Week ONE

A lot has happened in just week of living in Haiti, unfortunately if you're not interested in aquaponics, fish, or farming, this blog probably won't provide too much entertainment. I'll try to skip to the good stuff...

Where I'm living:

I am staying in a beautiful home at Grace Village, with three other missionaries, Jessica, Kathy and Kristina. You'll notice this is not the typical home in Haiti! 

The entrance to Grace

Missionary house

My favorite on the wall

Kitchen

What I'm eating:

On Tuesday I went to the market with my roommate, Kristina, and Madame Kelly, a cook at the Feeding Center. It was quite an adventure! The market is crowded, people follow you so they can carry your purchased goods for money, and everyone is trying to bargain prices. At one point, Madame Kelly had three different vendors arguing over who's bananas she should buy. An hour down at the market was definitely all I wanted to experience. On the bright side, I was able to load up on a week's worth of tomatoes, carrots, spinach, oranges, and green peppers for only $6! 

I may be the tallest person to shop at the market - I have to bend in half to get under the tarps

For the most part, I will be eating my dinners with the kids in the Feeding Center. Kristina, the nutrition advocate, is doing amazing work in expanding the meal plan at Grace Village to include locally grown fruits, vegetables, and grains. Some new things added to my diet include: bulgar, millet and plantains. Don't worry, I've got my mom sending me chocolate ASAP! (thanks, Mom!)

What I'm doing:

I was fortunate to have Cathy LeVahn, Healing Haiti aquaponics adviser,  accompany me in Haiti for my first few days (she's also the one who brought me here for my week-long trial in early November). The two of us, along with Salomon, a local from Titaneyn who has been managing the system, organized inventory, planted over 500 seeds, and troubleshooted some minor problems. 

Right now the system has 900 tilapia in three tanks, each tank contains fish of a different age. It takes approximately 8 months for the fish to grow to 1 lb, at which time they'll be harvested. Before we fill our fourth and final tank with fish, we need to start planting crops. The crops actually filter the water for the fish, so if we had too many fish, the water wouldn't be clean. Reversely, if we had too many crops and not enough fish, we wouldn't have enough nutrients to help the plants grow. 

My new friends

So what are we planting? Good question! Before I arrived in Haiti, Salomon had tested a few different types seeds including  lettuce, string beans, squash, eggplant, soy beans, and cucumbers. It's great to see these things are growing in such extreme heat, however, the wind right now is really strong, causing a lot of the plants to break at the stem. In a few weeks, a shade cloth will be placed over the 6 troughs to regulate direct sunlight and hopefully knock down some of the wind. As I mentioned, we planted more seeds including snap beans, kale, zucchini squash, and spinach. Once the seeds germinate and grow roots, they are transferred onto a raft and placed in a trough. 

Peppers in the germination table

Green and red lettuce in a trough

Cathy stayed through January 15th, but I was sad to see her go back to Minnesota. Luckily, through Google docs, email and phone, we can continue to communicate daily. I definitely keep her extra busy with all my questions! 

Highlights:

The best part of the week was on Wednesday when I got to spend a night at a resort with the other Healing Haiti missionaries, including Elisa, who started the same week as me and works down that the Healing Haiti guesthouses in Port-au-Prince. It was a great way to start my year in Haiti and get to know the girls who will be serving alongside me - plus we spent the day swimming in the ocean! AMAZING! 

Sitting poolside before breakfast

Haiti is BEAUTIFUL!

Jessica, Kathy, Elisa, me & Kristina - we're a pretty colorful group

It's easy to forget just how beautiful this country is when all you hear about is its poverty, but every morning I wake up, walk out my door and see the ocean and when I turn around, I see the mountains. The sun shines in Haiti everyday. I feel so blessed to be here.