Haiti

I was in Haiti in April to help run an innovation workshop for a sanitation NGO and look at their operations in two Haitian cities. To learn more you will just have to wait for my dissertation to come out in a few years.

Post-its and ideas galore!

Poop-compost with an ocean view.
To get to this site, we drove through the city dump - basically a DREAM COME TRUE!
(not the way the dump worked, but seeing it first hand)

They are doing some experiments to determine what sort of benefits
come from using their soil additive. 

After all that intense learning and research, there was time for a day at the beach. A thirty minute moto ride from the city where I was staying + another 20 on a boat landed my friends and I on a picturesque beach. As we approached the shore, several fishermen paddled up in kayaks with their catch, which we could then have cooked on the beach. My friends had been there before several times and knew one of the cooks, so they had him negotiate with the fishermen for us. There was time for relaxing on the shore, volleyball, and  snorkeling. I saw coral and so many fish! I had sort of given up on finding a time to go scuba diving, but now I am resolved to make it happen.

Type of boat that took us the last stretch.

Yum :)

My list of sea-life that I saw. I will try to match up the descriptions to images later.
(My google search for "fish that look like pickles" yielded no useful results.)

The beach itself was kind of strange. For the past few years, Haiti has been added as a stop on one of the big cruise lines (rumor has it that they just tell passengers that they are going to Hispaniola Island). Basically the passengers have to stay in an enclosed area with a water slide, zip-line, jet skis and inflatables, but can pay extra to be taken to the nice beach where we hung out. They let non-cruise people go there on days when there is no cruise ship.

You an see the the huge water slide in the cruise stop area.

With a productive workshop, interesting field visits, and a surreal beach experience under my belt, I flew back to the US for some quality family time.

Window seat!