Dear Everybody:

I just realized that I haven't written since June. Oops. 

I have been having a hard time finding my place here at YWAM. I had previously reported that I would be teaching science in the school beginning in September but that is no longer the case. One time the principle asked me what I thought about evolution and I replied that I didn't really think it mattered, God could have created the world in 6 days or in millions of years, that's his thing, not mine. Unfortunately you must be strictly anti-evolution to teach in the school. The teachers together voted me out. Ouch. I am very disappointed and I will have to search hard for another place to fit in. The work I'm doing right now I am not happy with. 

Yesterday I got back from a week long trip to Marmalade, a little town high in the northern mountain range here in Haiti. I wish I was still there. I learned a lot about Haiti during the trip and it gave me a much needed break from life here at YWAM. The trip was with a teen outreach group, and I served exclusively as chauffeur and observer. I was sick for a couple of days and puked once really bad but I didn't let that put a damper on things. 

I like the mountains for many reasons. Primarily, in the mountains there is relief from the heat! Its August now and I don't think any man or beast should have to live in this heat, but enough of that. Also in the mountains, there is clean water. Folks still have to walk to get their water, but at least it wont make them sick. It is also much quieter in the mountains, and it is very beautiful. Folks there live very simple lives, although they must work very hard. There is work for everybody, but they must work the land and carry the produce to market on their heads or loaded on the back of a donkey. I even saw some very old women coming down from the mountains with donkeys loaded and tobacco pipes or homemade cigars hanging from their mouths. I imagine they were doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same way 50 years ago. 

I got to see for myself some of the foolish things that the Haitian government does. The first part of the trip was from St. Marc to Gonaives. That section of road is about 40-50 miles long and takes 2 ½ hours to drive because it is all rocks, holes, dust and mud. It has never been paved but there is a huge amount of traffic on it. Traffic typically moves at between 10 and 25mph. It does damage to every vehicle that drives it. The road to Marmalade, however, runs way up into the mountains but is very well graded and smooth. It is very easy to drive. However, almost nobody in Marmalade has any use of transportation. I passed only a few vehicles on the whole road. Well, Rene Preval has a house in Marmalade. In Haiti, the constitution allows a man to be president for two terms, but not consecutively. Rene Preval was President Bertrand Aristides puppet president in the interim of his two terms; so many nice things are being done in Prevals home town now. There are public schools there that are very nice, for example. There is also a very nice center for public internet access with about 30 computers and solar cells on the roof to provide electricity. If I had not seen it, I would not have believed anything like that would exist in Haiti. Well, I saw one person using a computer. People who live in the mountains and farm bananas don't have anybody to e-mail, and I imagine there are only about a dozen web pages in Creole anyway. In case anybody was wondering where Haitian foreign aid money is spent, that's where. I really think they could do without an internet center in Marmalade and pave part of that road to Gonaives. 

Gonaives was the center of the anti-government demonstrations some of you may have heard about a few weeks ago. We stayed there for a few days and I saw the remains of the tire fires on virtually every street corner and the shells of various burnt out vehicles. The disturbance reached a climax when the rioters took a tractor and drove it through the wall of the prison and released 159 prisoners. It turns out that the father of one of the girls here on base is in charge of the prison so he was in a lot of trouble when all the prisoners left. They told him to find them all again. During the time that Gonaives was in an uproar, we stopped getting electricity in St. Marc. There is not much electricity to go around. The government has found that a great way to calm down a city is to give electricity because then people go home and watch their televisions. The boob tube is the true opiate of the masses, I guess. We eventually got electricity in St. Marc again, but it is still only from about 6pm until 5am most days. 

There is no good reason why Haiti shouldn't have electricity 24 hours a day. The government owns the electric utility and therefore has no profit motive. There is some power produced by hydro, but the rest is by diesel generators which are typically located close to the center of town. They are stinky and loud and require lots of expensive diesel fuel and break down often. People run wires anywhere they please and brazenly steal power unmetered or hook into their neighbors power meter. Any real business that needs constant power has to have a bank of deep cycle batteries and an expensive power inverter to provide it. If the government would privatize the electric utility, the cost of power would go up but they would make sure the generators always had enough fuel. Eventually, too, they would replace the diesel generators with cheaper, cleaner cogeneration plants and rates would come down again. However, the government doesn't seem to want to upset the majority of Haitians who are either stealing their power or don't realize that government run industry is a bad idea.

Haiti is the only country in the western hemisphere that is considered to be completely deforested. Aircraft that fly over Hispaniola can see where the division is between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. When I was in Marmalade I could see why. There was always a fire burning somewhere in the mountains. Often, its just to clear land so that they can plant more bananas or corn or whatever, but often its because they are making charcoal for cooking fires. A 40 gallon bag of charcoal sells for more money than the same quantity of mangoes or other produce, so folks go wandering through the mountains to chop down whatever extra trees aren't being used. The rivers of Haiti flow the same color as the land, and I don't think any fish live in them. The land needs its trees or it will wash down into the ocean. People in Haiti could cook with propane if they chose, and it is actually cheaper than charcoal, but most people don't have the money on hand to buy a propane cylinder and they are used to using charcoal and charcoal was good enough for their parents after all so it just continues. 

In the markets around Haiti there are fish for sale, but not much. What fish they have is usually very small. Crab, too is very small. In the Puget Sound it is illegal to take any crab which either female or has a shell width less than 6but here 3 1/2or so of either sex is just fine with most folks. I don't even know how you can get meat out of a shell that size but the attitude is that if you throw it back, someone else will just take it later so take it yourself now. The waters are very over fished because of that attitude. Unfortunately, people are so poor that they will continue to over fish and the fishes they catch will keep getting smaller.

Have you ever actually looked at a conch? I have seen lots of conch shells but until today I had never actually looked at a conch. They have EYES. They also have this lump of flesh that flops around and moves their shell about the ocean floor. In addition to that, they have a kind of tooth/spear thing that I suppose they use for catching prey. What bizarre creatures.

Voodoo is very big in Marmalade. We stayed right by the place of a Voodoo priest and I took pictures of his house. You can easily find a voodoo temple because they fly a red and blue flag overhead. It seems to me that much of Voodoo is about fear and control. Even the art on the walls of the temple is made to inspire fear. In the marketplace they sell black and orange candles, the black being for curses and the orange for vows. In the one small town of marmalade there are 22 Voodoo priests (almost as many Priests as internet computers). I think that Voodoo is a big part of Haiti's problem. As a religion, its based on cursing your neighbor instead of blessing him which really makes it a miserable religion as far as I'm concerned. Also as a social system its a complete bust because it prevents trust from developing in a community. Pretty much every Haitian leader has used Voodoo as a method to control the people. Papa Doc Duvalier is perhaps the best example. He made a point of inviting the most powerful and evil spirits to dwell within him during his reign and his henchmen, the Tonton Macoutes dressed as a certain Voodoo spirit to inspire fear. 

I have been enjoying my motorcycle. I have only made one long trip on it thus far, but the freedom it has given me has been great. A few weeks ago at night I hit a pot hole that was covered with water that turned out to be really deep. It nearly threw me. It seems to have bent the front rim a bit& I went on one ride out into the country by the sea and found some old folks harvesting watermelons. I decided to buy one and was told a price that was ridiculously low so I said thank you very much. After that, they gave me three more watermelons as a gift! They were very hard to fit into my backpack but I was so touched I didn't mind. Strangely, I have been enjoying watching my trees grow. I didn't ever think I would be a keen gardener but so much good stuff can grow here. I have planted orange, lime, grapefruit, mango, and coconut, sour sop, Abricot (not apricot, different fruit), avocado, and Quinep, papaya, banana and Jamaican apple. The Bananas are already three feet high and shooting up. 

Some of you have not been getting my e-mails because your inbox protectors have been blocking them. If you want to always get them, tell you inbox protector that. 

Please pray for me lots. I would like to help poor people and there are plenty of those in Haiti but there are few opportunities to do that here on the base. I need direction in that. 

Peace be the journey, Chris