Thursday, July 10, 2008

Deary Diary II

We passed a young man, probably in his 20s, who used to run a restaurant in Pestel until he became ill last year and had to be hospitalized in Port-au-Prince. Ever since he came back, however, he has been in a depression. He cannot be who he once was. He prefers to be busy, active, making meal after meal. But apparently he no longer has the stamina (and confidence?).

At 11am we met with Sister Fidelis' community development group (KPA). There were a little over 30 who attended (some walking about 2 hours from their village). Each gave a report of his/her village about the population size, number of cisterns (including the # of non-functioning cisterns), and latrines.

Here are a few samples from the report:

Village of Abrico = 1,220 population.
# cisterns = 15
# functioning = 11
# latrines = 5
1 public school (government pays teachers)

Village of Toma Elli = 1,500 population.
# cisterns = 8
# functioning cisterns = 6
# latrines = 3
1 private school (no money to pay teachers)

At Abrico for example the public school serves 250 children. The building is one-room, about 20 x 20 feet. The villagers construct temporary structures (out of bamboo) around the structure.

Sadly about 1/3 of their cisterns do not work. They're cracked. From our discussion the reasons for this are either that they dried out (due to a prolonged drought earlier this year...the worst they'd seen in 30 years) or poor construction. They do not have funds to repair them, and this worsens the water situation for Pestel. During the drought many had walked up to 10 miles to find water. That's hard to imagine...but I met these people personally. And when they say they walked to "Corail" (about 10 miles away) I believe them.

Overall I was very encouraged by this meeting. These appear to be well-invested inviduals (volunteers), both men and women.

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