two months on...

An enormous amount seems to be happening in my life as it relates to Haiti, much less as it relates to art, or at least my own art! I did finish a commission, a Himba girl bust, life-size, that I'm very pleased with... fired since returning from my month in Haiti.
The desert-like Gonaives area with it's dusty city, and river valley oases of millet and palms - and working for IOM - was fascinating, and seeing and feeling what is happening in Haiti since the earthquake was of course a very big experience... I was a little afraid I would be overwhelmed and in a way I was, but in the sense that it confirmed my desire to really jump in, to see what I can do there.
I had a brief chance at the end of my trip to visit another area (Lascahobas on the Central Plateau) with a smaller project, COSADH, and came across a small refugee camp that had been totally abandoned by any authorities or charities and was in a very bad way... and somehow started a little campaign to improve conditions there and give the 46 people left a chance at starting over in a few months... see website www.100percent4haiti, for the appeal for the Camp, and about the art show I ran here in St Croix last week with a great group of friends, we're hoping to keep on raising money for good causes in Haiti longterm. Both the art show and the camp appeal did really well, there's also a FaceBook page 100% for Haiti...

I'm hoping to go back to Haiti in July, to see progress in Lascahobas, and some other possibilities for longterm projects... sorry this blog has been so neglected!

Working in Gonaives

I'm setting off for Haiti again, with some trepidation - ten weeks since the earthquake, and right at the start of rainy season - to work in Gonaives, a dusty hot northern town that was the scene of terrible floods and mudslides in the hurricanes of 2008, more floods last year, and is in a badly deforested area. It's now also overrun by refugees from Port au Prince, some (thousands) of whom are being hired by the day to build terraces on the surrounding hills to control floodwater, provide flat agricultural land, and prevent mudslides - by the International Organisation on Migration, for whom I'll be a secretary/ publicity/ web person for a few weeks...

May14th Benefit Exhibition for Haitian relief! 100 artists participating!
Keep up to date on FaceBook, http://www.facebook.com/pages/100-for-Haiti/282674848036
or new website 
www.100percent4haiti.org

Now that the big basic aid is arriving in Haiti and unfortunately bottlenecked all over with uncleared roads, one damaged airport... all the unimaginable problems - the little aid agencies are starting to come into their own and getting organised - HCS founder Mathilde Aurielen Wilson only just reached Port au Prince but is already setting up a base with a second plane load of medical supplies tomorrow - follow this on FaceBook - Haiti Community Support page.

Poem for Port au Prince

I thought I knew before

How it is to feel heartsick and so far away and unable to help…

Now I see that I was only dreaming.

All the world sees

the few pictures are the same on every news-site,

the woman up to her waist in rubble, dust covering her like ash,

the naked dead piled on truck beds,

the crushed and bleeding limbs

the shock in every eye.

And no-one knows

there are no phones, no power, no internet connections.

The hospitals are fallen, missions full, no building safe to re-enter.

If you are there

and not buried yourself - what must your eyes accept?

Standing on the street corner or helping drag survivors from the rubble

Every way you turn your head there must be a thousand such images…

How long until you find your loved ones?

How many will be safe?

How many will be left amid the ruins?

Now I do know heartsickness and uselessness.

Earthquake Tuesday 12th Jan

Just this evening came the news of the 7.3 mag. earthquake right next to Haiti's capital and 3 million people who live mostly in illegal concrete block shacks with no seismic re-inforcing, even schools and hospitals are collapsing, houses falling in ravines... The phone services are out and there will probably be no word for a few days - we can only wait and hope for the best. Why does it seem Haiti has more bad luck than almost anywhere else on earth? And fewer resources or even time between emergencies to cope with them?

Some quick sketches - Haitian Old Year

and Haitian New Year...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Fotos

Those Haitian smiles look out from my photo album

On mule-back, next to thatched huts, coming down steep banks where there are no roads,

Wearing bright school uniforms or T-shirts with strange slogans (who knows, donated by Minnesotans...)

Stirring coffee beans in an old tin over the fire, planting yams with a heavy hoe and machete,

Walking with huge baskets on heads, half-naked children trotting behind...

Under the breadfruit trees or over the bare heights with white rocks like the bones of dinosaurs.

The school with its field of maize and beans

Queues at the school, the clinic, at the churches,

Crowds at the bus stop, the market, wherever anything new happens -

And I remember (here in my house full of books,

lights that turn on all day and night,

running water from six different taps,

an oven that could feed half a village) -

how those smiles are always there without any of this -

even when the child's belly cramps from hunger

and the morning mist chills with no breakfast

and the houses are damp from three days constant rain

and there are no dry clothes, no spare clothes at all,

while the bean seedlings wash away in the fields

and despair hovers barely out of sight

maybe as close as next week.

There are no books to distract you there

How few could even read them.

There is no power for lights, no money to buy a stove

Water comes from a gully or a spring

Laboriously by bucket - gutters are rare and cisterns too...

Food is whatever your family grew -

Eat when you can, whenever there is any...

Going to school is a privilege and an honor, easily lost -

A clinic is a miracle Heaven-sent,

though it may have no medicine to give this month or next -

The city is as almost as far away as America.

Finally!

The Omega VI Mill is in Timo's hands (and out of Customs)... so trials can begin and it's off to the village soon! Seemed like a long long time from here... but at one point I was trying to raise enough money by Xmas so at least we beat that! Well and truly!

Update - November

We're still waiting for the shipment of the Omega VI Mill to Port au Prince from Miami, bumped twice for medical priority shipments and now lost in transit, a second one is en route ...  but that gives time to finish translating the documents for it's use and maintenance, and to collect the materials to build the pedal-powered framework (much more efficient than the hand-crank)... 
Here in the "West" or First World it's hard to appreciate how very long it can take to get things done in Haiti - apart from getting things delivered there in the first place! Imagine if you had a mobile telephone that works most days, but no fixed phones in most of your country, almost all paperwork is done by hand in ledgers (but any official form must be typed and have stamps, seals, multiple signatures, often photos - and requires a 4 or 5 hour trip to make, and then file, in a town half-way to the capital city if not in the city!). You go there by bus or riding on top of a truck, because there are only two or three private vehicles in your district. If you are lucky the market town is in walking distance and has motor-bike taxis and a public notary and maybe a shop selling basic stationery... 
Then if you need any kind of permit or license your papers may or may not be accepted, you may or may not get a receipt for them, you travel home again and wait... you have lost several days work by now and  had to stay with relatives or ride all night in a truck... pay bribes, kowtow for hours, live in hope! And you need to be one of the less than 30% of the population who can read and write... or you'll have to trust someone else to do it!
When something is donated it causes immense joy - and a great deal of extra work for a few people who are charged with implementing the donation... and it will take months before we see how it works out, have some photos of it in situ, find out if we need another or a bigger version, etc. We're just seeing the very edges of the struggle that is life in Haiti.

Vévé profile (L)
6 x 6, clayboard
$190-

Vévé face (below)

6 x 6, clayboard

$190-

Sunset
8 x 8"
watercolor on clayboard
$240-

Stovetec

Just received the new Stovetec 2 door charcoal / wood burning rocket stove ( see one door version in my stove slide show) to test! Stovetec has given it to me free in exchange for my translation of their manuals into French, and then into Haitian creole with a great deal of help from Timo and friends in Haiti!
It will be really interesting to do some cooking with the dead branches that are all over my land here in STX and local charcoal similar to that made in Haiti. Then on my next trip I can demo it there like the first one, and hope it will also inspire people to use rocket stove principles -like in the school and cob stoves we've built, saving time & fuel, and causing much less pollution, danger, ill-health from smoke, and deforestation!

Mandy's Cards - receive 2 with $25 or more donation to Haiti fund.

Omega VI Mill.

I'm currently raising money to send a BURR MILL to Au Centre Village in November! This is a kind of grinder that can be used to husk coffee, grind coffee, grind maize, make flour from dried breadfruit and other crops, and make peanut butter and other pastes! It is hand powered and I am also sending the metal parts for a pedal-powered mounting that can be built in the village (it could even be generator powered in  the future).

The villagers are walking an hour each way to the market town to have their crops milled, carried in sacks on their heads, and of course they have to pay the miller. The Burr Mill will save them the journey and the percentage of the crop they give to the mill will go to feed the 170 schoolchildren their lunches (often their only proper meal), and to purchase additional schoolbooks.
The mill is made by a small non-profit specializing in compatible technologies for the Third World, is very simple and robust, in use in 20 countries, and costs $350. The pedal kit and shipping to Miami will cost another $100, and the normally very difficult and expensive shipping from there to Port au Prince, Haiti, is partly donated by a humanitarian pilot! Customs fees and transportation to the village are also being donated. 
IF YOU CAN HELP, PLEASE CONTACT ME - THIS DEVICE CAN SAVE LIVES, INCREASE SELF SUFFICIENCY AND FAMILY INCOMES, AND HELP Haiti Community Support's LA RENAISSANCE SCHOOL!
Donors of over $25 will receive a set of Mandy's beautiful West Indian watercolor portrait cards. 
100% raised today (22 OCT 09)! Next one ALREADY 50%  FUNDED... then maybe a solar pump?