Memorial Day

     I am back in the U.S. and this post has nothing to do with Haiti.

     Today is Memorial Day. This morning I drove up to Yeadon, a suburb of Philadelphia, to visit the cemetery where Mom and Dad are buried. I had not been back to the cemetery since Mom’s funeral in November 2012. Dad died in November 2010 a few weeks before my wife, Bedou, died. Today I wanted to go to the cemetery to see Mom and Dad. The sky was blue and bright with sunlight. I pulled into Fernwood Cemetery and drove slowly down the narrow roads that separate the sections. I parked along the side of the road and walked down the gentle slope toward the bottom of the section where the gravesite was. I stopped and scanned the rows of headstones trying to find Mom and Dad. The cemetery had placed American flags at the gravesite of each veteran buried here so I looked for a flag. Dad had served in the Seabees in the Pacific during World War II. I found the gravesite. I had only seen a picture of the newly carved headstone that now included Mom’s name and dates. It fit nicely on Dad’s official military headstone. They were together again as they had always been.

     I thought for a long time about what Mom and Dad had done for us, for their family, friends and neighbors. They gave so much, loved so much, and shared so much with everyone around them. They showed me how to be a good parent, not directly, but by the way they were parents to my brothers and I. If I did well raising my kids, it is due in part to the way my parents raised me.

     Today is Memorial Day. Thank you, Dad, for your service. Thank you Mom and Dad for being my parents.

Life, and Death

     I am sitting in the boarding area at the PAP airport, waiting for my 9:40 flight, American Airlines 377 to Miami. I am on my way back home. We left C'ville on the yellow school bus this morning at 5 am and arrived at the airport at a little past 6. On our way through the central market, I saw my most disturbing sight yet. Our driver pointed to his left. There was the body of a man lying in the middle of the road, crushed and broken, arms extended above his head, his lower body splashed open. It looked like the man had been run over. From our seats in the bus, we were higher than we would be in a car or in the Everest. My first thought was that it was a large animal. But even in the early dawn light, we could see the body all too clearly. It was a dead human being. Traffic slowed down to maneuver around the body. We drove around the body, too, just like everyone else. How long had the man been lying dead in the road? Minutes? Hours? I have no idea. No one was there to stop or direct traffic around the body. There were no police. Two UN trucks drove past in the opposite lane on our left. We drove on. To the right of us, the market was coming alive with activity as people unloaded their goods from trucks and tap taps. Less than 20 feet from the bustling outdoor market, there was a dead man lying in the street.

     I have heard people say that life is cheap in Haiti. I did not want to believe it. Today, I think I do.

Why the Pastor was Angry

     Someone just asked a simple question: how was the wedding reception? That question triggered a reaction that I never expected. The Pastor was clearly offended by something that happened to him. He had presided at the wedding ceremony but at the reception, he felt that he was not treated as he should have been treated, as he deserved to be treated. He gave few details, but one got the sense that he was not treated as a very special guest. He grumbled that Catholic priests are paid when they do weddings but that Protestant ministers do it for free. It’s not fair. We should charge them, he cried. So he proclaimed to all of us that in the future he will only agree to preside at weddings under certain conditions. He will insist on being treated royally. They should send a car, a limousine, to pick him up. He should be seated at the table with the other officials (I don’t know who they are) so that he would be sure to be served first in case there is not enough food for everyone else in attendance. I did not ask what other conditions he would demand. I was too disgusted by his arrogance and hubris. And this attitude was coming from someone who is a Pastor, a minister, someone who professes to follow the example of Jesus Christ. I wonder what Jesus would think of the Pastor’s attitude toward his people.

     Another wedding took place the same day in a town about 30 minutes west of the Angry Pastor’s wedding. The pastor who presided at this wedding did not arrive in a limousine. No one sent a car for him. He took a tap tap. This pastor did not ask for money. In fact, he helped bring the musical instruments to the wedding reception. He did not sit at the official table. He ate with the other guests. And he did not demand that he be treated royally. Angry Pastor should take a lesson from his brother pastor. He can learn a little about humility and service to God and his people. It is a wedding. It is not about the Pastor.

     Did the bride and groom err in not giving recognition at the reception to the man who married them? Certainly. But that is not an excuse for Angry Pastor to act in such an unchristian-like manner. To my mind, it is a petty issue, not worth ranting about to everyone.

Chik is Here

     Chikungunya fever is here. Florence Duperval, the Minister of Public Health and Population, made it official on May7. It was only a matter of time. Chik was already in the Caribbean and cases have been reported in the Dominican Republic so we were waiting for the last couple of months for the first cases to be reported in Haiti. Now it is official.

     The chikungunya virus is spread by Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, the same mosquitoes that transmit dengue virus. According to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/), symptoms may include headache, muscle pain, joint swelling, or rash. People at increased risk for severe disease include people with diabetes or high blood pressure, two conditions that are very prevalent among Haitians.

     UF-EPI Haiti Lab 1-Gressier is ramping up for Chik surveillance. This week Millé, one of the Haitian technicians who works in the arthropod lab here, came in and pulled out all the mosquito traps. He spent most of a day just hooking up and re-charging the batteries needed for the equipment. 

Mosquito traps

Mosquito trapping equipment 

     We have been getting many anecdotal reports of Chik. Makendy told us that there are “lots of people” with really bad fever. Some people have muscle pains so bad that they cannot walk. Others complain that it feels like they are carrying a large weight on their shoulders. Several members of the family of one of the C’ville workers have the fever. The clinic at the C’ville school has reported at least 25 children with fever. Millé is trying to get the addresses of where the students live so that he can go out to their neighborhoods and set traps. Some of the students live as far away as Mariani (a suburb of PauP) and Carrefour Dufort (west of Léogâne). Chik is not likely to be a local disease.

     I think people are worried. Maybe not scared, but worried. This disease is new. The population is naïve and has never been exposed to this virus before. People will get sick.

     I had stopped using Deet a long time ago. Now I’m spraying it on every morning to try and protect myself from the mosquitoes. Just trying to be as safe as possible.

PauP: Getting Better but Still Bad

     Some days when we drive through PauP, I get the impression that things are getting better. Certainly, things are better than a year or two ago. Most of the tent cities that went up to house the internally displaced population have disappeared although I have no idea where the residents were relocated. Some of the grand post-earthquake plans for rebuilding Haiti included housing although those plans have mostly not been realized. But the tent cities are gone.

     A lot of building is going on in PauP. The airport terminal has been rebuilt. Passengers no longer deplane onto the tarmac but pass through a jetway into the air-conditioned terminal. The chaotic baggage claim area is larger and a baggage carousel emblazoned with ads for Prestige now makes it much easier to find your bags. New government buildings are going up, as are new luxury hotels. Still, in some parts of PauP it is hard to tell whether a building behind a construction fence is going up or waiting to be torn down.

     Although earthquake debris has long since been hauled away, trash is still everywhere. However, in some neighborhoods the trash is swept up into large piles and trucks come by to pick up the trash. I have seen people sweeping the sidewalk in front of a large government building at the end of the day. Mounds of trash accumulate in front of the main market and then are picked up and hauled off. People still can be seen picking through the trash for something to eat or something that they can sell. I watched one man with a machete slashing open plastic bags on a trash pile and rooting through the trash looking for anything of value. Then there are goats and pigs and dogs that roam over trash piles looking for something to eat.

     Traffic signals are slowly being repaired and put back in service and actually work in some parts of the city. At the busiest intersections that still have no traffic signals, police now direct traffic. But there are still intersections where chaos reigns and only the steely-nerved driver dares enter the mix.

     I continue to be amazed at how many streets in PauP, the capital city of Haiti, are in such deplorable condition. Even the main road from Tabarre to the airport is in a horrible state. The road that goes past the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre is almost as bad but at least it is being repaired. Traffic is engulfed in a haze of dust as it slowly makes its way down these roads. The good roads that run through PauP and connect it with Delmas and Petionville are usually jammed with traffic. Makendy knows the streets of PauP and he knows shortcuts to take through the neighborhoods. He will not hesitate to make a U-turn on a busy, traffic-clogged street to take a less-travelled road. We went down one of these side streets recently. At the foot of a short descent, there was a huge mess at the intersection: a mixture of rocks and rubble on top of a road pavement that was completely broken up. An SUV was stopped in front of us. The driver got out and walked around the front of the vehicle and leaned over the front wheel. He was switching the front-end wheels into 4-wheel drive! I had never seen anyone use 4-wheel drive before in a city (unless there was snow or ice on the roads). As we watched, Makendy nodded toward the shifter to his right and proudly told me that the Everest had 4-wheel drive also but that he could activate it from inside the vehicle. We waited as the SUV in front of us used its 4-wheel drive to pull its way over and through the intersection, then it was our turn. Makendy deftly drove the Everest over the broken road and debris without using 4-wheel drive and we moved smoothly across PauP using his short cut.

     We were soon on the road out of PauP and into Carrefour where traffic slowed as we moved in single file across a small river/drainage ditch. To our right a new bridge is under construction. It has been that way since I arrived in October. Every time we pass the bridge on our way in or out of PauP, I look for progress. Not much has happened in the last two months. Like most things in Haiti, it is getting there, but slowly.

We Race Madsen up to Mirebalais, April 28, 2014

     Road trip.

     Meer and I decided to head out to the central plateau, an area north of PauP which neither of us had yet visited. Madsen was in town (again) for a meeting with the Carter Center at the University Hospital in Mirebalais and he thought it would be a good opportunity for us to visit the region, the new hospital and gather some water samples. We got into the Everest with Makendy and left Christianville at 7:45 am. The traffic was heavy getting through Carrefour and into PauP. We finally made it to the Avis rental agency lot near the airport around 9:15. It was bigger than the Hertz lot that I had seen on a previous trip. There were several UNOPS vehicles in the Avis lot as well (for maintenance?). Madsen was already there and had just gotten his rental car, a brand new Toyota Terios, a mini-SUV 4x4. We greeted each other and then we jumped back into the Everest to follow Madsen’s car up to Mirebalais.

     To get to Mirebalais, you have to drive through PauP and out to Croix des Bouquets. There you turn north on Route Nationale #3 into a flat, desolate, sparsely populated countryside. There wasn’t much traffic. After about 20 minutes, we drove past a strange site that I had heard someone talk about back in November: a veritable ghost town in the middle of the desert-like landscape. Here, miles from anything, is a new town: Lumane Casimir Village, at the foot of Morne à Cabri, about 25 kilometers northeast of PauP. I thought it was built for the internally displaced Haitians after the earthquake. But no, not really. Apparently, anyone “affected by the earthquake” is eligible to live here. They just have to have a job and show that they have the income to pay the rent, which is between US$163 and US$233 per month. The project costs US$49 million, is being paid for from the Petro-Caribe fund, and is under the supervision of the Unité de Construction de Logements et de Bâtiments Publics, the Haitian Division of Housing Construction and Public Buildings (http://uclbp.gouv.ht/pages/41-village-lumane-casimir.php).

Lumane Casimir Village

Over 1000 units of the planned 3000 units are built, and are largely still uninhabited. The project was inaugurated in May 2013 but few people moved in until October and even now when we passed Lumane Casimir, it looked empty. To me it was stunning to see this large housing project in such an isolated area, far from markets, schools, and churches. Who would want to move out here, I wondered. Although the project plans to have its own police station, market, and school, who knows when they will be built. Meanwhile, many of the buildings have been vandalized. I shook my head. All this money spent and no one lives here.

View from the road to Mirebalais

     Madsen’s driver must have been on loan from a Formula One race team. He sped along the flat road through the desert, the Terios passing slower moving cars, trucks and tap taps like they were standing still. Soon we were climbing up the winding mountain road and he was still racing. The road wound back and forth through one tortuous switch back curve after another. Up we climbed and still the Terios sped ahead. But Makendy stayed right with him. Maybe Madsen told his driver that Makendy was our best driver and bet him that he could not lose Makendy on the mountain. I stared out the window over the precipice. The view of the flat sun-baked landscape we had just crossed was as breathtaking as our speed. I must be here too long. Six months ago I would have had my heart in my throat as Makendy braked hard and down-shifted into the tight curves and then accelerated out of each turn to catch up with the Terios. Not now. I shrugged and remarked that there was nothing more than a low stone wall separating the road from the edge of the cliff. I saw a speed limit sign: 40 kph (25 mph). I glanced at the speedometer. We were going over 70 kph (45 mph). It was really a race in the mountains.

     Just before we entered the town of Mirebalais, we passed a UN base camp of Uruguayan forces. Meer reminded us that a UN camp near Mirebalais, occupied by Nepalese soldiers at the time, was the source of the cholera epidemic in October 2010. The epidemic soon spread throughout Haiti and for almost four years now has alternately raged and waned with the changes of the seasons.

Uruguayan UN camp near Mirebalais

In front of the Emergency Department of
the University Hospital of Mirebalais

     The Terios crossed a temporary bridge across the La Them river and up an incline to a plateau.

We followed and there in front of us was the Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais, the University Hospital of Mirebalais. It is an impressive single story complex topped off with 1800 solar panels that provide all of the electricity needs of the hospital (http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-7032-haiti-health-all-about-the-university-hospital-of-mirebalais.html). The 300 bed University Hospital is a partnership between the Haitian Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) and Partners in Health (PIH). We received a quick tour of the hospital. You can find details of what we saw at the PIH website (http://www.pih.org/pages/mirebalais). It is a remarkable place in the middle of the central plateau, probably the finest, most modern hospital in Haiti. Graduates from the state medical school in PauP will come here to Mirebalais to do their residencies. This way MSPP hopes that the doctors who are trained in Haiti stay and practice medicine in Haiti.

     After our tour, we got back into the Everest and drove down the road to the Mirebalais Cholera Treatment Center (CTC).

Mirebalais Cholera Treatment Center

As we stood in the courtyard, Madsen and Meer talked with the doctor about the number of cases they get and whether it would be possible to obtain stool samples. We walked over to the clinic building. There were at least two dozen cholera cots in the room. It was strange to be standing in this CTC at the heart of the epidemic yet it was so quiet. There were only two patients this day.

Mirebalais Cholera Treatment Center

Leaving the Mirebalais Cholera Treatment Center
A  bleach-soaked mat to disinfect our shoes

     We left the CTC, bid Madsen goodbye, and he went off to his meeting with the Carter Center. We got back in the Everest and went in search of water samples. Meer wanted to collect some samples from the famous Artibonite River. This river is where the cholera outbreak started from a UN base of Nepalese soldiers whose wastewater went untreated into the Artibonite River. We drove down a road and Makendy asked for directions to the river. After a couple of bad directions (how hard can it be to

The Artibonite River at Mirebalais

Makendy collects a water sample from the Artibonite

direct someone to a river?), a local resident offered to show us how to get to the river. We parked the Everest and walked behind our guide down a path between some houses. There was the Artibonite. We walked along the river for a bit and Makendy scrambled down the bank to collect a sample. The Artibonite ran fast and muddy. The rainy reason is starting and I imagine the river will soon get higher and flow faster.

     Before we headed back to C’ville, we decided to eat lunch in Mirebalais. In the town square, Makendy asked someone where we could eat. They pointed to the building behind us. A restaurant. How could we miss it? We walked in. No one was there. No customers. No one behind the counter. No one in the kitchen. We left and walked up the street. A restaurant called Le Gouter was on the left and there were two customers sitting at a table. We went in. The menu was pretty typical of other restaurants we had been in before: chicken, goat, fish, all served with rice and some red beans. We ordered the chicken.

     After lunch, Makendy drove the Everest back down the mountain, but a lot slower this time. I could see the ghost town of Lumane Casimir Village. From the mountain road the houses looked neatly lined up, a symmetrical, planned community.

Lumane Casimir Village viewed from the mountain road

We drove past the project. All the houses, little boxes, all in rows. Empty. Meer pointed out some cars and people in the village. So, I was wrong, the town was not totally deserted. A handful of people are living in Lumane Casimir Village. Will others come and join them to live here? Only time will tell if this huge investment in housing will succeed or if it will end up as another failed attempt to help Haitians.

A resident of Lumane Casimir Village

24 Hours in Baradères – Sister Denise, the Electrician, The Mayor, and the Agronomist

     We needed to get out of town. Meer has been here since January 6. Khan has been here almost as long. Kirk just needs to get out. Besides, Kirk has never been out west to the mountains. So I planned a quick road trip up to Baradères. I had three reasons for the trip. I wanted Kirk to inspect the lab space that Sister Denise had set aside for me and the existing electrical supply at the clinic. The trip would also give Kirk a chance to see another part of Haiti. The second reason for the trip was to take some of my supplies out to Baradères. And, finally, I wanted to maintain my relationship with Sister Denise. I wanted to reassure her of my commitment to doing the sexually transmitted infections surveillance that has been taking so long to get underway. And I wanted to start talking with Sister Denise about long-term plans for the lab.

     I had arranged with Sister Denise for her driver to meet us in Cavaillon and drive us up to Baradères. This way we would not have to use the Everest to make the brutal trip up the mountain. We would stay at the convent. Fr. Jacques is in the United States on vacation and there are two sisters staying at his house. It is sort of ironic that we would be staying with the sisters because some sisters are staying at the priest’s house. Friday night we packed up the back of the Everest with some of my stuff for the lab: the microscope, small incubator, specimen cups, OSOM test kits, 4-in-1 printer with cartridges. Ready to go.

     Saturday morning, our weekend driver, Gesner was ready to go before we were. We pulled out of C’ville at 8:15 am and reached the meeting point in Cavaillon, the gas station/hotel on Route Nationale #2, at 10:45 am. We made good time.

Meer, Kirk, and Khan in Cavaillon

Meer, Tony, and Khan in Cavaillon

While we waited for Kenol, Sister Denise’s driver, to arrive from Les Cayes to pick us up, we checked Gesner into the hotel. He would stay over Saturday night while we were in Baradères and be there to drive us back to C’ville the next day. Kenol pulled into the gas station and we loaded up the Land Cruiser with my lab stuff. We were on the road to Baradères at 12 noon. But before we left Cavaillon, Kenol stopped at a store and picked up a couple of large, empty containers from the owner. “Tafia?” I asked. Kenol smiled, yes, tafia (see 3-22-14 post). He was bringing back the empty containers to be filled with tafia and delivered on the next trip down the mountain. The road was as bad as ever. Kirk said he had been on worse roads but not for as long as the Baradères road. One and a half hours later, we arrived at the convent. Sister Denise greeted us and showed us our rooms and then we sat down to lunch.

     After lunch we headed over to the clinic. It was Saturday. There were no patients in the waiting area and only two pregnant women in the maternity rooms. Sister Denise took us around to the back of the clinic and introduced us to her electrician, a young man named Michel. Actually Michel is installing the electrical on the new vocational school that Sister Denise is building. Michel is from PauP but he graduated from the College St. John Baptiste in Baradères. His parents sent him to school here because they believed he would get a better education than in PauP. Michel’s aunt is also a sister in the same congregation as Sister Denise. Michel took us to see the generator and then the battery/inverter room. Kirk looked things over and then made some suggestions to Michel about the battery

Meer, Michel, and Khan watch as Kirk inspects the regulator

arrangement and the regulators, what was working and what was not working and why.  A new fuse was needed for the regulator to charge the batteries from the solar panels more efficiently. Kirk also looked at the pump for the well. It was not working and Yves, the clinic handyman, was busy hauling water out with a bucket. It turns out that the pump needed to be wired into the generator. It was not connected. Kirk told Michel what kind of wire and how much was needed and how to wire the pump back to the generator. It did not seem that hard to do. Then Michel asked the question. Where would he get the money to buy the wire in PauP? He would have to see with Sister Denise.

     We walked down the road to the vocational school under construction. The electrical was going in. That was Michel’s work. There was still a lot to be done but Sister Denise has no money yet to finish the building. Kirk asked Michel about the electricity in Baradères and wondered where the electrical lines on the poles led. Michel said that there was a generator in town but that was broken. That immediately got Kirk’s attention. Could we see the generator? It was a long walk into town and Kenol, the driver, was not around. So we walked into Baradères. The afternoon was hot. As we walked along the road, the poles were still there with wires on them. Every so often, a line dropped off the wire to connect to a house. But we saw no transformers. Finally after about 30 minutes, we reached the priest’s house and the beginning of the new concrete pavement that ran through town and out to where the road would eventually run north to connect Baradères with Petit Trou de Nippes. There were few people on the street. We passed a large house that had a sign outside inviting people to watch the broadcast of the Real Madrid vs. Valencia soccer match the next day for 15 gourdes.

     We reached the church square and still no generator. Michel told us to wait in front of the church while he went to find someone who would open the generator building. We bought some bottled fruit drinks from a vendor on the square. About 15 minutes later, Michel returned – with the mayor. Louis Sabé introduced himself as one of three mayors of Baradères. I introduced myself and Kirk, Meer, and Khan and explained why we were in Baradères and our interest in the generator. We walked with the mayor across the bridge and up the road to a building with a transformer sitting out in front and three thick cables leading through a window to the power pole.

Home of the Baradères generator

This was the home of Baradères’ 150 KV generator. And it was a good one according to Kirk. The mayor explained that Electricité de Haiti (EDH), the national power company, installed the generator and they also put up the poles and the wires. When does the generator run? The mayor decides that. The generator runs a few times per week for about four hours, between 7 and 11 pm. He also runs it for special occasions like Carnival, Easter, the end of the school year, etc. The diesel fuel comes from PauP, when EDH sends it. The town does not pay for the diesel and the people do not pay for the electricity, which seems mostly used to power the streetlights. We did not see very many homes connected to the grid. As we walked back through town, I asked the mayor if he planned to run the generator for the World Cup games. Yes, he would. Then I asked him which team was his favorite. “Brazil”, he replied. Meer is also a fan of Brazil, I told the mayor. Louis turned and gave Meer a hearty handshake. So here I was in a remote part of Haiti with two men from different countries, different religions and different cultures, who live thousands of miles apart but are drawn together by sport and a common passion – they would both be rooting for Brazil in the World Cup.

     After dinner that night, as we sought refuge from the heat on the roof of the convent, we saw that the street light in front of the convent was lit. It went out at 10:30 pm. Maybe Baradères had some electricity that night because we were in town. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

     Sunday morning I was awoken before 6 by singing coming from the small chapel down the hall from my room in the convent. The sisters were at morning prayers. I got dressed and joined Sister Denise for breakfast at 6:30 and then we got in the Land Cruiser with the other sisters and drove to church for Mass. We arrived at church at a little before 7 am and left church at 9:15, a little longer than what I’m used to back home but about right for Sunday church in Haiti.

     After lunch, as we said our goodbyes to Sister Denise, Kirk gave her some gourdes and told her to give it to Michel to buy the wire he needed to re-wire the pump for the well. No vehicle leaves Baradères unless it is full so when we left Baradères, there were nine people in the Land Cruiser: Meer, Khan, Kirk, two sisters, a priest, Kenol, myself, and Jean-Claude, the agronomist/distiller (see 3-22-14 post). As luck would have it, Jean-Claude was going to Les Cayes on his way back to the U.S. to visit his family. I greeted Jean-Claude and told him that I had been in contact with the people from Project Gaia about the alcohol-powered cook stoves. They were still interested in a future demonstration project in Baradères. I also explained to Jean-Claude the need for 90% ethanol for the stoves. Jean-Claude told me he was also still interested.  So we are definitely going to follow up on the idea and try and get the Project Gaia people to visit Baradères after Jean-Claude returns. I hope it happens.

     The Land Cruiser headed across the mountains, Kenol with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand pushing buttons on the radio to try and capture the broadcast of the Real Madrid-Valencia game. We finally reached Cavaillon where Gesner was waiting for us with the Everest. We grabbed our backpacks, said goodbye to our Haitian friends and climbed into the air-conditioned (ahhhh!) Everest. Kenol turned the Land Cruiser west towards Les Cayes and Gesner turned east on Route Nationale #2 towards Gressier. I stared out the window as we drove along the south coast, the beautiful waters of the Caribbean Sea on the right and the mountains we had just descended on the left. As I looked at the mountains, I could count at least seven ridgelines. Haiti truly is a land of mountains within mountains. It is beautiful out here. The sun was setting behind us when we arrived at C’ville. Back home again.

Two Kids and a Ken

     Yesterday was Ken’s birthday.

Ken with baby Maria

Our facilities manager is somewhere north of 70 years old. Since May 1 is also Labor Day in Haiti (and around the world, except for the U.S. which, I believe associated the concept with the socialist movement, i.e. communism, and thus decided to choose a completely different day to show that the U.S. was not supporting communism), the kitchen staff had the day off and no meals were being served in the dining hall. Marsha made coffee and prepared some powdered milk and brought out cold cereal for breakfast for the few C’ville residents and guests still here. We had a leisurely breakfast, talked about our projects, the different problems and solutions and also how Marsha (guesthouse and kitchen) and Ken and Kirk (facilities and power grid) manage to keep the whole C’ville operation running. Sometimes the money and management is just a mess, but that is a topic for another post.

     We decided to go out for lunch so we headed to Boulangerie Eva (see November 2, 2013 post). Bill and Dana (aquaculture project consultants), Meer (UF-EPI lab), Khan (UF-EPI TB lab), Jessica (goat volunteer from NC State) and I took the Everest out on Route Nationale #2 and drove west toward Léogâne. At Eva’s we ordered two burgers, one cheeseburger, two jambon-fromage (ham and cheese) sandwiches, one wings and fries, and two sides of fries. All that plus drinks and a packet of Eva’s cookies cost just $40.00 US. The air-conditioning in Eva’s was on full blast, as usual. Jessica had to step outside for a few minutes to warm up before our food arrived because she was getting so chilly just sitting there.

     As we left, Meer asked if we should get something for Ken for his birthday. A cake? No, the only place close by that sold cakes (Maco’s) was not too good. Can we make a cake? Eva has a small grocery store next to the sandwich/bakery shop so we all went in to see what we could find. Dana looked for a box of cake mix. Nothing. What could we buy? There were some toys on the shelf for sale including some Barbie dolls. I jokingly suggested that we get a Barbie for Ken. But seriously, we needed something. Dana stared at the shelf with cookies and wondered about cookies. I said, why not a cookie cake? We could make an ice cream cake with cookies. “They sell ice cream here?” Dana asked. Yep. We walked to the next aisle and there was the Pat n To’s ice cream freezer (no website but you can like them on Facebook). So we bought a couple of quarts of ice cream and four packets of cookies. Hey, It's Haiti. We work with what we can get.

     Back at our house, we got to work. Dana cleaned off a baking dish. In the short 10 minutes it took to drive back from Eva’s, the ice cream had softened nicely. I laid out a few rows of cookies on the bottom of the tray and Dana scooped and spread out the ice cream. First, one layer of vanilla cookies and a quart of vanilla ice cream. We followed this with a layer of chocolate cookies and a quart of chocolate ice cream. Then I topped it off with a checkerboard arrangement of cookies over the chocolate ice cream. It looked pretty decent. We covered the cake with plastic wrap and put it in the freezer.

     Later that afternoon, Jessica told us that one of the does had just given birth to two kids. We all walked down to the goat pen to see. Mama goat was standing over her two kids.

Mama goat and her two new kids

Jessica estimated that the kids, a male and a female, were about 10-15 minutes old. The placenta was still hanging from Mama goat, and the kids were already standing on their own legs.  Jessica took each new kid, cleaned off their umbilical stump, and weighed them. The male weighed 5.5 lbs.; the female weighed 4.25 lbs. Another birthday. We should name the kids Ken and Marsha. For those of you who may remember my earlier post about artificial insemination of the goats (see November 16, 2013 post – Goats, Anyone?), this doe was not one of them. She was inseminated the old-fashioned, natural way – by one of the bucks.

Jessica with one of the new kids

Our fish dinner

     For the first time since I have been in C’ville, we had fish for dinner in the dining hall. There was just a handful of us still here for dinner so Bill and Dana decided to harvest some fish from the aquaculture ponds (that they are helping C'ville get going again) and cook them up on the grill behind the guesthouse. Everyone helped out for dinner. Bill and Dana cooked the fish. Meer and Khan made rice and eggplant. Jessica and Marsha made salad with tomatoes, mirleton, moringa leaves, and a tasty salad dressing. And there was piklis, of course. So we all sat down, Bill and Dana, Jessica, Meer and Khan and Ken and Marsha and Kirk and me, for a fish dinner. What a delicious break from the routine menu!

Ice cream cookie cake

     I brought out the ice cream cookie cake after we had finished our fish and cleared off the table. Maybe I should have brought it out sooner to let it thaw a bit.  But it looked pretty good and Ken cut the cake and we each had a piece. I brought out the ice cream cookie cake after we had finished our fish and cleared off the table. Maybe I should have brought it out sooner to let it thaw a bit.  But it looked pretty good. Good enough for the cover of Southern Living magazine. Ken cut the cake and we each had a piece.

     Ice cream cookie cake! In Haiti!

Ice cream cookie cake

     Happy Birthday, Ken! And welcome to the new kids in the pen!