Safe and sound at the Domus
by Catherine LaineAugust 22nd, 2006
Blackout number 3 has occurred and we’ve only been here a few hours. Pete who is Mary Poppins’ lesser known brother produces two flashlights. One of which is a windup LED flashlight that he got for Christmas.
The Ekip Charbon (Alternative Charcoal Team) includes Amy Smith, Gerthy Lahens, Shawn Frayne, Jules Walter, Amy Banzaert, and Dan Sherizen.
A quick rundown of what I know of the team so far.
- Amy Smith is a professor at MIT and runs the D-Lab and the charcoal project. She recently won a MacArthur Fellowship (aka the MacArthur genius award).
- Gerthy is a leading activist in Boston’s Haitian community and is coordinating a lot on this end in Cap. She’s the mom of one of the first students in the D-lab and is the founder of a program called “The Friends of Petite Anse”. Petite Anse is a neighborhood not too far from here.
- Shawn is one of Amy’s former students, a mechanical engineer and an inventor. He, among other things, is working on solar disinfection (SODIS) units. From my understanding, they are basically nonreactive flexible plastic bags that you let sit out in the sun for several hours while sunlight and associated UV radiation do their thing. After a set amount of time, booya, you’ve got clean water. The extra special something that Shawn adds to this product is the packaging which turns out to be more than a little important to the overall functioning of the kit.
- Jules is a junior at MIT in mechanical engineering. He’s the baby of the bunch at just 20 years of age. He grew up in Haiti, around Port-au-Prince I’m guessing.
- Banz, also a mechanical engineer, is the logistician. She is the service learning and outreach coordinator at the MIT Public Service Center and helps run the IDEAS Competition at MIT.
- Dan, who I believe is also an engineer, is the only male vegan I’ve ever met. He and Pete are debunking the myth that veggie/vegan males are waif thin and non-athletic. He is currently suffering from intestinal angst and is on cipro.
We are staying in what I believe is a convent. A poem celebrating the Virgin Mary is on my bedroom wall. The two Amy’s are doing water purity testing on samples obtained in the previous days. From all accounts, the team’s training session in Les Cayes (southern Haiti) went very well. They found that the attendees/leaders were more agronomists and interested in charcoal production for personal use rather than mass production in a business. Overall, turnout was high and nearly double what they had expected. They gave away 3 of the 6 charcoal makers that Pete made. They are getting Henri Claude, a man whose bathtub foundry and outdoor metal working biz is located conveniently down the hill, to make a few more.
Our dinner is simple: bread and cheese and labouyi bannann just like mom used to make (assuming that your mom is Haitian). This glorious concoction is a kind of porridge made of banana puree with traces of nutmeg and other spices. It would be a great thing to have on the cold winter nights in Boston.
The night is torture… cruel oppressive heat with no whisper of wind to give solace. The dogs, normally quiet in the daytime, decide to ritually murder one of their own. That’s what all the barking sounds like at least. Grrr arggh. Our mosquito nets sit in a bag back in Weston. They were infected with a mongrel horde of fleas in Guatemala so had to be left behind. The only way to beat the heat and the mosquitoes is to cocoon myself in wet sarongs. Unfortunately the horrid little monsters are pretty adamant about sampling my blood and start biting my face. My lips, already naturally full, start to swell from a well-placed attack. Must get bug spray tomorrow. D is for deet. That’s good enough for me.
