Under A Blistering Sun

After two hours of bone-jarring, nausea-inducing travel the small village of Duclas emerges from around a corner. Located along the Artibonite River, Duclas is a dusty village of roughly 4,500 people, most of whom are rice farmers. It’s a landscape of intense contrast. You travel for a long time through a scorched barren landscape, turn a corner and are in the middle of lush fields. It’s confusing until a Haitian explains that the locals have created an irrigation system, which allows them to flood parts of the land for farming. Speckled along the route are men hacking away at the earth, tilling the ground under a blistering sun.

The Safe Water Committee

SWC training

Duclas is in the training stage of Water Missions International’s safe water process. For every community served with safe water a Safe Water Committee (SWC) is created, trained, and held responsible for overseeing and maintaining the project. One of the SWC members is a man named Sudoine Fenelus. He serves as the counselor and was more than happy to sit down with me after the training. As he settles his tall frame into a tiny chair under the tree, I grab my notebook. Sudoine starts with his family, telling me about his five kids as he points them out in the crowd of children hovering just outside the circle of our chairs. He absentmindedly pulls the youngest into his lap and the little tot wiggles to get comfortable, completely content staring at me as his dad tells the story of their lives. I take a moment and study Sudoine. He is quiet, thoughtful and holds a gentle expression on his weathered face. The wrinkles around his eyes tell an adequate story of his hard but joy-filled life. He shares about his wife, Bernia, who works in the market, and how all of his family members have been born, raised and buried in this small village. The whole community has come to witness this interview.

Sudoine and his five children in front of their home.

Sudoine explains how his family is constantly suffering from migraines and stomach problems causing his kids to routinely miss 1 to 3 weeks of school. Excitement over the coming safe water is evident as he emphasizes that it is God’s doing. He is confident in the Lord’s blessing on their community and is intent on communicating how much he “wants to walk with Christ every day.” I ask him if he is willing to show me his home and he quickly gathers up his kids and leads the way. We walk half a mile to a sheet of metal that serves as a front door. Walking in, he shows me their dead garden, storage shed, kitchen and sleeping quarters. Chickens scamper around the yard and the giant black pig plods over for an introductory snort. Sudoine shares about his work at the church where he spends much of his time helping the Pastor and praying over people. Any left over time is spent in the rice fields.

His daughters are responsible for collecting water and agree to let me join in their chore. The girls skip ahead, chatting excitedly to each other in Kreyol. This is an ingrained activity for the girls, who are used to collecting water three times a day from the river. It’s used for cooking and drinking and community members bath openly in the river, carrying their laundry to the riverside to wash. At any given moment someone is shedding their outer layers and diving into the muddy water for a quick rinse. The boys swim hard against the current to the other side, climb out and spend a few minutes retrieving mangos from the trees before jumping back in with their loot and returning to the village.

The rest of the day was spent touring the rice fields, seeing the new tilling machine, meeting community members and hanging with the local bike gang. As we packed up our stuff to start the drive back I thanked Sudoine for everything. He had been so welcoming and dedicated to sharing his life with me. He gave me a solid hug and then said goodbye. Waving through the car window all I could do was laugh. It’s been a broiling, sweaty and grueling two days but as the community disappears around a corner I am overcome with excitement because I know that the hope of safe water is alive and growing, and it’s just a matter of time before it begins to flow.

This week I’m in Port-Au-Prince, at the WMI headquarters. I’m hoping to have another update about how I’m doing adjusting to life here in Haiti by the end of the weekend. Then on Monday I’m heading up North to Cap Haitian for the week with Elsa. June sure is going to be a crazy month!