Haiti Day 3 by the Students (Will scribes)

Day 3 in Haiti: Thursday February 21st

Tired from the day before, much of delegation woke up to another beautiful day around 7:30 to have breakfast at 8:00. Today we had fruit, omelets and toast. After breakfast, we spent little time waiting and going on our way back to Cormier.

Our plan was to start off the day with stone carving workshops and Venever planting. Half of the students started with the carving workshop and the others started with planting Venever in the ravine we had seen the day before, and cycled. Students had time to carve, sand and polish their own hand made stone hearts. 

After the workshops, we took a long hike through a long river with beautiful scenery to a nearby village, Bigone, to do a stone stacking workshop. Alysha, the star stone-stacking master of our group has more to say on the workshop.

Stone stacking! ~Alysha G

After we walked through the river with its amazing scenery we arrived at a set up of various stacked stones.  Our instructor Reginald was placing one final stone. He proceeded to tell us how to go about making these amazing artworks. He described feeling the points of the stones and putting ourselves into it.  He described the patience and love required to make the structure stable.  Later, Niamia compared the stone stacking to our interactions with other humans.  It was an amazing new skill to learn and I can't wait to show everyone at home!

After our second workshop, we made our way back to Cormier. We ate lunch and waited until 3:00 to start our first session of tree planting.

All of the delegation agrees that it was an amazing experience. The opportunity to work side by side to work with the farmers and the children from the local community in planting the trees was amazing, and everyone had much fun. 

After working for a long while planting trees, we wound down with heading back to the place where we had lunch to relax, play hopscotch and a play a game played by the locals where you wear a blindfold and try to find a bottle on the ground by striking the ground with a stick, and the delegates had a lot of fun.

We returned to the hotel and ate dinner. Tonight we were served spaghetti and meatballs, which were met with praise. 

After dinner, we were given a presentation by Kiki, a member of our team who is a translator and has worked on projects in Haiti for a long time. He gave the delegation a presentation on the problems of trash collection in Haiti, and specifically Port-Au-Prince. He mentioned key ideas like; needing more education regarding the harms of trash, the negative effects of burning trash, the effects the trash has had on the conditions of life in Port-Au-Prince, and how all of this just is not limited to Haiti, but rather a problem the world faces. The students enjoyed the presentation and had gotten into a long conversation on how we continue further on the solution Kiki had thought of.

Tomorrow will be another day of visiting a local school and planting more trees. But until then, goodnight readers.

--