First Week, Enjoying Dondon: Kelly Wilson

Driving through the mountains to the EMAD training site from Port au Prince.

       Our first week in Haiti has allowed ample opportunity to learn about our wonderful Hatian colleagues, their country, and focus in on our experiential lesson plans for the up-coming teacher training.  After a few hot nights in Port au Prince, we were driven by our wonderful colleagues (and tour guides) at the Haitian Ministry to Dondon, a site of one of the future agricultural vocation schools.  The drive made clear why Paul Farmer named his book Mountains upon Mountains: our travel swerved us up and down and as we sidled mountain ledges.  Dondon is a small town nestled into those mountains, which means that the air is cool and the mosquitos are slightly less fierce, although our colleague Sammi would certainly disagree. Just like Hollywood, Dondon features an all-caps white-lettered sign as you enter!

Just like Hollywood, Dondon features an all-caps white-lettered sign as you enter!

The site is beautiful, just begging for a bunch of students to fill it up and get its projects moving.  There are many started projects that appear pretty disheveled at this point, as too few people live here regularly enough to uphold them.  This makes us all the more enthusiastic to ensure that the teachers are well-prepared so that this year’s October opening of the school will be a success. 

Our colleague Caleb explaining the processes at the livestock market in St. Raphael. 

Between lesson planning, we have been building up our goat area, making sure that there is plenty of space outside for foraging as well as piecing together a nighttime shelter to protect against predators.  We have had help from the technicians who are based in Dondon; they have been a great resource to learn about Haiti and better understand the challenges that farmers face.  

Today was especially exciting.  As previously mentioned, our training will focus on integrated goat management.  So of course, the most important materials we have needed to purchase are goats!  We have been waiting patiently for Thursday to roll around: the day of the St. Raphael livestock market.  We piled into the EMAD truck this morning and 30 minutes later were surrounded by goats, donkeys, and pigs strapped to the back of motorcycles.  We jumped out of the car and looked around for the goats we needed.  Unlike how we might normally look for a goat, we were eyeing the skinny ones: we needed some variety so we can demonstrate to the AGFs different Body Condition Scores (BCS). 

The training goats strapped into the trunk securely so they would not be thrown around on the bumpy roads. 

After an hour scanning the livestock market, we ended up with five nervous does and a very squawky kid.  They were secured in the bed of the truck, and we brought them back to site.

Now they all tethered to areas with plenty of delicious overgrowth for them to munch down.  We are excited to spend the next few days habituating them to appropriate handling and eventually some more nutritious feeds.  Next Tuesday they will be the stars in our first week’s lesson as the 2015 Summer Curriculum Development training at EMAD begins!