Haiti

Haiti is suffering from the massive Jan 12 earthquake and needs our help. Below I've posted some first-hand accounts of the quake from people in Haiti. Please consider a donation to an organization in Haiti. If you would like to give directly to a Haitian family, please contact me (anna.versluis@gmail.com).

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Ti Da

Last Tuesday morning around 10:30 am I was enjoying being by myself in the house I stay at in Fond Verrettes, which is the office for the local farmer's cooperative. I was sitting at the desk writing notes. The air outside was warm but inside it was cool and quiet. Suddenly a small, bright face popped up on the other side of the iron bars that wall in the porch. "Hello!" said a young girl of about six years. "You're Anna, right?" She said she'd heard the priest introduce me at the mass Sunday morning. She'd also seen me Saturday at the onion beds where I'd let her look at one of the pictures I'd taken on my camera. She asked me how I was doing. She told me her name, which I couldn't understand. I must have looked at her quizzically because she helpfully added, "People call me Ti Da." She was returning from the outdoor market with a small bag of salt for her mother. She started to go and then asked if she could have a glass of water. I brought her a tall glass and she drank it in one long swallow, tossed the last bit onto the ground, thanked me, and left. I stood there thinking, What a lovely creature, so full of life and cheer and brightness!

Extra Reading

I did not bring along enough leisure reading material for this past week in Fond Verrette—only one New Yorker magazine that I'd already partially read. It gets dark by 6 pm and besides talking to Ben (we found some crazy way that Ben can call me at a New Jersey number that goes through a cell phone communicating with towers in the Dominican Republic and rings at the Fond Verrettes radio station!) and writing research notes longhand, I read the New Yorker in the evenings by headlamp (thank you, Sara!). By the end of the week I'd read every article, every "talk of the town," every cartoon, and even every single review and announcement of movies, books, plays and restaurants! For being in a far-out place with no electricity and no real road to speak of, I certainly was up-to-date on happenings in Manhattan. I really knew I was hard up when I started reading the small print of the advertisements. Next time I know to bring a book!

Friday, February 23, 2007

Onion Beds, Fond Verettes











The rest of the pictures are of the onion seed beds just outside of Fond Verrettes--actually in one of the four ravines that converges at Fond Verrettes. This is the only ravine that has a constant trickle of water in it--it is fed by a mountain spring. So people rent land in the ravine, clear out rocks to make seed bed plots, add compost and manure from their yards, and plant onion seeds. They water them using watering cans and water from the small stream that flows through the middle of the ravine. It is currently the dry season, but as soon as the rain comes--in March or April--they will transplant the seedlings to mountain fields about a 3- to 4-hour walk from Fond Verrettes. The timing is crucial here, because rain will also cause flash floods in the ravine and destroy seedlings left there. Yet there is no way of irrigating in the mountain fields, so they cannot plant the onions until after a rain. Most amazing, the onion seeds come in shiny modern-looking packets with instructions in English. The seeds come from Oxnard, California, twin city to Ventura, where I live.It hasn't rained in Fond Verrettes since November (it's the dry season), so everything is not only rocky but dusty. Then there is the the expanse of the huge barren riverbed filled with cobbles from the 2004 disaster that killed over 1500 people--a constant reminder of the death and destruction that has marked Fond Verrettes' history. These things together made it a most poignant place to be on Ash Wednesday. Moise and I went to the 7 am mass and the priest marked crosses of ash on our foreheads. "From dust you come and to dust you will return."

Fond Verettes




1. photo of Moise, me, and Moise's grandmother in front of her house in Fond Verrettes

2. a spring-fed waterfall about a 40-minute hike from Fond Verrettes

3. further downstream from the waterfall, children collect drinking water to take to their homes

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

From February 13