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DONATIONS SENT TO GOOD SAM AS OF

June  2010

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2010 Planned Tours

LINKS:

LA Romana Dreamin

Wallingford DR Team

Circle of 12

HAITIAN EARTHQUAKE RECOVERY

Schools

From the break of dawn men are in the cane fields with their machetes hacking cane stocks.  They work in teams with some cutting while others pick the cane from the field and pack it onto the waiting ox cart.  Working in teams this way helps them to make more money.  The young, more fit, men swing the machetes while the older team members pick it from the ground and load the carts.

When full several carts are hitched together and form a train that is pulled by teams of oxen to a nearby scale.  They may only make this trip a couple of times a day.  When they arrive at the scales there is usually a waiting line and this provides a few moments of rest as well as the opportunity to chat with their neighbors.

In the early 1980’s, when the late Jean Luc Phanord first arrived in the region he discovered that the cane cutters were being cheated by the scale operators.  First, weight of the cane was recorded using the metric ton scale and sold by the English ton.  Also, the rate per ton was less than they were promised but without education the workers had no way of knowing their losses.

The first solution was to teach the men what to look out for and some arithmetic so they could determine the value of their work.  The longer answer was to begin building schools to teach them and their children how to read and write.