This last weekend I actually went back to the US for four days for my brother's college graduation. It was great to see family and get a little break from Haiti. I will admit I enjoyed the hot showers, good food, air conditioning, and especially getting to play golf. It was also nice not to have to think about how to communicate to people or where to get food. Colors in the US seemed more vibrant, especially the grass and trees. Not that there aren't green places in Haiti, but most of the country is not that way. I am roughly halfway through my internship so it was a good time to visit home.

Arriving at the P-au-P after the earthquake is an interesting experience. It is impressive that the airport has jetways for some of the planes (this wasn't the case when I came 1 1/2 years ago) so that you do not have to walk on the tarmac. However, some of the airport was damaged in the earthquake and is not usable. Immigration, baggage claim, and customs were relocated to an old empty airplane hanger.

As you leave the airport, you are mobbed by people asking if you need a taxi, if they can carry your bags (for a tip of course), or if you can give them a dollar. It is a little bit of an overwhelming experience, but luckily my boss was waiting outside customs and guided me to his friend's car.

Because my roomates are shortly moving out from our apartment, I was forced to find another place to stay. Luckily one of my boss's friends, who also works at Fonkoze, is letting me stay in one of his rooms. The best thing about the apartment is that it is only a 10 minute walk from work. It still does not have hot water, but he is working on getting the shower to work so that we do not need to bathe by bucket. We have more electricity than in the other neighborhood (usually from 8PM-8AM)and have both a television and an internet connection (although it's not wireless and is pretty slow). I am even able to watch the NBA playoffs at night (although sadly not the Blackhawks as Haitians don't follow Hockey) Having electricity at night has allowed me to power a fan which has helped make sleeping inside doable.

The day I got back and moved in to the new apartment was Tuesday, which is Flag Day in Haiti. Since Flag Day is a national holiday, we had the day off. At night I went with my boss and his friend to Champ de Mars (the main plaza in P-au-P which is right next to the Palace) to listen to a concert. The concert bore close resemblance to one in the US: a stage with a video screen (with lots of advertisements for cell phones and rice), huge speakers, a dancing mascot, lots of smoking and drinking, and lots of people in the crowd dancing. During the concert, many were waiving small Haitian flags. I heard the music continued until 2AM. One thing I was not happy to see was a group of drunk kids wondering around in the crowd. Without strong parental influences in their lives, just like in the US, many kids resort to drinking, smoking, and even drugs if they can get their hands on them. However, partaking in these activities in a place like Haiti robs them of their futures.

As we exited the concert through a mob of people, I had my first run in with attempted robbery. While some men were pushing and shoving their way through the crowd, I felt some hands trying to reach in my pockets. Luckily I had my hands in my pockets and was with my friends, who were able to guide me to safety. I'll make sure to stay away from crowds like this in the future.

Last week my boss and I went on another site visit, this time to an area named Bomon in the southwest corner of the country. It is quite isolated as it took 6.5 hours to get there by car. Humorously, the first 80 km took 3.5 hours and were on nice, paved roads, but the last 10 km took 3 hours and were on rocky, muddy roads up and down mountains. There were several places on the last 10 km where construction crews were working or trucks were stuck in the mud and we had to wait. Bomon is almost a different country compared to P-au-P. The way people live is much simpler as few people have access to electricity and a lot of people rely on subsistence farming. The change in temperature at higher elevations in Haiti is quite striking. While P-au-P is regularly in the 90s or low 100s during the day, it was only high 60s/low 70s in Bomon.

We were able to visit 13 clients over our two days in Bomon. Many clients welcomed us into their homes and businesses and a few offered us coffee, oranges, or sodas. We are learning many clients were affected by the earthquake in the same manner. Many shop-owners buy/sell their merchandise in P-au-P and had their supplier's warehouses collapse. One client sent her sister with money to buy goods for her and has not heard from her since the earthquake. We met one client who had lost 4 children in the earthquake in addition to losing merchandise. The client pictured below narrowly escaped death as a masonry wall collapsed on the bed of his truck but missed the cab. The remainder of his merchandise is shown in the picture. He is having trouble selling the little cement he has as construction is slow, even in the aftermath of the earthquake. We decided that all the clients visited would be eligible for our earthquake program, in which we will cancel their debt, give them a sum of $125 to help them recover, and if they would like, provide them a new loan. Somewhat surprisingly, we are finding that almost half of our clients do not want new loans, reflecting how bad business still is in the country.

I have found out that I will be splitting up with my boss to visit all the clients in the business development group affected by the earthquake to determine if they are eligible for the program. Until now I have gone on visits, like the one mentioned above, with both my boss and the credit agents and have been trying to follow what the clients are saying during our meetings. However, so that we can visit the rest of the clients more quickly, I will be traveling in the north half of the country with only the credit agents (who do not speak a lot of English). I will say that I have been able to understand most of the details of what the clients are saying. I hope that clients will have patience with me as I am sure I will need to ask a lot of questions and have them speak slowly. As my Creole continues to improve, I am sure this task will not be as difficult as it seems. Hope everyone back home is doing well!

I haven't updated in awhile but have lots of stories so I apologize in advance for a longer than usual post. Two Saturdays ago I was able to go to the beach. We had been planning to go to Jakmel (a city along the southern coast) because they have a party for May 1st but we had to change our plans because my boss had a problem with his tire. Instead, we ended up going to a closer beach in Leogan. The beach was not as nice as the other I had been to as there was no sand; the beach consisted of a concrete patio with a couple cabannas. It was still nice to relax a little bit after a long week. Because the food was so expensive ($12-15 per plate), we decided to eat street food (fried plantains, goat, rice) outside for a couple dollars. One thing that is interesting about both the beaches I have been to is that you can go away from shore for a few hundred feet and not need to swim. My theory is that this is a result of Haiti's deforestation problem (lots of people cut down trees to make charcoal/sell wood) because with no vegetation to stabilize the soil, large amounts of soil wash out to sea. Infact, you can see this from Google Earth if you look at the port of P-au-P. You can differentiate the Dominican Republic and Haiti by Haiti's lack of vegetation. Being one of only 3 "blans" at the beach, I received a lot of comments on my tan. I'm sure my friends and family who have made fun of my farmers tans would appreciate one man's quote: "Blan! Ale peye ou! Ou twop blan!" (White! Go back to your country! You're too white!) Of course the man was joking (and he might have had a few too many beers) as he and his friends were laughing as he spoke.

Although my boss's tire held up for the trip to the beach, it went completely flat the next day after work. Instead of phoning the auto club, my boss had me wait by the car. I was a little nervous as it was already dark but tried to relax and prayed he would be back quickly. After waiting 15 minutes, my boss returned with a repairman carrying a jack and a wrench to remove the lugnuts. After he had removed the tire, the repairman departed sprinting down the street while rolling the tire in front of him. Little did I know it would be 2.5 hours before he returned. I guess it could have been worse, but it reminded me that in Haiti everything takes time.

The next day, we experienced a 4.0 aftershock at work. I can't say I felt it as it only lasted a second, but as soon as it happened, everyone sprinted out of the office. I did not join in their reaction, but remained seated as I did not think pulling a Geore Costanza (in one Seinfeld episode, George pushes kids out of the way as he rushes out of the room during a fire drill) was a great idea. We have had other small aftershocks, but I can not say I have felt any of them since most have been at night.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I was able to join my boss on a trip to visit clients in the Central Plateau. If you have read Mountains Beyond Mountains about the NGO Partners in Health, this is where their headquarters are located. It was neat to see the large hospital complex, if even from the outside. In the village of Cange, where Partners in Health is located, lies Haiti's only hydroelectric dam, which supplies a lot of P-au-P's electricity. As a result of the lake the dam creates, many people lost their crops and had to relocate their homes, causing a great deal of poverty in the area.

The village we visited clients in was named Hinche and is nearby Cange. My boss chose to visit Cange because we had been getting lots of reports that clients far from the epicenter of the January 12th earthquake were affected and we wanted to learn how. We were able to visit 12 clients over two days which I know sounds small, but considering how far apart the clients lived, was not so bad. I cannot imagine having to consistently make the hours long walks or bike rides these people have to get around. What we found was that although clients businesses and homes did not suffer damage, the supply chain had been disrupted. Unfortunately everything is centralized in P-au-P in Haiti: suppliers, universities, jobs, government offices. One of Fonkoze's goals is to foster decentralization by supporting economic activities outside of P-au-P, but it is a long road. A common theme we found is that clients had good waiting to be picked up in warehouses on January 12th that were lost when the warehouses collapsed/were looted. Most of the clients we visited operated small stores out of shipping containers or their homes selling food, cosmetics, second-hand clothes, or construction equipment.It has been especially hard for some of the clients selling food (especially) rice to pay back due to all the food aid being distributed throughout Haiti. Although a few clients had run out of other products, they all had bags of rice which I would not doubt have been sitting in stock for awhile.

This past weekend was fairly low key. I went to church with my boss, got to watch some soccer matches, and hung out for awhile at a makeshift bar near all the tents set up in one of the plaza's near the Palace. Since my boss has left his car at a garage so the mechanics can take care of some other problems, we have been using public transportation. On Saturday, we were able to take a modern bus that Haitians have humorously nicknamed "Obama" because they arrived in Haiti at the same time Obama was elected.This next week I will be going to visit more clients affected by the earthquake in Bomon, which is in the southwest corner of Haiti. I am looking forward to seeing another part of the country. I am also excited for next weekend because I will be visiting the states for 4 days for my brother's college graduation.