The Denton Shipment Arrives – March 21, 2014

     Makendy does not like the Kia. He does not like it because, unlike the Everest, the Kia is dirty and the air conditioning does not work. Makendy drives the Everest for us and he keeps it clean and in good running condition.  Everyone uses the Kia. So the air conditioning in the Kia is broken and the Kia is dirty.

     None of that matters today. Today is a special day. Today we need a vehicle to transport stuff. Lots of stuff. My stuff was flying in to PAP today on a military transport as part of the Denton Program. The Denton Program – Humanitarian Assistance Transportation Programs – allows private U.S. citizens and organizations to use space available on U.S. military cargo planes to transport humanitarian goods to countries in need. Haiti is one of the approved countries. Ruben Vega at the U.S. Embassy, put me in touch with Kathy Cadden of Operation Ukraine who agreed to help me get my material into Haiti as part of a Denton Program shipment that she had coming in this month. My equipment and supplies were shipped to the Operation Ukraine warehouse in Mississippi last month, where they were inspected and bundled with Kathy’s supplies. Operation Ukraine then drove everything to Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma. From there the cargo was flown to Charleston, SC where it was put on a C-17 military transport plane bound for PAP. Kathy told me the rest is simple. We drive out to the PAP airport. When the flight arrives, the crew parks the plane, we pull up to the plane, pick up our stuff when it rolls off, load it into the Kia and drive back to Christianville. No customs, no hassle.

     I had been working a long time on this strategy to get my equipment and supplies into Haiti without having to wait months to clear customs and pay exorbitant customs duties. I started working on this solution in November. Now, four months later, my first shipment was flying in on a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III from Charleston, SC. I was excited but calm. We drove into PauP and, as usual, planned to do several things on one trip.

Hamburger and fries, Palm Inn Hotel

First, we dropped off Solomon to meet his construction friends and then continued on to a medical/scientific supply store. Meer and I introduced Justin (the TB technician from UF) to Marc, the store’s owner. Justin was very impressed by the supplies that were available and he bought some glassware and special petri dishes for the TB (BSL3) lab. We then dropped Justin off at the airport and went to the Palm Inn Hotel for lunch. We had never tried this restaurant before and it was a pleasant surprise. Quiet, clean, with a full menu at reasonable prices and fast service. We ordered hamburgers and fries, a good test to see how capable the kitchen is. The burger was very good (Haitian restaurants usually overcook all meat, except chicken) and the fries, crisp and tasty. The cost was a little high but worth it.

     After lunch, we headed for the PAP airport and the mysterious security gate #7. I say mysterious because there are no real gates, much less numbers. There is just a cyclone fence with guards at the entrance. We pulled into the small terminal (for local airlines) and asked about gate #7. They sent us back out on the road. Makendy pulled the Kia up to the gate where the aviation fuel tanker trucks enter. This can’t be it, I thought as I stared at the fuel storage tanks just beyond the gate. Makendy asked the guard at the gate if this was gate #7. The guard did not seem to know. I asked the guard if this was the gate for arrival of the Denton shipment. “Avion militaire?” the guard asked. I said oui. He nodded. This was the correct gate. Makendy handed over his driver’s license and we got a pass for the Kia. The guard waved us in.

     Makendy parked the Kia alongside a group of box trucks and pickup trucks that were already there. These were the vehicles from the other organizations that had cargo on this flight. We were a little early so I walked over to see if I could find Kathy. I recognized her without even ever meeting her in person before. We had been exchanging emails for the past three months. So she recognized me as well. Kathy gave me a big hug (after emailing for so long, she said we were past handshakes). I introduced Kathy to Meer and Pierre and we chatted for a while. Before I knew it, everyone was turning around and the C-17 was landing. I just got my cell phone out in time to take some pictures. The Denton shipment was here. It was 2:30 pm. Right on time.

The Denton flight lands at PAP

     As we waited for the signal to proceed on to the tarmac, Ruben Vega from the U.S. Embassy arrived. Ruben was coordinating the activities for the Denton flight. As with Kathy, I had been corresponding with Ruben for months. It was good to finally meet him. We all got into our vehicles and a ground security truck led us up, three vehicles at a time, to the next security gate. The vehicles were checked and we were wanded and patted down. After everyone was checked, the security vehicle led us past the gate and onto the tarmac.

Driving up to the C-17

We drove tight alongside the taxiway apron past the two American Airlines jets at the terminal gates to the end of the runway. And there it was. The C-17 was parked and already unloading its cargo.

The Denton C-17 Globemaster III

A forklift was shuttling back and forth bringing cargo from the C-17 into the staging area while the aircrew watched. There were pallets full of 50-pound sacks of U.S. rice, pinto beans, and corn grits, staples of the Haitian diet. There were also boxes of children’s clothes, shoes, school supplies, filing cabinets, chairs, and buckets. Many of the boxes had Vega written on them. They were for Ruben’s orphanage, Kathy explained. Ruben and the U.S. Army had “adopted” an orphanage and were helping take care of the children there. Kathy told me to start looking for my stuff, which she had marked with bright yellow tape.  It had been unbundled and re-palleted before loading onto the C-17. So my stuff was spread out on maybe four or five different pallets instead of on a single pallet. Meer, Pierre, Makendy and I began looking. As we started to gather my boxes and bring them to the Kia, Kathy asked me if I saw anything else on the tarmac that I needed. Kathy said, with a certain amount of pride, that everything I saw had been headed for a landfill in the U.S. and she got people and companies to donate the stuff to bring down to Haiti. I huddled with Meer and we started picking out stuff we could use for the lab or for Christianville. Filing cabinets (used, but still good), chairs (in great shape!), three ring binders (brand new). Kathy also brought me a blood-drawing chair, which she came across shortly after I had first contacted her about shipping my stuff. She had asked me if I could use it and I immediately said yes. So here it was, sitting on the top of a pallet. Makendy and Pierre picked it up and packed it in the Kia. The Kia was crammed full. All my stuff fit on and we filled in the rest of the space with the extra stuff Kathy gave us.

Pierre and Tony with the C-17

Pierre, Meer, Kathy, Tony and Makendy (kneeling)

     Shortly before 4:30 pm, the cargo door of the C-17 closed, the crew climbed back in, and the Denton flight taxied back out onto the runway for takeoff.  Take-off was pretty impressive. A C-17 is designed for short runways. According to its manufacturer, Boeing, a fully loaded C-17 can take off from a 7,600-ft. airfield. During flight-testing, the C-17 set short-takeoff-and-landing records in which the C-17 took off in less than 1,400 feet, carried a payload of 44,000 pounds, and landed in less than 1,400 feet. I don’t know how much runway it used to take off from PAP but our now empty C-17 was in the air with its landing gear up in far less time than the JetBlue flight that took off right behind it.

C-17 taking off; JetBlue flight in foreground on taxiway

     Makendy did a great job driving the fully loaded Kia through the streets of PauP and out on Route 2 back to Christianville. We arrived a little after 6 pm. After dinner, Pierre drove the Kia around to the storage container next to the water tank and we unloaded my stuff for Baradères into the container. It was a very good day. I was very happy. My Denton shipment had arrived. I think we’ll do it again next month.

Back at Christianville

Tony and Pierre and the Kia back at Christianville

Pierre backing the Kia up to the storage container

Charcoal, Clean Cook Stoves, (Part 2) and Tafia

     Earlier this month, Pierre and I spent a week with a team from our church in Silver Spring visiting our sister parish in Baradères. It is a very remote community, difficult to access and very poor. As I mentioned in the earlier post (see Part 1, 03-22-14 post), people in Baradères cut down trees and make charcoal. They use it for cooking and earn a living by shipping the charcoal to PauP where it is sold. There is no propane distributor in Baradères. So unless someone has a truck, there is no easy way to refill a propane tank. The people use charcoal for all their cooking.

     It occurred to me that Baradères would be an ideal site for the Project Gaia alcohol-fueled cook stove (http://www.projectgaia.com/) that I talked about in my post on 03-22-14. I discussed it with Fr. Jacques, the priest with whom we have been working. Fr. Jacques is Haitian and he has been pastor of the church in Baradères for three years. He knows the people and the community. I asked Fr. Jacques what he thought of the cook stoves. He said that they would be well received in Baradères. But what about the alcohol, I thought? Is it available?

     When I explained the main concern of availability of alcohol to fuel the stoves, Jacques invited me to drive over to visit Jean-Claude, the local agronomist and distiller of tafia de Baradères. Tafia is the local rum. Jean-Claude’s distillery is behind a house along the main road that runs through Baradères. The feedstock for his tafia is sugar cane. When we arrived at the distillery, a 38-year-old diesel-powered mill press was huffing away squeezing out juice from sugar cane.

Mill press in action

A pulley turned a wheel that ran the press. A worker was feeding a stack of cut cane by hand into the press. The juice spilled out into a cistern. The bagasse was tossed on to a pile to be burned as fuel for the boiler later. Another worker walked back and forth, carrying five gallon buckets of sugar cane juice to the fermentation house.

     Inside the fermentation house was pure microbiology. Large 55-gallon plastic drums, which serve as fermentation vats, stood in a row filled with sugar cane juice. The liquid in the early stages of fermentation was calm, quiet, dark, and mysterious.

Vats of fermenting sugar cane juice

As we walked along the row, we saw barrels further along in the process. The liquid in these drums was bubbling with microbes at work. Further down the row were the mature barrels. They were frothing to overflowing, brown foam on the surface and bubbles pushing the foam over the edge of the barrel and onto the dirt floor. It smelled like fermentation. It smelled like microbiology. I was ecstatic. These were my friends, microbes. I loved it. I could not believe all I saw. It was like visiting a 19th century distillery, or a moonshiner’s back woods operation. The fermentation process is centuries old. The technology was 19th century. But it still works. The product is alcohol.

     Jean-Claude makes a lot of tafia. Fr. Jacques said that people in Baradères drink a lot of tafia. There is nothing else to do. So Jean-Claude does a very good business. He inherited the distillery from his father and then built a second one. We visited that site as well. There was nothing happening there. The mill press was silent but there was a huge pile of bagasse next to the press-house. The still was in the back, resting, waiting for the next production lot to work its way through.

Bagasse at Jean-Claude's second distillery

     Jean-Claude sells a lot of tafia. He sells his tafia as far away as Cavaillon and Fond des Negres. He said he sold a lot of tafia for Carnaval. He continues to make it during Lent because people continue to drink it. One day as we hiked up to Vincendron, we saw several children on donkeys riding down the trail toward Baradères. We asked them where they were going. They replied that they were going to town to buy tafia (presumably for their parents). The day we left Baradères and drove back down the mountain to Cavaillon, we stopped at a store on the mountain road. Our driver got out and unloaded two one-gallon containers from the top of the Land Cruiser. He handed them to the storeowner, climbed back into the Land Cruiser and we drove off again. I asked Fr. Jacques what that was all about. It was a delivery, he explained. Tafia.

     After our tour of the distillery, I explained the Project Gaia cook stove project to Jean-Claude and the need for a reliable source of alcohol fuel. Could he do it, I asked? Jean-Claude was definitely interested. I was pretty excited after talking with Jean-Claude and I wrote Dan and Brady at Project Gaia. Their response was positive so the next step is to organize a trip to Baradères with Dan and Brady. They can do a demonstration of the CleanCook stove and visit the distillery and discuss alcohol production, price points, and logistics of alcohol supply for the community with Jean-Claude.

     A local alcohol fuel supply would be a huge advantage for Baradères, as it would make the project autonomous. Local fuel production can create jobs for adults as workers in distilleries that produce alcohol fuel. In addition, if we can get people who are making charcoal to transition toward ethanol production (growing sugar cane, recycling agricultural waste, etc.), it is a plus. My hope for Baradères is that they can be alcohol independent, maybe even to the point of being an alcohol supplier for the entire region. That would be a huge economic and environmental boom for the community. By reducing the need for charcoal, you reduce the need to cut down the trees to make the charcoal. You save the trees and, ultimately, the land.

     I am working with my colleagues to explore the possibility of linking a Project Gaia program in Baradères (and maybe in Gressier, as well) with an epidemiology study on respiratory diseases with the goal of measuring the health effects on women and children in households that start using the alcohol-fueled stoves. There are opportunities here to do some good things. Let’s do it.

Charcoal and Clean Cook Stoves (Part 1)

     Charcoal. It is everywhere. You may see it for the first time when you drive from the airport through the main market in Port-au-Prince. There is a section of the market where charcoal is sold from large sacks.

Sacks of charcoal at Port-au-Prince market

If you drive by in the early morning, you will see tap taps unloading large sacks of charcoal that arrive from the countryside. Out on National Route 2, tap taps stacked high with bags of charcoal roll down the highway toward PauP. Far from PauP, in Baradères, a large tap tap rumbles in every day headed toward the town square. It unloads goods from PauP and loads up with charcoal to sell in PauP. In any market place, in any town, large and small, you will see charcoal being sold.

Charcoal for sale in Gressier market

     Charcoal is everywhere. Its manufacture starts up in the mountains, above towns like Baradères. During a recent visit to Baradères, I sat on the porch of the priest’s house and watched as night fell, plunging the countryside into darkness. I could make out several points of light up in the mountains. They were not artificial lights. The lights were bonfires of wood being burned into charcoal. The charcoal will be packed into grey sacks and then placed at intervals along the road leading down from the mountains into Cavaillon. Tap taps pass along the road and collect the sacks of charcoal to sell in PauP.

Tap tap carrying sacks of charcoal along the road to Baradères

     Charcoal is made everywhere, not just in Baradères and the mountain communities. It is also made in the field across from Christianville. Someone will collect tree branches and other pieces of wood, trim them and make a pyre to burn into charcoal.

Wood prepared to burn into charcoal

Sacks of newly made charcoal awaiting pick up and transport

     The harvesting of trees and the burning of wood to produce charcoal is the way many people earn a living. It is also the main reason for the deforestation of the country. Vast expanses of the mountainsides are stripped of their trees. Loss of the forest brings a cascade of environmental disasters starting with massive erosion during the rainy season and loss of rich farmland. The flooding produced by the rains destroys housing and drowns livestock. The soil washes down the unprotected mountains and silts the rivers and bays making waterways difficult to navigate. The Haitian writer Jacques Roumain, described it so well in his novel, Gouverneurs de la Rosee. « les érosions ont mis a nu de longues coulées de roches: elles ont saigné la terre jusqu’a l’os. » (“erosion had stripped clean the long stretches of rock: they had bled the earth down to the bone.”).

Deforestation of the mountains

Deforestation of  the mountains

     Charcoal is burned in the home. The main fuel for cooking in Haiti is charcoal. In PauP in late afternoon, you may even see women in business attire stop to buy a small bag of charcoal on their way home for cooking the evening meal. There is no natural gas distribution system in PauP. The other option is propane stoves but even in the PauP middle class, not everyone can afford a propane cook stove. So everyone cooks with charcoal. In addition to the ecological consequences of using charcoal as a fuel, the health consequences of cooking with charcoal are not trivial. Respiratory problems and eye irritation are two of the most common complaints of women who come to the clinics. Similar health problems afflict young children who are in the home all day while the women cook the family meals. If there were another way to cook that did not use charcoal, the positive impact on health and the environmental would be huge.

     One of the great things about my experience in Haiti is making connections with a lot of different people who stay at the guesthouse who are involved in different activities, scientific and non-scientific. There are a lot of things that really interest me in terms of how we can improve the lives of Haitians and help them help themselves in the area of development. One of the more fascinating projects I learned about is Project Gaia (http://www.projectgaia.com/). Dan, Brady, and Hillary from Project Gaia arrived in Christianville to demonstrate the ethanol-fueled cook stove in the communities around the area. They stayed at C’ville and we talked a lot about their project. Project Gaia is promoting the CleanCook stove

http://www.dometic.com/

which burns alcohol fuel without smoke, is easy to use, is highly efficient, and affordable to run. The stove is stable, burns cleanly, and the fuel is stored safely in a non-spill fuel tank. The stoves have already been demonstrated in Ethiopia and have a high level of acceptance among the women who have used them. Project Gaia wants to start a program to sell these cook stoves in Haiti. The clean-burning ethanol stove addresses the problems of unhealthy and unsustainable cooking fuels that I outlined above. I was very impressed with these three young people who were managing projects in Ethiopia and now in Haiti. We talked about the advantages and disadvantages, the acceptability and performance of the stoves. Everything seemed positive. In the small demonstrations that they did during the few days they were here, Dan said that the women in the Gressier area who tried out the stoves loved them. The stoves are reasonably priced and will last up to 10 years. The main issue is availability of the fuel. The ethanol necessary to fuel the stoves is not readily available in Haiti. Identification and development of local sources of alcohol production is an important facet of Project Gaia.

    What are the next steps for ethanol-fueled cook stoves in Haiti? See Part 2, post 03-22-14.

Meer Turns the Tables

     When people visit Christianville and hear that there is a microbiology lab here, they start asking questions about what we do, followed by questions about what we can do for them and their church, school, orphanage, community, etc. The requests usually center on water quality. Maybe they dug a well and want us to test the well water or a water source that the community uses. So we designed a formula to provide water testing as a fee-for-service. We are careful to explain exactly what we can do (microbiological testing) and what we do not do (chemical water analysis). The fee covers the cost of materials and reagents as well as a salary for a technician we can now pay to do the work. It is a win-win. We provide a service to the community and the fees provide work for the Haitian technician that we trained.

A well in Lulay

     Sunday afternoon, I was working in the lab writing a paper. There was a knock on the door (the door is locked, access restricted to lab personnel only). I opened the door and standing there were two blans, gentlemen in tee-shirts that announce their affiliation with some organization. They asked for Dale, a construction guy who works for Christianville and who lives in a house down the road. I directed the gentlemen towards Dale’s house. I asked if they were staying at our guesthouse. They weren’t they just wanted to talk to Dale about water purification. I thought maybe they were looking for someone to test their water. After all, they knocked on the lab door. But they asked for Dale. I was confused. Why were they here? They explained that they install (sell) a water purification system that uses electrolysis to convert table salt into chlorine. The chlorine is then added to the water. I’ve heard of the method, it is a little costly and requires a source of electricity. They told me they had installed one in a community close by that is supported by a church in Arkansas. I never heard of the community or the church. They gentlemen were from Indianapolis with an organization I never heard of. They asked how we purify our water. I told them we used chlorination at the well and distribution through our network. They said thank you and them walked in the opposite direction from where Dale lives. I returned to the lab. Then it hit me – they were salesmen! The visit was a sales call! On a Sunday afternoon! They were trying to sell me their chlorination system. Maybe they knew Dale, maybe not. But they showed up at the gate to Christianville, the guards let them in (two blans in a rental car, that gets you in, no questions asked) and they came banging on the lab door to sell their water purification system. I was a little irritated. I went back to my work.

A well in Lulay

     After they left me, the two gentlemen went to the guesthouse. I heard from Dana later that they also made their pitch to my friends who were working there. Michael offered them a cold glass of our water. Then Meer arrived. The two salesmen pitched Meer. He listened carefully. Then Meer turned the tables. “How do you know your system is working?” Meer asked them. “Did you do microbiological tests?” “No”, they replied. So Meer explained how we do water testing for microbial pathogens and asked them if they would like to have their water tested, for a fee. They ordered two bottles for testing two water samples. Meer walked into the lab grabbed two bottles and two zip lock bags and walked back out. He walked back in and tossed the money on the table and told Pierre to write up the order for testing their water.

     I viewed the salesmen’s visit as an annoying interruption. Meer saw it as an opportunity and sold them on ordering some tests. I guess I still have a lot to learn about working in Haiti. Next time a blan comes knocking at my door, I’ll ask them if they want to have their water tested.