In a Friday market at the crossroads called Chada on the island of LaGonave in Haiti, I stopped at the rum seller’s table. I wanted to buy some kleren, local rum, distilled sugar cane spirits. “If you want some rum, you have to buy this,” the man said, and indicated a bottle of Babincourt, the Haitian national rum, bearing an undisturbed seal on its cap. I wanted kleren, … [Read more...] about Rum Spirits
Haiti
Three Things
Some of my earliest trips to Haiti were as a member of a teacher-training team. We conducted two-week programs for elementary and high school teachers, aimed to fill gaps in subject matter and methodology resulting from 200 years of isolation and poverty. One year, a lot of things went wrong. The workshops were free to the teachers but before we arrived, a local organizer … [Read more...] about Three Things
Reasons for Haiti
People go to Haiti for lots of reasons, some of which they understand. The first time I went there was in 1995. I got off the plane in Port-au-Prince with a suitcase and the address of a group of Haitian nuns who lived in the countryside, in Pandiassou, in the northeast part of the country. The nuns weren’t what you ‘d expect. The leader was perhaps in her 40s and none … [Read more...] about Reasons for Haiti
Teaching Spanish in Haiti
One of the more absurd things I’ve done in Haiti is teach Spanish. Not that it’s absurd for Haitians to learn Spanish. They share an island with the Spanish-speakers of the Dominican Republic. Due to Haiti's extreme poverty, young people consider slipping into the underground work force in the DR, living there as second class citizens, and facing situations where even the … [Read more...] about Teaching Spanish in Haiti