Port au Prince! I'm still only in Port au Prince.

Fe foje. Traditionally this was made from discarded steel barrels and has become a well known form of Haitian art. This one happens to be hanging outside my room.

Musical chairs Haitian style

Traffic in Port au Prince at dawn. We tried to get here early to avoid this but here we are. Trying to get to a meeting in a town on the other side of PAP by 10 but doubtful.

The traditional way of sawing a timber log. One person stands below and one above and the saw is patiently drawn through the log lengthwise. You can see the marks where the log will be cut into boards.

An example of the certificates being handed out to program participants who are graduating. After receiving training in various techniques and demonstrating that they are knowledgeable in those techniques, many farmers here have graduated in the past couple of months.

Mayi moulen, milled maize, a popular and very traditional dish here. In this case again at breakfast, although corn may be eaten at any time of day here although people are eating it less often now than in the past.

As of yesterday, NOAA (credit to the good people at NOAA for the image below) is still predicting no new tropical storms in the next 5 days. Plus the next mass demonstration in Port au Prince is not scheduled until Monday (credit to the local rumour mill for that information). So that at least gets me through this week. (and yes, it is all about me...I am prepared to admit that). Getting through this week means completing the evaluations in Haiti, and hopping on a short flight to the DR where we will do the same thing all over again.

"Si Dye vle."

"If God wills."

Farmers crowded around flipchart paper discussing changes in their community over the past 3 years. Among the things that they said (and then wrote down):

"avek tet ansanm nou fe anpil bagay"
"when we work together we can do many things"

Spaghetti for breakfast. A Haitian classic.

Nearly every Canadian or American I have known has the same reaction, "Spaghetti for breakfast?!". I heard a bit once that Chris Rock did about Haitians eating spaghetti for breakfast. Don't know how he's familiar with it. Maybe he is friends with Sean Pean or something.

Anyhow, once you've tried it you won't complain. So delicious...

In addition to hurricanes, the past few weeks, Port au Prince has been plagued by demonstrations against the new budget put forward by the government which would raise taxes considerably. In fact our staff today were concerned about getting through Port au Prince and out to the regions where our household survey's are being conducted. Basically, of the 4 regions where we work in Haiti, 3 of them require travel through the capital. Kind of a bottleneck, but hopefully they get through. If its not one thing its another I guess. Or as they say here,

'deye mon, gen mon'.

'beyond the mountains, more mountains'.

First day of the household survey. So far everything is working like clockwork. It is so great to be working with colleagues who are dedicated, and know what they are doing. This is the team getting the survey sample ready for the field.

In the airport one more time. Headed to Haiti for one week then directly to the DR for one week. Hoping the weather holds out. NOAA forecasts no new tropical storm formation for the next 5 days.

Finally I get to see the mountain. But I had to get on the plane and get above the clouds first. Then I only saw it for about 30 seconds before the pilot banked away. I thought I wasn't going to take pictures of it because I've taken so many before. But there's something about it. So beautiful.

Lunch time in Marangu. Notice the slab meat hanging in the kitchen window.

This is one of those times when Kilimanjaro is not visible. I've been here 6 days and haven't seen it yet. How can I be right next to the biggest thing on the continent and not know it is there? Some kind of metaphor in there somewhere...

Translation apps are sometimes hilarious. I mean, I use them all the time, and they keep getting better and better, but for less common languages they can still be pretty sketchy. So I was working on translation of something a farmer said in one of our focus groups (in Swahili). Apparently the correct translation of what they said was that, "there is an increase in natural vegetation." But what the translation app gave me was "natural diarrhea has rebuked". 

This plant is literally sprouting before my eyes. It's in front of our office in Sanya Juu. It is some kind of cycad maybe? Anyone know? You can see in the centre, white buds. The yellow leaves in the centre were one of those buds yesterday, but today they are leaves about 30 cm high.

Sadly I will not see this plant grow anymore since the evaluation is moving from this office to our office in Marangu for the next few days, and I just follow the evaluation like a wildebeest.

There has to be a better term than "jetlag". It just seems like such a casual way to describe something that affects your entire physiology. For one thing you can be awake and not awake at the same time. You don't know when to eat, and your intestines have no idea what is going on: "is he sending us food now? There's nothing on the schedule for another 8 hours!"

Mostly I have used denial as my main strategy for dealing with it but I am starting to notice some like slips in alertness which may or may not have been there before. Right now for example I intend to read for a while and expect I will be asleep in about 5 minutes.

There has to be a better term than "jetlag". It just seems like such a casual way to describe something that affects your entire physiology. For one thing you can be awake and not awake at the same time. You don't know when to eat, and your intestines have no idea what is going on: "is he sending us food now? There's nothing on the schedule for another 8 hours!"

Mostly I have used denial as my main strategy for dealing with it but I am starting to notice some like slips in alertness which may or may not have been there before. Right now for example I intend to read for a while and expect I will be asleep in about 5 minutes.

My room is hilariously romantic for some reason. I swear this is not photo shopped or anything. This place was highly recommended on the world wide web and its new to me. I'll try any place once I guess.

This is a starling. Hard to really see the beautiful blue colour. So much more striking than Canadian starlings