The border moved today to allow for Haitians to go to the twice weekly market on the DR side! A simple fence with 2 sleepy looking guards surrounds that market. We walk through without as much as a question having paid facilitation fees on the first day). It is 7 am in Haiti (8am in DR) and there is already a crowd of people on foot and motorbikes and considerable quantities of bananas and used clothes getting arranged.
We walk to the home of Santhonax, one of Kara's (or Carla as she is generally called here) many friends in Anses-a-Pitre, who has a goal of planting 10,000 trees. It is hard work. You need to make the top soil first since there is almost none. Just parched stony ground following decades of deforestation. It takes a long time to dig a big hole put in alternating layers of dried leaves maybe fruit scraps and the existing poor soil. Then you put a PVC pipe down to channel water to the hole three times a week. And then you wait a few months before you mix it up and plant a seedling of a type of tree (mayanut) that provides shade and also helps establish the soil around it. We learn all this as we take baby steps: Collecting mulch and peeling seeds out of fruits for planting. Turns out they turn your hands dark brown kind of like henna - oops it does not come off!
Mid-morning we move on to the Sadhana forest project ( the one we got to know yesterday) to help with their reforestation efforts. We join resident volunteers from around the world all in their 20s and work in 3 groups : 1 - scoping out sites in town where people would like us to plant a tree, have a fenced in space to protect it from animals and commit to watering. 2 - designing frames for signs to give a presentation on the mayanut tree, 3 - Cook food for everyone. On the food: the place is strictly vegan and uses solar power only for the water pump. All work is manual. They use NO processed food. Everything is made from scratch and quite an undertaking. Glenda, Phuong and Daniel are on kitchen duty and a couple of hours later we all enjoy delicious rice and beans with coconut and a huge salad of cabbage, tomatoes, broccoli, onions, peppers etc! It's also a very organic farm where human waste is put to good use - the 'bathrooms' take getting used to! The place tries to have no trash at all. You live with the earth and try to improve it so it can nourish you. I am reminded of the Martian and think trying to make soil and reforest Haiti by using such sustainable farming may be good practice for colonizing less hospitable planets!
Our second trip to the refugee camp is by riding/standing on a bigger truck than before - hold on as the driver maneuvers the bad gravel road. It is either this or hopping on the back of some motor bike. There are only a handful of cars which are useless anyway given the road conditions and the fact that the only road out of town( other than across the border to DR if you have a visa) is in too bad condition for cars.
So we think we are roughing it until we remember where we are headed. This is an unofficial camp of forgotten refugees. The ones who could have left and services seem to have stopped but there are still 49 families here who have nowhere else to go. We don't know the full story clearly ( much remains lost in translation) but are told that a lot of them are of Haitian origin with no ties left in Haiti having lived in or even been born in he DR - when they were expelled they had neither Haitian not DR papers. What can we do? The kids loved singing songs with the camp pastor (one of Kara's friends) and us, making bead necklaces and playing soccer. We will bring more supplies tomorrow. There is no structure or organization here other than what the pastor provides, so we are a welcome distraction!
The truck that brought us left unexpectedly and so we are temporarily stranded ... And very tired ... Until another one shows up magically a long while later and takes us back to the border crossing before it closes at 5pm. Just another mile or 2 to walk to the nice cold shower in our charming little hotel in Pedernales! We wonder whether we have ever been dirtier and sweatier!
Number of steps in the 20 to 30,000 depending on the job you were assigned today !
--Heidi
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