the old appendectomy, but I truly enjoyed myself and feel fully recharged for whatever time I may have left here in the D.R. Also, sorry if I missed you – I’ll be around again for a few days in February as well!

On another note, I experienced a 103 degree difference in temperature from take-off to landing on January 3rd. When I left Minneapolis it was -18, and when I landed for my layover in San Juan, Puerto Rico, it was 85. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling like I’m making a good decision…

Below I’ve attached some pictures from the sledding adventure that Steph, Sam, and I had. Enjoy!

Saludos!

I`ve been terribly neglectful for the past...uh...nearly two months it appears. It`s been a busy couple of months: the group that I arrived in country with said their final ¨adios¨ to the D.R., I did a medical mission, I worked on planning our annual Thanksgiving celebration, I turned 25, and that pesky little thing called ¨work¨ had to be taken care of as well. With all that, and limited internet access (as usual), I haven`t had a chance to update.

Rather than go into depth with everything I`ve been up to, suffice it to say that I`ve been doing very well (if not a little bit run down) and that I`m happy.

If you are curious to hear about how things have been going, we should hang out for the next couple of weeks. I`ll be back in Minnesota on the 22nd of December, and I`ll be there for nearly two full weeks.

Hope all is well!

Hello all,

Not too much news to report here. I'm feeling great and I'm looking forward to a couple weeks at home in December. I'll be stopping through Florida on the way up to Minnesota to spend some time with Steph, my new girlfriend, which I suppose does constitute news. I've attached a photo at the bottom of this post - it's not official if it's not on the Internet, right?

Anyway, I wrote a little something over the last couple of days and I thought you all might be interested as well. Below, I've copied an article that I submitted to the Peace Corps/DR volunteer publication, the Gringo Grita. I'm not sure if they'll publish it, but at least you all can read it! I've translated some of the Spanglish that we so commonly use here.

--------------------------------------------------------

Confessions of a Peace Corps Volunteer

By David Garfunkel

I am not a super Volunteer. Two years later, as I look back on the laundry list of projects that I at one time so enthusiastically launched in my sites, I find more failures than successes. Sure, I’ve had my moments; I have a blog full of photos of graduations and inaugurations, testaments to the fact that I showed up in my campo one November day and did the Peace Corps thing. However, there is a large part of me that feels as though I’ve been faking it. My friends and family tell me how proud they are and gush over my “accomplishments,” and I ask myself what I have really done.

Maybe I hold myself to a standard that is too high. After all, many of us decide to join the Peace Corps because we want to be part of a significant change in the world, and that is tough to accomplish in two years. Then, in the course of our journey, we come across the usual suspects – NGOs that are more focused on their own legacy than actually helping poor people, project partners that don’t show up to meetings, cynical second-year Volunteers who have nothing positive to say – and we get caught up in the lucha (fight). Frustrations turn into complaints and, before we know it, we have nothing more to talk about than our GRE scores and how many more months until that glorious day that we finally get to go home. Our own personal struggles get in the way of our original motivations and we lose focus on the big picture.

These two years should not just be a blip on our life’s radar screen, our perfunctory effort to try to make changes in this world that is rife with powers that seem so much bigger than us. “Yeah, I tried, but imagínate.” (It means, literally, imagine. It's a common response when something doesn't work out. For example, someone might show up to a meeting and they'll say: "David, nobody was home and I needed to cook for my kids...imagínate.) This experience is not just about us. When we leave here one day on our own free will, most Dominican children will still not receive a proper education, elderly women will still be forced to grovel with a cardboard box of avocado balanced on their heads, and the rich will continue to blatantly rob and step on the poor as they amass greater wealth. The powers-that-be will still point to misleading economic indicators, pat themselves on the back, and celebrate the high levels of “development” that happen (dizque - supposedly) across the country, but we won’t have to walk 100 yards from any of our doorsteps to witness real suffering.

I am guilty. I tried, but I did not try my hardest. I let my frustrations get the best of me, and I disengaged. I blamed my project partners, and I complained. I paid attention to my own needs, and I forgot about the more pressing needs of others. I told myself that I wasn’t here to suffer, and I went to the beach. I said, “Imagínate.”

I have never been surrounded by so many smart, hard-working people. I am truly inspired by the accomplishments of my fellow Volunteers, and I have constantly looked to them when I have felt discouraged. We, as Volunteers, do wonderful things. These wonderful things, however, are just the beginning. We cannot lose sight of the fact that we teach these classes, run these conferences, and give these charlas (chats, presentations) for reasons that are more important than anything that we could ever communicate on our résumés. We should be proud of our work and we should celebrate our achievements, but we should not be satisfied. If and when each of us leaves this country, we need to recognize that our work is far from finished and that we must continue to fight for a just world.

This is not a call for all of us to scrap our future plans and devote ourselves to development work. I’m not saying that you should sell everything you own and spend the rest of your life living humbly in the loma (mountain), waiting for the next plátano (plantain) harvest. But, let us focus our great potential. It starts today, when all of us are on the “front lines,” en la lucha (fighting the good fight). It can begin with a simple conversation with a group of like-minded people, or the decision to stand up to something that you know is not right in the face of opposition. We need to do the best that we can with the immense privilege that has been given to us to make this world a better place. We need to question, each day, whether or not we are dedicating ourselves to a just cause.

Have I been doing the best that I can? I don’t think so, but I will learn from my mistakes. I will not apologize for injustice. I will not condone racism, sexism, or an ever-increasing wealth disparity that has never before been witnessed in human history. I will not become pessimistic or apathetic. I will not forget the reasons why I came or why I care. I will do better.

--------------------------------------------------

That's it! As promised, here's a photo - bad internet cut it off, but you get the idea.

Family, friends, and neighbors,

I'll be in Minnesota from December 22nd through January 3rd!

Just bought the tickets.

I already can't wait!

-Gringo

What better time to break my spell of lack of inspiration than the two-year mark of my departure for the Peace Corps?

I actually had a train of thought going, and then my friend sent me a link to the following website that sells "Dominicanism" T-shirts.

www.tingola.net

At first, the site didn't seem particularly relevant to this post, which should be filled with grandiose obvservations about my personal change and growth over the past two years (yeah, right). Then, I realized that it was the perfect way to start thinking about how far I've come over these past 24 months. For 95% of the people who might read this blog, those T-shirts don't make any sense. I, on the other hand, have been stifling laughter for the past twenty minutes, trying not to make a scene in front of the other 15 people sharing this internet center with me. It's an activity that I'm used to - trying not to make a scene, draw attention to myself, or stick out too much.

Anyway, the site. The sayings and pictures on those T-shirts are about as Dominican as you could imagine. Most Latinos or otherwise Spanish-speaking folks wouldn't know where to begin the deciphering process for 75% of the shirts. Two years ago, I wouldn't have had a clue.

And now, I get it. Yeah, they're just a bunch of shirts, but I think that it is saying something when my friend (white, southern California dude) sends me (white, Minnesota dude) that link to get a couple of laughs. We are, as they say here, "aplatanados" (plantained: i.e., Dominican).

Not that I actually think that I'm Dominican, but - damnit - I'm proud of myself. For all those moments where I sat in a crowded bus or a loud corner store and didn't understand anything that was going on, for all those months spent in the campo trying to figure our just what I was doing there, for each and every one of those moments where I felt completely, uncomfortably, nervously out of my element - this stifled laughter (still) goes out to them.

We grizzled D.R. veterans always laugh when the new groups of volunteers come in. But, in my case, the laughter is not directed at the "newbies," as some so affectionately call them. It is instead playfully aimed at the reactions of those who have been here for a "long" time (like a year or so).

"Wow, these newbies don't know anything!"

"They're so green!"

etc. etc.

I remember the feeling I had after being here for a year. I definitely got it. I definitely was Dominican. I was a PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER.

A year later, my perspective has changed. Now (and despite my little T-shirt monologue), I realize that for all I've learned, I could live here forever and not fully understand the culture, the language, or the people. I rejoice in the moments where I do feel like I get it, but take more comfort in the fact that it's okay if I don't. I'm still amazed at the situations that I get myself into where the only familiar thing that I have to comfort me is that same old feeling that I've experienced over and over again here: "What is happening?"

My new job involves a lot of "site development," basically the process where Peace Corps staff and volunteer leaders investigate potential sites for the new volunteers to live and work during their two years. Last weekend, I had the opportunity to spend a night up at a site that I've developed from scratch. To be honest, I didn't really want to leave the confines of my comfortable house in the city. I had been traveling a lot, and I just kind of wanted to spend a night hanging out with my iPod, electricity, running water, and indoor bathroom. It turned out to be one of the best days I've had in some time.

The reason I mention it is that it brought me back to those first few weeks in country and in my site. Again, I was clueless. I didn't know more than three or four people by name, I was sleeping and eating in a stranger's house, I was awkwardly asking where they kept the toilet paper, I was casting furtive glances to see whether or not the way my food was prepared was going to give me a parasite - I was a newbie.

My favorite moment happened right after arrival. I showed up to the house where I was going to spend the night only to find that host mom wasn't around. She was down at the church. So, I sweatily wandered down the road where I proceeded to enter the church and take a seat on the outside of the prayer session that appeared to be in full session.

"Welcome, Dah-veed!"

So far, so good.

All of a sudden, though, there was a change in the atmosphere. Everyone stood up, and the leader of the group (host mom) mentioned something about praying out loud. I grew up Catholic, so I usually feel pretty comfortable navigating church-like situations. But this little "prayer out loud" turned out to be slightly different from the "Lord, hear our prayer" of my youth. Before I knew what had happened, all 12 or so of the women were screaming at the top of their lungs. I speak Spanish and English well, and I'm fairly certain that most of them were bordering more on the "speaking in tongues" language. A dozen women, on a mountaintop church, screaming in tongues...and me. Head bowed, trying to conjure up some comforting thoughts, maybe a "Hail Mary" or two (in English) to try to "participate."

Out of my element.

It was a great weekend. Dominoes, more church, a few speeches made up off the top of my head: "working." I'm so happy that I went, both to get that down home campo treatment and to re-ground me in regards to the volunteer experience. It was the perfect testament to exactly what I've been thinking about and writing here. I realized how far I have come, and I also realized that my knowledge, at times, doesn't do me a damn bit of good. I love it.

Happy Two Years, Gringo.

I promise that I'm formulating an actual post in my head at this very moment. That being said, this won't be it. To be honest, I've actually sat down in front of a computer a number of times in the past few weeks with plenty of time to at least scribble out a few paragraphs about the goings-on of my life, but I haven't felt any inspiration. I've opened up this same screen, a blank slate with nothing but potential for some silly stories or some moderately thoughtful life-ruminations, probably four times.

So, I'm going to list out a few of the songs that I am always listening to. At first, it seemed kind of trite, and then I realized how important it actually is to me. I spend nearly all of my free time either cooking, eating, listening to music, and playing my guitar. Most of the time, it's a combination of at least two of those activities, and I'm fairly certain that you might catch me attempting to do all four at once if you spent any amount of time with me.

I'm sure if I sat here and agonized a little bit more, I could come up with a couple more songs. But, the following were the songs that jumped right to the top of my head when I prompted myself. So here goes...

"Carey" - Joni Mitchell

*Not sure how I missed out on the Joni Mitchell boat for so long. I'm not sure I've ever been so immediatly impressed with anyone's song-writing skills.

"Buckets of Rain" - Bob Dylan

*A new Bob Dylan favorite; just add it to the list of the other 15 or so that I listen to constantly. "Life is a drag, life is a bust, all you can do, is do what you must. You do what you must do, and you do it well." Sounds about right.

"East of Eden" - Mason Jennings

*Just got the Century Spring album. My favorite is this song, so far.

"Freddie Freeloader" - Miles Davis

*It's my favorite rainy day music.

"You are my Sunshine" - Ray Charles

*Along with Joni Mitchell, the two artists that I was plain missing out on for nearly a quarter of a century.

"Sanguine" - The Avett Brothers

*I could listen to this one on repeat, I do believe.

"National Disgrace" - Atmosphere

*This is why I love Slug. Social commentary with a hint of self-deprecation.

"Someone Else's Song" - Wilco

*Makes me want to be a folk singer.

"I Can't Complain" - Todd Snider

*What could I possibly complain about?

That's it! If anyone has any suggestions for me, I'm always open to new music.

Real post coming soon...

Hope all are well and happy!

I have recently been lucky enough to be a participant in a series of events and conversations that has left me wondering just who or what it is that is directing this show. I generally enjoy those little moments of coincidence and serendipity that leave most of us with that hard-to-capture feeling: you know the one...getting a phone call from a distant friend whom you were just thinking abou, having a dream about something that happens the next day, deja vu. Now, I'm not particularly in tune with those feelings, my dreams, or really antying of the sort. Generally, I chalk it up to coincidence and continue on with my day...

It started with a dream about a friend. I don't remember much, just that we were having an unexplained gun battle. I wasn't scared or upset, just shooting and being shot at. I woke up before any of the bullets could find their intended targets, laughed about it, and decided I would email my friend:

"Hey man, just thought I'd let you know that we were shooting at each other, neither one of us is hurt. I see that you're in Mexico. What's happening down there?"

Not expecting much of a response, I sent the email and figured that I would hear from him when he had the time...

Two days later, I return to the same internet cafe to check my email, and he had responded. "Destino, hombre. Créelo." (Destiny, man. Believe it.)

He then began to recount a story that had happened to him less than a week before. After he arrived home at 2:00 am in Mexico and laid down in bed 15 minutes later, he heard an explosion. And another. And hundreds of others. An all out gun battle lasting the better part of the night and into the next day ensued, between some of the heavy hitter Mexican druglords and the military police. "Call the police? What are the police going to do? The police have pistols, the narcos have hand grenades." Heavy stuff.

He also mentioned that he had been thinking about me that same day because he had received a recruitment email from a university in Mexico where he was thinking about attending medical school. "Dave's done it. He's still doing it. Maybe I can live abroad for a couple of years and follow the dream."

So, within a day of my dream about my friend and a gun battle, he had been thinking about me and been an unwilling obvserver of his own little gun battle.

Fast forward two weeks to the night before last...

I hosted a few Peace Corps Volunteers at my place. Space was a little tight, so I ended up sharing my bed with another friend. At 3:00 am, I'm reminded of the story that I just recounted, and I start to tell it again:

"So, I have this friend. I had a dream about him. Weird little dream where we were both shooting at each other. Nobody hurt, but after I emailed him he got back to me and recounted the story of his own personal gun battle..."

All of a sudden, outside of MY house in the DOMINICAN REPUBLIC:

Boom. boom. boom. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

... a minute passes...

BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOOM.

Turns out, at the very moment that I decided to tell a story in the middle of the night, a group of thugs tried to rob a rich guy of his SUV. I have never heard a gunshot where I live. I've never even heard more than one or two in a row in my life. And THAT happens? 50 yards from my house?

Like I mentioned, I usually don't pay too much attention to those kinds of events or circumstances. But this is too much. Coincidence? Hmmmmm....

I guess that's where the story ends. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. Nobody was hurt, gracias a Diós. That kind of stuff can happen anywhere, but the timing and the circumstances and everything else was pretty crazy. Destino. Créelo.

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Other than little gun battles and extraordinary coincidences, there isn't much to report. I'm staying hot and busy, as usual. I'm learning to cook Indian food. I'm still trying to fight through the Peace Corps bureaucracy to get my job and pay all squared away, but my bosses are taking care of me. I feel appreciated, and I enjoy what I'm doing. And I may have the power to predict the future with my dreams and conversations, so that's kind of neat. Maybe they'll put me on Heroes next season. I'll probably be able to make more money than I do here.

I hope all is well back home! Thanks for checking in!

David

I'm out of it.

It took a text message from across the ocean for me to find out about the untimely death of Michael Jackson. Had it not been for that 35 word tidbit that was somehow encoded in Phoenix and displayed on my cell phone, I might not have found out about the King (of Pop, that is) for days...or weeks. I was far from any person who might have cared, spending a weekend with my buddies riding some ponies (for your viewing pleasure, I've attached a couple pictures at the end of this email).

It is a constant struggle to try to stay in tune with the goings-on of the world outside of my ever-shrinking Peace Corps bubble. If M.J. barely made it on to my radar, you can imagine how cursory my knowledge of other (read: more important) current events are. Honduras? Iran? The economy? The Twins? That polarizing comedian quasi-Senator guy?

Although, now that I have spent a couple of days reunited with the outside world, I'll probably be content to check back in to my own little societal version of the Hotel California - you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leeeeaaavvveee (insert Joe Walsh guitar solo played poorly, in the dark, by me).

Maybe the hotel management was on to something. Now, I'm not going to waste your - or my - time bemoaning the misdirection of our society or extending this trite hotel metaphor any further, but suffice it to say that I'm never too impressed when I get/have to hear about what is happening when I do get a taste of the outside world. Who are these people that are deciding what it is that we get to hear about or read about or see on television? Is it even possible to get an unbiased account of events that are of actual importance and significane to our lives?

As I write this, I'm already hearing the sirens of the irony police as they come to arrest me for doing exactly what I'm complaining about - giving biased opinions on topics that don't seem to be of that much importance to anybody, let alone the public at large. But, there are a few differences: nobody is telling me to write this or what to say, I'm not going to write this everyday for the next week every half an hour so that you can't escape it, and I'd like to think that my topics might change from time to time. But hey, what do I know? I'm not Rupert Murdoch.

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In other news not pertaining to anyone but myself...I'm doing well!

Work is good, play is good, health is good - I can't complain.

I'd say the only thing that's not doing so well right now is my train of thought. After spending day after day, week after week, month after month with all sorts of thoughts turning themselves over and over in my head, I finally get a couple of hours with a computer and get stage fright. Oh well...maybe next time!

Until then, enjoy the pictures and be well!

David

Us at the end of the day

The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse

Me and Morán (or Moron, as I came to know him)

Hello all,

It has been quite an eventful couple of months - maybe I´ll use that as my excuse for having not updated in a while. At any rate, I have a little time and I thought I´d write a bit and post a couple of pictures.

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New Job:

I´ve recently moved out of my campo site and into the city, where I´ll be transitioning to my new job and finishing up my old business. Things in the old site ended up well...

*My environmental youth group and I had an informal last meeting where I gave them some pictures and a certificate thanking them for their participation. I´m hoping to use them as a base to solicit a new volunteer for the fall, as I do believe that particular campo to be a fertile place to do some good development work.

*My English classes culminated with an epic Guys vs. Gals competition. As much as I´d like to try to make excuses for the boys, they got beat pretty handily by the much more energetic ladies. I think people had fun and it was a nice way to have a little bit of closure on an activity that has brought me a good deal of satisfaction over the past year or so.

*The women´s group is continuing to manufacture and sell the floor cleaning product. After some bad luck the previous few tries, I think this one is sticking and they are having success. Hopefully they´ll continue to work hard, despite the fact that I won´t be there.

*The local community group finished up the community diagnostic and is in the process of using the information to start new projects in the community. They took ownership of the project, and for that I´m happy.

Those were the main things I was working on. All the other little things are about to be wrapped up and I´m ready to be moved on...

...that being said, the new job is turning out to be a rather frustrating endeavor. Without going to much into it, there have been some snags in the transition process (government bureaucracy at its finest), and it´s been a bit difficult to get myself moved and up and working. However, once the process does work itself out (unfortunately, probably not until July or even August), I´ll be doing a bunch of different things:

*Regional coordinator for the Business Plan Competition - in the northern part of the country, I´ll be working with volunteers and their groups to make sure their classes are going well as well as coordinating regional activities.

*Site development - I´ll be the first point of contact for new sites that are being developed in my region. This is my favorite part of the job because I´m the first person that goes to sites and makes sure that there are good projects and places to host a volunteer for two years.

*Volunteer visits - I´ll be supporting volunteers who are already in their sites as they go through different phases of their service.

...and all sorts of other little things. I will be on the road a lot, which will be tiring, but I´m looking forward to the new challenges and responsibilities...

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What else?

Medical Mission: About a month ago, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in one of the many Medical Missions that volunteers get to help out with each year. For four days, I translated for doctors in small campos up in the mountains in the middle of the country. We saw all sorts of cases...skin problems, cold/flu, broken bones, infections, and just about everything else. We worked all day, which was tiring, but it was cool to be able to see immediate results for the long days that we were putting in.

Pico Duarte: I climbed Pico Duarte, the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi River in the Western Hemisphere (at over 10,000 feet) with a bunch of friends of mine. Below, I´ve attached some pictures of the hike. It was great to get back into nature a little bit, even if it was only for 4 or 5 days...

It got me thinking a lot about what does make me tick and what kinds of activities do satisfy me most. Before the hike, not surprisingly, I had gotten caught up in what all the other volunteers were doing and planning. Not to say that what many of my friends and other volunteers are planning for their futures isn´t legitimate or worthwhile, but I´m not sure that their route is my preferred route. It´s impossible to have a conversation with a group of volunteers (especially those of us who might be leaving in a few months) without talk of GRE scores and who has gotten into Colombia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, or any other number of A-list schools. It´s enough to make someone believe that they should be following that route as well.

Maybe part of the problem is that I do believe myself to be capable of following that path. I don´t question my academic abilities (despite being slightly understimulated for a couple of years), and I think I could get into those schools. I think I could pick a career that would interest me that would start from a place like Johns Hopkins.

At the same time, I don´t think I´m ready to make a decision that will probably tie me down for a number of years. Graduate school is not a small financial investment, and starting one of those careers is not a small time investment.

So...what to do? I do feel a lot of motivation to be moving forward, trying something new, and maybe (*gasp*) not being so broke all of the time. I didn´t finish up the hike feeling as though I just wanted to spend the rest of my life on a mountain, but it certainly did remind me that I do really enjoy being out in nature and seeing that part of the world. I also happened to be hiking with a bunch of guys who enjoy that kind of thing, as well - we didn´t talk at all about GRE scores of grad school or how long it was we expected to be working before we were working in the White House. It was nice.

But, I suppose I´ll be having this conversation with myself until I do find the next thing. I know that I previously had written that I´ll be here until next summer, but I´m not so sure anymore. Maybe that´s why I am feeling some pressure to make some decisions...

For now, though, I just need to figure out what´s for dinner. I moved to the city and my neighbors don´t cook for me anymore! And I am getting hungry, so it´s time to go.

Thanks, as always, for reading my rants and keeping up with what I´m up to down on this little island. I hope all is well back home, and we´ll talk soon!

Here are a couple pictures from the hike...Enjoy!

*The Río Bao, in the Valle de Bao

*Me at the top

*Duarte (father of the republic), the full moon, the Dominican flag, and a cross at the highest point

*Sunrise from Pico Duarte

*Yours truly cheesing in the Valle de Bao

*All the volunteers at the top

...continues...

I haven't found time to write in ages - sorry!

I still am not going to write anything of substance here, but I would love to update for real in the next couple of days...

Hope you are all well!

Hi friends,

Here are a few new pictures from Dave and Joe's recent visit. Be sure to check out the post right below the pictures for a short update, as well!

Pictures:

*A view from my friend Destin's house, where we stayed.

*Ceci and I throwing rocks at other rocks - the sport sweeping the nation.

*Joe and I, beachside.

*The Granite Gear Vapor Trail packs together again - all three of us had matching ones...pretty ridiculous.

*Sunset at my site.

*Joe and I in the mountains by my site.

*My neighbor and I.

*Bringing technology to the world, one digital camera at a time.

*Dave and his pack - that's all he brought for 2 weeks.

Hello again!

If those of you who follow this blog were my Dominican friends and family, you would give me a hard time about having not updated in such a long time. Think something along the lines of ¨you don't love us anymore¨ or ¨you´ve forgotten about us¨ or any other number of guilt-inducing jabs. Unlike my conversations with my Dominican pals, though, I won't try to make excuses or assuage those sentiments - I've just been busy!

I don't even know if I could recount all of the great things that Dave and Joe and I did while they were here for a total of almost three weeks - there was a lot of time spent in my site, a lot of time spent at the beach, a lot of time spent hanging out with volunteers, and most importantly...a lot of time spent catching up with two of my best friends whom I haven't seen very much of in a year and a half. It was truly a wonderful couple of weeks.

I could signal any number of reasons for such a successful trip, but I think it mostly has to do with the flexibility of Dave and Joe and their willingness to throw themselves out there into situations out of their comfort zone and just go with the flow. It can be stressful to have visitors (not to say that I wouldn't be more than happy to host anybody for any length of time), and I never felt the stress of having them around for a second.

What is hard to believe right now is that they're already gone. I thought that I had a pretty good grasp on the ever-increasing velocity of passing time during my Peace Corps experience, but this was just ridiculous. It's already been a month since Dave first arrived. Wow.

As would be expected, I took somewhere between zero and no pictures - (sorry.) However, maybe they would be so gracious as to send a couple pictures of the trip my way via email and I'd be happy to post them up here on the blog. As for now, there is one picture of me (above) - just a couple miles from my house in the campo. In any case, it was great. Thank you.

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Before I get to some work stuff, I have another piece of fun news to relate. A couple of years ago, a group of Volunteers began the annual tradition of the ¨Bola Race.¨ A bola, for those unfamiliar with the very Dominican term, is a free ride - a hitchhike. As I was unable to participate last year, I was excited to try my hand in 2009.

It is a 2 person team event, composed of one male and one female member. Cecilia and I thought we had a chance. I thought that my previous experience hitchhiking on the Appalachian Trail might help me out - we also decided that the ¨little black dress¨ look on Cecilia might expedite the process. Little did we know...

Part of the competition, besides arriving from point A to point B without paying for any form of transportation, is dressing up in a thematic costume and sticking with the story. Ceci and I decided to dress up as a traveling Mexican/American/Dominican musical duo. She and I set off from Santiago with a little black dress, her luggage, me, a cowboy hat, and a guitar (which was all I brought for 3 days).

Less than 4 hours later, halfway across the country, ahead of ALL 22 other teams, she and I came screaming across the finish line - in 1st place. Champions. After getting 6 different free rides, on highways, mountain roads, beach roads, in the back of Daihatsu trucks, in vans, in the back of pickup trucks...winners. I might never pay for another ride again. I'm still waiting on some pictures to get sent my way from that one, as well.

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Work? Work.

It's been a fun month, with the visitors, bola race, Semana Santa (Holy Week - maybe the biggest Dominican vacation of the year), and everything else. But we've still been accomplishing a good amount in my community.

English classes are still alive and kicking - nobody is leaving fluent, but I enjoy them and so do the students. The women's group in town is still producing and selling Mistolin, with much more success than any of the other times I've tried that project. With one community group, we did a survey of all of the houses in the community (over 300 families) - we are now in the process of synthesizing all of that information into a usable format. Hopefully it will give us some ideas for new projects. My environmental youth group is still rolling along. We spent yesterday in the mountains, exploring, learning about the environment, and chilling by the river. Not a bad Monday. Our newest idea is to hold a nature photography contest in the community.

The community stuff is great. I love where I live and the people around me take great care of me. I have invested a good deal in the community work, and I'd like to continue to do more. However, word has started leaking down from the head office in Santo Domingo, and (if all goes as planned), I should be moving out of my community in the next couple of months to take a new position as a regional peace corps volunteer leader in a nearby city. Besides a change in where I will be living and what I will be doing, this also means that I will be sticking around the D.R. for more time - probably around 7 or 8 months. By my count, that will leave me here until the summer of 2010.

Although it's tough to leave my community early and postpone my return to the United States by another half a year, I've though a lot about the decision and I think it's the right one. One it becomes official I'll be sure to let you all know what is going to happen more concretely.

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Thanks for keeping up with what's going on here, despite the extended time between entries. Enjoy the warmer weather State-side as I prepare to fry for the next six months!

David

Hello!

I was going to take some time over the next couple of days to take care of some stuff and perhaps get to a longer blog entry.

I decided to change my plans when Dave called me yesterday and said that he was coming into Santo Domingo tomorrow at noon.

So, my schedule for the next 3 weeks now looks like this:

Dave - March 22-30

Dave and Joe - March 31-April 3

Joe - April 3 - April 10

(Life is good.)

Maybe we'll get some free time over the next couple of weeks to get some computer time in, but something tells me that it might not be a priority...

Talk to you all soon!!!

Lil´ Dave

¿Cómo estás? (How are you?)

EN LA LUCHA!! (In the fight)

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As much as I enjoy my time in the D.R. and, in general, try (try) not to complain too much, sometimes it feels like I am fighting. Although the phrase "en la lucha" was surely born in the vocal chords of a Dominican peasant who was working 12 hours a day doing backbreaking labor in the fields only to come home to his or her little wooden, tin-roofed shack in the woods and a group of hungry children (and I by no means believe that my life is in any way nearly that difficult), I can sometimes relate in a sort of abstract manner.

Maybe it's a characteristic of the culture here that leaves all of us feeling at times like we are fighting, or maybe it's just life, but Dominicans do have a knack for describing how frustrating the old day-to-day can be. They also, not coincidentally, have a number of ways to describe the manner in which one can cope with fighting a seemingly losing battle - "God willing," "We'll see," "Yeah...maybe," "That's just life," etc.

Ironically, sometimes I feel that the losing battle that I am fighting is against the feeling that I am fighting a losing battle. Or, perhaps more accurately, I fight against the attitude that "aquí no hay vida" (here there is no life) - how do you convince people that they can move forward when all they've ever known is the lack of opportunity in the face of institutionalized poverty, political corruption, and any other number of deep-rooted factors outside of their immediate control?

It's the kind of question that makes you want to go to the beach.

Which is what I did when my dad came down a couple of weeks ago. I've attached a few pictures at the end of the post. We had a great time and it was a good opportunity to get away for a few days.

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So...what am I up to these days besides making myself crazy?

*I am working with a women's group to try to start a micro-business, selling household cleaning products. This project, although sometimes frustrating, is worth it. Many of these women have never had the opportunity to practice any sort of entrepreneurship or really gain any money for themselves. At times I feel like a mother bird pushing her chicks out of the nest so they can learn to fly - but these chicks are old women. And I don't like pushing old women off of things.

*I am facilitating a community diagnostic in my new community. Rather than doing it myself, I am helping a community group to create and implement the project. So far, so good.

*I am still facilitating the youth environment group. We are currently practicing our presentation that we are going to give in the high school. After that, it sounds as though we are going to get our green thumb on and make a garden. MMMMMM....veggies.

*I still teach English. They have an oral exam tomorrow. Study up.

*I've recently been put in charge of ecotourism at my partner foundation. After well over a year of marginally terrible relations with them, I get more responsibility. Go figure. Every time I pull out my matchbook to burn the proverbial bridges, something comes up. Maybe I'm just a sucker, but hopefully we can accomplish some positive things.

*Whatever else comes up! Staying busy, but not too too busy.

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That's all for now! I'm going out to eat, because I just got paid. I'm thinking a sandwich as big as my face. And french fries. And maybe a milk shake.

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Pictures:

-Me and Dad at the beach

-Me and Dad at Salto de Limón waterfall

-Salto de Limón (check out the people swimming in the pool for size reference)

-Me and Dad chowing

-Me, Cecilia, Evan, and Dad chowing

HELLO!

Just when I thought that I was getting the hang of this country and getting truly back into the swing of things after my nice Christmas break...

more rain!

This past weekend, I was originally slated to go up to my friend Patrick's site to ride some horses. He called me to tell me that it was raining a bunch up there and that it might not be worth my trip. Perhaps testing fate, I decided that it might be a good idea to try to get up there anyway and just hang out, if nothing else. Well...

I arrived at the stop to go to his house a good half an hour before he told me to get there. It turns out, the only truck that went up to his campo had left over TWO HOURS BEFORE because it was raining and the driver did not want to wait anymore.

Instead of returning to my site, I found another place to stay in a different town close to where I was. I ended up having to bunker down there for three days while I waited for the weather to clear. Finally, after all that time, I woke up yesterday to a nice, blue, clear day with only a few clouds in the distance. As I got to my stop, it started to sprinkle, then rain, then downpour...

By the time I got to the 1st of three rivers that I need to cross in order to get to my site (normally a 30 foot bridge crossing), the river was around 150 feet wide (over the bridge) with trees 50 feet long and 4 feet in diameter in the mix. Not crossable...

So, back at my bunker-down spot for the evening, I awoke again this morning to more rain that I had even seen the past five days.

I thought hurricane season was OVER!!!

It's not so bad, but I'm tired of being rained on and I've been rotating the same 3 shirts for the past week. And I'd like to see the sun. I'm in the Dominican Republic, not Seattle.

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I have a snail-like Internet connection currently, so I'm going to sign off for now and help all the animals that are pairing up to board the Ark.

Stay warm and dry!!

David