Day 3 in Haiti

GONAIVES, Haiti -- Rainy season is late getting started. Many residents of this sea-side region in central Haiti aren't too fond of heavy rains these days, though the rains are becoming uncomfortably late. The people here, already some of the most impoverished and disenfranchised on earth, are still experiencing the economic aftereffects of Hurricane Jeanne in 2004.

Thursday, May 18 was Flag Day ("fet drabo," in Creole). It is a national holiday. On Wednesday, many children returning home from school at 1 p.m. carried red-and-blue Haitian flags on small sticks for informal parades on Thursday. School was out. It normally runs from 7 a.m.-1 p.m. to avoid the intense afternoon heat.

On Wednesday, while driving north from Port-au-Prince, I heard on the radio a discussion featuring a government official and a Haitian college professor. They were talking about the importance of young Haitians to have national pride and hope in a better future for their homeland.

Haiti remains the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The per capita income barely exceeds $300 U.S. a year. Almost half of all Haitian children die before the age of five. I met and spent this morning with a Haitian family in the slums that has lost two of their eight children. Two of the older ones, teen-agers, are living in the countryside working a small farm with their grandparents. There is little work. Unemployment is 60 percent. The government has no regard for its people. One percent of the population controls more than half of the national wealth. There is a sense among the people that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer (sounds like the United States under the current administration, to a lesser degree).

I traveled Thursday to the east of Gonaives, about 70 kilometers, to the village and valley of Bassin. There, the Catholic relief group Hands Together has undertaken a six-year project that started with the contruction of a 25,000-gallon water cistern. It is filled by a pair of deep adjacent wells. Slim concrete canals run down the side of the mountain from the cistern to provide safe drinking water for residents and irrigation for crops. This section of the valley is greener and more fertile than the area around it. Coconut and mango trees are growing on the hills. Small crops of corn are sprouting. The bean crop will be planted again in November at the start of winter growing season.

Hands Together, in conjunction with the Catholic Diocese of Gonaives, purchased a used Ingersoll Rand well digger more than 10 years ago, and it has since dug several dozen safe-water wells throughout central Haiti.

Atop the hill, above the cistern, sits Hands Together's Aricultural and Environmental Center. Students and residents from all walks of live come from around the country to attend seminars that stress the importance of argiculture and greater ecological awareness. Increasing the number of trees and acres of green vegetation are important to reverse the generations-long trend of deforestastation. Less than 2 percent of Haiti's once lush forests remain, and the lack of ground covering contributed the fast-moving flood waters that engulfed Gonaives in 2004.

I am based at the Holy Family School in the Gonaives slum of Trou Sable. There are no public schools in Haiti. The only schools are funded by religious organizations, primarily the Catholic Church. The Diocese of Gonaives has 71 schools, all receiving aid from Hands Together for supplies and capital projects and to increase salaries of well-educated teaching staffs to a level that can sustain a family's basic needs.

-- Mark Curnutte