Les Cayes Gateway after Sandy

The first picture is the Les Cayes gateway as you enter the town coming from Port au Prince, taken when I arrived in August.  Note the 0 on the right.  The second picture is from the opposite side as you leave the city, taken a couple days ago from the end of the AUC driveway.  The same 0 is on the left - in its new position after Hurricane Sandy.

Aug. 2012, before Hurricane Sandy.

Nov.  2012, after Hurricane Sandy.

From Cayes to Port au Prince, post Sandy.

In Haiti Nov. 1 and 2 are national holidays, so I took a short vacation back to the US to visit friends and family in PA.  The logistics are such that it is best to get back to Port the day before your international flight, and stay overnight.  The options for making this trip from Les Cayes are:

• Charter a MAF flight for $500 or so, or if the timing is right, book a seat for $110 on a flight someone else has chartered.
• Pay a private driver (a friend of a friend) around $250.
• Pay $10 for a bus ride on Travel Chic or the bus that leaves from the Meridian Hotel.

I was nervous about taking a bus back to Port, picturing it to be crowded and driving too fast (I heard it takes 3.5 hours on the bus, when everyone else takes at least 4.5 hours).  But my friend Jehu saved me from that!  He is the brother-in-law of missionary friends in the Central Plateau, and took me on a tour of Port au Prince the week before the 2010 quake.  And he happened to be in the area and driving to Port the day I need to go.  So I rode in luxury in his giant cargo truck, high up in the passenger seat with a great view of the land.  And great view of the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy.

These pictures don’t do it justice.  I saw banana trees and corn fields flattened.  Water and mud on the road, high and very turbid rivers.  And this was 5 days after the hurricane left.  From our 3^rd floor guest house in a strong concrete building, we had no idea of the havoc Sandy was wrecking on the country.  This article indicates that 70% of Cayes corn, bananas, and breadfruit crops were destroyed.  Haiti was already facing high food prices with the loss of US crops due to the drought this summer.

I also saw my first tire-burning protest, about an hour into our trip.  It was in an area where the river floods often, so may have been related to the government not doing anything about the flooding.  Or may have been about food prices.  We never found out.  But the police were out with their giant guns and Kevlar, and turned us back.  We waited it out at a convenience store, and were entertained by an older hippy-looking Haitian woman dancing with young men to the blaring music (Why do they need to blast music in the Caribbean?!  Even churches have giant speaker systems that make the service unpleasant.).

In Port I stay at the Matthew 25 House, a very relaxing oasis in the midst of dirty, crowded Port au Prince.  Arriving in Port after being in Les Cayes was a shock.  There was a brown haze of smoke, dirt, something over the city.  People still live in tents.  There’s shanties everywhere, a ton of trash along the road and in the river beds.

Fortunately MAF was flying to Cayes on my return, so I was able to make the 40 minute flight and had a great view of the southern peninsula and the very steep, deforested mountains (which of course the pictures don’t do justice).  I also saw the wide swaths where the flooded rivers had raged down the mountains, unimpeded by any riparian vegetation.  

 

Flooded field along National Rt 2.

Tire burning down the road (where the smoke is).

Police dealing with the protest.

Flooded National Rt 2.

Steep mountains on the Southern Plateau

River bed.

 

Mesay, Sharky, and Abu, and Hurricane Sandy

4 weeks old.

Rather than being thrown into the fiery furnace like Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, our month-old orphan kittens Mesay, Sharky, and Abu survived their first hurricane safe in the third floor guest house.  Hurricane Sandy hit Jamaica earlier this week, and here in Cayes Haiti we have had heavy rain and winds for three straight days.  I haven’t left the building since Monday (today is Friday), but I heard that roads were flooded and power was out in town.  I was to take my two classes to the botanical garden this week.  Tuesday morning as it became apparent that the rain would not stop, that got changed to staying in and watching a movie (Medicine Man) during class.  It wasn’t until later in the day on Tuesday that we realized this was a major tropical storm and everyone needed to stay home.  But four ecology students showed up yesterday!  So we huddled around my netbook and watched the 1992 movie starring Sean Connery as a researcher on the brink of discovering the cure for cancer in a rain forest about to get bulldozed for a logging road.

A couple Haitians that I don’t really know texted me to see if I was ok during the storm.  One even asked if I was scared!  Which put into perspective how they must be viewing the storm verses how we are, all safe in our concrete building.  Watching movies, making pizza, snuggling the luckiest kittens in Haiti.

For more details about how Sandy has affected Haiti, visit this post by a friend who lives in Port au Prince.  http://vetmissions.blogspot.com/2012/10/sandy.html?m=1.

My favorite, Mesay, named after her mom Day-o.

At the pizza restaurant with Uncle Earl - 3 weeks.

2.5 weeks old.

The Audubon Center of Les Cayes Haiti

This past week, in addition to becoming the newest member of the American University of the Caribbean (AUC) Board, I am also in the process of resurrecting the Audubon Center which is housed at AUC.  Over the past 4 years I have developed an ecology program for schools and adult groups in Haiti, with no definitive home for it.  I started the program through United Christians International in Caiman.  In April I taught in a school in Merger, near Port au Prince.  In July I taught at HAFF back in the Central Plateau.  Basically, I have gone to whatever missionary group would have me.

But now I have found a home for the program!  The Audubon Center here at AUC.  The Audubon Center was started several years ago by people in the area who were interested in birding around Cayes.  And named after the world famous bird painter John James Audubon who was born here in Les Cayes in 1785.

The Center has a room at AUC where books, binoculars, and a GPS unit are housed for those interested in birding and the environment.  But the Center does not receive much attention.  So I have taken on task of reviving it and making an environmental education resource center for the area.  Here is the webpage of it and the activities we have going on.

Deye Switchbacks, Genyen Switchbacks – the Road to Macaya

A switchback in the road to Macaya.

There’s a Haitian proverb that says “Deye mon, genyen mon.”  Literally, behind mountains, there are mountains.  Meaning, if it’s not one thing, it another, which isn’t the point of this story.  The switchbacks were one after another though.  Today I went to Fomon (Fort Mon) on the outskirts of Macaya, one of Haiti’s three national parks.  A German group invited me to go with them to check out a water project there that has fallen into disarray.  So off I went with Marcus and Peguy (pronounced Peggy, a Haitian man) who I had never met before our 6am rendezvous which really was at 5:30am.

From Les Cayes, one travels Route 2 west and heads north at Torbeck on a fairly decent road for about an hour.  We stopped for coffee and bread right before a river crossing, which we were able to make despite the rain all night.  Shortly after the crossing, the road turns into rocks with switchbacks after switchbacks as we climb about 1000 ft.  And no guard rails.  Two people I mentioned this trip to said, woah, you are going by car?  Due to expert German driving, I thought the ride went fine.  Other than being jostled about for 2 hours is tiring (update the next morning – my back and shoulders are super sore, as if I had been working out).  Someone with physical health problems would not have been able to make the trip.

Training new bird guides.

Once we got to Fomon I went with Marcus as he checked the pvc pipes that carry water down the mountain to various faucets that were installed to make it easy for people to get water.  The hillside is eroding, rocks are up-lifting, and along with them the pvc pipes.  The plan was that it would take an hour to get to the water source, then I would go with our guide into the park for about an hour, then come back and meet up with the group.  Walking up a mountain on a rocky path after being at sea level for over a month turned out to be way harder than I expected.  Fortunately two kids had joined us and made me feel like an old lady as they helped me up the steep path.  We finally reached a point where I said I couldn’t go on.  Plus, I was watching my footing the entire time and not enjoying the scenery.  So the kids stayed with me while Marcus and the guide went on.

Turned out to be a great decision!  The kids knew I was there to see the birds and really got into the role of being bird guides.  I did see two I hadn’t seen before (Hispaniolan Spindalis and red-legged thrush), maybe 3 (one of the two todies), and a bunch of little yellow birds that I just couldn’t identify.  I paid them, so I might have been their first official ecotour customer!  Though it turned out to not be an intense birding trip, and we didn’t actually go into the park, I did get to mentor those two kids about birding, and that made it all worthwhile.  Well, actually just being up in the cool air among some pine trees made it worthwhile.

The river crossing.

A section of pipe exposed in extreme erosion.

Note the 5 lone trees at the top of the hill.

The rocky road to Macaya.

Checking the water system.

The Orphanage Part 3 – Return of the Bat TV

Watching a nature film on the Bat TV.

On Friday I went to the orphanage with Scott and Ashley (after a failed attempt to find the place where I’ll pick up my mail brought in by Agape Flights).  The previous week the kids kept asking about my Bat TV, the iPad on which I showed them videos of bats.  So this week I brought it and we sat and watched two 40 minute episodes of BBC Planet Earth, one about the ocean, and one about jungles.  And I found out I know very few words in Creole about ocean life.  My next goal is to get speakers for the iPad so we can hear the shows.  Too bad they aren’t subtitled so the kids can be learning English as well.

Jajebo Little Brown Bat Earrings

The kids also loved the bat earrings my mom gave me.  They are homemade from used cereal boxes by Jabebo Earrings.

Even Scott is watching the bat TV.

Scott taking a shift on the tiny chair.