in rural Haiti

I had one of the assignments in Haiti that I really enjoy - where I get to go out to visit some of the communities where we do our development work.  Always so much more satisfying than sitting in the office looking at documents.

The journey to this particular community was not an easy one, up steep, rocky tracks that apparently become so slippery as to be impassable after rain, and a short spell driving through what had become a seasonal river following Hurricane Matthew last year.


I couldn't capture it in my photos but in places the track was so steep that I held on tight, nervous that we wouldn't make it.


But the driver was very good - and used to this kind of road I suppose.  Even he, however, couldn't get around the obstacle that faced us around the next corner:

It had seemingly fallen onto the track from the hillside above, and there was no way of driving around it.  Thankfully we were two vehicles, with a number of young men, and after some considerable effort they moved the rock off the track.

Finally at the community, I met some of the community management committee, a group of people who had realised that if the community were to develop, they had to organise themselves to make this happen.  As the community leader told me, "The government have abandoned us".  Apparently the teachers have not been paid for the last three years.

Their small community school was paid for with donated funds a few years back, and at the end of my visit I went to verify the existence of a filing cabinet and some teaching materials we had delivered to them at the start of the school year. They told me proudly that they had just succeeded in getting their first pupil to university.  This was quite astonishing when I saw that there were not even any desks or chairs for the children to sit at, and the school principal said quietly that he was very happy with what we had provided - but that he would really like a desk.  I thought of him when I was booking my flight for my next work assignment in Brazil.  There was a flight home departing Sao Paulo at midday; another flight was departing at 05:24, meaning a night without sleep before the seven hour flight home. But taking the early flight would save $200, and who knows what difference $200 could make to that tiny community school.  Certainly every little bit helps.  & it's good to be reminded, every so often, of the realities of life "in the field"- for those who will never in their lifetimes even dream of the kind of life I've had.