Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Life cycles and food chains nan Kreyol





This summer I return to Caiman to teach more ecology! I am expanding beyond birds to teach about other animals, so I put together wordless visual aids that depict life cycles of fish, bats, dragonflies, frogs, etc. Thanks to my friends Diana & Mark who donated their laminator (plus a huge financial donation), I am able to laminate them and make sets for other people in Haiti. The idea is that participants (mainly little kids) can put each life cycle in order, then create food chains from all the animals. On the back of each I’ll put a label with speaking points in Kreyol (then if I get something wrong, I can change it). I’ll also print out each life cycle as a laminated strip (like a book marker) that I can pass out to the kids. Thanks to everyone who gave donations for this project! I wouldn't be able to do as much without your help.

Friend Kristie steered me in the right direction for words like juvenile, and adult. Please comment about what terms you hear in Haiti. And let me know if you would like to use the visual aids.

Adult animal – 'Yon bet ki majè' for adult animal, or you could use more common terminology and say 'vye bet' or 'ansyen bet' (don't use granmoun).

Juvenile animal – Jenn, examples: 'yon jenn bourik' or ‘yon jenn bef.’

Chick of a birdPousen is a good word for young of chickens only. You can use 'ti poul' too. For other young of birds in general use 'ti bet' if you want to emphasize that it is the young of a particular species say 'pitit tako' or 'pitit grigri.'

Baby bats (which are pups in English) – Baby bats would just be 'ti chochol' or again 'pitit chochol' to emphasize that it is the offspring of the bats.

Trees – If you talk about trees in general use 'pyebwa yo.' For general fruit trees say 'pye fwi yo.' For a particular type of tree say 'pye mango' or 'pye zoranj.' The word for wood is 'bwa.'