| Letters volume 1: |
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| January 30, 2003: So we leave in almost two weeks. Our first reaction upon being invited to Haiti is like---you got be kidding. We didnt even remember that Haiti was part of Peace Corps Carribean. Now although we are both concerned over the location given all the political/societal violence that is going on -- we're glad we are going to a country that actually needs the peace corps in it. Read a book about the 1994 invasion/occupation that reinstated Aristede. Pretty scary stuff has happened on this island. We both want to make a difference there --hope it happens. We are both done with work as of today giving us time to get everything we need for our trip. (Side note: If you are interested in news from/about Haiti check out the Miami Herald online. The best source of news(honest it appears) about Haiti.) well to those of you that are in my group hopefully you have found this site and are posting replies on the guest book or emailing me to put stuff on the site. Jen should be putting a message or two on here soon........ Sorry for the scatterbrained message been doing it off and on all day with my connection fizzling. z |
| Feb 27, 2002 So we are here and doing well. The group we are with is for the most part a really great bunch of people. I'm in the "internet cafe" in a small city. Consists of one computer that is slow as hell. Costs about 2 dollars for and hour. What to say. Bucket baths, no electricity, no running water, etc. The food so far is good. Beans and rice, fried chicken (no flour), goat, pig, whatever crawls. This place although being the ultimate ghetto is really nice. The people in the country side are kind and want to know what we are all about. Lots of calls saying "blan" or white person. One phone in the town that the lady charges us to use even with a phone card. My family seems nice, the mothers boyfriend is a voodoo priest. We seem actually safer here than in the US. In the cities we are just dollar signs but in the country people are genorous and look out for us. Vmaminaj se famni. The neighbors are family. Its really almost like the midwest farm mentality but with a more watchful eye for the dumb blans. We are in language class six hours a day and then study and try to speak creole to the neighbors and family. Jen and I miss everyone but at least we are doing the good deed. I almost miss working at the plant with my brothers. I dont have much time left, lots of people waiting on the computer. All is well and we are totally protected by the peace corps staff and locals to an almost suffocating degree. We love and miss everyone. Ill write a longer one when i actually get to a decent site. |
| March 20, 2003 So the war begins and we are in Tatouine or however you spell it. Akaye the training city and the surrounding towns where we live are dusty dirty and in bad shape. No one has quit yet out of a group of twenty five. Jen and I are doing well and we are learning creole at a rapid rate. The business program I'm in is not very structured but the training staff is really cool for the most part. My family is interesting , "mom" smokes does snuff and is in voodou rituals often,. My "dad" is a voodoo priest and makes strange noises out of the back of his throat. You can still get a cold beer and a pack of smokes even in this mad max dust bowl of a town. Had a rat scratching through our wall the other morning. I sat on the floor and waited for the bastard to come in to the room but he finally left. I was hoping for a rat sandwich after it kept me up most of the night scratching. The training gets a little boring after a while and this group is extremely well educated, three masters degrees, an mba, a lawyer, a psychologist and of course Jen and I both with our Masters. Hard to get to phones or computers, we have a nightly curfew for safety and the power even in the provincal capital is sporadic at best. The heat really sucks but other than that Ive opened up my Math for Economists book and am back into it. Well I have to go the connection is so poor Im afraid Ill lose even this little bit. |
| April 7, 2003 We are in Port of Prince getting ready to meet our delegades (haitian counterparts) and travel to our site for a visit. The site is where we will be spending the next two years after training. Be so glad after training is over, Jen and I are both so sick of the slow boring pace and the lack of actual work. Language classes are pretty much over, I got intermediate low at the midterm exam, Jen got novice high (intermediate low is the minimum for the final) one step below what is needed for the final. So we are both on track to pass, and we are both totally acclimated to the culture. Got my first bout of Dengue fever two weeks ago during a site visit to the same place we are going. Dengue totally blows. I hope I dont get it again but I'm sure I will along with malaria and whatever other nice maladies this place has. But now we are off to Les Cayes. Totally beautiful place. Lush green, could almost be Hawaii. Almost. We will have intermittent electricity and cool breezes. The complete opposite of Archahae the training site. We are both excited to end training and get going. I will be working with a farmers coop helping with export markets, managerial improvements, and finding new crops (Tilapia ive been told) to produce. Secondary project will be working with my friend and fellow trainee Matthew Milling on an internet cafe Jen will work with a clinic doing education, and helping the local doctor. ok got to go out of time till later..... |
| May 7th, 2003 Ok so we finally are done with training. We swear in on Thursday the 8th of May. First peace corps Haiti group to complete the training without one person dropping out during training. First group-- very nice honor for the group as a whole. All is well with Jen and I. Moved out of the scumbag family we were living with and are going to Kantz to work with an excellent bunch of people. We will be looking for a house right away although we can live for free with a lovely pastors family. Night and day the training family (mean-no food-little water) and the kick ass pastors family. Pastor Dubois a little funny man with a large blue black beautiful wife and 4 sweet discliplined children. We both did well on our language exam passed easily. Jen's got more vocabulary in her head and I hear better. I thinks it's from working with Mexicans for so long. So we meet the American ambassador and the prime minster of Haiti at the swearing in. Party at the ambassadors house Creole is effectively French ebonics. broken french. What else.... well our health is good we both are doing well and our looking forward to gettting our own space. Hopefully they have the internet back up in our next site when we get there I will add on later. Ok so Myself, Jen and Matthew are going to work with a coop called CEPA. They currently have a small "clinic", an internet cafe, a nursery for the hot peppers, a 70's style pig shack--concrete structure with running water, seperate pens, they utilize solar powered pumps to pump the water up from the groundwater, they just bought a mobile pump that they want to use for drip irrigation system. AND they have access to a 100 to 150 acre maybe bigger lake/pond. They want to do some aquaculture in it. I hope that they are into it. So jobs I will be doing Aquaculture, exporting, developing new products for export, working as an intemediary between the coop and the exporter (great potential job-cool cool cool), building irrigation systems, improving hog production. Also maybe getting to work on developing a website and marketing products directly stateside if possible. SO lots of great learning opportunities and actually will help to develop some new tools. Jens doing education work on Aids, family planning, womens group and young womens group. She may if she wants work at the clinic helping organizing and getting funding to help buy medications and get a doctor out to the clinic more often. Lots of good work for her to. I want to help her find a permanant funding source for the clinic--maybe it might work out as a good joint project. Well all for now-- |
| May 16, 2003 So we are officially volunteers now and we are sitting in an air conditioned US style internet cafe enjoying ourselves thoroughly. Jen is working with me on the website now so we will have shared duties on entering and upadating the website from now on. Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing well. Everything's fine here. So we officially swore-in on May 8th, and we moved to our new site the very next day. Now we live in Kantz which is near Les Cayes in the south of Haiti. Les Cayes is a port and the 3rd largest city. We can pretty much find anything we need here, and it's only a 20-minute tap-tap ride from our town. Let me explain about the tap-taps--I think there's a picture of one one our website. Tap-taps are old, rickety pick-up trucks from the 70's or 80's that have been rigged to carry ridiculously large loads of people. They have metal bars going up the sides and wooden planks for seats. Other than walking it is the most common way to get around in Haiti. You just flag them down like regular taxis. It's not always the most pleasant ride--at any given time you'll be jammed between a dirty bag of charcol and a man with a live rooster. Haitian are masters at fitting as many people as possible into one vehicle. Living in Kantz has been great so far. I think we literally have one of the best houses in our town: we've got electricity, but no running water, a cement floor and roof, and we're planning on building a rainwater shower using plastic barrels that collect rain off the roof. We're very fortunate to live in this house: other volunteers don't have it this good. We're going to take the next three months to integrate and improve our Creole, but we're looking forward to beginning work soon after that. Originally we were supposed to live with a host family for the first three months, but that didn't work out so we're frantically running around trying to buy everything we need from beds to spoons--we don't have anything right now. Oh by the way, here's our new address, for letters and padded envelopes only (U.S. Postal Service only, not DHL): Jennifer & Zachary Morley B.P. 121 HT 8110 Les Cayes, Haiti If you want to send a box, send it through DHL only using the address I left with our families, but don't send anything until August because boxes go to Port-au-Prince and we can't go there during the first three months. That's all for now. I'll check in later.....Jen |
| June 4, 2003 So the acclimation to Haiti continues for us. Every day is a new frustration, a new obstacle. Some days are good others are just downright terrible. Jen got the flu and a chest cold to go with it. She's better now but her energy level is better than it was. We are going over to sign a lease on a brick and stone house near where we live currently. The owner is putting in a shower (rainfed), toilet inside and it will have stable electricity. You have to laugh when one of your pleasures in life is sitting on a toilet rather than squatting over a latrine. The house we live in now is big and nice but the owners want like $10,000 US a year for |