“Yon Ayisyen, Yon pye bwa,” or “A Haitian, A Tree.”

Here is an article that caught my eye.  This year's flower celebration's theme triggered memories of our visit last year in the Central Plateau around Hinche.  We saw bare mountainsides stretching for miles.  The tragedy of deforestation in Haiti is a centuries-old story with many chapters.

On the other hand, we saw tree planting programs and some of the results of reforestation.  I was especially inspired by the scenery of preserved forests around L'Ermitage, the hotel built and run by the Jean-Mary family.   Here is a glimpse of that vista.

On a walking tour of the family's land, Dr. Kyss Jean-Mary told us about the importance of planting and nurturing trees in Haiti.  Clearly that importance goes beyond restoring trees and retarding erosion; it is a spiritual affirmation of hope for recovery, for wellbeing, and for mending the relation of the ecosystem with the people living in it.  That hope has vision in plans for an arboretum featuring native trees on acreage within sight of the hotel at L'Ermitage.  

Others are part of the nation-wide reforestation effort.  The Mennonite Central Committee, for instance, has led a program that has planted more than 200,000 trees since 2008.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) are donating 400,000 trees for planting this year.  Most important of all is the effort being backed now by the Haitian government to plant 50 million trees per year.  This campaign's goal is to double the forest coverage by 2016 up to 4.5% of the country's land.  This is just a beginning towards bringing Haiti's forest coverage up to the level of other Caribbean countries.  That is expected to take 50 years.  (Read more about it here.)

So, I invite my reading friends to see the planting of trees not only as a practical necessity for the recovery of the ecosystem, but also as a metaphor for hope that must be sustained for decades to realize the renaissance of Haiti.