“The world’s favorite season is the spring.

All things seem possible in May.”  Edwin Way Teale

The first week of May is all about preparation and setting work plans.  We travelled to Port au Prince on Friday 1^st; meet our fellow Irish living and working in Haiti; wish the Haven volunteers a safe trip home and head south again on Saturday.  Normally I wouldn’t do the round trip in two days but with only a week before my holidays I need every day I can get on Ileavache.  At the same time, the trip to PAP was worth it as I got a rare chance to meet nearly every Irish person living/working in Haiti.

May means home time for me and a rest/working visit.  In the meantime I have a hectic schedule of finishing up jobs, paying the local bosses and setting work up for when we get back.   We were looking for a solution for Sonson wheelchair when Medical Team International arrived with a chair/bike from Cayes, free of charge.  It is a temporary but very practical solution to his mobility needs.

The boat for Canobert and motor still need some work and local boss Antoine will look after this.

Reconaissance have offered to print the identification badges for the orphanage for free and we need to get that information to their office to be processed.  Thirty eight photos later and I’ve taken them all wrong as I have encouraged them to smile where it should have been more like our passport photo requirements.  The staff can use the card for identification in the bank, medical clinics etc.  It is highly valued in a country where obtaining your NIF (our equivalent is PPS) number is a challenge due to the lack of registers for births in Haiti.

Last but not least I need to organise the logistics for the two new Chache Lavi team members; Girlande Louissant and Josiane Bazile.  They will head to Lamardelle for two weeks training with the Foundation Enfant Jesus (FEJ) team in preparation to start work on June 1^st.

We head to Port au Prince one more time this week, for meetings with the Digicel Fondation for our Chache Lavi project.  Our request for funding is successful and thanks to Digicel Foundation’s continued support we are one step closer to our target.   We also have an invitation to meet the Papal Nuncio His Excellence Eugene Martin Nugent who hails from Co Clare.

It is time to buy supplies (nappies and cleaning products) for the orphanage, tidy up the emails and board a plane for Dublin.   I feel like a student again, I’m bringing my washing home with me as there has been no time or electricity to get it done here.

I also have some time to meet some of the people that make our work down here possible.  Sharon and I have a catch up and plan some programs for later in the year with board member Michael Dawson of One4All and then head on out for a visit to Country Crest in North Dublin.  Country Crest support Soul of Haiti’s Christine farm project outside of Cavaillon.  They also provide my “call centre support” when I have simple questions like how to start a tractor!  It is good to have time in the office in Dublin to talk through all our projects and especially how we will implement Chache Lavi. That is of course right after we sign the Memo of Understanding for our partnership with FEJ.

Home means Galway for me and family time, catching up and spending time with them all.  Soon it is time to head back to Haiti and literally straight back to work, from plane to the Clinton Global Initiative meeting where I am presenting the Chache Lavi program.  We have a fantastic response, a pledge of more funding and a chance to network with potential partners.

As I’m on the agriculture table on this rotation, our group are discussing organic certification and a school food program.  These items will touch on our business start-ups in Ileavache.  The beauty of farming down here is that we are already almost organic, poverty means farmers cannot afford to buy fertilizers etc so things are done much as they always have been, naturally.

Our proposed solution to the school food program is one right out of the Chache Lavi program.  We will look for a model that will support the farmers in improving their farming methods/crops and in return request they give back a percentage of their crop to provide food for the schools in their community ie it will be their children benefiting.  Combined with school gardens it would help alleviate the problem schools now face that food aid budgets have been cut.

Then I head off to Lamardelle for my induction training into Chache Lavi and after almost two weeks of English I need to switch completely into Kreyol (with some French for good measure).  The team in FEJ cover all of the program and in three days I’m declared fit for purpose and shipped back to Ile-a-vache!

On the back of a great trip home; all the support we have received; with our training program complete and a project launch in one weeks’ time all things seem possible.