A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, by Gozde Avci, Programme Director

Every now and then, I put my “Manager” hat aside and go in the field to work with the Cash-For-Work crews; it’s hard labor, but it’s something I enjoy enormously. So today, I helped the crews construct an Impluvium in the village of Godin; like many mountain villages, Godin seems lost in the Artibonite Mountains.

An Impluvium is a circular wall designed to catch rain water. We’re constructing 5 Impluviums within the HTRIP programme (Haiti Tree Reintegration Programme), in the mountains, where water is scarce and much needed for agriculture.

At 6am, I met up with the HTRIP team, and we drove to Godin on the tiny, bumpy mountain roads....we were grateful for the cool breeze as we climbed the mountain and got closer to the work site. We met with the Cash For Work team which consisted of 20 people, all of whom were already at work. 

I joined a crew of women who were in charge of carrying buckets of sand up and down the hill...sand which is needed to prepare mortar for construction of the Impluvium walls. Men, divided into three small groups, prepared the mix itself (sand, water and cement) and also carried big pieces of rock, then broke them into smaller pieces, and finally mixed it all together to construct the Impluvium wall. 

I have to say, that I admire every person who works at this site...after spending just one morning with them, I realized just how hard their job really is...working for 6 hours, under the unrelenting Haitian sun. 
I, by no means, came even close to the level of performance of my co-workers; I struggled to keep up with each of them as they climbed those hills, barefoot (and with enthusiasm!) carrying heavy buckets of sand on their heads....After a couple of round trips, I was already exhausted.

But even so, my Turkish stubbornness, and a feeling of responsibility kept me going;  seeing that I was struggling, the women I worked along-side took pity on me and helped me to carry my buckets....but I wasn't willing to accept defeat, I kept telling myself: “You DO NOT leave in the middle of a job!” I realized that I was fooling no one when the women kept on giggling, and asking me if everything was alright...each time, I’d smile and reply, “M’ap Kenbe!” (“I’m holding on!”) all the while, thinking to myself that I wished I had their strength, both physically and morally.

Towards the end, we started having mini-breaks; we chatted about the up-coming elections in Haiti, about the country I came from, about unemployment in the mountains, and about the heavy rains which had just passed through the region a couple of weeks ago…..

While we worked, men and women together, we all sang to the rhythm of schoolchildren’s songs which echoed from the hills behind us. Towards noon, the supervisor’s wife started a camp fire and cooked rice and beans for the whole team. As we quickly swallowed-up our food, we talked over our work and about just how far the Impluvium wall had advanced since we began working in the morning. I felt privileged to have had the chance to work with these amazing people, and to have done so, surrounded by those beautiful mountains, was truly a gift.

WAITING FOR GODOT by Gozde Avci, Programme Director

We'd never felt like celebrities before setting foot in Deschapelles, Haiti to run HAS's Cash for Work project. 

The first month of hirings were calm and went smoothly....I remember that we even spent time worrying about how was best to get the word out about our program; we wanted to be sure that everyone in the community knew about the job opportunities Cash for Work offered. With strong and wishful thinking, we hoped that this smooth pace would continue.

The second month’s hirings were a bit more agitated….everyone in the community was now aware that we were hiring thousands of people, and were doing so after a catastrophic earthquake, in one of the poorest regions, of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.  People hoping to be hired started queuing up in large numbers at our hiring sites, and we discovered that our names and our life stories were being murmured among people in the community.  Everyone knew our faces and what cars we drove; suddenly, everyone was waving and shouting  at me as I drove by, “Kijan nous ye Madanm Gozde?” (How are you, Ms. Gozde?)  At every step, I found I was greeted with smiles and waves….We continued to be very clear that our hirings were fair and transparent, and with the exception of the displaced and handicapped, no one received preferential treatment when hired for our program....our strategy has always been, and remains, “first-come, first-served”.

The third month of hiring hit hard. People from all over the region were now aware of the Cash for Work project. For each project, we only had the resources to hire people who lived in the different areas in which the crews would work, but now that word was out, we found that people from villages far away would be waiting for us, or even camping out in front of our houses in hopes of following us to discover where we’d be hiring next.

There were hiring days where 900 people would show up for only 200 jobs; considering that our budget does not allow for taking the measures necessary to ensure the safety of a group of 600 people or more, we worried enormously for the crowd’s safety....and as a result, we were forced to come up with creative solutions which would avoid putting those waiting in line in danger.

One hiring day, we created a diversion: I drove around in my well-recognized truck the morning we were to hire, so that those who were waiting in front of my house (all of whom were not from the village in which we were to hire, and therefor not eligible for this hiring) assumed I was on my way to the hiring site, and followed me to an alternative site. At the same time, Project Managers set out on foot for the real hiring site, and went ahead and hired those already in line, a number which already far exceeded our quota for hiring.

Our last hiring was at our “base” here in Deschapelles....by 2am of hiring day, we discovered that hundreds of people had already lined up for a hiring which wasn’t scheduled to begin until 6am! Rather than risk the safety of people whose numbers could easily swell to 900 by 6am, we surprised everyone and began hiring at 3am, and after registering the first 300 people in line (and filling our quota) we packed up and left. Although we didn’t enjoy deceiving people, we felt sure that we’d avoided what could well have turned into a riot.

A day didn’t go by without putting ourselves into the shoes of people seeking jobs....I wish we would have had more finances to hire more people to do more meaningful jobs, but both we and the Haitians bitterly accept the reality of having limited resources and being obliged to hire limited numbers of people....the Haitian people are forced by nothing more than circumstance to understand and respect the limits which come with a Cash for Work job. What would you do if you’ve heard there’s a job opportunity for a month paying 90USD, and you’re used to earning only 10USD a month? And have a family at home waiting to be fed, sent to school or to hospital?  I have no doubt that I too would follow the manager’s truck or queue up for hours, hoping to be hired.  This is something I never forget when I’m doing my job.

FIGHTING EROSION FOR FARMLAND, by Starry Sprenkle, HTRIP Project Manager

Recently, Eddie and I went up to see the work accomplished by the Cash for Work crews at the low, mountain community, Source Dupont.  The work at Source Dupont had been done in the first month of the program and all efforts focused on addressing the damaging effects of erosion. Two local crew supervisors led us on a hike through mountains and up ravines to proudly show us the progress of their crews; they'd built rock walls in the bottom of steep ravines to slow the damaging flow of water during intense rains in order to trap sediment, eventually creating agriculturally-rich soil, reduce flooding downstream, and slow the ongoing erosion in the ravines. The work being done is classified as “Ravine Correction”.

Even though I’m used to the physical work which comes with working in the mountains, I actually became winded as I climbed the ravines to inspect the crew’s work...I was well aware that the crews, many of whom are older than I, have been climbing these steep ravines while doing far more physically demanding work than I was doing;  the stamina of the people who live in the mountains continues to amaze me.

The lack of a local water source in the mountains is an ongoing struggle to the mountain communities in Haiti, a problem we at HTRIP are constantly trying to address with both long and short term solutions. In an attempt to access a local water source, the crews dug a channel at least 10 feet deep to allow the water to flow from their local spring, which up until now has been a stagnant source of water.  Unfortunately, the water just isn’t coming out fast enough, and a stagnant pool remains at the top of the deep channel.  We concluded that we need to reforest above the spring to allow more water to infiltrate the mountain itself, and eventually filter out at the spring.  That’s the long term plan......

As we walked through a few ravines which hadn’t been worked on in the past month by the Cash for Work crews, the leaders begged us to bring a second crew to continue the work.  We said we’d consider it,  but later, after we visited the last ravine (a wide-cut ravine, lower down the mountain) we realized that we couldn’t say no.  The crew lower down the mountain had built 8 ft. tall rock walls through this particular ravine, which in the last month alone, had completely filled in with sediment.  One month’s erosion represents hundreds of cubic meters of potentially farmable land which could be cultivated within these cleared, nutrient-rich ravines.  Even though the risk of losing valuable crops due to a flood remains, considering the soil on the surrounding, sloping mountains is poor in nutrients and water, the comparitively rich soil in the ravines makes it a risk worth taking. 

It’s clear that we need to do more work upstream...work which will not only protect the incredible effort that went into these newly built walls downstream, but will also protect the new captured sediment which represents potential farmland. So, we’ve decided to give the mountain communities a second group of workers for the last month of the Cash for Work project.  This last crew will correct more ravines and will also work with a Mason we’ve hired to build a rock wall in a basin, to create a water-catchment (an “Impluvium”) near the center of the community.

The two Supervisors we’ve hired are very good leaders, and even though neither of them is literate, each has a good technical knowledge of what is required to get the job done. I’m confident that they’ll continue this amazing work which will undoubtedly benefit not only their own community, but also the communities downstream, as well as the local environment as a whole.....