My Journey in Haiti

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arts, book, books, children, Haiti, HTF, literature, non-profit, photographs, stories

I put together a blurb book of the photos and stories I wrote on my journey in Haiti.  The book is available for sale on the blurb.com site.  All proceeds will go directly to HTF to help the lives of children in Haiti.

Please take a look.

My Journey in …

By Michael D. King

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Hotel Montana

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earthquake, Haiti, hotel montana, memorial, nature, plants

Tree trunk covered in staghorn ferns.

View from the memorial at the Hotel Montana

One of the more somber things that we did in our visit to Haiti was to stop by the site of the former Hotel Montana.  The hotel is gone now, swept away in the earthquake that claimed so many lives on January 12, 2010.   Tom, one of the men who was part of our group, asked to stop by there to pay his respects to a colleague and friend who was killed when the hotel collapsed in the earthquake.  On the day of the quake, 220,000 people in Port au Prince died and over 300,000 were injured.

The memorial was simple and solemn. The area is fenced off and stands on the brink of the hill overlooking a beautiful valley.  At one side stands a tower with a bell.  Next to it is a tree trunk covered in ferns and other plants.  These ferns are air plants which means that they don’t need soil to grow.  They live off of the moisture and nutrients they take in through the air.  I thought it was a fitting plant for the memorial. They keep watch over the site and continue to grow so long as there is air and moisture. Off to another side is a shaded area with benches so that you can sit and think about the loss of life that happened that day. During our visit there I didn’t see any other memorials to the victims of the earthquake (thought that doesn’t mean there weren’t any, we just didn’t see any).

Tom told us that his friend was there on business and it was by happenstance that he made the trip.  Another colleague was supposed to be on that project, but couldn’t make it, so Tom’s friend went instead.  For me, it really drove home how fragile life is and how quickly it can end.  Though, I’m guessing that Tom’s friend was happy being there and helping the people of Haiti.

Chemen Lavi Miyò

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Chemen Lavi Miyò, Haiti, HTF

Chemen Lavi Miyo, or the Road to a Better Life, is a program supported by the Haitian Timoun Foundation that is targeted toward women who are at margins of society.  To be a member of the program, the family must be headed by a woman who does not have any income generating opportunities.  She must have small children who are unable to attend school, and she does not have access to food and healthcare.

We spoke to three women who were in the program and got to learn about their progress in the program. You could see the pride in their faces as they told us about their homes, assets, and families.  We were invited into their homes so that they could show their water filtration system.  The smiles on their faces was heartwarming, knowing that they were on the path to earning money that would allow their children to go to school and provide them with the bare necessities of life.

To learn more about this program, visit the Haitian Timoun Foundation website and click on the link for the CLM project.

Haiti Street Scenes

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d300s, Haiti, HTF, lightroom, market, nikon, photoshop, travel

Open air markets, like this one, can be found on most streets in Haiti.

I’m still working through all the photos that I took during my time in Haiti.  Today’s installment is scenes from the streets of Haiti.  There is still a lot of  damage to houses and roads from the earthquake in January 2010.  There are also a lot of open air market areas where people set up shop on the sidewalk and sell foodstuffs, clothing, shoes, auto parts, you name it.  There’s a block in Carrefour that is a solid city block of auto parts dealers. You could build an entire car from all the parts.

Enjoy!

Tetkole

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children, Haiti, HTF, Jacmel, Tetkole

As we toured the Tetkole school, one of the boys came to check out the strangers who were visiting

On our way back to our hotel in Jacmel, we stopped at the Tetkole school.  This school rescues children who are living on the streets and provides them with a home and schooling.  It’s a small school right now with only a few children there, but Verbo has big dreams and he is working to increase the size of the school.

In the image of the two boys, one of the boys was working on homework using a pencil that was about 1 inch long.  It had been sharpened down to a nub.  I had a pencil in my camera bag that was about half the size of a full pencil, but about 5 times the size of his pencil.  I gave him my pencil.

One of the things I noticed frequently as we traveled around Haiti was that school children would be working on homework in any free time they had.  You’d see them sitting outside their homes with workbooks and papers busy learning.  I suppose that in a country with such a small portion of the population able to go to school, the ones who do get to go really take advantage of it.

The band you see in these images was playing a concert for us.  The first song they played was the University of Wisconsin fight song.  The director had attended Wisconsin.  I asked him to learn the Ohio State fight song so that when I come back next year I could hear them play that.  Somehow, I doubt that will happen.

The hand prints you see in the images were on many walls at the school.  They are the hand prints of the children who were attending the school.