no remorse

perhaps

up the mountain

This weekend I visited Parc National La Visite - a national park that is a 30 minute motorcycle ride + 4-hour hike above the greater Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. The 300 or so hectares of pine and deciduous trees around the village of Sequin compose one of the last standing forests in Haiti. It protects one of the country's three main watersheds - no small task in a country that has been completely ravaged by environmental destruction.

The region has technically been protected since 1983 when the second generation dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier declared it an protected area. His motivation was most likely to access large-scale international donor money available at the time for conservation efforts rather than any personal conviction about environmental protection. Before establishing the park, he had set up a lumber mill in the area and was exporting the valuable hard woods.

While the national park status has likely helped to slow degradation process to some degree, the total lack of capacity to enforce regulations (e.g. park guards have not been paid in a very long time)and the relative proximity to Port-au-Prince means that trees and other high value forest products continue to disappear at an alarming rate. We saw multiple donkeys and groups of children loaded down with fire food walking along the park roads.

The Foundation Seguin was founded by a group of wealthy Haitians committed to preserving this region. They run a small guest house just outside the park that is a popular weekend hiking destination for foreigners living in Haiti. FS has put significant effort into promoting the planting of fast-growing bamboo on deforested land. They sponsor ecole vert - or "green schools" providing environmental education for urban school children. A dozen or so other initiatives are at various stages of development and implementation.

My own trip up to Seguin was too short but lovely. I met up with three fellow Cornellians - my friend J#1 who works for the fortified peanut-butter producing NGO, J #2 an ornithologist I originally met back in Ithaca who has been making short research trips to Haiti for several years and J#3 who is a specialist in natural resource management who came to help J#2 conduct interviews with local residents about how they interact with the protected space.

Two remnants of deciduous forest zones in Haiti (Seguin and Pic Macacya) and one in the Dominican Republic are the migration destination of choice for the endangered Black-capped Petrels. J#2's research is focused on characterizing the current populations of these birds on Hispanola.

It probably goes without saying that I learned a lot this weekend. Beyond the fresh air and beautiful landscapes, my favorite thing about the trip was listening to the J's and the guest house's owner talk about conservation and development. Here are some photos of the hike up and back.

my next big thing

look here. a girlz gotta have a dream

outs and abouts

March and April flew by thanks to lots of great visitors and travel. Only problem is that it didn't leave much time for getting work things done (and I am definitely paying for that now).

I spent a long weekend in the Dominican Republic in March visiting the capital city Santo Domingo - a 7 hour bus ride away from Port-au-Prince. My agenda was pretty simple - walk a lot, visit a museum or two, go to church and buy a pair of bling, bling sandals. Was successful on all fronts - with the added bonus of eating peach-raspberry-strawberry yogen fruz - twice. You can see a few photos mostly from from the lovely Zona Colonial here. Even after seeing the other side of Hispanola for myself, I have a hard time believing that the extreme differences in infrastructure, environmental degradation and overall economies I saw between the DR and Haiti are for real.

In early April, my dear friend and former Charm City housemate G came for a week-long visit. We spent a lovely few days up in Northern Haiti visiting Haiti's UNESCO world heritage sites** - the Citadelle and the Palace Sans Souci - and relaxing at a great little B&B on Labadi beach. We spent one day in the clinic where I work and then roamed around Port-au-Prince for the first two days of the long Easter weekend. Some photos here. It was fantastic on so many fronts including that it gave me a reason to visit a beautiful corner of Haiti and even more so, a chance to spend quality time with someone I dearly love. Thanks again G!

G and I left Haiti for the USA on the same Saturday afternoon. She returned home to Nashville and I started a two-week journey that took me through 5 cities in 4 states via 4 different modes of transportation. (My itinerary was PAP-JFK-ITH-PHL-MSY -HOU-CLT-MIA-PAP. I traveled by plane, bus, taxi and my trusty Nissan Sentra) The primary motivation for the trip was to present a poster about our research at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition in NOLA ...but I also managed to fit in a lot of quality time with some of my lovely friends and their families in Manhattan, Ithaca, Philadelphia and Houston.

While most of the time in NOLA was spent in windowless rooms at the conference center, I did get out to see enough of the city (Mid-City, French Quarter, Business District, Garden District), eat enough amazing food and hear enough fabulous music to convince me that I must get back there soon. A special thank you to A and the unique community at First Grace United Methodist Church /Hagar's House for giving me a fabulous free place to stay for the week. I loved it. Here are a few random snapshots from a walking tour of the Garden District and a little funk/soul on Frenchmen's Street.

I've been back in Haiti for a week now but am already counting down the days until I leave again. Will be spending the first two weeks of June in Southern Africa - visiting two sites doing similar work in Malawi and presenting another poster at a conference in Nambia. An even bigger countdown is well underway - the countdown to the end of this 2-year season living in Haiti. The plan is too return to Ithaca in early August to start writing up my dissertation - with hopes of graduating between May-August 2010. While I'm sure I'll be back to visit Haiti at least once during that time, home will definitely be NY.

On that note...better go get to work!

**Start here to learn more about the massive fortress The Citadelle and the Versailles-like Palace San Souci built by Haiti's only king Henri Christophe in the early 1800s - just after Haiti won independence from the French through an impressive slave rebellion. At that time, the country was divided into a northern Kingdom and a southern Republic.