HAITI INDEPENDENCE DAY

While the world celebrates New Year's Day, Haitians add the celebration of their independence as a nation state on January 1 every year.  

Basic Facts

Two months after his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's colonial forces in 1803, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Saint-Domingue, renaming it Haiti after its original Arawak name. January 1, 1804 was declared Independence Day.  In 1791, a slave revolt erupted on the French colony, and Toussaint-Louverture, a former slave who was himself a slave owner, took control of the rebels.  It took 13 years of bloody warfare to secure the country from its former slave masters and from Napoleon's attempt to reconquer and reinstate slavery.  The victory not only delivered the country from French control, it also secured freedom from slavery for all Haitians.  

Celebrating Freedom and Independence

Soup Joumou (Freedom Soup) is the festive symbol of Haitian nationhood and freedom.  It was not allowed for slaves to eat this soup.  After slavery was ended and the nation was established, eating the forbidden soup became the essential act of remembrance for Haitians.  

• Haitians make Soup Joumou every New Year...
• Haitians eat Soup Joumou every New Year...
• They share Soup Joumou with friends every New Year...
• They do that in order to remember their past, their struggle for FREEDOM, and their ongoing fight to remain free.

What better way to celebrate the New Year than with the very soup that they were not allowed to have as slaves?

PAINTING THE WELL HOUSE

Monday's plan was to participate with a community finishing the work on its well house.  It was a day of hard hot work painting the well house in preparation for the inauguration celebration the next day -- a big event for this community of about 300 people.

First, though we had to get there and that was the hard part.  For all but a few old folks, including me, that meant a two hour drive on barely passable roads with huge washouts, bumps, puddles and two rivers to cross.  Those in the back of the pickup (third class, for sure) had to stand for two hours. It was even more exhausting coming back after five hours of painting in the mid-day sun.
But all who went returned, refreshed themselves with showers, went down the road for cold drinks before supper and now are in various states of collapse before an early bedtime.

We had an audience of school kids in their uniforms, teachers and mothers watching our work.  

Before

                             



                                                         During     

After




Some men and women pitched in a bit.  We worked together laughing and joking across language barriers.  The kids demanded attention and play, an accommodation most of us were happy to participate in.  Many pictures were taken.

A real highlight was eating our box lunch of peanut butter and banana sandwiches and cookies as guests of the family nearest the well.  Take a look.

Tomorrow we return to this same village for the celebration and ceremony where Haiti Outreach gives them the keys to the pump and the well house signifying that they now own their well and are responsible for managing it and the water distribution system their well committee has created.  It will be fun for sure!

--kjl

GABO: A LITTLE VILLAGE WITH LIVING WATER

Gabo is too little to appear on any map I could find.  It is in the commune of Maissade.  To get there from our guesthouse in Pignon, you head south on unpaved and untended Highway 3 a few miles, then turn west for the most challenging road we encountered in six days of travel.   There are no maps; no signs.  You just have to know which forks to take.  Gabo is about straight north of the town of Maissade.  No roads go straight in Haiti, though.

The road ends before reaching the village and the village had to cut a path for the drilling rig and water tank. The tanker, pictured below turned over.  That delayed the drilling.

To get there, we cross a river (link to video) and bounce through mud holes and ruts that are more like trenches. (link to video here)  But once we arrive, the vista from a hilltop is fabulous.  (video)

People appear to greet us and show us their well.  They pumped water.  Some of us did too.  (video 2)

We have a plaque to commemorate the well and to link our communities together in the accomplishment of a community managed water system at the center of the village.  Here is John Lentz making the presentation. (Presentation video)

We retreat from the sun to the church, a meeting hall that served the village for any gathering.  There, with help from our interpreter, questions are asked by a both the village leaders and us.  We here how much clean water close at hand for most of the village meant to families.  They were working to carry out the management responsibilities for the well and also to increase the households with latrines.  It was obvious that the "animators," those teachers and organizers who came to the village from Pignon many, many times, are village heroes.  Theirs is the transforming work in this process.

Seeing the children gathered for a picture in front of the well, inspires hope that these bright-eyed kids will have a better chance at growing up healthy and strong; that they will learn by their experience how to act together for the benefit of their whole community.  That, after all, is what community development for clean water is really about.

--kjl