A little taste of Heaven

So Haiti is a country full of extremes.  Be it the weather, the gap between rich and poor or the very difficult question of religion.  Our time here on the second leg of our journey in Les Cayes has been very mixed. Again we are faced with extremes from taunts in the street of "oi blanc, blanc blanc" and a few un complimentary hand gestures to those who are open with us about their lives and appreciate and want the work we are doing to continue in Haiti.  On Saturday we spent the day looking for other hotels and guest houses to stay in as the Hosana Guet house, although comfortable makes us feel confined, like living in a prison.  Only allowed out with someone to be our guide we are forced to sit in this great mansion which has massive walls with glass covering the top and a huge iron gate to prevent people getting in...or out?  Each day we have to say grace at the dinner table and listen to our hosts talking about the devils work and how you cannot be christian unless you have been re born.  It stirs a mixture of emotions in all of us.  The divide between rich and poor in this country is extreme to say the least and this is amplified when we ask "what about those living in tents. What will happen to them?"  We are met with the response "the government will have a plan" or the shrug of shoulders, a distinct lack of care perhaps?

So yesterday we had a day off and so made our way to Il a Vache a tiny island off the coast of Les Cayes.  We arrived at the docks after a bumpy truck ride to be greeted by Pasteur Malingo (our guide who runs the orphanage) and our translators who we work with. Rubbish is everywhere in Haiti and it lines the edge of every pavement, house and free space.  The sea was a wash with plastic bottles, paper and green slime.  Our expectations for the day were low and we wondered if Il a Vache was as beautiful as every body said.  After a 30 minute boat ride across the sea we were greeted by this islands beauty.  White sand, palm trees, small wooden shacks painted the colours of the rainbow and small fishing boats.  Heaven it seemed was here in Il a Vache.  As we rode into Port Morgan famous for Captain Morgn's Rum i got excited about the visit to the beach.  My expectations were blown away as we rounded the corner of the bay and were greeted with water that was clear an empty beach and the sun gleaming down.  If you can remember the bounty advert 'a taste of paradise' that is what it was like.  The rest of our party had never visited Il a Vache due to the cost of the boat and i thought what a shame they are missing out on something so beautiful right on their doorstep. 

We spent the whole day in Il a Vache sunbathing, chatting about politics, education, the state of the health service both in Britain and in Haiti.  We drank rum and beer together and soaked up the rays.  It restored my belief in the Hatian people and as we returned to Les Cayes singing ridiculous and funny songs we were reminded of the poverty, tension and rubbish that greeted us on our return.  When we got back to our guest house we were thoroughly sun burnt, sleepy and all very silent.  The family who runs the guest house were still out at church (16 hours spent at church) and as i settled down for the night feeeling contented, the smell of the ocean on my clothes, my skin feeling exfoliated from the sand and my hair smelling salty i thought what an amazing opportunity i am getting. 

Haiti truly could be a beautiful country.

Tamsin Fitzgerald

Ellie.Gap after no internet. end of Croix de Bouquets and beginnings in Les Cayes

Here we are at Hosanna Guest House in the outskirts of Les Cayes. It’s run by enthusiastic Evangelicals with a strict timetable for meals, a bell and Grace. Our ‘man on the ground’ here, Mali, is a young  Pasteur and he chose it for us.This is not chronological as we haven’t had access to internet for a few days.

Foremost in our minds is the small mob of angry men who arrived at the Lumiere et Vie orphanage in Les Cayes where we started our workshops yesterday. We had just finished a very good session with the five  translators who are working with us ( feast after famine )when we heard shouting. About 8 angry guys , one coming right into the orphanage and one in the background  with a machete were shouting at Mali in a horribly threatening way. We thought at first it might be something to do with us – whites- being there but it was apparently a dispute about the land surrounding the orphanage. In the UK we might refuse planning permission but they do things differently here! Mali was very calm and patient and eventually they went away.

The last day at the FRADES orphanage at Croix de bouquets brought its now-familiar mixure of quite extreme emotions, doubts and certainties. You can’t help but make special connections to one or two of the children. Mine was to Michaela, a cheeky, raucous 13 year-old who wouldn’t join in anything, was a great mimic of my singing and Nathan’s but had such spirit and cried so hard and held onto me as we left.

Our set  was thirty Fun for life in Haiti! balloons and the audience for the  final showing to friends and any relatives was  one appreciative mute mother, Pierre-Louis the toothless doorman and. Rachelle looking beautiful as ever.  She had to finish some work on her computer until nearly half way through the show. Gerald was nowhere to be seen – off on his motorbike trying to find some food for the fete afterwards. Luckily he appeared just after we had started, to replace one of the two light bulbs we had for our  lighting rig with the bulb from the girl’s dormitory. It was fairly chaotic of course but the kids loved doing  it and they were very proud of themselves. Afterwards they had sausage rolls which were a meat treat. (We worry about how many have got the malnutrition characteristic of the distended belly.) I gave a short speech about FFL and Ali’s film and presented Gerald with the computer that Tamsin had brought from St Mary’s school and her excellent children’s book about street dancing. Then Gerald spoke warmly about us and the kids sung us the most tear-jerking song.

• So along come the doubts. These children have been abandoned so many times in their lives and here we are doing it to them again. There is no Facebook for them, no way we can keep in touch. Can we go back? Can we afford it? It’s cripplingly expensive here even now we have learnt how to find lifts in the back of pick-ups! If we send paper and coloured pens ( they don’t have either) would it get to them? Although I sobbed in the pick-up all the way back to our guest house, I genuinely believe we put some love, colour and energy into their lives and that the united Nathans –haha – and Tamsin are doing a terrific job.

Photographer's view

http://catseyeproductions.wordpress.com/

Thoughts on the aural landscape

For those with a passion for sound Port au Prince presents a pallete of sonic textures that are as diverse as they are challenging. With my dusty eyelids closed, the whispering hum of the overworked fan provides a foundation for a myriad of sounds pulsing further afield; low flying helicopters, the sweat shined hawks of street vendors, whistling brakes and incessant car horns accompany the familiar scales of emergency sirens, the fugle-horn bark of American petrol tankers and the universally pleasant  tones of children at play.  The heat is intense at eleven in the morning and serves to focus the sounds of this noisy capital in curious Technicolor.

Today we will deliver our final day of workshops building upon the trust we have earned over the last few sessions.  We seem to have found the balance now between fun, creativity and structure and it's working well despite my own personal crisis of confidence yesterday. Because of the diverse age range we have split the groups on this basis and have planned our workshops accordingly, creating a narrative, story based session for the little ones and a more challenging programme for the elders. There will be a sharing at the end of the day to a small audience which will I’m sure be followed by a bitter-sweet farewell party.

As a musician is truly a pleasure to come to a country where music (both secular and religious) is still deeply embedded within everyday culture and where a deep musicality is seen in everyone; be it our driver singing and dancing as he navigates the viscous flow of  traffic, the religious cacophony of the city on the sabbath or the multitude of  road side shops and Tap Taps (taxis) serving up a plethora of rhythms familiar or otherwise. People seem to only the slightest provocation to sing or dance and actually it makes me feel rather shy.

I have been keen to make it clear to everyone I meet that I am not here to teach music but to learn and to share it and it has been inspiring to see the fearlessness and joy in the Haitian approach to listening to and making music.  I would like to distill it, bottle it and serve up hefty measures to those in England who often say 'Me? Oh I'm not musical!'. What is it that we have lost that so many of these people still remember? 

I have never yet been anywhere on my travels where the culture of the people so closely resembles that Zimbabwean proverb 'If you can walk you can dance. If you can talk you can sing' and I am truly humbled by it. I look forward wholeheartedly to another two weeks of immersion in a culture whose passion is so familiar but whose sound craft is so very different to my own.

St Joseph's and the art of interpretation . from Ellie

Some have it and some don't. The perfecr interpreter for our kind of work is an extrovert but not an egotist; someone who carries energy across with clarity and enthusiasm  and only translates what we actually say. The situation can be difficult when the translator takes over, says what he wants to say- at length -,disciplines the children sharply and wanders off to have phone conversations...

St  Joseph's Home for Boys. worth googling. we stayed in the guest house attached and had wonderful food and excellent informal hospitality alongside the nine adolescent boys staying at  ' Michael's Place.' The algebra homework every night was awesome, but then so was their dance company and their paintings - which were hung everywhere. The boys prefer to sleep outside and do so in a tent on a terrace. They bought the house next door - where we were - and they are in the proces of rebuiling the original with the biggest foundations I have ever seen.  the original house was next door and had been wiped out by the earthquake - but no boys killed. It's one of the few rebuilding projects we have seen
Today we continue at 'our' orphange which sadly is far less well endowed. But that is why we are there. We are communicating better with Gerald who runs it and the sessions get progressivly better and the children jump and skip around the minibus as we arrive through the locked metal door. (Talking of metal,  the favourite game enjoyed by both the lovely elderly Pierre Louis , the  doorkeeper and  the girls alike , is to chase them  with a metal bar until they squeal...)

The first workshop

So today was our first day teaching at the orphanage.  At 1pm we got into our minibus and made the 1hr and 15 min trek to the orphanage at Croix de Bouquet.  As we ventured to the outskirts of Port au Prince the scale of the devestation of the earthquake just continued on and on.  The intensity of the heat, the fumes from the petrol and the noise all around you is overwhelming.  You want the window open to have a break from the heat but the fumes engulf your whole body.

As we made our way down the back streets on roads that make Herefordshire roads seem well maintained we finally reached the orphanage.  On our arrival a handful of children came to greet us with a mixture of excitment and shyness,  their beautiful faces half smiling back at us. Trusting but detatched. We met with the staff at the orphanage and were then kind of left to start work.  We introduced ourselves with name games and body popping but it was hard to communicate what we were trying to express without the translator who happened to turn up half an hour late.  The children did very well with the movement we were trying to get them to do and 4 little boys were incredible rocking out some tops and busting out the broken leg.  When we did the freestyle circle at the end of the day it was a truly amazing and hilarious experience.  One little girl who was probably about 6 but looked 3 came into the middle and waggled her finger at us, with hand on the hip and the best pout i have seen in a long time showed us what she was about.  It was like watching an episode of Oprah.  It was truly inspiring. We go back to the orphanage today with a clearer plan of what will work (hopefully) but who knows.  Its hard to plan in a country that has none. 

We talk long into the night and morning on the subject creativity versus structure?  Do we discipline or not?  At the end of the day these children have nothing really so whatever we do will give them something they have not had before. Fun, new experiences, creative expression and perhaps more importantly some routine in their lives. Today we go back to try again with new work and new ideas.

Tamsin Fitzgerald

On The Road Again

After our stay at the beautiful Hotel Oloffson we ventured to our new destination St. Josephs guest house. On our very rocky route I took the time to take in the surrounding scenery with a mixture of debris from the fallen buildings, to the incredible landscape behind which consisted of tall empowering mountings piercing the clouds. Then was brought back to reality to see the children of this city begging at our vehicle door. When we arrived at our new place of stay we were greeted by Michael and was toured round the house. We met a couple of the guys on the top floor who was in the middle of making some jewelry, necklaces and bracelets amazingly hand crafted from the shell of a coconut. We were then shown the foundations of the new house, where the old one that was destroyed used to be, and was told an incredible story of when it collapsed it fell against a tree which supported it and saved lives. After the tour we decided to take a trip through the streets and down to the grocery store as we were told it was. This became a great opportunity to get in amongst the people and say hello. We arrived at what we thought would be a little corner grocery, instead a massive supermarket guarded by military and rifles stood in front of us. We managed to find what we were looking for and started making our way back. We were going to take this chance to get on a tap tap, which is quite like a taxi, only you can fit on however many people you can squeeze into it which looks quite amuzing. but traffic was bad so we carried on the walk back to the guest house. To finally have some amazing home cooked Haitian soup, and to jump into the shower that consisted of a barrel of water, a cup and a bucket.

Nathan French