Bonjou from Haiti!

This was an email I wrote to some friends and family.. I think it sufficiently summarizes my stay in Haiti thus far. Enjoy!

It’s been over 2 weeks since I arrived in Leogane, Haiti so I’m not quite sure where to start with this email. It’s kind of long and goes into some detail about why I’m here and what I’ve been doing so far. Everything that’s happened since we arrived has been surreal—including the sheer amount of mosquito bites I’ve gotten. Everything has far surpassed any expectations I had of Haiti or the experience I was to have here.

My three-hour journey from JFK culminated in a roar of praise and applause as the wheels of the jet touched ground in Port-au-Prince. This would be my first taste of Haitian pride, something that I soon learned was engrained into the identity of everyone I’ve met thus far. I stepped out of the plane with the two carryon bags that contained my only belongings for the next 8 weeks and was greeted by a strong blast of warm Caribbean wind. We walked down onto the tarmac and passed by a konpa band into the smallest airport I’ve ever seen.

The 30km journey took us through the potholed roads of Port-au-Prince, past garbage-lined slums, where hundreds of civilians sat idle seemingly with neither care nor purpose. Women maneuvered seamlessly through the crowds with baskets delicately balanced on their heads. A few men carried live chickens under their arms like an outdated man purse. In going about their daily routine, people walked around the UN barricades and gave way to patrol vehicles full of men in uniform and semi-automatic rifles. The air was stifling with the stench of burning waste. Pigs, goats and an occasional cow lined the streets, eating out of mud puddles and piles of garbage. Traffic lights, street signs and sidewalks are nowhere to be found. Traffic is directed with a series of hand signals and the universal honk of the horn. Each tap-tap (a taxi-like vehicle) is colorfully decorated with religious symbols and other recognizable icons. Despite all the chaos, there was an innate sense of beauty that lined the mountains of Haiti.

I came to Leogane with two other students, Katie and Matthew. We are interns with Family Health Ministries, a non-profit organization based in Durham. Our task for the summer is to help Dr. Delson Merisier (the OB-GYN physician at Hopital Sainte Croix in Leogane) to conduct a study to develop a HPV detection kit for Digene. In conjunction with the study, I will complete a community-based research project as a part of SOL, to be presented to FHM at the end of the summer. Since we arrived, however, we learned that Digene was bought out by another pharmaceutical company. Consequently, not only will our study not start until mid-August, I had to redesign my research question and methods.

As it stands now, my research involves evaluating the supply and demand of healthcare services in the area by interviewing professionals in the district of Leogane and a subpopulation of residents that live in the Miton community.

Leogane is a quiet city surrounded by mountains, just west of Port-au-Prince. HSC acts as the main area hospital and serve people who live up to 7 hours away. There are a few smaller hospitals in Leogane and many private clinics and alternative medicine providers. But nothing comes without a price. After shadowing several physicians at HSC and traveling with a mobile clinic for a week, I got a better grasp of the healthcare system in the area. In order to see a physician, a patient must identify which specialist he would like to visit and pay 50 gourdes (roughly US$1.50) for a consultation at HSC. From there, every piece of equipment (from gloves to syringes) and every dose of medication (from ibuprofen to an IV drip) must be paid in full before it is administered to the patient. It became obvious that preventative care is not a major concern and a visit to the hospital could be pushed off until it was absolutely necessary (or sometimes, until it’s too late).

I have yet to start collecting data for my research. Everything here runs on the ever flexible “Haitian time” so I have faith that despite the easy-going pace, something worthwhile will come of all this.

For whatever reason, having fun was the last thing I was expecting to do in Haiti. In retrospect, that was really silly of me. Despite cultural differences and a language gap (but I’m learning Kreyol!), we’ve become very close with the staff of the hospital and the guesthouse. Along with Matthew and Katie, there were also four students from the University of Notre Dame and several other Americans in town. Notre Dame has a lymphatic filarisis research program in Leogane and owns a giant mansion-like guesthouse about 15 minutes away from the hospital. We were kicked out of our guesthouse at the hospital last week when a medical mission group that came through. As a result, we moved into “the Residence Filarisis” for a week—what we like to call “The Real World: Haiti.” When we’re not pretending to be doctors, we frequented the surrounding beaches, watched salsa dancing on Saturday nights, attended Catholic mass, and spent every night on the roof of the house—watching the electricity go out in the city over a few good conversations and bottles of Prestige (think Red Stripe, but Haitian).

Three members of our rat pack left to return to the States, where they will each start their first year of medical school in the next few weeks. Since then, Matthew and I moved back to the hospital grounds, where we were given the fully furnished and decorated two-bedroom apartment adjacent to the guesthouse. Just being here for the past two weeks has changed my perspective on many things and I’m curious to see what the next few weeks will bring.

If you’ve read this far, I want to thank you for being a true friend (even if you skimmed through a lot of it). I know that you are all doing some pretty amazing stuff right now. I’m quite out of touch down here and would love to hear from you! I promise to reply with a more personalized message ☺

With love,
Ming

And so...

Hi all!

I intended to sit down and write a long time ago, but my schedule (read: laziness) got the better of me. So, here goes. Like Christen, I love hearing about what everyone is doing, and I wish Letters Home were all public (Karmel: I loved your thoughts on magic, and my subsequent letter was actually a response of sorts. I am, of course, in the birthplace of Harry Potter). After such an intense semester, I miss everyone!

I think my experiences here in Europe are a bit different from those in, say, Costa Rica or Africa; there is so much to do here that my work feels secondary at times, but I really want to know what life is like elsewhere. I just rolled in on the Eurostar from a weekend in Paris a few hours ago-I had less than 48 hours to conquer the major points of a huge and amazing city-and I am pretty sure that my new goal is to spend some time in France at some point. My flatmate and I took a great night bike tour, which included a cruise down the Seine with a great view of the brightly-lit Eiffel Tower. Interesting story: I am walking down the street on Sunday morning and walk right past three people who went to my high school. Weird?

Aside from Paris, I have visited Prague (heading down to Seville in a few weeks) and tried to accomplish as much as possible in London. It requires a go-go-go approach, and I now feel like I have lived here forever.

As far as work goes, I am not doing at all what I imagined. I didn’t get IRB approval until 4.5 weeks in, which was pretty rough, but in addition to doing interviews I am also working on planning an event for the graduates of the MEND program. It isn’t nearly the scale of Karmel’s amazing festival, but it is all me, which is hard given that I don’t know anything about England and how things work (or even geography-everything ends in –ham or –shire-that has been a blast). We are using a cricket club field to hold sessions on street dance, Nordic walking, football (known to us as soccer), and food competitions. I am really excited about it, but I didn’t realize how difficult, yet fun, it is to organize the details for parties. Makes me wonder how anyone pulls off huge carnivals or sporting events or even weddings.

Well, keep in touch everyone, and please post pictures as well. Due to the obvious limitations of typing story after story, we are going to need some major debriefing sessions when we get back to Duke.

As the English say at the end of every conversation, Cheers!

So cheers to our new blog guys! Thanks to those of you who have already posted, I love reading about your summers. Ok, I’ll be honest, I already added the SOL blog to my bookmarks…perhaps I should add it to my interests on fb (kidding, sort of).

Karmel, I perused the conference, it looks awesome! I can’t wait to get an update about how it went. And, I also enjoyed your letter home. Anything with Harry Potter is usually pretty awesome (and yes, I am counting down to the next book, but shh).

Christian, good to hear from you. I am having a lot of similar struggles to yours. How about an update on what life is like in Tanzania. I can’t really even imagine. I mean, I was unprepared for a lot of aspects about life in Costa Rica. Even though I knew I wouldn’t have a cell phone or Internet most of the time, life without the Times every morning has definitely taken some getting used to. Laugh, but really, it’s been a an adjustment

So finally, I got my IRB approval. I started my interviews this week. The hardest part of doing the interviews, besides speaking in Spanish, is actually just finding the place. For example, to interview an association of organic farmers, I had to go to the “Beneficio.” Ok mind you there are no street signs here, and address? Haha come on, everyone just knows where things in this town are….well, except for the gringa. Anyway, It’s the rainy season in Costa Rica, so the torrential rains have rendered my speedy little red bike rather useless. So I have been taking taxi’s to my interviews, and trying to find the Beneficio is the best story yet.

The taxi I hired, George number 324, had to run through a fence, cross a coffee field, go up a hill seemingly in the middle of the rain forest to reach the Beneficio—a barn in the middle of a field. The shiny little red taxi actually got stuck in a mud puddle on the way. It’s a good thing that I know how to drive a standard because I actually had to drive the taxi while George, the grisly taxi driver, pushed the car out of the mud.

Anyway, I have about two weeks left! And Frances is coming to visit this weekend! I can’t wait to see her again! Ok keep the updates coming people.

Ciao!

Random sights from the city

Hello beautiful people. Wanted to give you a few random sights from the city; the first is a shot from my cell phone (excuse the quality) of the pigeons that reside under the EL stop at State/Madison. Every morning, regardless of what time I walk by, they've just been mysteriously fed. This is the bean (original name: "Cloud Gate") -- so my office is actually the building just to the left of the Bean in this picture (nearly 40-stories tall) that resembles a (cough) phallic object. So when I'm in the office and look out from my cubicle through my boss's window, I can make out the bean in Millienium Park. The bean does resemble a pinto bean in shape, and I can't help but theorize that Chipotle is somehow behind this.
I didn't actually take this picture, but check out Christian Bale in the new Batman. The movie has been in production close to my office off and on the last few weeks -- I tried following signs for the 'Extras' hoping to get my big shot, but they said that they had enough.. w/e, their loss. Talk soon folks!!

halfway point

Hey everybody, here's an excerpt from an email i sent home today... hope everyone's doing well!

so as of today i havebeen here exactly one month. I have exactly 3 weeks and 2 days left! Time has gone by relatively quickly here... it feels like a month has goneby, but not really... i dunno. on thursday we had a good meeting with mr.mapunda and the manager of SEDA (small enterprise development agency), a local organization. it was good because after our presentation to the social workers on tuesday, it felt like we had hit a plateau and didnt really know where to go from there. but on thursday we did some brainstorming and came up with ideas to do for the rest of our time here. we'll be having focus groups and more meetings with the people who have participated in the programs of other organizations, in order to get the perspective of the actual participants. we interviewed yesterday the lady who sells bananas to Amani. her child used to be at amani, and she's been selling bananas to them as her only business since 2004. its sad though because although she seems to be in a good position (as the only seller of bananas to a large organization), she only works one day a week and only makes a profit of $4 per week. except she has 8 children. that kind of blew my mind. its basically 50 cents per child per week, with nothing left over for her. that's just crazy. she was a valuable source of information, because we were able to ask her all about her business, her neighbors, her village, and whether or not people can cooperate together in her neighborhood to advance together. it kind of challenged some of the assumptions we've been making, especially the idea of having groups of families start businesses together, because she said that people don't really trust one another and that even though people may be excited initially about such collaborative efforts, that they usually break down when people sit down to settle out the details. that's kinda sad, and signals a need for more education and training of the people. i asked her what she thought would help the people of her neighborhood, and she said animals projects (like pigs or chickens) which was exciting because we've already been planning for that. however, our idea was for families to run these projects together, but she said it would work better individually because people take responsibility for their own things much more than when they are in groups. i hope all of this works out and we can find a way for people to take ownership of their business.
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saludos a todos!

what's happening in DC

Hi, I'm at the office now, just came in from lunch at this awesome (but cheap) restaurant at Dupont Circle. Quick post - the festival that I'm putting on is this weekend! I'm going to be working with several child artists with Polaroid cameras. Check out http://www.icaf.org/worldfestival.
Yay, hope everyone is having a wonderful summer so far.

And we're off..

Hello all and welcome to the unofficial-official blog for the Duke SOL students. There are twelve of us in the amazing program (through Hart Leadership Program at Duke). We are all over the world and studying some fascinating social issues. I don't want to steal everyone else's thunder so I'll let them tell you where their research has taken them and what sort of work they're doing.

Guess I'll get the ball rolling on these posts. My name is Matt Zafirovski and I'm doing research for the Golden Apple Foundation in Chicago, IL. I'm studying their Scholars program -- the nation's largest pre-teaching support program that gives out 100 scholarships a year to students who wish to become excellent teachers in schools of needs. As the program is about to celebrate its 20th year anniversary, I'm specifically trying to what enables success for a Scholar -- i.e. what are the personal and organization factors that shape a successful Scholar.

Besides being incredibly rewarding and eye-opening work, I get to be in Chicago. I spent my last few years of high school in the Northern Suburbs, but besides ball games, the random field trip, and Second City shows, I never really got to experience this place. When I visit a new city, the first thing I'm likely to do is lace up my Asics and go for a walk or run, sans iPod, to begin to get my bearings.

That's been my mindset as I find myself taking a slightly different route on my walks to and from work. By altering my routes, I'm consciously building a mental 3-D map of the city and rejecting routine. It's not that I necessarily fear routine, rather I fear ending up like Michael Bolton from Office Space, except with not as good of a conversation-starter name. I do appreciate the constants in my walk though, such as the flock of pigeons under the El stop at State/Madison fighting for the bread crumbs that always seem to appear just before I get there; the Italian restaurant owner who waters his flowers at the same time every morning; and the mood of the man peddling newspaper that is dependent on the outcome of the Cubs game (read generally not very happy).

As I wonder through the grid of gorgeous skyscrapers and buildings that pioneered the modern architecture movement, it's tough to fathom how such a beautiful and wealthy city can condone such a low performing school district. Chicago Public Schools graduates 44% of its students in high school and out of those college-bound students, 6% graduate from college. This should be considered a crisis, yet to show the the state of things, leaders appluad the 44% rate because it's an improvement!

I attended a talk by Pedro Naguera, the director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education in NYC, who addressed this very issue. After extensive research in Barbados, and comparisons of the U.S. education system to relatively stronger ones in Slovenia, Cuba, and Canada, he argues that the difference is the lack of a public will in the U.S. to educate. Take Canada for example: they lack the economic prosperity and development of the U.S. but they've put education and health care as their top priorities and becuase of that, you see a more equitable society.

A few hours after this talk, I found myself on a train chatting with Shawn, a fragance consultant (who by day works for the state government) and Jose, a Puerto Rican immigrant. (Shawn is not relevant to the story, I thought I'd just share that I met a fragance consultant). Jose boarded the train with four kids, his wife, and a stroller. His gold chain, white beater, and bevy of tattoos (some more hardcore than others, but my favorite: "I LOVE MOM") did little to express the compassion that lay within. Jose is a college dropout whose kids for the past few years have been attending Chicago Public Schools. He's in the process this summer of moving his family out of the city in order to find a school system that can better educate and look after his kids. One of his sons is diabetic and the school was unsupportive and unwilling to properly address his health needs. Jose has taken on extra jobs and is seeking a third job in order to finance the move. His sacrifice though, in his eyes, is worth it so that he can give his kids opportunities that he never had.

Jose's resolve and determination to better his family is nothing short of heroic. Yet shouldn't we expect more out of our public schools, regardless of what district they're in? True Chicago Public Schools are a different tax base than suburban schools, which drastically affects funding. Yet by not prioritizing equal opportunity in the education system, we are systemically discriminating and further contributing to the growing inequalities.