Category: short story series

The House That Trash Built: an Open Source Building Technology

May 28, 2013May 28, 2013 Melissa Schilling short story series

April2012_Print-15

We all heard and read lots of details about the horrible Haitian earthquake in 2010. Subsequent reports of extensive international funding, rampant corruption, misappropriation of resources and the near standstill of progress followed the earthquake. In a small corner of a big city, tucked behind tall compound walls, a team of determined individuals from very different walks of life came together to build up and over the stagnation that permeated the other corners of the big city.

This is their story as I saw it unfold over several months and listened to developments in many conversations. -MS

“Holy shit, earthquakes of this scale are very violent. And for this house to survive — well, it was just time to start building them in Port au Prince. Having worked with alternative building around the world, in developing countries it’s difficult to introduce new, innovations. Noble construction using standard materials is the norm. The trick is to bring innovation and have it be embraced in traditional communities.” – Sam Bloch

Peals of happy laughter echoed like rainbows around the room, lighting up the drab, gray 4-walled structure sitting on a table in the center of a Texas room. The joyous reaction to the news that the house built from trash had survived a simulated earthquake measuring 8.2 on the richter scale.

Polystyrene foam (Styrofoam) trash is toxic to the environment and is known to cause cancer. The EPA lists it as carcinogenic to humans. Styrofoam can be recycled, but it is nearly cost-prohibitive to do so. For those in the business of reducing, reusing and recycling the goal is to divert restaurant waste like Styrofoam from entering the landfills and trash bins — and to eventually eradicate it altogether.

“I have a passion for this. Changing lives using refuse. I have a real passion for this. The trick is to just get through all the people who have their own agendas. People from various organizations call me and want to use Ubuntu Blocks to build and I tell them, SURE! I can help you. But it has to be for everyone in the community.” – Harvey Lacey

The Ubuntu Technique comes from Texas, invented by a man named Harvey Lacey. Lacey is a forthright, honest sort who self-describes himself as a bull in a china shop. Lacey rolled up his sleeves in March of 2012, at Haiti Communitere, a resource building center for non-profits in Port au Prince, Haiti, and started working with a team to train them in the art of Ubuntu.

Using a simple baling press, several pounds of foraged styrotrash and a few trained helping hands it is relatively simple to begin creating Ubuntu Blocks. Once built, the Ubuntu Blocks (each weighing a pound and a half) that will eventually comprise a house, library or community center can withstand 500 years of time.

Cite Soleil was selected as the home neighborhood for the Ubuntu Pilot Program for the sheer amount of styro-trash permeating its canals. Most of Port au Prince’s trash flows down from the affluent neighborhoods in the mountains towards the ocean, by way of Cite Soleil.

“These women can make a block like you’ve never seen. They have it down. Better than any of us at HC.” – Tim Overton

Rounding out the Ubuntu team were Rox Duigou and Tim Overton, two pragmatic Canadian volunteers who would excel at project management. They served as the constants on the team through the pilot program. The two were also brought on board amidst a general excitement within the international community who offered the promise of funding from a variety of NGO’s and NPO’s that simply never materialized. Lost in an international shuffle of bureaucratic structure and paperwork.

Despite the lack of funding, Tim and Rox managed to democratically source a balanced team of twenty women from a variety of underserved neighborhoods to train them to build Ubuntu Houses. Female community leaders in Cite Soleil were invited to fill out an application and join the pool of potential. Twenty women were selected to serve as volunteer staff. They would receive progressive construction training, breakfast and lunch and the opportunity to apply for jobs down the road.

The 20 women in the program will be able to serve as trained trainors: bringing innovation directly into their communities. Harvey, Tim and Rox all hoped the women would share Ubuntu’s benefits, lessons and foundational notions with their friends, families and neighbors.

Building houses out of trash serves a dual purpose of cleaning up roads, canals and waterways.

“Overall we need about $100,000K to perfect the infrastructure for this livelihood program, recycling program and create a viable architectural program unique to Haiti. It’s starting a business in Haiti that eventually will be handed over to Haitians to run.” – Rox Duigou

The Ubuntu Pilot Program began in March of 2012. The first Ubuntu home was finished in June and the 20 women were invited to Haiti Communitere for a slumber party. Now the sky is the limit — already Ubuntu composting toilets have been built. Harvey is working on a community learning center for orphan children. And back home at HC, partnerships with Ramase Lajan, Team Tassy and Thread International are plowing ahead with master plasterer Jean Louis and several of the pilot program women at the helm to begin building with used styrofoam.

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Harvey Lacey — Busy as always working on new ideas. Find him in his Facebook group, Ubuntu Blox: https://www.facebook.com/groups/UbuntuBlox

Sam Bloch — Can’t wait to finish the Ubuntu Factory and is always posting updates on the HC website, http://www.haiti.communitere.org

Tim Overton and Rox Duigou — Are on the lookout for funding to continue the success of the Ubuntu Pilot Program. Contact them by email: project1@haiti.communitere.org

Haiti Communitere — Haiti Communitere (HC) is a Haitian based organization that strives for Haitian and International groups to operate as a community, thus increasing capacity and streamlining logistical operations. HC partners operate in a shared overhead environment, thus allowing their focus of operations to remain project based. HC continues to respond to the observed needs not being addressed on the ground while coordinating a Sustainability Resource Center that fosters creativity and connectivity while inspiring the Haitian and International development effort.

Team Tassy — Our mission is to unleash the inherent power in every person to eliminate global poverty. We work with poor families in Haiti, getting them “out of the hole” and into jobs. Follow us @TeamTassy.

Ramase Lajan — Executives Without Borders and CSS International Holdings, Inc. are excited to launch Ramase Lajan. The phrase Ramase Lajan literally means, “Picking Up Money.” No name for this groundbreaking new program could be more accurate. Collection of the bottles clogging the canals, jugs overflowing the dumpsters, and the 1,500+ tons of NEW plastics imported into Haiti every month are a basis for sustainable job and business growth throughout the country!

Thread International — Thread takes waste in desperately poor countries like Haiti, and turns it into the most innovative products possible, sets an example for environmentally conscious innovation, provides economic opportunity and improves the general welfare of the people we serve, and uses our business to inspire common sense, actionable, sustainable solutions throughout the developing world.

Claire Heureuse and the start of Freedom Soup

January 17, 2013December 31, 2016 Melissa Schilling Haitian Culture/Language, short story series, Visual Storytelling

The girls began pummeling garlic and parsley in three separate batches, in wooden mortar and pestles on New Year’s Eve.
Twenty girls strong were all participating in a task associated with the famous Haitian Winter Squash Soup known as Soup Joumou or Freedom Soup.
To make enough soup for 40 people the girls would cut, chop, pound, puree and stir into the wee hours of the night. Then a shift of girls would go to sleep and a new round of girls from the OJFA girls empowerment center would arise and take up the baton, in this case a long wooden spoon.

Sometime around noon on New Year’s Day everyone sat down to a giant bowl of soup.
As we ate, I wondered where this delicious soup came from and why everyone was eating it. Up and down alleys, streets and boulevards you could see Haitians hunched over eating soup. Delicious soup.

“The soup was considered superior,” Marie Romelus says. “The slave – they were considered as lower class. So when we get our independence, we were free to have a soup.” – NPR Article, Belly Full of Soup

After more digging, someone at Atis Rezistans mentioned Claire Heureuse.
After careful digging, I read her inspirational story.

New Year’s Day marks each anniversary of Haiti’s independence from the French and the birth of the world’s first black independent nation. To celebrate independence, Marie-Claire Heureuse Felicite, the wife of revolutionary leader Jean-Jacque Dessalines, proclaimed that on this day no Haitian should go without a bowl of pumpkin soup (Soup Joumou). A colorful and delicious item on every Haitian New Year menu.

…
Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité (1758 – 8 August 1858) was the Empress of Haiti as the spouse of Jean-Jacques Dessalines. During the siege of Jacmel in 1800, she made herself a name for her work for the wounded and starving. She managed to convince Dessalines, who was one of the parties besieging the city, to allow some roads to the city to be opened, so that the wounded in the city could receive help. She led a procession of women and children with food, clothes and medicine back to the city, and then arranged for the food to be cooked on the streets.

On 21 October 1801, she married Jean-Jacques Dessalines. She was described as kind, merciful and natural, with an elegant and cordial manner. She legitimized the children produced by Dessalines’ adulterous affairs. She was a contrast to her husband in her tolerance and support and by showing indiscriminate kindness to people of all colors. She was a great opponent of Dessalines’ policy toward the white French people of Haiti; she saw to the needs of the prisoners, and she did not hesitate, despite her husband’s anger, to save many of them from the 1804 Haiti Massacre arranged by her husband. She is reported to have fallen to her knees before him to beg him to spare their lives and is said to have hidden one of them, Descourtilz, under her own bed to save him. She was made Empress of Haiti in 1804 upon the creation of the monarchy of Haiti, and crowned with her husband at the Church of Champ-de-Mars on 8 October 1804. She kept the status for two years.

After the deposition and death of her Dessalines in 1806, she denied the offer from Henry Christophe to move in with his family. As a widow, she was styled Princess Dowager on 17 October 1806. As the property of her late husband was confiscated, she lived in poverty in Saint-Marc until August 1843, when she was granted a pension 1,200 gourdes.
…

So it was Claire Heureuse who took to leading women into the streets to cook food out in the open, to be shared with all.

Soup Joumou is a mildly spicy soup native to Haitian cuisine, although variations of it can be found throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
This savory pumpkin soup is served in Haiti on January 1, the anniversary of Haiti’s liberation from France. It is said that the soup was once a delicacy reserved for white masters but forbidden to the slaves who cooked it. After Independence, Haitians took to eating it to celebrate the world’s first and only successful slave revolution resulting in an independent nation.

The soup is based on winter squash. The squash slices are simmered in a saucepan along with pieces of beef, potato, plaintains and vegetables such as parsley, carrots,green cabbage,celery and onions. The squash is puréed, usually in a food processor, with water and the purée is returned to the saucepan, where salt and seasoning along with garlic and other herbs and spices are added. Thin pasta such as vermicelli and macaroni and a small amount of butter or oil is sometimes also put in. The soup is always served hot and is usually accompanied with a sliced bread with which to dip in the soup.

Soup Joumou Recipe
Beef marinate made by crushing 4 garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon thyme 1/4 teaspoon pepper, shallot and 2 sliced scallions and 2 teaspoons of salt
1-pound piece of beef stew meat
10 cups water (add more later if necessary to make soup less thick)
1 whole scotch bonnet pepper with stem
2 pounds pumpkin (or winter squash / butternut), peeled and chopped
2 carrots peeled and sliced
2 stalks celery sliced lengthwise and cut into pieces
5 parsley sprigs
1 large onion cubed
2 medium turnips peeled and cubed
2 medium potatoes peeled and cubed
1 pound cabbage sliced fine and chopped
1/4 pound vermicelli or other thin pasta, broken into shorter lengths
2 limes juiced
1/4 can tomato paste (for browning meat)
1/2 cup or 1 can tomato sauce
1 low sodium beef bouillon cube (if you’d like more flavor)

Directions
1.In a medium pot, cook pumpkin over medium heat in 6 cups water for 30 minutes. Purée pumpkin in the water.
While the pumpkin is cooking, clean meat with lime, rinse with hot water and drain. Marinate meat with meat rub. Rub the meat with the spice paste-scallions, onion, thyme, garlic, shallot, , green pepper, salt and black pepper ground together. (For an enhanced flavor, you can marinate the meat from 1 hour up to one day in advance.)
2. In stockpot, add the meat with the oil and tomato paste and brown by adding small amounts of water to caremelize the meat. Cook covered over medium heat for 20 minutes. Add 3 cups water and puréed pumpkin and bring to a boil.
3. Add the cabbage, carrots, celery, onion, turnips, tomato sauce, potato and parsley to the soup, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour with a whole scotch bonnet on top. (The whole scotch bonnet is for flavoring not to make the soup “hot”. Remember to find and remove the pepper as you stir the soup and remove it before it bursts)
6. Add the spaghetti broken in to short pieces and cook until soft and tender.
7. Taste and add a minimal ammount of salt, black pepper or hot pepper to taste.
8. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let sit until ready to serve.

Makes 10 one-cup servings.

Number of Servings: 10

short story: oranges and granola

December 16, 2012March 19, 2013 Melissa Schilling short story series 1 Comment

Oranges and Granola

The tall catholic church stood gleaming against the grime of the street.
Women crouched on their heels hawking fruit across from the church. The most beautiful fruit. More beautiful than could be found inside the adjacent supermarket. More beautiful fruit than in any supermarket in all of Haiti.

The only good thing about the supermarkets with the wilting produce was the air conditioning. It was almost worth it to purchase a single soft apple or brown tinged banana just to cool your forehead against the glass of the soda case. Relax from the heat for a few seconds.

Trying to negotiate fruit for Haitian Gourds, stuttering creole numbers around the air in front of your face, was like trying to roller skate with three wheels on a gravel street. Awkward. Difficult. And you only hurt yourself in the end.

The fruit women needed the extra 50 cents more than I could ever imagine needing it. They wore monochromatic pencil skirts and bright colored tops. Some with bras. Some without. Some nursing babies. Some bent over with age, missing teeth.

Leaning over the fruit hawkers you could glimpse into their world, briefly. Babies crying. Smoke from open fires cooking rice, wafting past you on a journey to the heavens. Someone bathing upright in a tiny bucket glimpsing their underwear through old fashioned soap suds. Plastic bags on the ground amidst the broken concrete rubble of the public street. Odd triangles of light shafting through bright red Digicel umbrellas.

Arcing your body from an acute angle backwards to an obtuse angle reverted you back into the vision of the church and the supermarket. Back to air conditioning and everything you ever knew as a human being in the first world.

Eventually a bag of oranges found its way into my hand. Trudging back to Hotel Doux se Jours, back to the patio upstairs, back to the rainbow mural that was unfolding onto waxed, blank canvas amongst a group of American artists.

…

I was alone.
Walking down the street, away from the hotel.

I encountered the same two boys I had seen throughout the week. Without the gift of language, I beckoned them into the hotel with me. They followed at a safe distance, unsure.
The hotel was more of a tree house than a formal building. Following a narrow path and climbing up a ladder, landed you on the outdoor patio adjacent to my tiny room that I shared with two other artists. The boys followed me up the ladder, closer now. They stopped at the edge of the walkway, which more closely resembled a gang plank on a ship.

I never felt more like a stalker molester in my life.
Again, I beckoned them closer.
No language to be exchanged. Nothing I could say to ease the discomfort in the air.

The boys hesitated. Then followed me. Once inside the dark room with the evening sun setting behind us, I motioned for them to sit on the bed. I began rummaging around suitcases. My hands surfaced with hand sanitizer jugs, a bulk bag of granola and the bag of oranges I had purchased several days before, from the fruit ladies. I handed the loot over to the boys.

“Mesi madame. Mesi anpil, anpil.”

They hot footed out of the room, across the gang plank, down the ladder and back onto the street.

A day or two later, though in Haiti it felt like weeks later. A women, I never seen her before, overtook me on the street. Her hair was wrapped in a scarf and her dress was shapeless, non-descript. Hard living was etched on her face as if you were viewing a human through a lace veil. When she took my hands in her hands, I could feel the soft person she was underneath her hard living skin.

She began to thank me profusely with many Creole words I just didn’t understand. Words marching around. Her eyes searched mine. More words. The meaning wasn’t lost, I understood. She was the mother of the two boys I had given fruit, granola and hand sanitizer to a few days before.

Can you imagine being that grateful for so little?
That moment put my entire life into perspective. And continues to shape the person I would like to become.

a bike for Moïse

August 12, 2012May 4, 2013 Melissa Schilling short story series

One of my dearest friends in Haiti, Moïse, lives in an orphanage for girls. He was found after the earthquake in 2010 hurt, alone and hungry. He was taken in and cared for by Nadine and Sadrack Francois.

Whenever it is time for me to leave the orphanage all of the girls gaily wave me goodbye with songs. They carefully mark the date of my next visit in red ink on a wall and send me on my way.
Moïse, however, being the most sensitive soul in the whole place, always cries and follows me home to the hotel and stays with me until it is time to catch my flight.
Sweetheart.

On a visit to Haiti in April of 2012 it was observed that little Moïse needed a bicycle. So Sylwia and I lugged one across the country for him in July 2012.

Big thank you to Jason DeCook for sourcing, repairing and donating a really rocking mountain bike perfect for the broken streets of downtown Port au Prince.
Big thank you to my mom and aunt for helping me ship the bike to Florida.
Big thank you to Sylwia for helping to get it to Haiti.

I love you Moïse.
See you in January ♥

…

Moïse is the French spelling of Moses …

“And the LORD said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them. 13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God.”

1. You must not have any other god but me.

2. You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea.

3. You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name.

4.Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

5. Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life.

6. You must not murder.

7. You must not commit adultery.

8. You must not steal.

9.You must not testify falsely against your neighbor.

10. You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

Back from our July 2012 Trip

July 28, 2012May 4, 2013 short story series

Project HOPE Art completed it’s 7th trip to Haiti last week, and it was filled with new milestones and new memories – plenty to last a lifetime! Below is a brief overview of what transpired from July 6th – July 22nd, 2012.

Team members Melissa Schilling, Sylwia Jarosz, Kathy Barbro, Sarah Bolls and Liz Anker worked with kids at a total of 5 locations: the OJFA Orphanage, Pastor Jules’ orphanage, SAKALA, the Neuf Beouf school, and patients at the TB ward at the Ti Kay clinic.

Art, science and literacy projects conducted over the 3 week period included:
1. Haiti Watercolor Maps
2. Art Portfolio Decorating
3. Beadmaking
4. Thank You card painting
5. Watercolor Dinner Plates
6. Pineapple Drawing
7. Balloon Dancing
8. Six Literacy Poster Projects
9. Recycle Robot Planters
10. Angel Wings Mural painting
11. Tree Drawings
12. Pogo Portraits
13. Coffee Bag Planters
14. Two Composting Gardening Murals
15. Unicorn Horns
16. And lots of yoga and dancing!

To complete all these projects, we traveled with many stuffed suitcases containing: watercolor paints and paper, portfolios, markers, beads, art trading cards, balloons, 9 literacy posters, 6 Moringa posters, worms, Moringa seeds, tin cans, hot glue guns, bottle caps, murals, oil pastels, crayons, masking tape, feathers, glue, GLITTER!, Pogo printer and paper, fingernail polish, face paint, coffee bags, wire coat hangers, tons of Cleanwell products and approximately 75 homemade dresses.

Project HOPE Art would like to thank our corporate sponsors Cleanwell and Dick Blick, who helped us work with approximately 150 children, many repeatedly, over the course of our stay. Their financial assistance allowed us to stay on budget, and work with as many kids as possible.

Thanks so much to all our generous donors who made this trip possible, and we look forward to our next trip scheduled for January 2013!