For those of you from California, I suppose this is no big deal, but I wandered down to the beach again between workshops and dinner and came across a bunch of seals (harbor seals, I think), just hanging out on the rocks. For me this was very exciting, although for locals maybe it's like seeing a squirrel, or a raccoon or something, I don't know. I was actually looking for seals, out in the ocean, so when I glanced down and saw them just out there in the open on the rocks it was pretty cool (for me). Also some black thing swimming around pretty fast, which I'm guessing was a sea otter--check the first photo. If anyone knows, please confirm. Whatever it was, was kind of camera shy, and both times when I saw it, it soon disappeared when I lifted my camera.

This is that sound I could hear last night. I got up this morning before breakfast and went for a walk. This beach has been turned into a state nature preserve, and is two minutes walk from my room. At breakfast the various people I was sharing the table with were all talking about how beautiful it is here. None of them were from this area. There were 3 Canadians, 1 Kiwi, 1 Texan, 1 New Yorker, and 1 Oregon(er??). Anyhow, for all of you who said I should take a couple extra days and just wander here: I am very sorry I ignored your advice. First workshop starts in 15 minutes. Gotta run.

I've arrived at the conference centre where I'll be for the next few days...conferencing. It was 64 degrees when the plane landed which is what in Celsius? All I know it's a big relief. Let's say it's the temperature where you think, "should I put a sweater on, or just stay in a t-shirt?"

Sorry no photo yet since it was also dark when I arrived. Tomorrow morning though, first thing, I promise. Well, maybe right after breakfast. What I can tell you is that I can hear the ocean. At first I thought it was was a highway, but no, it's waves breaking on a beach...I'm telling you, it is going to be very tempting just to skip out on the  meetings  altogether and just wander around here, even the conference grounds literature says there's lots to see. No one would even know...

For those of you that wonder what I do when I'm not travelling, here's my list of stuff I did today:
1. Got up
2. Ate breakfast
3. Corresponded with contacts in SE Asia about a trip planned to that area
4. Worked on planning ideas for a new program (somewhere in Africa--location to be revealed)
5. Helped translate a technical document about plant propagation into Haitian Creole (used Google Translate)
6. Researched and downloaded data on tree cover in SE Asia  (see image below)
7. Packed
8. Went to airport
9. Sat at airport
10. Still sitting at airport

A full day really.

This file shows percent tree cover in 2010 for part of South East Asia. Most of the work is done in advance by folks at NASA and their partners. Estimating tree cover is not an easy thing and there are a number of ways of doing it, each with varying levels of reliability. Interpreting the data for our purposes or in order to be able to post it on a blog like this is another whole step.

It rarely happens but my arrival gate in Amsterdam and my departure gate are right next to each other. Literally a 10 metre walk from where I got off the plane to where I get on again to go to Toronto. In fact I started heading deep into the airport assuming I would have a bit of a hike as one usually does. The first photo shows the plane that I was on which came from Nairobi. The second photo shows the plane I'll be getting on at the next gate over. So a very low stress situation. In fact in the second photo if you look closely, you can see the reflection of the sign for the neighbouring gate where I arrived. 

Tired of photos of plants? Here's a shot of spectacular Lake Malawi, one of Africa's Great Lakes. The mountains in the background on the other side of the lake would be Mozambique.

My now required picture of a national flag. I  got lucky since I was in an immigration line at  the airport and it was moving slowly enough that I was able to get my camera out of my luggage and ask someone to take a picture for me. Malawi by the way.

We're here in Malawi. This you could call field trip for a few staff from our Burundi, Tanzania  and US offices to learn about improved  fallows. What is an improved  fallow? This photo below illustrates pretty well. On the right you can see some trees or maybe tall shrubs called  Tephrosia which are 2.5 years old and  have grown  to  a height of about 3 metres. The are legumes so  they add nitrogen to the soil as well as organic matter. All  this means that after a time, the soil is much richer,  and then  the cut the plants down and plant corn as they have done on the left (you can see the corn stalks on the soil surface. Yields on these fields after an improved fallow are 2.4 to 2.8 metric tonnes per hectare, which is at least twice the average yield using the  traditional system. Improved  fallow systems are relatively new, maybe they have been around for 15 years or so, but Malawi is one place where they have had particular success with promoting these systems with farmers. So we're here, not just to learn about the technical aspects, but also to learn about how they have persuaded farmers to adopt these systems--not always an easy task as I think I've mentioned in the past. We're doing this for the next 3 days, so if I get internet again you  can expect more discussion  of the same. This is only one of a variety of great techniques that can help farmer  increase  yield and income  with little expense.

We are experimenting with some different techniques for sharing knowledge. One of the challenges of this work is to find ways to effectively  get new ideas and new practices out to farmers in ways that they can accept. This then leads to the same farmers actually using those practices on  their farms--at least that is the idea. One of the other challenges is accessing the knowledge that farmers already have. There is a  tendency for everyone (both farmers and traditional trainers) to assume that farmers really don't know very much, and everyone looks  to the trained technician to have all the answers. So one of the things we have just started trying is a teaching technique called farmer field schools. The concept of FFS has been around for a while, and has worked well, especially for training in pest management. We just spent this last week, working on trying to adapt the FFS system to our situation, for teaching various topics on sustainable agriculture. Pictured below is the first workshop in the field, and you can see farmers making observations on tree seedlings in a backyard nursery. The idea is that farmers observe, and learn, share with each  other, and  share with training  staff. This puts everyone on more of an equal footing,  rather than technician first, and farmer second. We have a long way to go to make this really workable for us, and we will probably experiment with other approaches besides FFS, but at least this first attempt was seen as a positive  step by those involved.

I had a chance to visit a microwatershed project being taken on by on of the community groups where we are collaborating. The group is planning, on their own initiative to reforest 10 acres of land that border the Kilimanjaro National Park. So far they have planted over 4000 seedlings on 2 acres. You can see in the photo below, the large trees in the background, which are on the other side of a stream and are actually in the park. The side where folks are standing is on private land, land owned by farmers who are part of this particular group. If you look closely you can see a few of the 4000 seedlings scattered around. People in the photo are a mixture of community members and our staff. I took this shot with a zoom lens so  I  was pretty far away, but I tell myself they were talking about about a better future.

Tracking what happens to trees after they get planted is kind of difficult. So  many things can  happen, drought,  goats, machetes. We estimate our survival rate is probably somewhere between 50  to 75  percent,  but once I tree is in the field it is pretty much  on it's  own. So it was encouraging today to return to a farm where 5 years ago, some visitors, including the director of our organization, and myself had planted seeds  in a tree nursery, which this farmer in Tanzania (in yellow) then went on to transplant on his farm and are shown below. 

Alright, apparently I have 15 minutes free courtesy of the Charles DeGaulle airport. So I will squander that time talking about the guy sitting beside me on my last flight. I think it may have been his first flight ever. Or maybe his first day ever. First he was watching an episode of Friends, the TV show, and laughing hilariously like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Then we got into a little, just a very little bit of turbulence--enough to make you careful with your drink, but not enough to stop you from drinking. Except this guy. He had a tight grip with both hands on the seat back in front of him and had his head down like it might all be over in seconds. I was actually concerned that if we did get into some real turbulence that he would have a panic attack (well, a bigger one), and how that would interfere with my dinner--chicken and pasta, with baguette, cheese and wine. Air France I guess, makes sense. The baguette I mean, I don't know about the panic attack.

Leaving 2 days between trips is clearly  not ideal. I could have used a couple more to rest and get prepared. Maybe I can sleep on  the plane. 

More exciting shots of plants. Still in the border region, this time in  the DR. The first photo shows an agroforestry plot, which you can see is a somewhat complex mixture of multiple species including taro, castor, coffee, bananas, and a shade tree, in this case Guama (Inga spp.).  A system like this imitates natural forest in many ways, allows multiple products on the same piece of land, makes better use of resources since each plant has it's own niche, reduces soil loss, and improves soil quality. In the second photo, you can see one of these plots right next to the conventional corn/beans field.  Corn/beans is fine until the crop is done, and the field is bare, often  because the farmer has burned the remaining stubble, leaving the soil exposed to rain, wind,  etc. I think you  can get a sense of how much damage a heavy tropical rain might do in the field pictured. Fields like the coffee agroforestry plot you see pictured are popping up all over the place  in this area, I'm quite happy to say, thanks to the hard work of our staff here,  and of the farmers who are changing their fields.

I didn't know which other picture of plants to show you. Here is a living barrier in Haiti in the border area. The grass like plant you see is sugar  cane, and the white and brown  stem you see in  the foreground is eucalyptus. There are several  trees  planted along  the barrier.  An  earth barrier is  dug along the contour  using  an implement called  an A-frame (which maybe I'll describe in another installment), and then a  grass or sugar  cane is planted along the contour. Trees are planted on a wider spacing to help reinforce the barrier, and provide additional products  and organic  matter. The barrier helps  retain soil  in the field, while at the same time improving the  quality  of the soil, and providing multiple products beyond just the standard beans  and corn. So  it's a win-win situation. One  of  the small but important details  in this case,  is that sugar cane is considered  people food, so people are less  likely  to allow their  animals to graze  on a living barrier, thus keeping it from being destroyed. Sugar cane can also be used as animal forage,  but little details like that can make the difference between a field successfully being protected and not.

Had a bit of a scare yesterday when I couldn't seem to retrieve any pictures off the memory card on my camera. Somehow through the last week, the card itself had suffered physical damage, and coincidentally acquired a virus. After a few moments of panic, some creative use of scotch tape, and following some obscure instructions from the internet, I'm happy to report that all those photos of corn and trees have survived. 

Yesterday I visited the Dominican museum of modern art. All these years of coming here, and I've never once visited a museum up until now. Kind of sad, I admit. It was pretty interesting too. Below is a photo of a painting called "El Sacrificio del Chivo" by an artist named Pichardo. What's interesting is that the goat (chivo) symbolized Trujillo, the brutal dictator of the DR from 1930 to 1961. This painting was done in 1958, and was intended to symbolize the Dominican people rising up against oppression. All in secret of course. Had Trujillo known the true meaning of the painting, I suppose Pichardo would have been the goat.

I don't which of my 400 pictures of trees and other plants to show you.  But this one is pretty exciting to  me. These are pines planted in the border area in Haiti in a community called Savane Bombe. Two things about this are surprising to  me. One is that they are being planted  at all.  The local pine, Pinus  occidentalis is disappearing in Haiti,  and  there are very few forests left which contain the species. It is endemic  to the island, so once it is gone, it's gone. Fortunately there is still lots of it on  the Dominican side. However, to see people planting it in  Haiti is a  big deal for me. Turns out that people at  least in this  community  like planting it. It doesn't demand much water from the field,  or create much shade, so people can grow other underneath, and eventually  it produces timber which makes the farmer  a profit. The second surprising thing for me is how fast it grows. These trees here, which are 2-3 metres tall are about 3 years old. Not too bad for a tree which is supposed to be slow growing. So maybe there's hope for pine in Haiti after all.

So I'm  back  from my trip to the border area (where we have a project). This is me standing by a concrete border marker between the 2 countries. RD=Republica Dominicana, RH=Republique d'Haiti. In other words, the top picture, the RD picture shows Haiti in the background,  the bottom picture, the RH picture shows the DR  in the background. My question is, in which photo do you see more trees?

Today,  the final results of the presidential vote were officially declared and  then some celebration ensued. This is Piedra Blanca, a small town of maybe a few thousand people. But there was enough noise to make it hard for us to continue our office meeting. So I took the opportunity to duck out onto the office balcony and take some pictures.

This afternoon, I'll be heading for the border region near Haiti. This is about a 6 hour drive and I'll be there for a few days. No internet, no blogging sorry. The border area, which I think I've talked about in the past, is pretty interesting. There's this blending and clashing of cultures and economies and beliefs that make it pretty complicated and fascinating. Sort of a wild west scenario in someways. Would make an amazing Ph.D thesis for somebody. Anyone?

Today, my arrival, just happened  to be presidential election day. An apparently peaceful and orderly event. However, this evening everyone seems to be staying off the streets, I guess in case  something does happen. 

So I pulled the old stay-up-really-late-the-night-before-an-early-morning-trip stunt. This I actually think is a good strategy, because then on the travel day you're so tired you keep falling asleep all  through the flights and layovers, so the day doesn't seem nearly as long. The obvious drawback is that if you need to be alert for any reason during the course of the journey, well, you're kind of out of luck.  

I've got all these little plants on my balcony which now are going to go unattended for a bit. I hope they make it. 

I'm in a really good  mood tonight, and I don't even know exactly why. Maybe it's because I got to go canoeing with my Dad this  evening, which was really great, and we got to see a whole bunch of wildlife right in the middle of the city. Or maybe some other reason, I don't know. Probably shouldn't over-think it.

On the plane on Saturday I hit the jack of my headphones with my knee, which broke the jack. I bought a jack replacement at an electronics store for 1.27, and found plenty of helpful videos on line, but this particular earbud set, SE115m, which is no longer being sold by Shure has a more confusing wiring scheme than regular headsets. So after some trial and error I figured out which wire goes where. So maybe I'll save someone else the hassle by saying Pin 1-Blue wire, Pin 2-Red wire, Pin 3-Black, Grey, Ground wire. The yellow wire I think is for the switch or mic, and doesn't seem  to need to be hooked up if you're just using it for audio.

After all these years of travelling, I finally get to Japan! I have an 11 hour layover here,  and took the chance to get out of the airport and take the train into Tokyo. Shown below is the Sensoji Temple in the Asakusa area, apparently Tokyo's oldest temple. I apologize if the image is a bit hazy, since it rained  most of  the day, and I was continually trying to keep raindrops and condensation off the camera lens. Tucked away in a corner of the temple property far from the hundreds of visitors, I found the oldest building at the Senso-ji site, and the only building with an English explanation. This almost felt like a discovery to me in the midst of all the crowds, and there was even enough space for me to set up a self-timed tripod shot.

For those who  may want to do something similar on a Narita layover, I found this relatively easy to pull off. If you do a websearch for transport from Narita to Tokyo, you  will find that the train system is described as being rather intimidating, and I would have  to agree. However, there is pretty good signage in Japanese, Korean, and English, and I found the train and airport staff to be extremely helpful in getting me pointed in the right direction, even if our ability to communicate was limited. 

At the Asakusa station in Tokyo, the station attendant knew little English, but when I said, 'Narita?', he replied, "Narita airport?" a word he appeared to have memorized precisely for this kind of situation. He then looked at his watch and said, "11:50", jumped up, escorted me to the ticket machine, and punched in the correct options. This left me with just the task of (very quickly) putting in the appropriate amount of yen--1250 by the way--an grabbing my ticket. I thought about pulling out my cell phone to check the time, but based on the station attendant's air of urgency, I figured that might waste precious seconds. I grabbed my bags, checked through the wicket, and took about a half a second to scan the signs directing me to the right platform, before I felt a train blowing into the platform below. I ran down the stairs, and there it was. Jumped on with the doors closing seconds  later. One hour, fifteen minutes later, I was  back at the airport.

The other fortunate thing is that, completely by accident, I ended  up here on a Saturday. This meant the trains were mercifully uncrowded as you can see. Quite unlike what I had envisioned.

 

By the way, it is freezing here. I've got a toque on and a fleece jacket, and I'm still cold. OK realistically it is probably about 15 degrees but I am not warm. By afternoon the toque will come off and it will be pretty pleasant, but mornings are cool this time of year here. Also, another by the way, the thing I was afraid of has happened. That is that all that smoke in the air has somehow worked  its way into my sinuses, and I feel like my head is a balloon with too much air. A lot of complaining for one blog post, I know.

If you like street food, you would enjoy the thing I went to last night which is pretty much a weekly street food festival with dozens of vendors and hundreds of hungry people wandering up and down buying satay, fried noodles, soup. This particular vendor was selling a sticky rice pastry with mung bean, toasted on charcoal grill. Very tasty, and actually reminded me of something my grandmother used to make. There was even street food sushi. Although I don't know about eating street food sushi...

One of the many plants at the centre here which is used in agroforestry, in this case a young  fan palm.  It's like a little botanical garden here.  Very beautiful. The people are very nice too. And there's wifi all the time. Not really a very challenging place at all. For me in terms of living conditions that is. A huge amount of work has gone into building and maintaining this place. I just happen to be fortunate enough  to benefit from the result.

Today was a training day on participatory methods. This is a shot from the corner of the meeting area where we held the workshop to give you an idea of how things look from where I've been standing most of the day.

I  got to the meeting and back without any further head injuries. The meeting was with a  commmunity made  up of mainly migrants from Burma who have escaped their homeland because of war and injustice, only to  find themselves  in trouble with authorities here. People have been  arrested,  ways of earning a living are few. Many find themselves in day  labour jobs on large industrial  farms spraying dangerous chemicals or otherwise working under difficult conditions. Our partner here is working with an network of  NGO's to help this community gain  some kind of stability and legal status.

We're going to  the field today so I had to set my alarm and get up at 6. So when it went off, I jumped up and said to myself, "getting up suddenly early in the morning when you're still jet-lagged, that has got to be the worst feeling in the world.

Then I turned and slammed the top of my skull into the 5 foot 6 door frame to  my bathroom.
"No," I said to myself, "that has got to be the worst feeling in the world."

This is the dry season, and people burn their fields in preparation for the planting season. So there is typically a haze over the entire area. This year apparently it is particularly bad and you can  sort of see and feel the smoke hanging  over everything. In the photo below you can make out how the  sun is heavily masked even though it is early  afternoon.

Forget practicing how to pronounce Chang Pheuk Gate. Thanks to poor weather in Toronto, and what seems to be a very chaotic system at the airport for de-icing planes, my first flight of the day ended up getting cancelled after we taxied around on the runway for about 3 hours. Very frustrating. However, thanks to my constant mantra--no checked bags--I was able to get on another flight in the afternoon to Bejing instead of Hong Kong which will put me into my final destination at almost the same time as I had orignally planned. When I went to the airline staff at the gate after all 300 frustrated passengers deplaned the first time, the staff were mainly in crowd-control mode, and not really that interested in helping me or any other individual. But when the representative I was talking to found out I had no checked luggage her facial expression went from despondent to hopeful. I mean you could literally see her thinking, "hey, I can actually help this person". She quickly directed me around the corner to another service desk out of sight of the angry mobs, and I got help and a brand new ticket within minutes. Last seat on the plane, but somehow I managed to end up not only in  my  favourite window seat, but also in an emergency exit row, with lots of leg room.

So here I am in the Bejing airport enroute. I didn't leave the airport, but I did get a country  stamp in my passport even  though I was just in transit. So this is kind of a grey area. What do you  think, can I count it as a legitmate country visit?

I'm listening to the google translate pronunciation of Chang Pheuk Gate, so I will hopefully have a slight chance of directing a cab driver my guesthouse once I arrive in Chiang Mai 26 hours from now.  ที่อยู่ใกล้ประตูช้างเผือก

or something like that. I don't really pretend to read Thai script. Plus the whole rising/falling tone thing throws me.

This trip is vaguely similar to the recent Haiti trip in that we will be covering similar topics: evaluations, watersheds, research. We will also be talking about participatory methods, which  if you've followed this blog at  all you will remember are a group of techniques designed to increase a community's ability to communicate, reflect on their situation and make decisions. When it works well, this approach gives people more say in what happens. We will  also be  talking some about PGIS --Participatory Geographic Information Systems--which is the nexus of participatory techniques, and modern spatial information ('mapping') technologies. You may have seen the battery commercial where inhabitants of the Amazon are using GPS to map their local resources. That's an example of PGIS. The idea is to bring together local knowledge and pair it with the ever increasing power of software that can process geographic information. Not an easy task, and in fact I saw an article asking if PGIS wasn't an oxymoron. There are in fact, numerous examples of where GIS is being successfully  integrated with local knowledge, so it is possible. For me personally, it brings together two of my current big interests, and our partner in Thailand has already worked in this area, so I'm excited about discussing more possibilities with them.

I'm looking at the ever growing line at Tim Horton's in terminal 3 and wondering if it's worth getting breakfast or not. T3 people, if you come across this post, you've really got to up your breakfast game.

Well, the moral of the story is "don't schedule too little  time in between two trips". Which is advice I exactly ignored in  this case and found myself playing catch up from my last trip (Haiti), while trying to get a whole pile of stuff ready for my next trip (Thailand). At least partly my own fault, although several other unexpected things got added in along the way, making it a little more challenging. Eg. this evening I ended up arguing with the people at the  print shop  about stuff  I needed for my flight tomorrow even  though I  ordered well in  advance. Sorry  to burden you with that, but it's  just an  accumulation of little things. At least for the next 24-36 hours I can decompress  on the plane in a low stress, low stimulation environment.  Kind of cocoon like.

I tried  something a bit different on my return flight from Haiti this time. I routed my return through  the Turks and Caicos islands. So I had myself a little 4 hour micro vacation. I got a cab to Grace Bay, one of the  main resort areas with 12 miles of continuous beach. I went for walk, had a swim, and had lunch at one of the resorts. By the time I was  done, I felt totally relaxed, just like a real vacation, then hopped  on  the next plane  and headed back home. I couldn't  seem to find a flag anywhere to take a picture with, and the woman in  the airport gift shop refused to let me take a picture, so I was forced to take the shot below surreptitiously using my zoom lens. And I'm not in the shot, but it's the best I could do. I didn't actually see a flag anywhere in my 4 hours of wandering.

Almost every time I visit Haiti, I try to see one farmer's plot which I've  been following since 2005 when he planted it. Now, 7 years later it's becoming a small forest. This small grove of trees (Simarouba glauca for those who care) has survived goats, hurricanes, earthquakes, and vandalism, thanks to Jessner's perseverance--goats being the worst of all.  He told me today when I shot this photo, that trees are life, when we're born, it's on a bed made of wood, and when we die it's in a box made of wood. And in between we survive on avocado, oranges, and mangos. The second photo is from 2007, just for reference. He may even be standing beside the exact same tree.

Today's discussions will be about 2 topics, watersheds, and evaluations. The picture below shows a view of one of the watersheds in Haiti where we work, the Riviere Gauche watershed. The green dots show the communities where we are working and that we have pretty good coverage of the upper part of the watershed. This  is  more by good  fortune than design, since we started working in this area before we started thinking strategically about watersheds, but it puts us in a good position for future work at a watershed level.

As far as evaluations go, this graph shows a sample of the results from our recent analysis in Haiti, showing the average number of trees planted by farmers. This data shows that farmers participating in our programme ('members') plant at least 3 times as many trees as farmers who do not participate in our programme.

Anyhow, just a sample of the discussion we'll be having today.

Today was an all-day meeting with staff here to talk about our research programme.  I know, not  very exciting,  but the  idea is  to take some of the best lessons from product development in the business world, and apply them so we can generate the best possible ideas to benefit farmers. Problem is not everyone agrees all the time, and so there was quite  a bit of let's say lively debate. On the weekend I had  a discussion with some other foreigners who were advising me that local  folks here will feel obliged to agree with a foreigner while inside they feel humiliated. This is not the case with us. Sometimes I almost wish we had that problem. Such discussions like the one we had today require the ability to listen, and respect others viewpoints, while also being  able to express one's own perhaps differing viewpoint with care. Not an easy thing at all in a language which is not one's own. 

We visited a farm on a hillside that looks down toward the Dominican border with Haiti.  One of the visitors asked  where exactly on the hillside the  border was. The farmer responded, "Do  you see that mango down there? There's a bunch of  trees in  front of it and then that one mango. That's where the  border is."  As he was giving this  description, I  realized that the border actually starts where the trees stop.  But  not  what you're thinking.  All  the trees are on the Haitian side! Once you get across the border it is pretty much barren, with a few shrubs here and there. This is contrary to the common wisdom, as you likely know, everyone says that there are more trees in the DR and you can actually trace the border by the tree cover. It's true overall that there is more tree cover in the DR than Haiti by a long shot, but in this particular case you can trace the border by  following the trees on the Haitian side. The reason for this is partly  because the plain area in the DR in this particular region is drier  compared to the higher altitude Haitian part, but also  because of the share-cropping arrangement typical in  this area. Dominican farmers will strike an agreement with a Haitian farmer allowing the Haitian to manage his land and split the profits. In this specific case, this means the Haitian farmer is  cutting trees and making charcoal,  something he  doesn't  do when he returns home in  the evening to his own  farm.  Surprised? I  am a little. The photos below show Haiti in the foreground, the DR in the background.

I ran ahead of the visiting group so I could get a shot of them on a hillside trail. They in turn got a shot of me.  Where is Bob?

Maybe it's time for a quick Kreyol lesson:

"Ki jan ou ye?"--How are you?
(KEE JAWN OO YAY, except the N is nasal as in Jean Cretien)

"Pa pi mal"--Not bad
(PAH PEE MAL)

Today begins the first day of a donor visit. Several supporters of our organization will be arriving from  the US to see the work that is being done,  learn a bit about Haiti, and connect with our local staff and farmers. I am part of the team that is hosting the visit, and will be functioning as interpreter. I will probably lose internet capability for a  few days, although connectivity here has been getting better and better since 2010, so who knows. Maybe you will hear from me this evening.

Always happy when I arrive. The plane even landed in Port au Prince 10 minutes ahead of schedule. My ride was here to pick me up which I am also grateful for--that doesn't always happen either. Which, is another thing, I love it when porters and cab drivers in the airport try and pretend like they're your friend who's come to pick you up. It strikes me as hilarious somehow. Like they think I'm just that dumb. Or  so egotistical  that I would believe that random cab  drivers recognize me.

I just got the now almost predictable reaction from a customs officer:
"Where are you going?"
"Haiti"
"For how long?"
"2 weeks"
"THAT'S all the luggage your taking for 2 weeks?"
"Yes."

I'm always somewhat pleased by that response, but it also makes me a  bit nervous, because it seems to make  them  suspicious. But then, what doesn't  make  the suspicious? 

So I have a small confession. When I travel, I like to plug into my mp3 player and listen to the song Extreme Ways by Moby--the theme song from the Bourne  Identity--and sort of imagine like I'm Jason Bourne. Which by the way, the only resemblance between me and Jason Bourne is that we both have terrible memories. Oh, and we've both travelled on Canadian passports. 

Every year I bring a tomato plant or two in off my balcony in the fall,  and try to keep them alive over  winter. I have never done this successfully until this year. For some reason--the warm weather, I think--I've not only managed to keep the plants alive but have even got two tomatoes. The photo below is the only record, because that red one on  the left, I ate today. If I can get them to last another couple months, I might be able to put them back outside, and get a second year out of these. 

Anyhow, I had to eat the ripe one, because I'm going away and it would be overripe by the time I got back. This is  my first trip in a while, after an almost solid 4 months at home. 

I have one word for you: 24 degrees Celsius. Ok, that's 3 words, or two words  and one number. My point is that is the temperature here in Texas. Feels  pretty good, coming from  minus 6.

Today was a long but rewarding day hashing through some planning issues with the organization  I mentioned  this morning. This I think, puts a pretty heavy demand on my brain  cells. Thinking takes energy for sure. And at the end of a day like this, I feel like my brain has had a work out. It's kind  of similar in a way to the feeling you get in your legs when you've gone for a run. Tired but good. Tired but more alive somehow.

Tomorrow, I'll try to get a picture of what 24 degrees looks like. For those of you who might have forgotten.

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to whereintheairportisbob, since that seems to be where I post my entries from these days. I just got through one of the longest security checks I've had in a while. Even the flight crew  line was backed up. So I guess somewhere in the world some piece of information surfaces which requires everyone to be on high alert, and ultimately forces me to make a choice between a  pat-down and a body scan.

This weekend I'm involved in a workshop. Two days of what is likely to be a fairly intense planning session with folks from an organization working in Haiti. Yesterday the media specialist from the organization gave me a call  to ask me how I wanted the meeting room set up and what kind of projection system I need. I thought this was very conscientious and a pleasant surprise. It was also a bit amusing to me when I think of all the times I've used a projector run by a gas generator roaring just outside the office window, or done workshops using index cards held down by small stones to keep them from blowing away in some farmer's front yard. Come to think of it, I haven't really run very many workshops at all under what I would call  ideal conditions. 

My car numbers are in for those who find that interesting. Average fuel mileage for 2011 was 6.91 L/100km, almost exactly the same as last year. See  the graph below for the week by week performance. Total cost per km, including vehicle depreciation was 36 cents/km, without considering depreciation, 25 cents per km. Only considering fuel, 8.4 cents per km.

Two and a half months later, I finally get around to talking about my Mediterranean vacation. Italy, Croatia, Greece  and Turkey. It was very nice. Mostly on the boat (cruise ship), and some stops to see pretty, and pretty interesting sites. My new thing is to try and take a photo with the flag of every new country I go  to so here I've got Turkey and Greece. In total I added three new countries to my list. I have to now figure out a way to up  those numbers somehow. If you're looking for a travel partner, let me know. Don't ask me to go to Haiti or the DR though. Going to a country 20 times does not add to my new country count.

I've also included a photo of the ship I was on. That in itself was fascinating to me. I mean they create an instant town, which runs flawlessly. Very impressive. It helps I guess that there were 750 crew on board (for 2000 guests).