Navigating the airport - Part I - arrival

Here’s a blog tour of the International airport in P-au-P. Fill your water bottle before you get on the plane in Miami - it's your last chance to find water until you arrive at your destination for the night in Haiti. Upon arrival at PAP, have your passport, green customs form, baggage claim ticket, and a bunch of $1 bills at hand. You debark on the second story and walk down a hallway from which you can see the old airport and cracked windows (I assume from the quake). Then you go down an escalator – have $1 ready if the little band is playing and you want a photo or just like the music. Then everyone gets on a bus to go to another building that was a warehouse or something.

When you get off the bus, go inside and get in line to show the customs guy your passport – save the detached part of the green card you filled out on the plane – you'll need it when you leave the country. The customs guy really wanted to know the address of where I was staying – all I knew was the neighborhood which of course he hadn’t heard of. Then you stand near the conveyor belt to wait for your bags. Workers remove the bags off of the far side of the belt, so look for yours there if you were way behind in the line. If you’re early wait near the front of the belt to grab your bags as they enter the building. Then you go by a guy at a little desk who may or may not look at your luggage claim ticket. If not, someone outside will look at it. Be prepared for the onslaught of people who want to help you! I’ve given in and let someone carry my big bag, since he knows if you need to show someone outside your claim ticket. If your ride is not waiting for you in the mob of people right there (see photo), the bag guy will lead you down an outdoor walk way to another waiting place. When you find your ride give the bag guy $2 – 3. He might ask for $10, and won’t have change. Your ride will take you to the MAF airport or other destination.

MAF – When you are dropped off at the little domestic airport, again a bunch of men will try to help you with your bags – let one help you put your bags through security and take them to the MAF window and give him $1 or $2. The security is right at the building entrance and you don’t have to take shoes off or anything out of your bag. Anyone can go in. Bathrooms are near this door (have toilet paper with you just in case). An old woman sits by the bathroom door and will expect $1 on the way out (not sure what she does).

Check in at the MAF window. You can pay in US cash or by check, and lately they’ve wanted payment for the return trip too. Keep your receipt for the return trip. All your bags and you will be weighed. Then your stuff is piled in the corner by the scale. One time a pipe or something was dripping water in the corner so I moved my stuff to a dry place. Keep your valuables on you because then you go and sit and wait (see photo). Kind of keep an eye on your stuff. The MAF guys are nice and will make sure you don’t miss the flight. There’s no food or drinks, but you can buy bottles of syrup.

When it’s time for the flight all your stuff gets loaded onto a cart, and you’re told to go stand by the departure door (to the left of the Tortuga booth). A man will come around from the outside and unlock the door and you walk out to the MAF plane. Have your camera and whatever else you want in hand because they put everything else under or in the back of the plane to distribute the weight. The flight to Pignon is about 20 minutes and might be a little bumpy, but gives a great view of Haiti. At the MAF airstrip your hosts will pick you up. Next post – departure.

It once was a rainforest

These are largest trees I’ve seen in Haiti.

If you know what these are please leave a comment. The banyan tree (strangler fig) comes to mind for the one with all the roots hanging down, but I don't know what it is. The other was called a pistach tree, pistach is Creole for peanut. I assume trees like this grow in the national forests on the south peninsula. It’s sad to think they used to cover the country and now 99% of Haiti looks like this:

The book Collapse has a chapter about how the colonial history of Haiti lead to deforestation. According to it and other sources, the French brought slaves and left with timber, leaving Haiti largely deforested before it became independent.

Birding in November

I saw 21 species of birds in November 2011. They are listed at this posting.

At least 8 of the species I saw in the Mompremiers front wooded yard. Even the giant plain pigeon (ramye) lives there. My 40-something year old host recalled this large dove in large flocks during his childhood. They were hunted to a threatened status, and previously I would see at most one each visit. But this trip I saw and heard them everywhere! My hosts commented that they are seeing more birds this year. Perhaps my message to protect the birds is working. Whatever the reason it is good to see so many birds here.

My guide took me on 2 birding hikes. I now can distinguish the calls of the ground dove and plain pigeon. We saw all three hummingbirds (which he can distinguish by sound). We saw 2 birds new for me: the Greater Antillean Bullfinch which is native to the island; and the Cape May Warbler which comes down from Canada – a perfect example to teach about migration.

Gardens Part II - Irrigated

Saul the agriculture extension agent gave us a tour of his gardens. Huge beautiful fields of cabbages, with tomatoes and peppers along the edges. Even a small patch of rice. Banana trees and breadfruit trees. And a couple of huge trees that survived the deforestation. It was impressive.

Then we went to his garden that has irrigation canals. It was like a botanical garden. Different varieties of bananas. Coffee trees. Cocoa trees! - the orange things in the picture are the cocoa pods. I suggested that Saul open a restaurant overlooking the gardens, and give tours. It’d be a perfect place to relax and enjoy the beauty and food of Haiti.

This final photo shows corn being irrigated, right next to coconut tree. I don’t know if it is as productive as the same sized Kansas corn field, but they also aren’t trying to grow the corn just to feed cows like they do here in the US. That Saul can grow his own rice is a huge deal. The Haitian rice farmers are driven out of business by the importation of American rice (cheaper due to subsidies). Thus

people lose jobs and can’t feed themselves, and the money goes to the US.

Hillside gardens

My last Saturday morning in Haiti my guide took me on a hike to the large cave that’s 2.5 miles from UCI, which isn’t that far, but the 730 ft rise in elevation in ½ mile is tough. We had made this arrangement before I got sick that week, and since I had been there last year, I knew what a steep hike it was, so the day of the hike I said I’d like to go to the smaller, closer cave instead. He said yes. Knowing that my guide says yes when he doesn’t always understand, I reiterated – The small cave. He said yes. I reiterated – The cave that is close. He said yes. Well, we ended up going to that far cave which turned into a 5.5 hour hike! The route didn’t seem like the way to the small cave. The stream crossing confirmed that we were indeed going to the farther cave. Oh well – that’s where I originally wanted to go and I was feeling a bit better. Only I didn’t have enough water for that long of a hike and ran out before we were heading back.

The way there seems very long because of the steep climb, it took us about 3 hours. My guide said he can make it in an hour. We were birding along the way, I was taking pictures, and I wasn’t used to this kind of climb. Last year he and his sister did the hike in flip flops. The same bottles of reddish Corona beer were there, along with the cat skull and chicken bones. We heard the bats fluttering around this time, didn’t hear them last year.

The gardens along the way were amazing. Not that they were large and productive, but that anyone could garden on a steep rocky hillside. There were small plots of corn. Gourds, pigeon peas, and banana trees were tucked away everywhere. On rocky terraces (mesiks, see picture) people planted manioc, potatoes, beans. We saw older men and women out there harvesting their vegetables. They must be in super shape! The hut in the photo is a little garden plot.

Use of water quality test kits in Haitian ecology conference

At both ecology conferences I taught about bacteria using the portable microbiology labs that Dr. Bob Metcalf of California State University developed for use in Africa. The kits detect both the ecoli that usually occur in the environment, and the ecoli that come from human and livestock kaka (the universal term for poop). The ecoli itself doesn’t make us sick, it’s the other things in our kaka such as cholera and dysentery that makes us sick. Thus the fecal ecoli indicates that human or livestock kaka is in the water and possibly the bacteria that make us sick. Contaminated water needs to be boiled before drinking. It seems that people already treat their water, so I presented this as a way to track down sources of contamination. The bacteria in the water sample will grow on the petri plates and make the water in the tubes turn yellow. If the bacteria are from kaka, they will be blue on the plates and fluoresce when a black light is shone of the tubes. The tubes and plates need to be incubated for 12 hours the bacteria to grow. In lieu of an electric incubator one can incubate them against the body under the waistband.

I handed out 3 bags of 4 kits (plate + tube) to people at the first conference on the second day of the conference, then wizened up for the second conference at Riske de Cayahonde and handed them out the 1^st day so that people could bring them back and I could help them interpret the results. These observations are from the 2^nd conference (see pics). I showed three people how to use the kits (with the rest of the class watching), but didn’t have a spare plate to show for real how to put the water on the plates. That was a mistake – only one person got it right! I don’t know what the old man did – he had time to do only 2 of the tests and it looks like he just put a couple drops of water on the plates. The tubes were still clear which means he didn’t incubate anything. He also didn’t label anything. He later spoke up and commended the woman who did everything perfectly and said it’s a lesson in taking education seriously. The class gave her three rounds of applaud. Three people worked together on the third batch of kits. The water wasn’t distributed evenly on the plates so I don’t think they got enough water on it (1ml which is measured with the supplied pipette). But everything was labeled and incubated properly. Next time I need to color code the pairs of tubes and plates since I have difficulty reading the Haitian handwriting. Then at least I know how to pair up the tubes and plates even if I can’t figure out the writing.

Another thing that was difficult was seeing the fluorescence of the tubes with the black light. I didn’t realize that it needed to be very dark to see this. I put the tubes in a cardboard box and peeked in and could tell which tubes fluoresced, but it was too difficult to show this to the class. Next time I’ll use a black bag we can stick our heads in. (Also I didn’t try to explain fluorescence, I called it glowing).

The results are in the pictures of the white board. If the tube is clear and no bacteria grow on the plates, the water is sterile – none were like this of course. If the tube is yellow and the bacteria colonies on the plates are red, then there is ecoli but not the kaka kind. Four of the 8 water samples were like this. Two samples fluoresced but had no blue colonies, thus a moderate risk of getting sick from kaka carried diseases. Two samples did not fluoresce but did have a couple blue colonies, also a moderate risk of getting sick from kaka carried diseases.

I will translate some of the instructions and interpretation of results into Creole for next year. People need to record the dat (date), lokasyon (location), if the tube turned jòn (yellow), if the colonies were ble (blue), and if this means a risk of maladi (illness). Non = no, wi = yes. Locations included sous (spring), gwo rivye (big river), and a ravin (ravine). Locations in the 2^nd board are place names or descriptions: ti pye = little tree, not sure what the other two are. These kits are great tools for teaching about health and water quality, and I learned a lot about how to better structure the teaching to help people get better results.

Two more schools – one repeat and one new

On Thursday I taught ecology at Maranatha school which I taught in an assembly last year. This time I went to each of the 7 classes which is more affective in finding out what the kids know and drilling into them “pa krasse ze yo!” – don’t crush the eggs! The kids all remembered me from June and when asked what they do when they see bird nests all but the youngest class said they protect them. The youngest class of preschoolers didn’t know what to do, and two boys in other classes said they catch the birds. I asked why and they said to eat, but admitted they have chickens to eat too. The kids put a rope in the nests to catch the birds. We reviewed the benefits of hawks and hummingbirds, and then talked about the bats. The youngest kids didn’t know where bats come from – it’s nice to have fresh minds to teach! The older ones thought they come from old mice. At each school the kids seem to know that the bats live in caves.

The final school I taught at was the Catholic school, Ekòl Mè, which is on Hwy 3 at the east intersection to Caiman Rd.* This was my first time at the school (green uniforms) so I only taught about birds. There are 6 classrooms, one room having 2 classes in it (not uncommon). This time it was the older kids in 3 classes of 3rd – 6th grade (12 – 18 yrs old) who said they protect the nests, plus the youngest preschool class. In the middle classes the girls said they protect the birds, while the boys said they catch the birds to eat. And when asked what hawks eat they all yelled chickens! I explained that yes they eat chickens, but eat more rats and chickens, and the rats eat the chickens too.

This month I taught at 4 schools and reached 530 kids. I look forward to my next visit and seeing what the kids remember. I’ll probably teach about snakes. There are no poisonous ones in Haiti, but kids kill them because they think snakes are Satan!

*I’m glad to find out the name of the road that UCI is on – Caiman Rd. The customs guy at the airport really wanted to know the address I was staying at while in Haiti. I know I’m in Caiman the village but really doubt UCI has an address since there is no mail service.