Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Photo update 2: The first two days in Deschapelles

 
Driving out of Port-au-Prince, we saw the remnants of a tent city of people displaced (still) by the earthquake.

Pretty little protected lagoon off of the highway

Market in one of the larger cities along the way

Off the coast, you can see Isle de la Gonaive

View from my room in Deschapelles, at Kay Ayiti.

Off of the far side of the house, a breadfruit tree, called lamveritab in Kreyol (and the namesake for the room I was staying in).

Close-up of the lamveritab tree.

Under the shade of the breadfruit tree, a calf and its mama were nuzzling.

 A couple of the students playing with one of the resident dogs, Tig.

The dragonflies were so pretty! Here are some purple ones. 

And here's an orange/brown one!

Tig and Ti Be playfully wrestling in the early morning light.

Ti Be, the other resident dog, was born with only one eye, but he's still adorable!

The only picture I ended up having of the canal, which is a remnant of the colonial era and the plantations that were there.


Side of the house view at the house of the Mellons, the founders of HAS.

The garden at the Mellon house, the memorial grove, where HTRIP (Haiti Tree Re-Introduction Program) is testing out different tree mixes to determine how they can best grow.


On the way to the Mellon garden

Lizard!

Plantains!

Pretty red something or other...

Cacao pods


Beautiful iron gate

The final resting place of Larry and Gwen Mellon

HTRIP is introducing bees!

Beautiful bright red hibiscus

Ffyona posing with hibiscus

Everyone wanted a photo of the cacao pods

Tippy-tap!

A charging station where people (who don't have electricity) can charge their phones. They were powered by a solar panel in the front yard!

We visited a dam, and this is the river on the other side. 

Part of the canal washed out, so the ever-resourceful locals welded together oil barrels to create a pipe between the washed-out sections

Some round, spiky unidentified fruit

Looking up the river toward the dam

Natural spring just below the dam, used as a source of drinking water for locals who are closer to this than the installed well.

A local woman actually collecting water from the spring

Monday, March 18, 2013

Some photos

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I got a little mixed up with the time change. The result was that I got to watch the sunrise over Port-au-Prince, which was great! Here are a few of the photos from that morning.




The fully constructed and filled swimming pool on the otherwise unfinished roof. 






This area was only blocks from our very fancy hotel. Extravagance and poverty as neighbors.

A beautifully painted wall during our driving tour of the city.

Typical street in Port-au-Prince.


THIS is the church referenced in the last post. It was once very beautiful, but collapsed almost completely into rubble during the earthquake. Apparently there are still some sermons held there, though.


I love the painted advertisements. It seems like almost everything in Haiti is painted.

We stopped at the Hotel Olaffson. It's a beautiful compound with some quirky art.









A living wall! So cool!


We drove up into the mountains for a hike, and stopped for a scenic view along the way. The side of the road had some beautiful examples of Haitian metal work.

Some cool plant wall art.

"Papa Noel" - our fantastic professor Gordon.

During our hike we saw a man carrying a huge pile of woven baskets on his head!






Roadside bar on our hike

Several more tap-taps!







A small tent city within Port-au-Prince