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I said, "Kids, look sad and I'll send the photo to Dad and tell him we need him to come home."
Try one ... Lydie was too freaky looking...
try two...
Third try ... best effort.
Djenie and Kenny - formerly at Harbor HouseThey visited yesterday, he turned two last month.
Before the date with Noah for his birthday ... Favorite quotes of that night, "Well Mom, you're my first date ever. I guess someday I'll have to tell a girl, Sorry to say it girl, you are not my first date."  Later when Troy called, he said to Troy, "I am with your lady, we're out, you should be jealous."  He wore Troy's cologne for the date. :)
Babies Gloria and Gary - both born this year...
Marie Fusenie and baby Tamar at their post-partum check-upPaige and her traffic-time reading ...
John turned 60.  Seems like a lot of years of bad hair to me. 
Abigail turned 1 (Jimmy and Becky's baby girl)





Said to the boys: "Hey, we think we found a teacher for this summer"  Isaac said, "Oh really, who?!"  I said, "Her name is Chelsea and she is cute and smart."  Noah said, "Well, if she is cute I'm gonna have to kiss her."  Meet cute, smart Chelsea who is coming for six weeks this summer to help make us all sane.

By Haiti Grassroots Watch (Haiti Liberte)

Last October, officials from the Haitian government and a number of foreign governments and institutions, who call themselves“friends of Haiti,” saw their dream become a reality. Finally, there was earthquake reconstruction progress worth celebrating with the inauguration of the giant Caracol Industrial Park (PIC), which, according to its backers, will someday host 20,000 or maybe even 65,000 jobs.

            President Michel Martelly was there, as were Haitian and foreign diplomats, the Clinton power couple, millionaires and actors, all present to celebrate the government’s clarion call: “Haiti is open for business.”*            “We supported the Caracol Park because we knew it was going to be an extraordinary thing for the north,” then-Social Affairs Minister Josépha Raymond Gauthier told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW). “The park will allow us to ‘decentralize’ the country and create a northern ‘pole.’ It will also give people jobs in an extraordinary way!”            But a two-month investigation by HGW discovered that the number of jobs in the north is not yet “extraordinary,” and that many other promises have not yet been kept.            One year after it started operations, only 1,388 people work in the park; 26 of them are foreigners, and another 24 are security guards. Also, HGW research among a sampling of workers found that, at the end of the day, most have only 57 gourdes, or US$1.36, in hand after paying for transportation and food out of their 200 gourdes minimum wage (US$4.75) salary.            HGW also learned that most of the farmers kicked off the land to make way for the industrial park are still without land.             “Before, Caracol was the breadbasket of the Northeast department,” said Breüs Wilcien, one of the farmers expelled from the 250-hectare zone. “Right now there is a shortage of some products in the local markets. We are just sitting here in misery.”            Another farmer, Waldins Paul, a member of the Association of Caracol Workers, explained: “In my opinion, [the PIC] has its advantages and its disadvantages… The good part is that there are a lot of people who before didn’t have anything to do, who just sat around yawning. But now they see they aren’t getting that much for working, since 200 gourdes (about US$4.75) can’t do anything for anyone. What’s worse, it has impoverished the breadbasket of Haiti’s North and Northeast departments.”            The PIC was put together by the U.S. and Haitian governments with help from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It cost, for the first phase, at least US$250 million. Almost half, about US$120 million, came from U.S. citizens. Since then, more money has been spent on studies, roads, and on paying off the farmers expelled from their lands. [See “Caracol By The Numbers”]                                                                    
“The disadvantages”
The January 2010 earthquake forcefully dislocated 1.3 million people in Léogâne and the capital. But those weren’t the only regions that saw dislocation. The PIC also forcefully expelled people: the 366 families who were farming 250 hectares of fertile land. [See “Haiti: Open for Business” to learn more about the choice of Caracol for the park.] The Chabert plantation assured the survival of about 2,500 people in those families, as well as 750 agricultural workers who toiled for at least 100 days per year each year on the plots.            The Haitian government requisitioned the land in November 2011, covered it with asphalt and fill, and put up giant hangers for the factories. The Technical and Execution Unit (Unité Technique d’Exécution - UTE), an agency of the Finance Ministry, has been charged with the task of relocating of the farmers, and also with paying them damages to cover the cost of every harvest lost until they receive new lands.            According to the UTE, each farmer is getting US$1,450 per hectare to make up for the lost cash revenue, as well as an additional US$1,000 per hectare to account for the food that the family would have eaten from its own plot(s). (HGW could not determine if the agricultural workers also received payments.)            In January 2013, the UTE told HGW that the state had paid out to the farmers on two occasions, because the farmers had lost two harvests thus far.             In addition to the money spent to reimburse the farmers – a total of about US$1.2 million, Haiti has also twice lost 1,400 metric tons (MT) of agricultural products, or 2,800 MT of food produced in Haiti for Haitian consumption. It takes over 100,000 bushels of dried beans to make up 2,800 MT. Finally, the UTE itself has an operating budget of about US$1 million. [See Caracol By The Numbers]            Verly Davilmar will be getting 35,000 gourdes, or about US$833, for the most recent harvest lost. Before, he worked a half-hectare of land, growing yams, manioc and spinach. No longer. No land. He sits at home. A family of 10.            “What they gave me is gone in a flash,” he told HGW. “There’s no other revenue. You don’t have any land so you have to make do with nothing.”            UTE Director Michael Delandsheer told HGW that his team has almost found a solution. The farmers will eventually get plots nearby, in Glaudine.            “Our first priority is to give the farmers land so they can work,” Delandsheer explained.  “But even then, once they have land, we aren’t finished. We are going to make sure they get official leases to their land from the tax office, and we are going to accompany them throughout the process. Even then, our work isn’t done. We want to continue to accompany them, to help them improve their productivity.”            After almost two years of promises, the Caracol farmers remain skeptical. Some of the farmers in the Ouanaminthe area, home to the CODEVI industrial park, never got lands they were promised after being displaced almost a decade ago.             Caracol farmers were also allegedly promised jobs. “They said our family would be able to work [at the PIC], but so far we haven’t gotten any job offers,” Davilmar said.            The assistant mayor of Caracol is also disappointed. At the beginning, Vilsaint Joseph was not completely supportive of the park, but he kept an open mind, he said. And he is happy that the commune now has electricity, thanks to the power plant built by the U.S.. But people in Caracol haven’t gotten jobs.            “There are people who are about 32 years old, who went and got training, but they didn’t get a job because of the flood of young people in their twenties,” the mayor lamented. “I think that isn’t right. People spent three months getting trained up but then were told – ‘no work for you.’”            The decline in regional agricultural production is also a worry, he said, because before, “come harvest time, there would be truckloads of corn and beans for Port-au-Prince.”            Of a dozen farming families questioned by HGW, all of them said the payments were insufficient. Some said they could not afford to send all of their children to school.            “We are thinking of organizing a sit-in to demand that the authorities give us land so we can work,” Breüs Wilcien told HGW during a recent telephone interview.            Wilcien got 42,000 gourdes (US$1,000) but he said he can’t pay for his children’s schooling.            “My entire household is suffering,” he said. “Before, we always had our manioc field. When things were going badly, we went out there and pulled some up to make sweet bread or to just eat as is. We are really suffering these days.”
The “winners”
If the farmers and their families can be considered as “losers,” at least for the moment, the government and its partners say that those who got jobs are “winners” because they have employment. All of the documents concerning Haiti’s reconstruction talk about the need to “create” jobs and in this regard, the PIC is held up as the biggest “success” thus far.            HGW interviewed 15 workers, men and women, employed at the South Korean factory employing most of the PIC’s workers. This assembly factory – S & H Global – is a subsidiary of SAE-A Trading. It puts together clothing for some of the biggest U.S.-based companies, including JC Penny and WalMart.            All of the workers – most of them women, as in assembly factories the world over – confirmed that they received the minimum wage of 200 gourdes (US$4.75) per day. Among the workers questioned, 11 said that they spent on average 61 gourdes on transportation each day, and another 82 gourdes on the midday meal and a drink. That left only 57 gourdes or about US$1.36, for all the additional expenses: water, electricity, food for the family, clothing, school fees, etc. [See “Haiti: Open for Business”]            “I can’t live on this salary. It doesn’t do anything for me,” Annette** told HGW.            Before the PIC, this mother of 10 worked at the CODEVI industrial park in Ouanaminthe. She lives near the border town and gets up early every day to come to the PIC. Annette left her job for the new position in the hope that conditions would be better, she said. She was wrong.            “What I found is not worth if,” she explained, but she doesn’t know what else to do. Annette is in the same position as the thousands of Haitians who agree to work for a 200-gourde daily salary.            Economist Frédérick Gérald Chéry believes that the Haitian government has a flawed approach to the minimum wage question, and that it has made a huge error in focusing on assembly factories where workers rarely earn more than that. In addition to not providing enough income for even a basic existence, the State University professor notes that a 200-gourde salary cannot contribute to the growth of other sectors of Haiti’s economy.            “You have to calculate what a worker earns and then what he can buy with that money,” Chéry told HGW during a November 2012 interview. “What he can buy is the most important factor. You should not set the minimum wage according to absolute terms, but in terms of the basic necessities. You should not encourage a worker to buy rice that comes from the U.S. or the Dominican Republic. A minimum wage should be able to buy local products.”            Waiting for a bus to go back home to Cap Haïtien, Flora* was overjoyed to talk to a journalist, despite clearly being exhausted.            “God sent you,” she said. “I have been needing a journalist to talk about what we are putting up with in the park. They yell at us as if we were animals. The food they prepare is bad. There is only warm water to drink. Sometimes I’ve had to work all day without a face-mask. Dust fills my nose.”            The workers’ comments were backed up by a recent report from “Better Work,” an agency of the UN’s International Labor Organization, which found that half of the 22 assembly factories in the capital region were “in non-compliance” as far as working conditions were concerned, and that 16 of them did not have an “acceptable” temperature.            Asked about salaries and working conditions at its Caracol factory, a representative of SAE-A contacted via email said the company respected all aspects of Haitian law. However, when HGW asked to visit the factory in order to see the working conditions, the request was denied. More recently, a union organizer also asked to visit the factory in order to see working conditions. That request was also denied.            HGW’s investigation revealed that of the 15 S & H Global workers questioned, 80% said they felt the salary level vs. the amount worked did not make sense.             “It’s not worth it!” Adeline* said. “The supervisors don’t respect us. They don’t see us as human beings. They hit us with pieces of cloth.”            Formerly a merchant, Adeline said she wants to go back to her old profession rather than continue to suffer.            Haiti’s former Social Affairs Minister told HGW that she realizes the minimum wage offers a low salary. But she immediately echoed the same justifications that all the factory owners and managers repeat.            “Someone working in an assembly industry [factory] isn’t going to get rich overnight,” ex-Minister Josépha Raymond Gauthier said in a November 2012 interview. “But someone who has no job at all has no hope.”            The Caracol mayor told HGW that he felt the same way last year. Now that he knows more about what he called “unacceptable” conditions and the low salary, he has changed his mind. The jobs are nothing short of “humiliation,” Vilsaint Joseph said.            The Haitian government has said that eventually it will provide free bus transportation to workers and has also promised that some of them will receive housing with subsidized mortgages. Part of the US$120 million pledged by the U.S. government is for a US$31 million development of 1,500 small homes called “EKAM” and located near the PIC. According to U.S. and IDB documents, the houses – costing US$23,510 each – will be for workers as well as displaced Caracol families considered “vulnerable” because they are headed by a woman or an elderly person.            However, because only 750 are funded at the moment, relatively few will benefit. [See also Caracol by the Numbers]
Worth the risk?
In all, for the installation of the park, the power station, EKAM, the payments to the farmers, and other expenses, the U.S. government, the IDB and the Haitian government have spent over US$250 million. But even with that investment, the eventual benefits to Haiti and to the Haitian state are not guaranteed.            All of the companies that set up shop in the PIC will get various tax breaks, meaning that little money will end up in the state coffers. Until the year 2020, the clothing assembly companies, like S & H Global, have additional privileges thanks to the U.S. “HELP” (Haiti Economic Lift Program) law. [See “Haiti: Open for Business”]            S & H Global does employ 1,388 people and has promised to employ another 1,300 by the end of the year. In addition, SAE-A is building a school and will subsidize its operation.            But to establish those jobs, SAE-A closed down a Guatemala factory, throwing 1,200 workers on the street. The company left Guatemala for Haiti because of Haiti’s low salaries and because of the HELP law, according to Prensa Libre. Once the HELP advantages expire in seven years, will SAE-A also leave Haiti?            Even with these meager results, the Haitian government and other actors say the PIC is a good “bet.” In one document, the IDB promisesthat it will set Haiti on “the path of economic growth.”            Speaking to the New York Times in 2012, the IDB’s country manager José Agustín Aguerre recognized that “[c]reating an exclusively garment maquiladora zone is something everyone — I wouldn’t say tries to avoid, but considers a last resort.” Still, he said, the PIC is “a good opportunity” even though the salaries are “low” and the jobs “unstable.”            “[Y]es, maybe tomorrow there will a better opportunity for firms elsewhere and they will just leave,” Aguerre added. “But everyone thought this was a risk worth taking.”            Economist Frédérick Gérald Chéry has a completely different analysis. Chéry notes that rushing to set up assembly industries, without a global plan, and without a national debate, is an error.            “Rather than seeing the textile industry as a temporary thing, they see it as a contributing sector to our economy, and it cannot be that, because the salaries are too low and because we don’t produce any of the inputs,” Chéry told HGW. “We don’t produce the cloth, we don’t do the design, and we don’t have an ‘economy of scale.’ I predict a catastrophe if we stay on this path.”            Also, the economist noted, prioritizing the PIC over agricultural production is very worrying. “If we don’t develop our agriculture in parallel with the clothing assembly industry, the farmers will be the losers,” he said.            The Caracol Industrial Park is not the first big project full of promises to set up shop in Haiti’s north. In 1927, U.S. capitalists established the Dauphin Plantation to grow sisal for the international market. By World War II, the plantation had taken over 10,000 hectares of land and was the biggest employer in the country. But tens of thousands of farmers lost their land to make way for the monoculture, and the entire region became dependent on the industry.            After the war and the invention of nylon, sisal’s price plummeted. The investors pulled out and eventually – in the 1980s – the plantation closed, bankrupt. Its traces can be seen today: ruined buildings and land made less fertile by years of sisal plants.             One of the Caracol farmers remembered the plantation. He knows what happened when the industry closed down. “Today, if you go visit Derac, Collette, and Phaeton, you’ll see,” he said. “If it weren’t for the UN blue helmets and the World Food Organization, those people would have died of hunger by now.”
*  Reporters from Haiti Grassroots Watch and many other media were denied access because they were not on a list compiled by a private media consulting group called Wellcom Haiti, located in the capital.
** This is a fictional name. HGW decided to conceal the identity of the workers in order to protect them from repercussions.
Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication(SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media, and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.
...steam rollers clear road into the 600 acre industrial park. Photo: USAID
Farmer Alfred Joseph, 52, lost the land he had farmed for decades. "What little land I had is now covered with cement. What is an old person supposed to do?"Photo: Lafontaine Orvild/HGW
A Haitian fisherman on Caracol Bay. Fishing employs many in the region. The IDB has promised to help Caracol’s fishermen with new engines and other aid. Photo: Lafontaine Orvild/HGW  Caracol By the Numbersby Haiti Grassroots Watch
Approximate cost to launch the PIC: over US$250 million
Source of the financing – US government: US$124 million; Inter-American Development Bank: US$55 million, SAE-A (S. Korean textile company): US$78 million
Number of eventual jobs at the PIC, according to different actors: 37,000 or 40,000 or 65,000…
Number of jobs at the PIC in January 2013, including the 24 security guards: 1,388
Number of farmers kicked off 250 hectares (the Chabert plantation and other lands) in order to make way for the PIC: 366 families
Amount of agricultural products (corn, manioc, plantains, black beans) formerly grown on those 250 hectares: 1,400 metric tons each harvest
Monetary value of those products: US$807,638 (each harvest)
Approximate cost of indemnifying and eventually relocating the farmers: more than US$4.6 million
Amount of money paid, per hectare, for each lost harvest: US$2,450
Average amount of land formerly farmed by each of the 366 families: 0.68 hectares
Amount of money received by each farmer for each lost harvest, on average: US$1,666
Number of new homes promised for the region from various actors: “up to 5,000”
Number of new homes under construction (January 2013) at the EKAM site, financed by the US government: 750
Amount of money spent by the US government to prepare the EKAM site, which will eventually have 1,500 small houses, schools, and other infrastructure: US$13,724,975 or about $9,000 for each eventual home
Amount of money committed to the US firm Thor Construction for 750 small houses: $17,632,839 or US$23,510 for each small house
Sources: UTE, BID, US government documents, including http://www.usaspending.gov

By Mark Schuller (Haiti Liberte)

On Feb. 26, Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn, who now acts as Haitian President Michel Martelly’s “Ambassador-at-Large,” extolled the progress Haiti has made since the 2010 earthquake as “extraordinary.”            There has indeed been some progress, and Penn has worked hard to resettle and improve the living standards of tens of thousands of people in one of the capital’s largest internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. However, Penn’s recent declaration is best understood as an infomercial, selling President Martelly – a.k.a. compas musician “Sweet Micky” – and reading his lines for a government show called “Haiti is open for business,” a slogan recently challenged by the U.N.             Penn’s performance distracts attention from other grim realities, particularly the almost 350,000 people still living under tents in Haiti. But he is far from the only actor playing make-believe. Here’s a list of what might be considered Haiti’s Oscar-winning performances.

Best Make-up and Costume:
Goes to the United Nations. After over 20 months of vociferously denying overwhelming epidemiological and genetic evidence that UN occupation troops brought a deadly strain of cholera to Haiti in October 2010, unleashing an epidemic that has now killed over 8,000, the world body finally rebuffed a suit demanding compensation for victims, arguing that “the claims are not receivable” and that it is not responsible for damages.            The UN also should be nominated for “Best Humanitarian Actor in a Supporting Role” for this cover-up, and “Best Special Effects” for claiming diplomatic immunity.
Best Picture:
This prize goes to former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who stole hundreds of millions in foreign aid, which went into private Swiss bank accounts and to fund his secret police – the Tontons Macoutes – which killed or "disappeared" tens of thousands of Haitians. Despite this embezzlement (which even the International Monetary Fund has documented1), Duvalier brazenly returned to Haiti in January 2011, probably to make a claim on $5 million in a Swiss bank account which the Swiss government froze. Since then he has been living large. On Feb. 28, he finally showed up in a Haitian court to answer questions about the multitude of human rights abuses under his regime. He was ordered to come back on Mar. 7, but his lawyer now says he is sick in an unspecified hospital.            Haiti’s justice system is also nominated for “Best Special Effects.”
Best Supporting Actor:
For this prize, it is a tie between the international community, humanitarian agencies, and the Haitian government for supporting the climate of fear and violence against Haiti’s IDPs.            In a December report, Oxfam estimates that 233,000 people in 247 camps face forced eviction, a situation condemned by international human rights groups like Amnesty International and others. I have writtenabout the terrible assault on the residents at the Hancho camp near Port-au-Prince’s Industrial Park.            As funds for relocation have all but dried up, many IDPs who remain are in a constant state of fear. Near midnight on Feb. 16,  hundreds of people’s makeshift homes were burned to the ground in camp ACRA 2 in Pétionville’s Juvenat near the Karibe Convention Center.            According to Jackson Doliscar of FRAKKA, “This camp was always under threat. The more then 4,000 families said they don’t have anywhere to go. They sleep in the streets or the corridors between people’s houses. People fled this act of violence and returned to find that assailants continued to burn other tents. Ms. Dilia Mari had five children in her tent, including a one month old baby named Cadet Ismaélla, whom she luckily saved. But according to witnesses, there were three people burned [to death], including a child. It’s important to point out that the camp was burned one and two days in advance of the CARICOM [Caribbean Common Market] assembly,” held at the Karibe Convention Center.            Human rights groups confirmed that as of today no formal investigation has yet been made, and like with cholera, the victims haven’t received any word about compensation for damages.
Best actor in a lead role:
A mission group has raised over $3 million to build homes for people seeking emergency shelter in their compound. That said, the 537 families still in Grace Village, in the sprawling suburb of Carrefour, have been living in constant fear of eviction for the past year and a half.            In a recent video, the journalist group Haiti Reporters not only documents slow progress in relocating Grace Village’s IDPs, but questions the fundraising by Grace Village’s U.S.-based nonprofit parent, Grace International Inc.. As Haiti Reporters pointed out, Grace International has claimed on its website that each “Permanent Sustainable Home for a Family” would cost $7,000. However, Michael Jeune, Grace Village’s administrator, told Haiti Reporters that each house cost only $900 to build.            It’s possible that the Grace International website and Michael Jeune were referring to two different projects, and it’s common practice for nonprofits to charge overhead, typically justified as necessary due to the scarcity of funds for general operating expenses. However, it appears that this large mark-up may well be a case of profiteering (or what is wryly called in NGO circles “non-profiteering”), especially in the light of a discrepancy in Grace International’s annual reports to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The NGO’s 2010 tax return reported “current year” revenues as $981,183, up from $311,157 in the previous year. In their 2011 report, for the “previous year” (2010), Grace International reported $2,831,683.            Perhaps due to the Haiti Reporters’ exposé, or to the lack of progress in IDP resettlement, or to the authoritarian shift in the political climate as President Martelly has unilaterally renamed all but two of Haiti’s municipal governments, the owners of Grace Village have increasingly responded to the IDPs stranded on their grounds with threats of violence.            A leader of IDPs in Grace Village, Marcel Germain, who was interviewed in Haiti Reporters’ documentary, outlined the violent tactics increasingly used.            The following is a transcript of a testimony given at an international colloquium on IDPs and aid held at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, hosted by the Development Sciences Department, to commemorate International Human Rights Day, on Dec. 10-11, 2012. Marcel’s testimony was cut short because the police fired teargas into the university complex in their attempt to quell an unrelated student protest. (The previous international colloquium held at the school last February had also been teargassed.)
Every day is a dilemma where Joel Jeune beats people up, forces them out, threatens people, everything. What’s worse, three people inside have lost their lives. One person [who died] we call “TiFrè” [Little Brother]. During a Brazil-Ecuador football game, there was a discussion. [Grace Village’s chauffeur] took an electric stick they had inside and he hit TiFrè with it in the heart.            The second person who died had bullets in his forearm, the same time. But his brother works as a security guard at Joel’s house. They corrupted him, promising that they’d give him medical care. They have a clinic, here. They said they’d give him a little money, a little rice. This guy didn’t have anything. So they had him stay. He didn’t go to the Justice. He didn’t do anything.             The third person they killed was Jean. They killed him on March 23. Jean had gone out and returned with a bucket full of wood beams and put it in front of his tent. Two children played with the bucket and he told them to stop, that the wood would injure you. He took a coconut leaf and brushed the children’s feet when he saw the kids insisted. 

By Kim Ives - Haiti Liberte

Tens of thousands of Haitians spontaneously poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince on the morning of Mar. 12, 2007. President Hugo Chavez had just arrived in Haiti all but unannounced, and a multitude, shrieking and singing with glee, joined him in jogging alongside the motorcade of Haiti’s then President René Préval on its way to the National Palace (later destroyed in the 2010 earthquake).            There, Chavez announced that Venezuela would help Haiti by building power stations, expanding electricity networks, improving airports, supplying garbage trucks, and supporting widely-deployed Cuban medical teams. But the centerpiece of the gifts Chavez brought Haiti was 14,000 barrels of oil a day, a Godsend in a country that has been plagued by blackouts and power shortages for decades.

            The oil was part of a PetroCaribe deal which Venezuela had signed with Haiti a year before. Haiti had only to pay 60% for the oil it received, while the remaining 40% could be paid over the course of 25 years at 1% interest. Under similar PetroCaribe deals, Venezuela now provides more than 250,000 barrels a day at sharply discounted prices to 17 Central American and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.            The cost of the program is estimated at some $5 billion annually. But the benefits to, and gratitude from, PetroCaribe recipients are huge, particularly during the on-going global economic crisis. In short, Caracas is underwriting the stability and energy security of most economies in the Caribbean and Central America, at the same time challenging, for the first time in over a century, U.S. hegemony in its own “backyard.”            Washington’s alarm over and hostility to PetroCaribe is layed bare in secret diplomatic cables obtained by the media organization WikiLeaks. Then U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson rebuked Préval for “giving Chavez a platform to spout anti-American slogans” during his 2007 visit, said one cable cited in an article which debuted in June 2011 a WikiLeaks-based series produced by Haïti Liberté and The Nation.            Reviewing all 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables which were later released, one realizes that Sanderson wasn’t the only U.S. diplomat wringing her hands about PetroCaribe.             “It is remarkable that in this current contest we are being outspent by two impoverished countries: Cuba and Venezuela,” noted U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Frank Baxter in a 2007 cable released by Wikileaks. “We offer a small Fulbright program; they offer a thousand medical scholarships. We offer a half dozen brief IV programs to ‘future leaders’; they offer thousands of eye operations to poor people. We offer complex free trade agreements someday; they offer oil at favorable rates today. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Chavez is winning friends and influencing people at our expense.”            We can now expect the Washington’s “contest” with Venezuela to escalate dramatically as it attempts to take advantage of the Bolivarian regime’s vulnerability during the transition of power. Already Vice President Nicolas Maduro, whom Chavez asked Venezuelans to make his successor, has sounded the alarm. "We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness," Maduro said on Mar. 5, repeating a suspicion voiced by Chavez himself that Washington was somehow responsible for the fatal cancer he contracted. "The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health."            Maduro also announced on national television on Mar. 5 “that a U.S. Embassy attache was being expelled for meeting with military officers and planning to destabilize the country,” the AP reported. A U.S. Air Force attaché was also expelled.            In short, just as the imperative to secure oil has driven the U.S. to multiple wars, coups, and intrigues in the Mideast over the past 60 years, it is now driving the U.S. toward a major new confrontation in Latin America. With Chavez’s death, Washington sees a long awaited opportunity to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution and programs like PetroCaribe. In recent years, Chavez has led Venezuela to nationalize dozens of foreign-owned undertakings, including oil projects run by Exxon Mobil, Texaco Chevron, and other large North American corporations. The future of the hydrocarbon resources in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin and Orinoco Belt, recently declared to be the world’s largest, will soon reveal itself to be the central economic and political issue, and hottest flashpoint, in the hemisphere.            In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.” Haiti was the first nation of Latin America, gaining its independence in 1804. In the 19th century’s first example of international solidarity, Haitian revolutionary leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion provided Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar, South America’s “Great Liberator,” with guns, ships, and printing presses to carry out the anti-colonial struggle on the continent.            And this was the dream that inspired Hugo Chavez: a modern Bolivarian revolution sweeping South America, spreading independence from Washington and growing “21st century socialism.” PetroCaribe was Chavez’s flagship in that “contest,” as Ambassador Baxter called it.            Ironically, it was former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who first foiled U.S. election engineering in Latin America in December 1990, but his electoral victory was cut short by a September 1991 coup. Hugo Chavez was the next Latin American leader to successfully carry out a political revolution at the polls in 2000. His people defeated the U.S.-backed coup that tried to unseat him in April 2002. Due to his strategic acumen, his popular support, and the goodwill created with PetroCaribe, Chavez’s prestige grew in Venezuela and around the world during his 13 years in power up until his death today, which will bring a huge tide of mourning across Latin America.            The eulogies will be many, but former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who personally knew and worked with Chavez, made a prescient observation in January that stands out:  “In my opinion, history will judge the contributions of Hugo Chavez to Latin American as greater than those of Bolivar.”
In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given “to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.”

By Yves Pierre-Louis and Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)

On Feb. 28, 2013, former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier had to show up at the Port-au-Prince Appeals Court to hear various charges against him for crimes against humanity. After not responding to three previous summonses in February,  the former “President for Life” had to bow to the court’s authority or risk arrest for contempt.            Duvalier was due to report to court again on Mar. 7, but his lawyer claims that he is sick in an unspecified hospital.            Nonetheless, many suspect that the hearings summoning Duvalier are nothing more than “show business” aimed at rubber-stamping the Jan. 30, 2012 finding of examining magistrate Jean Carvès. He ruled that the statue of limitations has expired for prosecuting Duvalier for his human rights crimes. These hearings are for an appeal to overturn that ruling.

            Duvalier ruled Haiti with an iron fist from 1971 to 1986, during which time tens of thousands were extrajudicially killed, imprisoned, exiled, or disappeared.            With many of his victims in the audience, Duvalier responded to questions from members of the Court, the prosecution, the plaintiffs, and defense counsel.            When the court asked about “repression, torture, beatings, crimes against humanity, political killings, and human rights violations” under his regime, Duvalier dead panned that “every time an anomaly was reported to me, I intervened so that justice could be done. I want to stress that I sent a letter to all department commanders, to all section chiefs, asking them to strictly apply the law around the country, and these directives also applied to the Corps of the Volunteers for National Security,” better known as the infamous Tontons Macoutes, who were the eyes, ears, and fists of the Duvalier regime.            Asked again later about “murders, political imprisonment, summary execution under your government, and forcing people into exile,” Duvalier replied: “Murders exist in all countries. I did not intervene in police activities... As for imprisonment, whenever such cases occurred, I intervened to stop abuses being committed.”            Duvalier never betrayed a trace of remorse or regret, arguing that “I did everything to ensure a better life for my countrymen... I'm not saying that life was rosy, but at least people could live decently.”             He claims that he on his return, “I found a ruined country, with boundless corruption that hinders the development of this country. And on my return, it’s my turn to ask: what have you done to my country?”            He suggested that he was close to journalist Jean Léopold Dominique (slain in 2000), “who accompanied me often in my inspections in the province” and that he helped Dominique obtain his radio station, Radio Haïti.             Former soccer star Robert “Bobby” Duval, the founder of the Haitian League of Former Political Prisoners (LAPPH), was also in the courtroom as one of the plaintiffs appealing Judge Carvès Jean’s ruling. Duval spent 17 months imprisoned in the infamous Fort Dimanche prison without charges. But Duvalier claimed that Duval “was arrested for subversive activities,” saying that “during a search at the François Duvalier airport, we found weapons in his possession and he was released a few years later by an act of clemency by the Head of State.” Duvalier claimed that Duval’s suit against him “is a real joke” and that Duval “was treated well” and that “a family member brought him food three times a day.”            Asked what he thought about the charges against him, Duvalier said “it makes me laugh” because people are just “inventing fantasies.”            The hearing lasted more than three hours, after which Duvalier’s victims and representatives of human rights organizations said they were satisfied and encouraged that the Appeals Court judges were not intimidated by government pressure. They said they felt more determined than ever to talk about the suffering and torment caused by the murder, imprisonment, disappearances, and other crimes committed under Duvalier’s dictatorship. They were also galled by Baby Doc’s contemptuous attitude during the hearing.            After the hearing, Bobby Duval scoffed at Duvalier’s assertion that he had been arrested for illegal possession of firearms. Of the 13 Haitian political prisoners whom Amnesty International championed at that time in the late 1970s, Duval is one of the three survivors. "Their goal was to kill me," he said, adding that he would not have survived much longer in prison.            Henry Faustin was another former political prisoner who attended the trial. Arrested on Jun. 15, 1976, Faustin spent two months in a dungeon in the Dessalines Barracks (other political prison under Duvalier, located behind the National Palace). Only 20 years old, Faustin was then transferred for another 16 months (until December 1977) to Fort Dimanche. "Fort Dimanche was not child's play,” he said. “You arrived there as a prisoner, with clothes, but then they stripped you naked as a worm."            International human rights organizations are following the Duvalier hearings closely. “If someone like Duvalier is not judged, how can one judge someone who has stolen a chicken to feed his family?” asked Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch. “How do you establish the rule of law when he who is accused of the worst crimes gets away with it? But Haiti has always been considered an exception. Moreover it is interesting to see that the big countries like France and the United States have never requested that Duvalier be tried, because they have disdain for Haiti. Haiti is not entitled to justice. It's good enough if Haiti just gets a little to eat, or if the population has a little shelter. They don’t make the link between the lack of justice for the vast majority and the lack of social justice as well." 
Former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was contemptuous and arrogant when responding to questions in the first hearing into his human rights abuses.

As you know, electricity in Port au Prince (Pòtoprens) can be like a new riddle to solve every day. Its tenebrous unpredictability always keeps us all under the control of the great electricity Czar and all of his minions.  

{Related?: Lab rats are being used less frequently in experiments.}

It is not good to charge batteries on computers, phones, or any electronics unless you have city or generator power. (In other words try not to charge batteries off of batteries, it shortens their life.) I admit that I don't pay attention or care enough about charging at the right time. I admit that my lack of care is annoying to my helpmate. "Charge em if you got em" is frequently called out across the house. 

 I pick up my phone and say, "Wow! How did it get charged to 100%?"

 "Charging your devices is my love language" he replied. 




(so many jokes there, no?) 

Here we are. The last semester of Paige's full-time-life in Haiti. It is sad and happy and wonderful and terrible.

She packed her first 40 pound bag of personal possessions and sent it to Texas for storage with our friends last week.  <sniff> More strategic removal of 50 pound bags is in the works.

Today is day one of our 2013 Spring Break week. Oddly, Paige long ago decided this is not a spring break hot spot and worked to save her translating and babysitting money for a ticket to Texas to see her best friend, sister, brother-in-law, and more friends.
<----

We are all inappropriately dramatic when she leaves here and upsets the balance of our lives. We will begrudgingly put her on the  airplane early morning, but only because we know we need to get used to this goodbye stuff.

In May she'll graduate, friends and family will join us in Port au Prince to celebrate her accomplishments. (Join us!) In late June she'll get on an airplane and head out of here to start her new life.

One of the things she'll do is attend a 10-day re-entry seminar for kids - ahem - young adults that have grown up cross-culturally.  The description and information can be found here and here. I scoffed and mocked this idea of re-entry struggles back before I knew anything about anything. As per usual, I learned I was wrong.

If you are interested in giving a small gift toward this re-entry seminar, please find the PayPal link (right) to do that.  If not interested, no problem at all, but please pray for our girl as she prepares to say goodbye to her home and transition from many years outside of the U.S.  - to life as a freshman American college student. Experience and friends with experience all tell us this adjustment can be challenging.

Related:
We spent January getting in touch with the core group of people that help us do our life here by supporting us with dollars and prayers.  If we could find them by email, we polled them in order to find out how they would feel about us taking an extended time away from Haiti (five months) in order to support Paige and her transition. (And also in order to take midwifery certifications and dental classes that cannot be taken here in Haiti.)

We were nervous about it as we prepared to ask.  We decided that 90% "yes, that is okay with us" was our goal and that if we could get 90% approval we weren't off base to want to do this for and with Paige.  Shockingly we had an 100% "yes, go!" response.

That to say, in August we will join Paige in Texas and be with her for her first semester of life in America. She is excited, we are excited. We'll all wrestle with our awkward, lost, uncomfortable, homeless feelings together as an act of solidarity.

We are so grateful our donors have given us the ability to do it. The five youngest kids are beyond excited and "When we are in America" is the most often uttered phrase in this house right now even though it is still several months away. They have not left this island since that time it shook in 2010; that time they left by C-130 military transport aircraft. Isaac thinks he can taste the juicy steak already.

We are hoping to find adoptive parents or someone else with an interest in a middle-term (five month) assignment in Haiti that might like to sub-lease our house. If by chance you know of someone that needs Port au Prince housing for five months we can guarantee that covering our rent will be cheaper than any guesthouse or hotel option around and they'll get to have total privacy and two amazing (but not amazing smelling) Mastiffs - please send them our way.

Most of us are purposefully living in the moment and this time in America is a long way off still. There is much much much to be done in the next five months  - we just know that the speed at which time passes is increasingly more insane at every turn. It is possible that the Haiti way of focusing only on the next five to ten minutes is what causes it all to pass by in a giant blur. Sometimes I notice that what I thought was coming back to an email quickly was actually coming back to it a month later.  Because of our tendency to lose a month in a blink of the eye, we wanted to share the 'house for rent' news while it could still be considered long range planning for those that might be looking for a temporary place to rent.

And now it is time for Spring Break 2013 to commence.

"I can't wait for tomorrow - even though I'm supposed to live in the moment." 
-Noah Livesay

This study by Santa Clara University ..... very long but scroll down to part 3 , paragraph 6

 

New Design

Reading Jonathan Katz's thoughts on the complicated political history of Haiti and his personal experiences here before, during, and after the earthquake was very interesting to me. Katz was the Associated Press journalist living in Haiti when the earthquake struck.

Two short excerpts:
"They were words you can truly understand only when you realize that to love Haiti is to come away bruised; that loving Haiti is to love something that may not even love itself, but that it's still love, after all."

"Haiti had given, and it had taken, and I suppose I gave and took too. A little over a year before, the Earth had almost taken it all. I was leaving behind friends and the memories of friends, far too many of whom had gone from the world. The island, in good times and bad, is not a place to which you adapt. It rewires you. To cope and not be torched by its energy, you have to change the way you think and feel and see the things around you. Even the illogic has a rhythm to get used to. But there's a limit to understanding. I had thought I'd known Haiti before the quake struck; I had thought I'd learned post quake Haiti when the epidemic hit; I had thought I could predict the direction of things when the election went sour. I had no idea. Haiti, like life, does not care what you want from it."


I had involuntary tears in a few places in the book when I so deeply understood his struggles in the time following the quake. More than once I read out loud to Troy and Paige and their "Uh-huh, yes" responses confirmed that Katz was communicating things we all think and feel.

If you love this country and have an interest in its history or in understanding how millions of aid dollars can be given while nothing visibly changes, I believe Katz gives a fair assessment in his book, The Big Truck That Went By.



Beth thought I would like Madame Dread, I decided to read it on her recommendation.  This book also covers some of the volatile political history of Haiti, making it a both interesting and educational.  I enjoyed reading a memoir written by an American that came here for one reason, then fell in love with Haiti and eventually married a Haitian man. Kathie Klarreich honestly addressed some of the challenges of an interracial and intercultural marriage. Because there is a solid chance a bunch of little Livesays will end up in interracial and intercultural marriages I am interested in better understanding those unique dynamics. Klarreich's respect for Haiti is evident. She beautifully expresses the conundrum of loving a place that perpetually  leaves you uncertain and off balance.

~         ~          ~

Troy is back from his time in Limbe. He had a great week working out there and came home lamenting how "di" (hard) the city is compared to the outlying areas. There is Port au Prince, and there is the other Haiti. - Or maybe it is: There is Haiti and there is Port au Prince.
Whichever way, we love (and other things too) this place that leaves us perpetually uncertain and off balance.

To my dear friend Philippe Allouard, who was killed in a moto accident in Léogâne in Haiti yesterday: You knew Haiti better than almost any foreigner I've ever met, and I always learned so much from listening to your perspective. I hope you are sitting on a shady beach somewhere right now chatting with James, Verdure and all our old friends the preceded you, happy and safe. I will join you there some day. My trips to Ayiti Cherie will never be the same without you.

~         ~         ~


"I am 42 years old. My gray hair and lined face trick you into thinking I'm older than that.

I had five children.

In the earthquake my oldest, who was 14 at the time, was crushed to death in her school building that fell.

After the earthquake I had just four children.

God told me in a dream that He would give me another child, and then in 2011 He did.

Now I am pregnant again and I did not plan for this and I am afraid to have another child to care for so soon. I am getting old.

This is my seventh pregnancy."
~          ~         ~

Tears fall as she speaks.

~         ~          ~
We take her blood pressure as we listen to her story.

162/102

Managing hypertensive disorders in pregnancy is tricky.
Being pregnant in Haiti is tricky.
The need for better access to healthcare in the rural areas and in the cities is substantial.

~          ~          ~

On International Women's Day we salute the women of this island we love. 
We daily learn from them and their strength. We stand in awe of the way they carry this country.

We want more for them ... We want the best for them.  

Maternal Health matters ... reduces poverty ... saves lives.  

Consider giving here today in honor of the women of Haiti. 

(Written by Tara)

You may recall a month or two back I wrote that Troy was doing something new and exciting in Haiti and that he'd be sharing about that.

Ahem. 

Troy has had an interest in dentistry for a long time. He used to work in a dental office with his Mom on occasion.

When he was 18 he had that thing that many of us have when we are young; you know the thing. Six or eight years sounds like forever and you cannot possibly imagine taking on something that will take longer than nine or ten minutes. He made the choice to drink beer and have fun instead of pursing dentistry. The drinking establishments of the Twin Cities salute him.

Fast forward 19 years. Last June (2012) a dental team from Boston came to Heartline. When they left Troy said he knew it sounded crazy but he couldn't stop thinking about how much he enjoyed being a small part of their work and wondered if it was too late to try to explore some type of dentistry training.  Troy started researching and reaching out and asking questions.

Last November Troy was trained in atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) by a dentist that came to Haiti specifically by Troy's request to train him. The guy was a huge encouragement to Troy and because he'd worked so many years in Senegal and had trained hundreds of people in the techniques of ART and had also begun dentistry training at age 37, the two of them very much hit it off.

When that training was complete I asked Troy if he'd explain the why and when and how and all the ins and outs of the whole thing in a blog post.  Troy gave me an unconvincing "Yeah, sure, I'll do that for you my wonderful wife that never nags me" response.

Soooo. I saw on the calendar this morning that it is now March. I am finally giving up on waiting and I will make a feeble and mainly uneducated attempt at explaining the situation.

"The atraumatic restorative treatment (ART) approach was born 25 years ago in Tanzania. It has evolved into an essential caries management concept for improving quality and access to oral care globally." (This technique requires zero electricity or fancy technology and works just as well in a shiny dental office in Dallas, TX as it does in the interior mountains of Haiti or Tanzania.) 

For those with a desire for details and reading words that don't mean things to everyone:
New article - supporting evidence about ART
World Health Organization PDF about ART
Comprehensive 25 year anniversary overview of ART

Troy learned this treatment with the goal of doing this one safe and straight forward thing to help save teeth. He learned it as the tangible and useful thing he can safely do in the dentistry arena while he slowly begins to determine how to pursue more advanced training.

Now you're probably wondering if there are dentists in Haiti.  Yes, in Haiti there are dentists. There are some great dentists. There are some very sketchy dentists.

The average Haitian (which is possibly a rude generalization -please forgive it) does not have a disposable income to speak of, therefore going to a dentist is quite honestly a privilege of the upper-middle and upper class. Most people here are working, bartering, trading, and borrowing money for much more basic needs. A trip to the dentist would fall quite far down the list.

Oftentimes women in the prenatal program will have toothaches for weeks and months without getting help because the cost of seeing a dentist is prohibitive. They live with pain in ways we still cannot easily comprehend. Because money is tight for most folks, teeth are neglected for a long time and rather than saving the tooth by filling a cavity, it is common for teeth to become so decayed they need to be pulled instead.

As the man's wife, I can tell you that it has been a joy to see him so excited and happy. Having added this into his weekly routine and having something far more tangible than what he is usually toiling at has been so good for Troy.  In the last several years I was generally enjoying my day to day life and work more than Troy. He was feeling frustrated at a lack of measurable productivity. That is not to say there was not productivity, that is just to say Troy couldn't figure out how to measure it.

We're not alike in every way but we are similar in this way: we both prefer to be able to measure our work at the end of a day.  We struggle with frustration when things are ambiguous and intangible.  In many ways the unpredictability (read: zero cooperation) of Haiti has forced us to grow in this area, but even so we're both likely to take things in in a literal and concrete fashion and we generally approach things with a clear idea of "how things should be" -- that is super nice and all ... right up until our perceived "should be" is not at all how things are. Then we're frustrated.

Troy is starting with women in the Heartline programs, (sewing, jewlry, prenatal, early childhood development, cooking, literacy) there are enough cavities to keep him busy into the distant future before opening it up to others. For Troy this is one area where he can set a goal, work toward the goal, achieve a goal.  (See a bad tooth, work at fixing said tooth, end up with a finished product of a much improved tooth.)

It is the very beginning of what he hopes will become a long career of fixing mouths.

Antoinette & TroyIn January Troy's mom, her boss, and her entire dental office were in Haiti and they invited Troy to join them. This week another dentist from Minnesota invited Troy to go to the north part of the island to work with him. Knowing Troy is getting a chance to learn and observe and do something he loves is making his cheering section at home in Port au Prince very happy.



About the title: ouvri bouch ou means open your mouth
Photos: teeth repaired by troy with ART 

Amelioration of the cholera epidemic in Haiti: Necessary steps to be taken with assistance from the international community

( original at:   http://www.gknudsenlaw.com/?page_id=196  )

 

The cholera epidemic in Haiti continues to claim victims, in part due to lack of a concerted…

This young man, the freckle-faced comedian of our family, is nine years old today.

Not yet two years old, Isaac and Hope had been in Minnesota for nine months when I went to the doctor convinced I was sick, possibly with something terrible and terminal.  The doctor mocked me, "You're not sick. You're pregnant."  Much maniacal laughter ensued.  That possibility was not on my radar.

Here we are - nine and a half+ years later.
Fast facts about our fifth child:

• Noah was born via crazy emergency c-section and required resuscitation and NICU. He has continued on in the same vein, with attention seeking behavior most every day since.
• Noah has spent 68% of his life in Haiti.  (21% MN & 11% TX) 
• Noah has celebrated all but his 1st and 6th birthdays in Haiti.
• Noah hates milk. 
• Noah loves cucumbers, apples, and strawberries.
• Noah loves stuffed animals and dogs. He really wants another dog. 
• Noah worships his big brother and believes him to be one of the world's greatest humans.
• Noah loves to make people laugh, has a wicked hot temper and a very sensitive and affectionate side that not many people know about. (until now) 
• Noah is going on a birthday date with his mom tonight.  (she cannot wait!)

Happy NINTH Birthday to our complicated comedian. We're incredibly grateful you were a baby instead of a terminal illness and we are madly MADLY in love with your freckle-faced goodness.  
XOXO M & D

In November we reached a point of great stress, I wrote HERE about Lydia. In part I said,  "We try to keep it light(er) when we discuss the ferocious personality that is Lydia Beth Livesay - we're madly in love with this complicated little person, and we feel protective of her.  Her capacity to love (and hate) is really quite a spectacle. In truth some of her behavior the last two months has been pretty upsetting and difficult for the whole family." 
After we wrote that people carefully approached us to say, "I have an idea" and "Can we tell you what worked for us?" We read the various stories and suggestions and talked to an internet friend, Tamara of ZoeRoots. We were very concerned about Lydie and everyone was affected by her angry outbursts. We needed that input.
We identified that the worst behavior began with the big change of starting school. We listed the (possible) past trauma in Lydia's life and we admitted that we were not doing a good job of paying attention to the signals she was sending prior to the total implosions.  
Lydia is the only one of the five youngest kids that ever brings up the earthquake. Every so often she'll say something out of the blue. In those weeks in October and November surrounding her most angry behavior she said, "When we left at the earthquake, that was scary" and "Why did you forget about me?"  We realized that most of Lydia's worst behavior came after feeling left out or alone. We also connected the very most over-the-top volatile times - to a lot of artificial food-dye and sugar consumption. 
If we let her eat a bowl of Fruit Loops and then her siblings left her out of a game - watch out!! Hell hath no fury like a Lydia filled with food dyes and feeling rejected or abandoned.
We started using some of the ideas that Tamara gave us and we tried hard not to miss the early signals she sent of impending doom. Things improved right away. The other thing we did was to attempt to address her diet. We're not delusional and we're not swimming in money, so we knew that many of the healthiest diets would not be easily implemented into our busy (read: chaotic) lives. We knew if we changed her diet we all needed to change our diets too.  Lydia's favorite foods:  white rice, white bread, white noodles and any sugary dessert. That has not changed.  What has changed is that we started finding ways to sneak in more protein (still failing at green things with her - she won't do it) and we began looking at the snack foods Lydia prefers. The yogurt she was eating every single day was filled with food dye. (Watch out for these: Blue 1, Red 3, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6 - they are in almost everything.)
By attempting to remove all food dye and just watching the sugar a little more carefully we have seen a drastic change in Lydia since late December.  It is drastic enough that she is on board and totally believes that too much sugar or things that have dye in it are a bad idea for her.  The other night she said to Troy, "Oh, you're drinking pop? You're going to be wild and angry."  
This particular five year old is doing so much better. Thanks for writing your ideas and thank-you for praying for Lydie ... We're grateful to report things are vastly improved.

related: banned foods still allowed in usa 
MORE related:  Mac and Cheese 

...that is just one piece of the puzzle.

• Support Heartline as we offer prenatal care all throughout pregnancy.
• Support Heartline as we offer a safe, loving, clean environment for labor & delivery.
• Support Heartline as we offer postpartum care after delivery.
• Support Heartline as we encourage and support mothers as they bond during the crucial first six months of their babies lives.
• Support Heartline as we offer family planning and education.
• Support Heartline as we give women the love and respect and care they deserve.

We remain amazed and aware of how privileged we are to be allowed to participate in this work. It is not easy, in fact, it is painful, exhausting, and messy at times. But in the pain and in the mess we so often get to see His glory and provision. We thank you for helping us stand so close to these women as they sort out the tremendous mysteries of life and the incredible miracles of motherhood. 

Humbly,
Beth, Winifred, Agathe, Tara
Photo: Yvette meeting her son 2/28/2013 

a TRUE artist can win "best overall display" without paying attention to details

Morning menu:Cornflakes (Lydia, Isaac)Spaghetti (Phoebe, Hope, Noah)Darkest Coffee possible (Mom and Dad and Paige)
The last couple weeks have been so busy, I'm not getting time to write anything about the good or the bad or the miraculous or the heart-breaking.  Bullet points don't tell stories well but at least they capture a small snap shot of life to try to retrieve the details later on ...

• Small team from Arkansas was here. Friends we met in 2006 led the group. They got to see a lot of different things going on in Haiti in the few days they were here. We skipped having them do any work that would be better offered as paying jobs to the Haitian workforce. That felt good. Or at least it did not feel bad. Troy led the group. I barely saw them but I think they had a good trip.
• Troy opened a car door into his head and looks super bad$%& right now. When he had the giant band aid on there, it wasn't so tough looking. 
• Paige translated a few days for a medical group. She keeps promising me that she will write about the cute and inspiring Haitian people she got to meet but her promises seem empty. 
• We got to see old friends we have not seen in many years and have a mother-daughter double date last week.
• A miracle occurred today - there was not even one car of ours broken down or out of commission.  The last time that happened it was 2011. 
• One pregnant lady in the program had her baby at home and then refused to move for a few days. We found out about it three days after the fact. She then got very sick with pneumonia.  She is doing much better now.  Her baby is doing well too.
• Today the pregnant mom of the twins was having some pre-term labor. Hopefully the hospital she was transported to was able to get those twins to stay in the cooker a while longer.
• Today Yvette gave birth to a baby boy at 3:50pm - He was 6 lbs and 1 ounce  - it was a difficult birth in more than a few ways, we're grateful that Yvette is doing okay tonight. It was great to have Melissa here for this birth or it would have been a transport -- lots of higher level complications to manage.
• The full prenatal day on top of a difficult birth was a little bit of crazy-making today.  Five new ladies started today. 19 ladies had prenatal visits after class. Currently have 46 pregnant ladies coming on Thursdays. That's an all time high and a tiny mistake on my part ... the room doesn't really hold them - the front row has their knees almost touching the teacher. :) 
• The kids got to go hiking in Kenscoff with other families and their teachers on Wednesday. It sounded like everyone had a great day.  Both Phoebe and Hope blamed their moods and troubles of the late afternoon today on the hiking of yesterday.  Brilliant girls.  What makes more sense than this: "I hiked yesterday, so today, 24 hours later, I am unpredictably grouchy and consequently I am unaccountable for my actions."  
• The kids have their second annual ART SHOW tomorrow morning.  Last year John bought this drawing of Noah's for $20 USD ... so the kids are excited to see what ridiculous amount of money John hands over to them tomorrow morning. 

Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, walked into a packed courtroom on Thursday and for the first time answered questions about his brutal, 15-year reign.