Hungry for Self-sustainability

How Haiti is Uniting to Build a Healthier, Independent Nation

By: Emily McIntyre

Produced and Edited By: Sam Campbell

Food Distribution in Haiti. Photo via FMSC/Flickr

When a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in 2010, the population was pushed deeper into its battle with extreme poverty. Thousands of people died, families were separated and the country’s free market economy plunged. Nonprofit organizations, charities and relief efforts flooded into Haiti for support, and though six years have passed since the earthquake, the country is still picking up the pieces.

Before the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti (CNP)/Kore Timoun (which means caring for children) was established in 1998, the acute malnutrition rate was an alarming 24 percent for the region of Léogâne, located in the Ouest Department of Haiti. 

Today, that rate has dropped to approximately less than 3 percent, said Taryn Silver the country program director of CNP. Focusing on the Léogâne area, CNP depends on female leaders called monitrices to teach the local communities how to be self-sustainable via Women’s Groups and Health Committees. Silver explains that monitrices play an especially instrumental role in treating women who are malnourished, pregnant or lactating. 

“They’ll talk about, like, ‘OK you basically need to eat an extra bowl of rice, or basically eating a little bit extra’ to get those extra calories while they’re pregnant,” Silver said.

Exclusive breastfeeding is also an issue in some communities as well, because not all mothers are well-nourished enough to do so.

“It’s not like they’re supplementing with formula or anything. They’re using food, or baby powders, and just regular powdered milk,” Silver said. “So what our monitrices will tell the women is ‘If you’re buying milk for your baby, no, you drink that milk. Use that extra money to buy extra food for yourself, especially while you’re breastfeeding.’”

In March 2014, CNP also started promoting the growth of Moringa trees, which have nutrient-dense leaves. Monitrices show mothers how they can incorporate them into their diet, such as adding them in soup.

Malnutrition affects Haitian children to the point where often times their hunger distracts them from learning at school. In Ouanaminthe, located in the Nord-Est Department of Haiti, is Institution Univers, one of the top ten ranked schools in the country. The Coalition of Children in Need Association founder Hugues Bastien started a farm to operate in tandem with the school’s lunch program.

The local crops grown there include sweet potatoes, mangoes, coconuts, cashews and limes, and they are harvested to feed more than 2,300 students ranging from preschool to high school.

A worker tends to his organic farm. Photo via uusc4all/Flickr.

“They were seeing not only kids who were malnourished, but even just because they were so hungry, they couldn’t learn. They couldn’t concentrate in class, and they didn’t have the energy to do what they needed to do,” said COCINA Communications Director Anna Lile.

COCINA also funds and supports Univers Medical Center in Ouanaminthe, which has become one of the biggest health clinics in the area. 

Aside from the wreckage following the tragedy, Haiti has suffered from massive deforestation within the past two decades. Part of the reason for this is producing and relying on charcoal for fuel, which requires cutting down trees Deforestation has also forced farmers to abandon or give up agriculture, because not enough profit is being collected from their crops.

“With deforestation, there’s more malnutrition and… there’s often no rain because there are often droughts,” said CNP Program Manager Rose Elene Veillard.* “Locals grow gardens, and the gardens can’t produce anything."

When it comes to a balanced diet, the best recommendation for Haitians with limited access to a variety of foods is to choose the right foods based on what is available. Cost has been a major setback when it comes to shopping for meals at the markets or grocery stores in Haiti.

“They’ve almost created this generation of ‘We live off of aid.’ The people don’t want that. They want to be a strong, proud country.”

Silver explaied that Haiti is frustrated with the food shipments that constantly pour in from other countries. “It puts a lot of people out of business,” she said. “When you go to the market in Haiti to buy rice, you can buy a bag of American or Taiwanese rice for maybe half the cost of Haitian rice.”

Cassandra Jean François, a member of SOHASAN (Solidarité Haitienne de Sécurité Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle) stressed that a major challenge with external aid is that there are no laws for food regulation in Haiti.

“But everyone needs access to food,” she said.*

Tania Bernard, Accounting Manager and official of Haitian Ministry of National Education and Professional Training (le Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle, or MENFP) agrees; she thinks that instead of the U.S. and other countries shipping metric tons of food as a form of aid, they should lend assistance in helping to reform the nation’s economy.

“So the help we need in Haiti by precisely related to this issue of food insecurity is first domestic production,” Bernard said. “I think the development of our country must first go through projects…  agricultural reform projects, projects that are taking shape in the rural section, with farmers and with communities in order to arrive at large-scale development of our national economy.”

Lost in the whirlwind of governmental reform, the Haitian population can only hope to make steps toward becoming a more sustainable nation once their new political leaders take office.

“They want to have hope for their future. They know that their country is broken, and they want to be able to take care of themselves,” Lile said. “They’ve almost created this generation of ‘We live off of aid.’ The people don’t want that. They want to be a strong, proud country.”

*Some quotes translated by the author.

On children and guns

By Lionel Brossi, Chile (SUSI scholar 2014)

The road to Chillicothe, Ohio, reminded me the surroundings of Valdivia, a small city in the South of Chile, where meandering rivers and native forest providing a kind of eternal mist, create an atmosphere similar to that of the tales of knight-errantry. 

We went to see the Tecumseh! drama, which takes place in an inmense amphitheatre sorrounded by nature, next to the Great Seal State Park. The play tells the story of  Shawnee, a native american leader from the XVI century, who fights to protect his homeland and his people from the American  settlers. Although some scenes could be quite violent for children (some of the assisting kids were  covering their eyes and ears at certain moments), the play was more than interesting and it worth the visit.

The theatre complex includes a prehistoric indian mini-museum, a terrace buffet, a snacks store and the “Mountain Gallerie Free Shop”, where enthusiastic parents were buying toy-weapons for their children. There were two kinds of weapons on sale: those used by the indians –bow and arrow- and those used by the settlers: rifles and shotguns.

Before the play had started, dozens of children were playing with their plastic shotguns pointing each-other, to their parents, to other people in the theatre and also to the yet empty stage. I guess that shotguns were much more popular than bows and arrows.  During the play, the intermetzzo and at the end of the drama, the kids were more excited about playing and some parents were proudly taking pictures of them while posing with their guns.

This whole scene brought to my mind the work of the photographer An-Sofie Kesteleyn, who traveled to the US to visit rifle ranges in Ohio and other southern states, where children learn the necessary skills to use a weapon and to shoot propperly. Part of her work and the story can be seen in this article from The Guardian’s journalist Sean O’Hagan. What strikes me most about these photographs is that the weapons used by children are not toys, but real guns in blue and pink.

Hard facts

According to The State of America Children’s last report 2014, 2,694 children, including teenagers, were killed by guns in 2010 and 15,576 children and teens were injured by guns, meaning that one child or teen was killed or injured every 30 minutes, 50 every day, and 351 every week. The report also shows the following stats,  depicting the astounding difference between US gun death in children and other high income countries.

The following video produced by the non profit news organization Mother Jones, shows in numbers and visualizations how many children were killed by guns in the US between the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 and december 2013.

We mostly know about US children dying in massacres through mainstream media, which in general give a deep coverage of this kind of events, taking advantage of the profit generated by violent images and dramatic stories that attract bigger audiences. But the truth, is that there are so many cases that are left behind: those children who die alone in their own homes because of gun shoots,  either by accident or by murder.

It was a fake!

Last tuesday, in the peaceful city of Athens in Ohio, after participating in an inspiring session of the SUSI program at the Scripps School of Journalism, all the scholars were adviced that there was a possible shooting on campus, in a residence hall located on the East Green area.  These were the news on twitter:

Helicopters, police cars, ambulances and media were in minutes sorrounding the area.  Most of us went to our dorms and stayed there until receiving the good news: every place was inspected and nothing was found, not even a witness of the possible shooting.  

Compulsive Obsessive

In Spanish, we have the expression "deformación profesional", meaning some kind of "professional obsession or misconduct", referring mainly to when you keep working in the moments you shouldn't. While waiting for the news, I did some little research on school shootings in Ohio since 1864 until present and added the data into a map (feel free to click on the red pins to expand the information).

Finally, the case was a fake alarm, but I must say that it was quite an uncomfortable and a bit scary situation for all of us who were on campus.  Just in case, I also found these instructions on how to respond to an active shooter.

I think in all the above stories and numbers there is a common place: how much damage causes to a peaceful society the promotion and use of fire weapons and how worse it gets when parents grow their children in a gun friendly environment.

The promoted idea that “arming more adults will protect kids” falls into pieces when we see the story of school massacres and dead children by fireguns in the country. Just see the numbers, see all the stories behind them. 

I know. Life is a death to come. But why should we rush it?

Lionel Brossi. Instituto de la Comunicación e Imagen. Universidad de Chile. lionel.brossi@u.uchile.cl

Preparing For Volunteer Work At An African Orphanage

Hannah May

Hmay2011@aol.com

Before traveling to Ghana and receiving our selected internships, I had in mind one of the main impacts I wanted to receive from this 25-day journey. I have had numerous friends and family members that have traveled to different countries in Africa working at orphanages and with young African children. When asking about their personal experiences, the only response I seemed to have received was, “You’ll just have to experience it for yourself.” This was my chance.

On our last day of orientation before flying overseas to Ghana, we met as a group to select our desired internships or places of volunteer. When in Ghana, I desired a unique experience, something far different than the student organization and internship work I have completed in the States. I saw Weep Not Child Foundation – Children’s Orphanage on the page and immediately wrote that as my top choice. Having several other students choose that as their first as well, I was ecstatic when I saw that my name was chosen with one other student to volunteer at the Foundation while in Ghana.

I have completed two full days out of four at the Weep Not Child Foundation. The learning process began within the first few seconds our car drove through the gates of the secluded orphanage. The knowledge I have gained from the two days working with the children and adults at the Weep Not Child Foundation is irreplaceable and immensely beneficial to the growth of who I am going to become as a person from here on out. Before starting at the Weep Not Child Foundation it would have been beneficial to have prior knowledge on the circumstances and emotions I was about to face. 

Things one must do in order to prepare for the first day of arrival at an orphanage:

1. Mentally prepare yourself – arriving at any orphanage is not an easy task. Contrastive to America, the conditions of some of the orphanages in countries like Ghana are sub par to say the least. You need to be aware that the bathrooms may just be dirt mounds, the live poultry squawking next to you may be fresh dinner the next day, and the showers may just be buckets of water. Aside for the conditions, you must be aware of the toll that these children will have on your heart. You will care for them immediately, you will love them like your own, and you will never want to leave their side.
2. Research – Ghana specifically is divided into different regions: Central, East, West, and Northern. Each of these regions is home to different Tribes found in Ghana. These different tribes also value different beliefs. These beliefs could contribute to how the orphanages are run, and also what the people inside of them believe. Research the orphanage you will be working with, research the location, the beliefs that area holds, research any piece of information that will make you as prepared as possible before entering the gates. This will catch you less off guard when entering the facility and hearing what the Madam has to say about the history of the orphanage and their daily activities.
3. Keep an open mind – After mental preparation and research, before stepping foot into the gates you need to remind yourself to keep an ope n mind. They will eat differently than you, cook differently, clean differently, and go about daily life differently than you. You must be able to accept and tolerate how these people live. An orphanage is the last place where judgments should be made. 

Last piece of advice: Take a step out of your comfort zone and volunteer at an African orphanage in your lifetime. Put it on your bucket list, save money, and make the trip to impact someone's life just as much as they will be impacting yours. As cheesy as it is, these children will change your life, forever.