Ok, it wasn't quite what I was expecting which was traditional dancers and costumes, but it was traditional in the sense of being sort of your classic African bar with people gathered to mostly appreciate the band and hang out with their friends. Apparently it's called karaoke here, but not at all like karaoke in Canada. The  band was quality musicians who provided a good night of entertainment. Music upbeat and loud enough to be enjoyed but not so much you couldn't have a conversation if you wanted to. I was one of about 4 foreigner-types in the whole place if anyone cares.

It's Friday night and some of my co-workers have kindly offered  to take  me to see a traditional dance show. Which  is great, and I'm sure will interesting, but I'm still shaking off the fog of former time zones, and could probably  just as happily stay in my hotel room, read for a bit,  then drift off to sleep. Still, I'm excited about going and hopefully I'll come back with pictures.

Our office is right in the downtown area and about 15 minutes walk from my hotel. So last night I decided to walk home at 7:30 pm. Probably not advisable, and I was offered a ride by my co-workers which I refused seeing as it is so close by. This walk from office to hotel takes me by the market and bus station area, one of the most crowded parts of town. For some reason or other as I was getting near the market (maybe because it was dark and crowded--a bad combination in my mind) I started to get a strange feeling. Without really thinking much about it I diverted my route which required walking a couple extra blocks, but it just felt better. No exciting end to this tale sorry, I got home safely is all. And I don't even know if my feeling was substantiated in any way. Truth is even in day time I feel this is an area where one should be cautious. Here's a  picture from this morning.

My hotel room in Bujumbura. I would recommend this place if you're here. Reasonably priced, clean, free wifi available most of the time. Although by recommending it, I suppose I make it more popular and therefore harder for me to get a room. In fact last night I barely got in and had to push the manager to find me some space at 3 am when I got here. 

The white cone shaped thing at the top of the picture, that's a mosquito net if you're wondering. I didn't use it last night, although there may have been mosquitoes for all I know. It feels so good to sleep horizontally after  1.5 days of plane travel where you sleep in any position but horizontal. Not sure why the human body is best adapted to sleeping prone. But I suppose that's a good thing overall. 

Every year I go through all my photos and put together a calendar of my 12 favourites for the following year. Narrowing it down is always tough and there's usually a few photos that I wish I could include. So I'm posting the 'runners-up' here. I feel bad about having to leave these ones off the calendar.

 Scarborough Bluffs, Canada

 Monterey USA

 Bay of Bengal, Burma

 Yangoon, Burma

 Mae Ghok River, Thailand

Mekong River, Thailand, Burma, Laos (from left to right)

My last post from Haiti for a while. I've spent the past 3 days talking about mapping technologies with a couple different organizations. What I've learned is that there is a big need for community organizations to access and use mapping technologies but my perception is that many smaller community development groups don't have the resources to really take advantage of the mapping tools that could help them. We ourselves are just learning about the usefulness of them. Among many other things, it can really help an organization make better use of their (always limited) resources to have the biggest impact possible, as well as help them understand the kind of impact they are having. So the uses are there, the tools are there, and the demand  is there. I'm just not sure at this point how to connect all  those dots. I would love to spend all my time travelling around and helping organizations access and use these tools, but the way things are at the moment I don't have the time. I'm going to have to think on that some more. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. 

This picture really has nothing to do with the post. I just like the way the sun is reflecting off the tops of the hills.

Early morning sky in Haiti. I thought this  had to be some kind of significant planet viewing. A quick search of the web tells me that Venus, Mecury and Saturn are visible in the early morning. The bright one I am pretty sure is Venus, the other two may be Mecury and Saturn,  I'm not so sure. Pretty cool to see anyways.  I wouldn't have seen it at all, except that a) I was in rural Haiti where there's not light pollution, and b) I had to get up at 5  this morning, so when I stumbled out to go to the latrine, this is what greeted me. 

Where I'm staying for a few days has a bucket shower. Everyone should learn how to use the bucket shower. Really not that much different than a regular shower, except you have to pour the water over yourself. This does require some technique. Truthfully these days, I don't have nearly as much occasion to use bucket shower as in the past. I'm getting lazy. So it's good to get back 

The damage from Hurricane Sandy in Haiti is insidious, I think is the best way to describe it. No sort of dramatic, media-worthy destruction to report, but multiple days of rain and wind right in the middle of the cropping season, essentially took out a good portion of the country's food supply for the next 6 months. You can see in the first photo below, in a shot I took looking north towards the Gulf of La Gonave that there are many whitish looking spots. These are areas that were stripped bare by the storm, and an indicator of the extent of damage. More serious really is that the bean and pigeon pea crops were wiped out or set back. The second shot is flowering pigeon pea (Pwa Kongo). I shouldn't have really  bean  able to take this picture this time of year. Pigeon pea should be well on into the seeding or even harvest stage by now, and people  would  have been counting on that for food or  income. Fortunately a second flowering  took place, although the yield will likely be small compared to the initial hoped for season. All  of these consequences remain hidden, and most likely the affected areas will suffer in silence until the next cropping season which  begins in March or April. For a more official assessment you can check Reliefweb: http://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haiti-food-security-outlook-october-2012-through-march-2013

Off in the distance you can see the island of La Gonave. La Gonave is apparently a woman sleeping on the back of a whale with her hands folded. In her folded hands she has the secret to peace for Haiti. She was sent at the beginning of time to deliver this message but the whale carried her so gently that she fell asleep and has yet to wake up. During the day the whale moves out into the harbour and every evening he brings the woman close in to shore hoping she will wake and deliver her message of peace. Haiti is still waiting.

The best travel towel I have found. I'm sure I've mentioned it before. The funny thing is, it's not even a travel towel, but it's better than any of the 'official' travel towels I have tried which you get at the fancy camping stores. And a lot cheaper. I bought a pack of them at a hardware store and then cut it into quarters. It functions well as a washcloth and for drying (because it is so absorbent as advertised).  And the towel itself dries well and quickly. It is best though to hang it somewhere in the sun and open air, such as  in the picture. The infomercials say they last 20 years, but my experience is they last 6-12 months with heavy usage. The wear results mostly from wringing it out to help the drying process.

Really difficult to get the exposure just right so that it feels like what I was looking at. Maybe someone has advice on how to do this reliably. My strategy was to just take about 30 shots and hope for the best. Seems like there has to be a better way.

The dish that keeps the office here connected and lets me keep blogging. I climbed up on the roof to get this shot with the traditional rural house and homegarden in  the background. There was a time when people went overseas and didn't know if they would ever come back or hear from their loved ones. Even my grandmother left family behind to get on a ship to come to Canada and it was years before she got a chance to go back and visit. Now its so easy for me to communicate with anyone anywhere. But I also think it makes it harder to focus on just 'being' in a place. I'm in Haiti,  but I'm also  thinking about  Burma,  Burundi,    Canada.

This also is farmer field school. Farmers making observations together in the field to solve real problems that they are concerned with. As I mentioned the other day, the idea is to put more emphasis on farmer knowledge and less on trainer knowledge. This is a hard habit to break, and there's a well established hierarchy of those with more education having more to say.

I looked out my window this morning when I first got up and saw this mist. I grabbed my camera and ran outside basically in my pyjamas because morning mist like this doesn't last long. Turns out I had about 5 minutes before the mist started to burn off. I don't know what real photographers say, but it seems to me that the beginning and end of the day are some of the most interesting times to take pictures but the light conditions change so fast it's hard to capture. Not that this picture qualifies as 'interesting'. In my imagination it looked much better than it actually turned out here.

This is farmer field school. Or at least a part of it called the AgroEcosystems Analysis. The idea is that farmers observe real field situations, and draw their own conclusions, and learn from each other. Among other things, the system is designed to break out of the mentality that organizations do all the teaching and farmers do all the learning. Here you see the result of the staff testing the idea, making observations and drawings of a plant in the field, in this case, velvet bean. I took a picture of the field where this observation was done just a few days back, for those that are keeping track.

If this looks like a picture of a bunch of grass, that's because it is a picture of a bunch of grass. Otherwise known as a forage bank. One of the big causes of deforestation here, or perhaps one of the reasons it is so difficult to reforest is because of animal grazing, especially goats. So creating alternate food sources for animals so they aren't tempted to eat trees is one of the objectives. This is not a new idea. Forage banks have been around and successfully used around the world. But not a widely adopted practice here. At least not on the scale required to also allow reforestation. 

Every time I visit, if I am able, I visit this farmer's agroforestry plot. Basically I've been following this tree planting and this farmer for the past 6 or 7 years. It's fun to see the trees growing and talk to the farmer. It's kind of our thing. In fact this time he came by the office and asked me when I would be free to go see the plot. He keeps planting more trees in the remaining spaces. You might remember from previous blog entries that the soil in this spot is not great, one of the reasons he decided to plant trees, but but they continue to grow and are starting to be a small forest. If you look at the tops of the branches you might see that there's a lot of resprouting after Tropical Storm Sandy

I did catch up on my sleep. Not that I'm going to make this entire blog about my sleep habits. But on the first night I went to bed around 8 pm and slept right through til morning. It's very peaceful here at night. If you're looking to catch up on your sleep this is definitely the place to do it.

Now everytime I pass by these fields, I am compelled to look and see how the soil conservation and tree planting we did on a massive scale as part of earthquake response is holding up. Two years later there is considerable loss, as would be expected, but there are a few pockets where farmers have been able to protect their fields from marauding goats and other troubles. This field in the foreground is one. I don't know if you can really see but there are a bunch of trees on the first hill that are doing pretty well, and 3-5 metres in height.