First Week at Fonkoze

Just wanted to fill you all in on how my first full week in Port-au-Prince. Thank you to all of you that have left messages so far - it's been great reading them. The week started with a trip to a beach an hour north of Port-au-Prince last Sunday. The family I am staying with invited me to come with them and I thought it would be a neat experience to see what it was like. They charged roughly $15 to enter. There was a seaside restaurant and bar and a 300 yd stretch of beach shaded by large palm trees. They had waiters that came around to take drink/food orders as well as men hawking things like coconuts and seafood. It was a nice setting but my only complaint (I feel like a snob saying this) is that the sand had so many rocks that I found it difficult to walk on. Needless to say, I spent most of the time reading on a beach chair. As I mentioned in my last post, I feel a little guilty about experiences like this we passed refugee camps on the way to the beach but I think it is important to experience different facets of Haiti. Sometime soon I will update the Picassa site with some of the pictures I took.

On Monday I met my boss, Getro, and learned what I would be working on for the first few weeks. He is a Haitian but has spent a semester studying at NIU in Dekalb so his English is pretty good. We will be focusing on business development loans - $1500-$25,000 USD loans given to develop small shops, typically run by women. He has been training me to study loan applications and financial statements and has been teaching me about the requirements for clients (which we call ti marchann, or merchant women) to recieve loans. The hope (if I understood him correctly) is that after training, I will be able to review loan applications. The other focus of the first few weeks is implementing a program for clients that have been affected by the earthquake in which we will: 1) provide them with a small stipend, 2) cancel their existing loans, and 3) renogotiate new loans.

One thing I really liked about my first week is that Getro asked me to come on a couple of trips to meet with clients of some of the other branches. On Tuesday we took a day trip to Marigo, which is a small city on the southern coast of Haiti. He surprised me again on Wednesday asking me if I wanted to come with him to Tyot, another small city but along the border with the Dominican Republic. We met with several clients at each location to inquire how business has changed for them since the earthquake. We also met with clients late on their loan payments to inquire why they were having difficulty. A common answer was that someone in their family or even the client themselves had gotten sick. Amusingly, one gentlemen told us how he had to take a break from his construction business because he ran to be the town deputy. I wouldn't quite call us loan-sharks because the clients had already taken the initiative to try to pay off the rest of their loans. However, Getro and I where joking about whipping out knives and brass knuckles if the cleints decided not to repay their loands. I guess my nickname from Washu, "brass knuckles O'Brien," was well-deserved.

I hope I continue to be offered the opportunity to travel to different branches across the country like I have. I will admit that Port-au-Prince isn't exactly a pretty city, but the countryside is amazing. The first part of our trip to Tyot we went up and down bare mountains along a dry riverbed and then all of a sudden where in a village called the forest of pines. If I didn't know where I was, I would have thought it was Pennsylvania. When we got close to Tyot, the climate transitioned again to a rain forest.

When I got back last night I swung by the Port-au-Prince country club to become a member of a library run by a Canadian gentleman. I did not expect to have access to a library with English books in Haiti but life is full of surprises. Because the library is only open for a couple hours on Friday evenings, last night was a social gathering of mostly American and Canadians working in Haiti. I was able to chat with several very interesting people, including one man who lived at Four Lakes Apartments several years ago (down the road from my high school).

Finally, today I went to a prayer service and then to look for an apartment with Getro. I definitely need to build my stamina - I haven't gotten out of a Haitian church in less than two hours yet. Luckily I have found a reasonably priced place to move into on Monday. I will be renting a room in a three bedroom apartment with two women. One of the women is looking for a job and the other is studying to be a lawyer. I'll have to fill you all in on my next post how that goes but I met them both today and both of them seem very nice. Hope everyone stateside is having a nice weekend!