Field Trip!

A lot of random things have happened in the past few days, but I'm not sure how interested you all are to hear that I had my first encounter with a spider the size of my hand (in my shower, I trapped him and set him free), or the fact that I found out I have a colleague who is named Prince Harry. Prince Harry as first names Rosignol as his last. He's no ginger, although apparently he did start an email last week with "let it be known...."!

A building site in Duval. What a view! 

I did get up to something quite interesting yesterday though, I went out to the field to see our programs in action. I had been out to an area called Villa Rosa last week, so this wasn't my first visit. On the map in my office, Villa Rosa is described as a 'shantytown', because it has a lot of haphazard settlements built closely together on a very steep slope. Duval, where I went yesterday, couldn't be more different. It's up in the mountains, it takes over an hour to get there. There is miles of space between the houses, although to be fair many of them are still built on very steep slopes. It was a very picturesque drive up though, reminding me at times of Peru or Sri Lanka, and being up in the mountains has the added benefit of being at least 10 degrees cooler than the city.

I was quite interested to go because we saw houses in various stages of construction, so it was easy for me to visualize the building process, and easy for me to see how the technologies we teach help buildings become disaster-resistant. I will probably delve into work stuff more in later posts, so I won't bore you "non-engineers" with it now. (Yes, I am also a non-engineer, and have been referred to as one in a somewhat-endearing way by one of my colleagues).

It was also really neat because they do a lot of agriculture up there, we passed tons of cabbage, lettuce, beets and other veggies. Actually, my colleague brought us some of the Duval lettuce last week, which I had been eating in salads and sandwiches. It was really neat to compare their agriculture to what I've seen in other hilly places though, because they are able to grow things on VERY steep slopes. They do terracing like I saw in Peru, but it's way less formal, they'll just pile a bunch of rocks along the plots, which tumble down now and again and get piled back up when the do. The other funny thing that reminded me of other places I've been was unexpected, because I was reminded of Afghanistan! It seems like a couple of the households have been siphoning off electricity from the main power lines (not that uncommon), but they're not using electrical wiring, they were using barbed wire as their conductor! I love how strong the entrepreneurial spirit is in places like this...

I leave you with another proof of entrepreneurship, an entire furniture showroom fitting into one tap-tap for transport.... enjoy :)

Flag Day

Happy long weekend to most of you readers! Haiti also has a long weekend, though we had Friday off instead of Monday. Yesterday was Flag Day! Not independence day, flag day. I went out sightseeing with my colleagues, inadvertently learning about flag day and coming upon a parade. I'll start at the beginning:

I went out with Juan and Ben with the goal of taking photos of some gingerbread houses. Haiti has these really cool houses built during the 20s-40s that look very tropical villa-esque, brightly painted with a neat old time feel. We went down into the old district and found a few that we could take photos of from the outside, and one where the caretaker let us in to wander around. The rooms were empty but even their atmosphere is enough to take you back to the time they were built, you could picture the southern ladies and gentleman having cocktails in the salon. They had wraparound porches and patios off bedroom/offices on the upper floors, providing a great view of Port-au-Prince and the bay. Sadly, many were damaged in the earthquake, but they can be retrofitted, and it would be SO neat to retrofit and restore then and open a hotel/bar/restaurant.

While we were downtown we also happened by the Haitian Cultural Museum, and it being flag day we decided to go in. The museum itself it quite small but they have a few artifacts, including the anchor from the Santa Maria (Christopher Colombus' boat), some swords/spears/personal effects of the Haitian "rebel" (aka native) army that got independence for Haiti from France in 1804, etc. They had just opened an exhibition on Haiti's flag, which has quite the long and colourful past. There have been about a dozen versions since the Haitian "rebels" fought France for independence in the late 18th century, and it seems like every new dictator in the 20thC was happy to declare Haiti a new flag. The current one was Haiti's flag from 1820-1843 when the north and the south parts of the country unified, then was tossed out by a dictator, changed again by another dictator in the 1960s, and brought back in 1986 after the Duvalier regime fell. Good times.

We went uptown for lunch, and then embarked upon a search to find Ben a backpack. The Jansport backpack is ubiquitous here, but there are tons of knockoffs (called Joysports!). It was fun getting out and walking through the markets though, it was like a bazaar in Afghanistan where there are just piles of stuff on display, suitcases and cell phones and clothes and bed frames, you name it and I probably saw it. I did however thoroughly enjoy this souvenir (see photo) obviously targeted at MINUSTAH, the peacekeeping for here. They have the Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean soldiers all lined up in fatigues with guns, and there is the Canadian in his policeman's uniform and nothing but a sidearm. How very typically Canadian!

We got a last dose of culture on the drive back, when we came across a flag day parade! I have learned that everyone gets flag day off but school kids, who are forced to march in celebration of their flag. This parade had it all: marching bands, coordinated dance routines, songs, outfits, flag waving, and vocal onlookers. In Kabul we would have had to avoid such a demonstration, but here we were able to pull over and enjoy it. There's nothing like a good parade to cap off your flag day! Well, actually I capped off my day with a quadri-lingual scrabble game (English, French, Spanish, Creole), and those of you who know my love for scrabble can imagine how much I enjoyed that!

Back to Haiti

Hello all, 


As most of you know, I'm back in Haiti. I'm with a new organization, called Build Change, who designs earthquake-resistant houses and then train and supervises homeowners, builders, and government officials to build them. I've been back almost two weeks but have been too busy/tired to start the blog, so this first post will be a copy/paste of an email some of you received, and the second will be new. Here goes! 

Well, I'm back to being Katie in Haiti and I am really, really enjoying it! It is so very different from Afghanistan, but also quite different from the last time I was here. It seems like I bring a unique perspective having been here before the earthquake, and then again shortly afterwards. So much has changed - there are way more restaurant/bars (to cater to expats but also Haitians), the price of food has gone up (expats and well-to-do Haitians are willing to pay, so they can charge), and a lot of the tent cities have been cleared out since I was here after the earthquake. Apparently many have been cleared as recently as a few weeks ago, but what a difference it makes. 

The job:

Is really good, I'm enjoying myself a lot so far. Build Change designs earthquake-resistant houses and then trains homeowners, builders, and government officials how to build them. We either do designs for new construction, or retrofits of houses that were deemed unsafe. We don't provide financing for homeowners to build, nor do we do the actual building, but we train people how to do it and provide onsite, on-the-job supervision so that the builders learn a skill they can carry away. I am doing fund development and grant writing, which is a combination of networking on the ground and writing proposals. For example, an NGO may win a contract to retrofit/build 300 new houses in Port-au-Prince. I'll write a proposal offering to sub-contract to them, having Build Change provide housing designs, train their builders how to build the designs, and provide onsite supervision throughout the process so it's done correctly. I've wrote three last week and there are another couple in the pipeline, so you can imagine how busy we are! I like it though, it's a good mix of getting out meeting people and the geeky, proposal writing stuff I like to do. I report to the Director of Programs, who is great and has been helping me a lot this past week. 

My coworkers:

Are all really nice. There are about 80 Haitians, the majority of who are engineers/trainers and are on building sites every day to make sure things run smoothly. The rest are admin/operations people, comms people, or architect/engineers who create house designs. There are 9 expats including me, two Haitian-Americans (one heads admin and the other comms), then the director of programs and 5 engineers/architects. All are men except the comms director, but it's not a problem at all. All are really, really nice and have been great at getting me up to speed and making me feel included in their after-work activities.

My apartment:

Is also quite nice, and a lot like the ones I stayed in with PDT. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen, living room, and a shared bathroom, and all are big and spacious. I am sharing an apartment with Juan, a Honduran architect. He's fluent in English and French, but I'm practicing my Spanish with him as well. He's been great about making me feel welcome and it isn't weird sharing the living space. The apartment is about halfway in between the office and Petionville, the kind of hub of activity for extra-curricular stuff, it has lots of restaurants, gyms, bars, etc. Traffic is terrible here, so it's in a nice midway location. 

Haiti itself:

Is awesome! It is SUCH a change from Afghanistan, I can't get over it. We don't have any curfews or security restrictions except that we're supposed to take Build Change drivers. This means that if we want to go to the beach, we can go we just need to take one of our drivers. We're actually going to a beach about an hour outside of PAP today! My coworkers have taken day/weekend trips all around the country, so I'm getting excited to do the same. I feel completely safe in the city as well, there really aren't any security concerns. It would be totally possible to come down for a Haitian vacation, spend your days at nice cafes/restaurants and going to the beach. SUCH an upgrade from Kabul! I am really excited for my new lifestyle. 

For all of you that want to keep in touch in another way, we can BBM! Work gave me a Blackberry and I am slowly learning how to use it, so if you have one you can pass along your pin. That's it for now, post #2 coming up!