On Halloween, Ben and I flew to Haiti with a group from MCC on a Soil to Table Learning Tour.
He is my favorite person to travel with, we always have fun together. :-)
This blog post will not be even close to a full rundown of the trip. It will not have details and facts and figures. This is a compilation of some of the photos I snapped during our adventure.
Port-au-Prince is a busy city with lots of beautiful people and loads of cars, motos and tap-taps (pick-up trucks with colorful, covered seating in the back). Tap taps are a major source of transportation for most Haitians.
We slept one night at the MCC Haiti guest house in PaP, then drove for nearly 4 hours to travel 40 miles to Desarmes in the Artibonite Valley. Lunch is the big meal of the day in Haiti and this was our colorful lunch plate that first meal in Desarmes. All of the food was local.
This is the road just outside the MCC Desarmes guest house where we stayed while we were out in the country. There are no shortage of free range goats out in the countryside. Most of them have wooden triangles around their heads to keep them out of people's gardens.
I loved the color of plantains.
This prickly mess is a living fence, another way Haitians try to keep those free range goats out of their gardens!
We learned how to make mamba (Haitian peanut butter) one afternoon. First step, stir the peanuts while they roast over a charcoal fire.
While other people were stirring, Ben and I went to say "hello" to the family's pigs.
Oh! And how refreshing pop was on such a warm afternoon!!
After the roasting was done, we had to go through and take the skins off each peanut.
That's Roselyn, she's the mamba master and our generous hostess for the afternoon.
With just a quick couple of flicks, she got all the peanut skins out of the basket and didn't fling a single peanut out! I was amazed.
Then we ran the peanuts through her grinder. Two times. It took some serious strength to turn that sucker.
And then we got to eat it!! The traditional snack is to eat it on cassava bread (this version was made with locally grown corn - almost like a corn tortilla).
Mamba is an important source of protein in Haiti and we were lucky to enjoy it at every breakfast!
There was endless beauty, at every turn there was something beautiful growing.
We took an adventurous ride up the mountain in the MCC Land Rover...the folks in the back did a lot of bouncing around! I was the wimpy one in the front seat fighting off carsickness...
my view out the front up the "road"
Ahhhh, look at that view! It was gorgeous up in the mountains.
Then we hiked down into a valley and crossed this shallow river, which felt amazing on our hot feet.
Moringa trees are fast growing trees that MCC works with communities to grow and plant in reforestation efforts.
Another delicious lunch....I know it doesn't look that appetizing, but it was! Plus, the fruit juice was so good, especially after all the water we'd been drinking to stay hydrated. Again, everything on the plate was grown locally, and the cooks spent all morning preparing the meal. It takes a long time to go through rice to get any imperfect grains out.
We also had the privilege of visiting Mary Ann Belena's courtyard to learn how to roast coffee like a Haitian. She was incredible!
She roasted the coffee beans over the fire, then cooked sugar until it was caramelized, then put the beans in the sugar and poured it out to cool. When the sugar had hardened into basically a coffee bean brittle, she broke it up and then pounded it to a fine powder.
Thankfully, MCC paid her and we each got to take some of this coffee home with us.
A delicious breakfast! Eggs with veggies, fresh fruit, warm rolls with lots of mamba and jelly plus coffee! Can you tell I enjoyed the food?!
This is the outside of the MCC Desarmes office/guest house.
We went up the mountains again, this time to a community called Kabay.
We saw some super-impressive peanut gardens.
A dewy peanut leaf.
Our trusty driver, Solomon, worked hard to load all our belongings back on top of the van for the ride to our "fun day" location - it's nice that MCC throws in something fun so learning tour participants get a chance to relax and recharge.
Our fun day was at the beach! Woo-hoo! This was the view from the hotel lobby looking out to the ocean.
I spent all afternoon sitting on the beach finding tiny treasures all around me. The breeze was great, the water and sun were warm.
The hotel was quite nice, especially by Haitian standards. But it's not located in the best spot for tourists, so we were the only people in the entire place!
They served us a very nice meal that evening!
The next morning we ate breakfast and then hit the road for PaP.
We toured a school called FOPJ which means "House of Solidarity". It's a Catholic school that MCC supports in a variety of ways. The school works with children and young adults that come from very difficult situations and gives them an education, as well as vocational training. We were served a meal prepared by students in the culinary vocational program.
MCC Port-au-Prince's cook Eclane taught us how to make Haitian hot chocolate. The super-bonus is that we got to bring chocolate balls home with us to make our own hot chocolate this winter!
Even on a hot afternoon, hot chocolate was a delicious treat!
Ben and I went with Elise, the MCC Haiti Connecting People's Coordinator, to the local grocery store one afternoon to burn a little time and stretch our legs a bit. Elise is a young woman from Canada that is doing a 3-year service assignment in Haiti. She's been there several months now, and it was fun to see her interact with street vendors that have become her friends in just those few short months. The sidewalks are filled with people selling fresh produce, medicine, grilled meats, t-shirts, shoes, everything you can think of.
Ben did a bit of wash one night - by hand, in the dark out behind the house.
Up into the mountains we went again, but this time we went much higher because it was actually cool at the top!
We visited Wynne Farms where they do extensive research on what grows best in Haiti and how best to grow it. They also host large groups of children from the city so they can learn how their food is grown and see the world from a fresh perspective.
After lunch that day, we visited Sakala, a community center in the Cite Soleil neighborhood of PaP. They work with kids in super-tough situations and give them chances for education, learning to garden and lots more. The cutest part of the visit were these two little puppies sleeping in the middle of the community center courtyard.
Church on Sunday morning took us down some roads that reminded us of Marion County, Kansas!
We attended a Mennonite Church that is currently in the midst of rebuilding their church after the earthquake destroyed it.
We sat on wooden benches, with rocks underfoot, in a covered space that for some reason reminded me of Threshing Days in Goessel. Maybe that's because it was hot and I'm always drowning in my own sweat at Threshing Days.
This school is connected to the church and was built with support from MCC.
The music at church was lively and LOUD, but some of the most heartfelt singing I've ever heard.
They served us Soup Joumou, a traditional Haitian soup, after the service.
This was the biggest waterhole we drove through - we felt like we were back home for a second! Truthfully, this waterhole is the result of zero government infrastructure to care for roads, and this was just from a small rain - actually quite different from at home.
Here's the outside of the MCC PaP office and guest house. Such a cheerful yellow!
And our Soup Joumou meal that Eclane made for us. We had Soup Joumou three times, each time it was quite different (similar to how people in the U.S. make chili - everyone has their own version of the same idea). Soup Joumou is a soup served to guests and is the food they celebrate with on Jan. 1, their Independence Day. Everyone makes soup and then goes to family and neighbors to visit and eat soup and celebrate.
We saw MCC comforters at Timketec, a school, vocational school and dormitory for street kids in a PaP slum that MCC supports in a variety of ways.
Looking out from the school windows, we could see the hillsides of homes where the children come from to attend the school.
Our last meal as a group was a fancy, locally-sourced, meal at a restaurant in PaP. The restaurant is connected to the Haitian national museum and was such a departure from our other food experiences that it was almost surreal, but such a treat!!
We had a menu created for our group. The restaurant itself is all white, glass and thoroughly modern.
This passion fruit sorbet was to-die-for.
See, there it is. A modern oasis in the middle of Port-au-Prince.
Early the next morning we left for the airport - here's my last glance at the MCC PaP gates.
We landed in Miami and came across this...it was election day in the U.S. What a way to return home, huh?
And our first meal back in the states was a cheeseburger and fries. It was delicious, but in a different way, than all the food we'd had in Haiti!
Haiti has left its mark on my heart. I think of the experiences and people often, trying to be grateful for what we have here, not taking it for granted. It is a beautiful place, full of gorgeous and strong people. Maybe we'll go back someday!
