Changing Perspectives

new home

2013-03-09T15:15:00.000-05:00

I signed a five year lease on an apartment which is unfurnished.

This is to be my first home in nine years.

And, my first home ever in which I will not have to store any of the family's stuff.

My mother, Betty Waldo Parish

had a fine collection of art both her own and other from other artists which my nephew and now.. welll. me again because i confess that after i had given away every bit that she left in my care to the Asheville Art Museum ten years ago.... I missed having her art around.

So I bought a piece.

anyway.. my nephew, also cursed with the child of an artist custodian curse.. will never be free of his fathers work since it is of metal and for sale with a lot of zeros.. but the man seems to like the biz

My brother;s son Matthew did a great job with his fathers work.

Now if all of you bought a piece as well.

It would make my mother's ghost happy.

Happy Women's Day

Escape from the Coast

2013-02-13T09:09:00.000-05:00

This is from a letter that I wrote to my dearest French Friends in Las terreanas.. after I had to be evacuated in an ambulance with an upright seat.. since I had a blood clot in the leg which was moving.

//////////

have tried to call you a couple of times but no answer on either phone. I hope that you are well.. And that you have forgiven me for my outbursts.

It just broke my heart.. to see the fire coral from the reef in Haiti where I used to swim three hours a day.. the reef that drew me back here.. cut up and for sale in Las Terrenas. It was right off the coast at Amani y les Bains near St Marc. Hait's beaches are so much more beautiful as the sea is flat and Carribbean Blue.

The store in the paseo, which i love, told me the coral was from Haiti. I said that the red coral has been internationally protected for years.. it is on the endangered species list. Alan Baskin helped the government of Haiti declare the entire reef protected. Spear fishing was banned there in 1979

The manager, who is charming, sighed.. and said.. the people want it.

The little hotel where I stayed was completely full. They have upgraded.. the lights in the garden .. so that I can no longer see the stars at night. Then they keep taking the seaweed away from the base of the palm trees on Punto Poppy and the trees keep falling in. I keep waiting for the internation residents to speak out but it has been happening more and more over the last five years. I think that maybe it is just like lobsters.. that you are in the water and it is getting hotter but you do not notice. Anyway.. my heart was broken.

And then the medicine that I have been taking makes me allergic to the sun.. I just walked around the corner for cigs without sunscreen on and was burning up already inside. I was in the hospital once with this already.... aarrgh.. Anyway.. it takes a long time to land from a manic episode.. which was back in June.. the first one of this series,.. when I had to run from my apartment. Clearly.. LT is a dangerous place for me.

The work with the Haitians continues. We managed to extracate four Haitians from prison in Dajabon and let them return to the Capiral. My friend Edward Paraiston, who is the former minister of the Diaspora, is going to set up a meeting with the haitian embassy here to see how we can bring down the cost of the paper work. IT is about the cost of a month;s living expenses.. which is clearly too much for the Hjaitian ex pat community here to pay.

I hope Iko will not completely forget me. I know it was the best thing for her but I do miss her terribly. It is for the best since if one cannot take care of oneself one cannot take care of a dog. Also I am having to look for a new apartment.. the landlady says she wants to sell. I have found a place in the same builiddng on the ground floor and Maria is helping me with the lease papers. They want a fiador which is absurb since I simply do not know a Dominican who could gurantee five years of rent. It is a bigger apartment and is the first one on the ground floor.. it has a little door to the outside in case I want to set up being a Tarot Card reader...

anyway.. just wanted to write

i will come back and viisit when I can find an escort. Do not think that I should come back alone

thank you from the bottem of my heart for all the care you have taken of me over the years

god will reward you.//

because there is not enough tea in china with which to drink to your health

hugs and love

lizi

2013-01-20T07:39:00.003-05:00

how am i related to the roebling?

i was married in Emily's wedding mantilla out of the house of the widow of her son

she.. Emilty.. was my maternal great aunt Helens mother in law

i took the name legally in north carolina a number of years ago

since Auntie Helen told me to carry on the Roebling name

and I thought that Emily and Washington and great uncle john would be proud of me

Great uncle john raised his three sons in Asheville, NC.. where i ended up living for 20 years

i did not even know that they had been there til i was packing the books to leave and found that one of them said that they are in asheville.. where there is a roebling road

i am pretty sure that they never made it to

san domingue

legalize hemp production..

2013-01-20T07:11:00.001-05:00

have used marijuan as a medicine since i was twenty ... which is now a great deal longer than i care to remember. The diagnosis, made when i wa thirty,, after spending fotty days in the British Prison System. .. for shooting my mouth off about the war in ireland. Damn, there she goes .. shooting her mouth off again. Is bipolar. To which a psychiatrist once commented when i met him at a party.. was "congratulations"// When I told my mother that it ran in the top ten percent of the population in brains and creativity.. she said |well, maybe it does come from our side of the family after all.

the psychiatric establishment here in the Domican Repulic has already stated that they wish marijuana to be included in their repetore. It was growing here during the Spanish Royal Realm.. as well.. you can see the gold leave medicine cabinet in the museao de casa reales.. the drawer that says cannibis satvia./

Now we have grass arriving through haiti supposedly but is suspect rather it is from Cali. Our grass in Grenada in 197? aarrived in rolled up newspaper on the federal boat from Jamaica. twice here i have smoked ganga that must have been laced with some psychodylic.. the bales are packed by machine.. this is not coming from either haiti or jamaica....... look to cali

haitians of course know it and smoke it and have no problem with it whatsoever. with my team, i can smoke in front of them .. as i do tobacco. which i also do but which is an addiction, which marijuana does not produce

another advantage is the pot smokers and cocaine users simply do not HANG.. we are the rastafarians and they are stilletto disco dancing..

so how about we just legalize it here on the island of hispaniola?

i mean.. hemp.. now/.

there was some good robe

almost as good as roebling cable
no wait

better.. no mining in volved

i am almost in borneo

2012-12-27T12:56:00.000-05:00

i am herehttp://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/2011/04/incredible-hulk-schefflera-actinophylla.html

the scheffleera outside my third floor office window just went out of bloon

the birds ate most of the seeds

i do not feed them when it is in bloom

new years resolution

2012-12-27T11:47:00.002-05:00

be more like Woolmanhttp://www.qis.net/~daruma/woolman1.html

and less
like
a
bitchin babe

My bragging wall

2012-12-27T08:31:00.003-05:00

look.. i earned my own permanent press pass as a stringer to the United Nations office for interpressservice

Banned for your music

2012-12-25T21:59:00.001-05:00

i do not know where i heard the story of when Mercedes Sosa performed in Buenas Aires

she was under a government ban to not siing

solo lo pide a dios

the plaza of the cinco de mayo was full

government snipers were on the roof tops

and sosa

turned to her band

and signaled
and they played

and she stood in front of the microphone
completely silent

as the crowd sang her
signature songhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIrot1Flczg

when i told this story
to my friend
peggy seeger

she
said

imagine
being
banned
for
your
music

Moving South in Winter

2012-12-25T15:08:00.001-05:00

I just read that the cost for student lving expenses at the University level for a Master;s Student, which is what I am and have been for the last forty years.. is seven hundred US per month

so no wonder i am feeling like a grande dona here in Santo Domingo with my

two thousand six hundred dollar retirement

no, please,

call me Dona... that is with the gngng letter n thing that i cannot find on my keyboard...

Full Disclosure

2012-11-19T07:43:00.000-05:00

I need to now identify myslef for the sake of full disclosure

My legal name is

Elizabeth Parish Eames Roebling

Born New York City, April 15 1947
US Passport Number 71167776

Parents, Betty Waldo Parish, Society of Mayflower Descendants etcher and engraver, Richard Comyn Eames, New York Yacht Club

Educated Friends Seminary, Middlebury College, Hunter College, BA< Ecole du Montcel (Jouy-en/ Josas France) Escuela Francisco Marroquin, Antiqua Guatemala

Employed. InterPress Service

I adopted the name of Roebling in honor of my paternal great aunt Emily Roebling, wife of the engineer builder of the Brooklyn Bridge whose wedding veil I wore at my marriage. The Roeblings one of the founding families of the State of New Jersey. John Augustus emigrated from German at the beginning of the 18th Century.. settled in PA.. and started engineeering bridges. He had been trained in engineering in Germany but knew that the future of bridges was suspension and that the establishment in Germany would not let him build them thers.

I am a serving member of the Asheville Quaker Meeting, here on peace witness.

I was diagonosed with bipoler disorder after having served 40 days in a British prison for shooting my mouth off over the war in Ireland when it was under marshall law. I stayed in the same private mental hospital as Johan Nash for six weeks and was placed under lithium carbonate for 30 years.

With the help of my Quaker Meeting, I came off of lithium and went on to the new psychiatric medicinces.

I have smoked marijuana off and on since I was twenty years old. I have never found it to be addictive in that I could always stop. I have been somking tobacco since I was 14 and am completely addicted. But I have found that both marijuana and tobacco are medicinal medicines. The marijuana is the best psychiatric medicine that I know.

This war on drugs is merly a war between the north and the south the patent medicines pharma and hte
gnaga

look

we

can

work

this
out

really

we

can

build a bridge
we
do
we
not

something
in
lace
curtain
irish

Breaking News

2012-11-17T15:29:00.000-05:00

Here is finally unravelling the mystery of why this Quaker was called to this island.

Haitian Oil exceeds that of Venezuela

2012-11-15T13:21:00.003-05:00

http://www.worldoil.com/haiti_could_have_larger_oil_reserves_than_venezuela.html

News of Relief work from Caritas

2012-10-27T18:37:00.001-04:00

Haïti sous les effets de l'ouragan Sandy qui passe sur la Caraïbe depuis le mercredi 24 octobre

PORT-AU-PRINCE (25 octobre 2012) – La population haïtienne, particulièrement celle du Grand Sud du pays, subit depuis le mercredi 24 octobre 2012, les effets du mortel ouragan Sandy qui se déplace à une vitesse de 20 kilomètres par heure avec des vents pouvant souffler jusqu'à 130 km/h.

Les fortes pluies déversées sur diverses régions du pays ont fait trois morts dans la Grand ‘Anse et quatre dans le département du Sud, selon les informations des agents pastoraux de Caritas Haïti et d’autres sources dont la Direction de protection civile (DPC). Plusieurs régions sont encore sous la pluie. Selon le Centre National de météorologie d'Haïti et la Direction de la Protection Civile, il faut s’attendre à 300mm de pluie sur les plaines et près de 500 sur les massifs montagneux.

Déjà de nombreuses zones du pays sont inondées. "Les régions les plus touchées sont la Grande’Anse, le Sud et les Nippes", a constaté Jude Castra Pierre, responsable du Programme de Gestion des Risques et Désastres de Caritas Haïti. "Nos équipes sur le terrain partagent en permanence des informations avec les agents de la DPC sur la situation des populations dans les zones à risque.

Caritas Haïti félicite la DPC qui a pu évacuer plus de cinq mille personnes dans le Sud, les Nippes et la Grande’Anse. Mais les dégâts matériels sont nombreux : les eaux ont emporté les cultures et des têtes de bétails. Nos agents sur le terrain ont constaté que de nombreuses localités sont totalement sous les eaux à Petite-Rivière de Nippes, Baradères (Nippes), Solon (Sud), Carcasse (Grande-Anse). Plusieurs villes sont également isolées à cause des routes et des ponts coupés.

De nombreuses églises et presbytères sont inondés. Dans la localité de Solon, les eaux ont détruit le matériel scolaire et l'entrepôt de l'école presbytérale où était stocké les provisions de la cantine. Mais la population veille et prie.

Caritas Haïti, présente dans les dix départements du pays à travers près de 300 points locaux et dix directions diocésaines, continuer de suivre la situation. Elle est en train de mettre en place un plan d’intervention.

"L'institution a déjà contacté ses partenaires locaux afin de répondre aux besoins urgents des communautés. Elle félicite Catholic Relief Services qui met à sa disposition des kits d'hygiène et des kits de cuisine, Cordaid (Caritas Hollande) qui lui offre des bâches, des jerrycans et Trocaire pour son appui logistique. Ces matériels seront bientôt disponibles dans les Directions diocésaines concernées pour être distribués aux sinistrés", informe Mildrède Béliard, Directrice de Communication et de Coopération à Caritas Haïti.

Caritas Haïti profite de l’occasion pour présenter ses sympathies aux nombreuses familles sinistrées, aux victimes et parents des victimes de l’ouragan Sand. Elle appelle la population à respecter les consignes de sécurités de la DPC pour éviter que le bilan des dégâts soit plus lourd.

A propos de Caritas Haïti : Fondée en 1975 par la Conférence des Evêques d'Haïti, Caritas Haïti débute ses activités par des dons humanitaires. Nourriture, médicaments, moments de convivialité sont offerts et organisés pour secourir les exclus et les plus pauvres de la société. Les programmes et projets de Caritas Haïti s'adressent à des groupes organisés tels les groupements de femmes, groupements de planteurs, comités d’irrigants, groupes de crédit, mutuelles de solidarité, comité de santé, etc. Caritas est la seule institution humanitaire représenté dans tous les départements du pays et dans plus de 300 paroisses.

Mildrède Béliard

Directrice de Communication et de Coopération

31, Delmas 65 - B.P. # 13197 - Delmas, Haiti, W.I.

Téls: (509) 2813-1690 | 2249-0347 | 2249-1690

Fax: (509) 2249-0128

Cell: (509) 3804 0211

now we start the real work

2012-10-13T09:49:00.002-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVUU3p5iHMA&feature=channel&list=UL

Wanted Machine operators

2012-09-26T22:50:00.002-04:00

Wanted Machine operators, excavators, Bobcats for demo crew in Haiti , We are in need of Owners of Mini and 200 series excavators and above. You will have Top priority consideration; our window on this demolition project is short. Start date is May 1st Window closes May 15th. This is a demo project will that will last 15 Months Please respond to the following Website at www.harborhouseunlimited.com or email at jamesjohnson472@ Hotmail.com. We also have need of ¾ ton Trucks 2500 and above for various catastrophe projects thru out the US . For more info contact James Johnson at 817-212-9383 or 1-888-832-1693 for more information. Only serious inquiries please.

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Poison Fruit

2012-08-07T11:06:00.002-04:00

I see the USA now through an electronic lens of print and video. I have not lived there for eight years now nor have I visited in two. So it is becoming a foreign country to me. But my heart is breaking to see and hear the pictures and news that are coming out of my homeland.

My friends are mostly marginal. Many of my family are marginal as well. No one is doing well. Even my more prosperous friends and family are concerned about the violence, and the prospects for their children.

From a distance, it looks like an even fight for the presidency between two qualified and reasonable men.

This is not the case.

Because the giant think tank that is behind Mitt Romney is organized, funded, and the very personification of corporate control. Read his economic plan. Then read Rand Paul's budget plan, which got 16 votes on the floor of the US Senate and understand that the intention of this wing of the Republican party is out to bankrupt and dismantle the Federal government.

They will not fund regulatory agencies. They will dismantle Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Dependent Chirdren, privatize Social Security, institute a voucher system for private schools.

The Federal budget is only to be used for the defense of the nation.

I do not stand completely opposed to this.For instance, now with the Faith Based Initiavite, we are now federally funding Bible based Christian missionary agencies.

Except for the fact that Clear Channel, which is owned by Bain, supports voices like Rush Limbaugh who has been spewing hate speech over the America that I love for years.

I lived in the buckle of the Bible belt. We did a Listening Project from our Quaker meeting with the local pastors who came out so vehemently against gays/. I know a lot of these folks/ who i am sure flooded Chick Fil a in Asheville and are still '/// to be kind and good hearted and simple folk,,, tobacco farmers and banjo players.... not the sort of people who would have Rush Limbaugh to dinner.

I lived with them for 20 years. They are not evil people.

But there is this wierd twist in the word of God where it gets written down and then the Book of Revelation got included and folks do not seem to know their hearts any more.

I do not understand the Book of Mormon although I have read a bit of it.

I have met several Mormons here who definitely walk their walk. And others along my life who also appeared to be gentle and loving people.

So I am not questioning Mr Romney's religion, even though I do not understand it.

But it does appear that the fruits of Mr Romney's tree is poisonous.

bonus paid to sugar workers

2012-07-12T11:17:00.001-04:00

http://www.diariolibre.com/dlenglish/2012/07/12/i343566_central-romana-delivers-largest-bonus-ever.html

Large bonus paid to sugar workers in the Dominican Republic

Good work, team!

Note this is not the company which was featured in the film The Price of Sugar, I do not believe....

but another.

None of the sugar companies are held up here as models of employment yet.

But this is the result, really of the work of ONE MAN, Christopher Hartley

who had the courage to simply SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER

Well done

Father Hartley

my hat is off to Thee

Hartley asserted that the following conditions exist here

. In a letter to the directors of Tate & Lyle dated July 10, 2009, he asserted that

human rights violations
continue in the Dominican Republic, which include "daily and systematic disregard for fundamental human dignity in the forms of “statelessness” (and its inherent lack of civil liberties),

human trafficking,

extreme poverty,

child labor,

racial discrimination,

lack of education and healthcare, and

general squalor

I concur

Camping for Carnival

2012-07-12T10:43:00.000-04:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-schuller/sweeping-haitis-poor-back_b_1648209.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Too Soon for Carnival: Sweeping Haiti's 400,000 Poor Back Under the Rug
Huffington Post - By Mark Schuller - July 8, 2012

For those who haven't been to Haiti for a while, or for those who have
never been but have seen the hell on earth portrayed in the media, the
fact that Champs-de-Mars and other plazas in Port-au-Prince are no
longer home to thousands of people is a symbol of progress.

Celebrating this "liberation" of public spaces, President Martelly is
planning a Carnival des Fleurs, a tradition under Duvalier, scheduled
to begin July 29, a day after the anniversary of the 1915 U.S.
invasion.

For the 390,276 people the International Organization for Migration
(IOM) estimates who are still under ripped sheets of plastic or tarp,
it's too soon to celebrate.

Many believe this relocation of camps on highly-visible areas is akin
to sweeping the garbage off the floor only to have it out of sight and
out of mind, in someone else's backyard. Where are people going?

For its part, the IOM is keeping track of people they have relocated
in the 16/6 program. But the 16/6 camps only account for 5 percent of
the total camp population.

And for the others? "Nou pa konnen." We don't know.

We do know that places like M?n Lopital are sites for thousands of new
residents inching ever farther up the mountainside, in crowded
shantytowns. Kanaran, a long stretch of desert land in the outskirts
of town, is still growing -- no one knows how many people live there.
I've heard estimates of 130,000 to 180,000 people but IOM has never
done a census.

Like piles of garbage swept aside and neglected, away from the main
plazas and busy thoroughfares are camps that are real, all too real.
And they are not going away any time soon.

Among the eight camps in my study last summer, for example, HANCHO,
Karade, and Kolonbi are already well on their way to becoming
shantytowns, the Cit? Soleils (which recently was upgraded to a
"yellow zone") of the next generation. Some residents are beginning to
erect walls or concrete foundations for their homes, some now made of
scrap metal instead of tarp. A common denominator is that they are all
hidden, on land that is relatively secure - many owned by former
military members long in exile -- and of no strategic interest to
investors or tourism promoters.

Unfortunately they also have in common an even increasing
deterioration of the ripped sheets of plastic that are people's homes
and primary services such as water. In Kolonbi, the IOM finally took
out the latrines that hadn't been cleaned for months in February (they
later opened a cholera treatment center). But new people -- arriving
as the 16/6 program began -- pitched their tent right on top of the
former site that still exudes a strong smell. The Red Cross's work to
reinforce the walls on the ravine, where people now throw their
excrement, has been stopped for several months.

Toilets have also been removed in HANCHO, as well as a few residents,
including the only family who sold hot meals. A walk through the
windy, dusty camp reveals most tents -- in much worse condition than
before -- occupied, with people singing, listening to the radio,
washing clothes, cooking, or reading. A former army officer is
reclaiming part of the space to build a factory; 15 families are at
imminent risk of forced relocation since last Tuesday. With no
relocation assistance or mediation from the IOM, they wait daily for
the order to move, hoping it won't come in the middle of the night and
accompanied by arson or machetes like other recent cases. Some may
pitch their tent somewhere else in the camp, clearing the weeds where
goats graze.

In Karade, trees planted since the earthquake are now higher than many
tents, offering some shade. And Frisline, whom I've known since 2003,
proudly shared a banana from her yard. But there is still no clinic
and it is still a 20 minute walk to get the water stationed outside
the camp and outside the Delmas city limits, in front of the
t-shelters installed by CRS for those displaced from St. Louis.

Frisline, who has had to twice buy new tarps, either suffocates in the
heat trapped inside the fraying tarps or opens a flap, inviting dust
to blow inside the tent. Karade is on a hill where the wind almost
constantly kicks up dust. Since no one has invested in roads, rains
mean a treacherous trek back home or even a mudslide. More than a
dozen tents have been moved because the rains have eroded the ground
by the ravine.

Kolonbi, HANCHO, and Karade are by no means unique. Large camps are
still tucked away among Port-au-Prince's teeming shantytowns,
hillsides or valleys, like Acra (there are four camps bearing the name
of this wealthy family), KID, Bourdon, Solino, M?n Silo, Cineas...

Given the more complex realities, not to mention living under sheets
of plastic ripped by another rainy season on top of the hottest summer
in recent memory, it's too soon to celebrate. Where are people going?
And are they living better than before? And what about those who
remain?

Individual solutions may work well for those who made it on the list,
but for the rest, only a collective social policy will be able to do
more than sweep the problem onto someone else's doorstep. On Monday,
an international campaign was launched to ask the Haitian government
and donors to build quality social housing and stop forced eviction
until said housing is built.

german speaking haitian tour guides needed

2012-07-10T10:23:00.001-04:00

from voyageslumierehaiti@gmail.com

The tourism business is picking up and I'm happy to report
that the Germans might be coming!! They hopefully will do
a two centre holiday - part DR and part Haiti!!

Does anyone know any German speaking Haitian young people
who could act as guides both in Cap Haitian and in
Port-au-Prince. German is not one of the languages I
speak! They are insisting on having a German speaking guide as
not all Germans speak English.

So with all of you and your contacts I'm hoping someone will
know a bright personable German speaking person whom I can
train up as a tour guide.

Please reply to me offline on voyageslumierehaiti@gmail.com

Many thanks.

Jacqui Labrom
-- The New CD from the Chamber Orchestra :"*HAITIAN CLASSICS IN THE GARDEN*"
is now on sale. Contact me for details.

*LONELY PLANET GUIDE 2009 on SALE.*

Voyages Lumi?re SA
*YOUR PARTNER IN TOURISM IN HAITI*
*VOTRE PARTENAIRE EN TOURISME EN HAITI*
*
*email: voyageslumierehaiti@gmail.com
Tel: (00 509) Cellphones: (00 509) 3607-1321
Website : www.voyageslumiere.com

Journeys for the enlightened traveller
Los viajes para el turista lucido

Beltane

2012-04-30T20:53:00.002-04:00

The team from the IOM went up to Las Terrenas last week with my friend Dieudonne and met with some of the Haitian ministers in town. Dieudonne reported that one of them said that I had not done anything for the Association of Haitians in Las Terrenas. And that he, himself, did not want to return to Haiti.

He said that then , one of the women from the congregation stood up and said "but I , I want to return to Haiti."

And then Dieudonne took up my cause and said that I had ORGANIZED the visit from the IOM.. that these people from the Capital in their bright shiny new van with the important logo, were only in town because I had gotten them there with my work.. and that I work EVERY DAY.. for the Haitians here. He said that the folks from the IOM nodded their heads in agreement.

And then he said that the IOM promised that ALL the Haitians in Las Terrenas who want to go back to Haiti, will go back to Haiti. With papers.. and everything!!

Food Aid Needed

2012-04-19T09:35:00.001-04:00

We are asking that food aid be delivered here in the Domnican Republic through the Haitian churches.

We have a new outbreak of cholera in Santiago among the Haitian population.

We have had kawisikoor in Samana.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zionist Church in Las Terreanas is the largest international church serving this population.

Rice, Beans, Oil, canned fish, sugar, dried milk, peanut butter, crackers

An now my ancestral home island

2012-04-17T10:14:00.000-04:00

My godfather, The Rt Reverand Kenneth Riches, was the Bishop of Linclon. He and his family stayed with us in New Jersey for a summer. Then I went over to tour the land of my grandparents under the care of his daugther, Anne. We stayed with them at the Bishop's house behind the Cathedral. His youngest son, Christopher, used to sneak us into the church at night to run through the aisles. I called him The Bish.

One of my favorite places

2012-04-16T11:11:00.000-04:00

I wanted to take you around my island a bit

to show you about a bit

so walk about with me

I love the border region.. the high central mountains

My favorite little town on this side is called

Matas de Farfan

it is in a flat gorgeous fertile cool high mountain valley

on a straight shoot ashpalt highway

about 20 minutes

to the border

then

15 minutes on a motor bike

to the border of Haiti

to the ancient capital city of Haiti, Belledaire, surely the most beautiful city in Haiti, untouched by earthquake damage

rents in Matas start at $100 a month

health care is provided by the Dominican State

You are all invited

Aid to Haiti

2012-04-16T09:06:00.000-04:00

Before the earthquake, the South East Regional Office of the American Friends Serivice Committee was working on a school kit project here

There were two boxes collected but we we reached an impasse at delivery since the traditional method for delivery had been through visiting Friends and there are few Friends visiting Haiti. I had wished for them to be shipped so that Friends who were making the contributions could also contribute the cost of the shipping.

The Lambi Fund in Haiti, here, works in the rural areas of Haiti, and shares Quaker values. They, had, at the time, agreed to work with AFSC in receiving donations in Haiti and helping to distribute them.

Although the primary need is always for money, I know that Friends prefer to involve their Meetings and particularly their First Day Schools in direct contact with materials and the recipients.

At the time of our initial discussions, with Patrick Lucien of the Edem Foundation, there was a request from Friends that the children in Haiti correspond with the donors in the United States. While this might be a lovely exchange, I would hope that it is not placed as a requirement upon the recipients, given their circumstances.

I would request that SERO, AFSC and all Quaker Meetings might consider this project as a way to reach out to the people of Haiti.

Thirty six percent of the population of Haiti is under the age of 14, as opposed to 13% of the United States under that age.

Mesi d'avant.

Saving Turtle Island

2012-04-15T16:13:00.000-04:00

It's only 4 pm and already it is the best birthday EVER

Woke up to snuggles of love ... hugs from all around

went with my fFriend Marcos to Unity

lunched in the Zona

ran into Luis.. MORE hugs

back to my little corner of AYATI here in Sainte Domingue

to read the wonderful news

That HEINEKEN has bought both Presidente (Dominican) and Prestige(Haitian) breweries

and that DIGICEL
from Ireland.. which revolutionized communications in Haiti a few years back by taking it wireless.. has just bought VIVA.. an internet provider there and about second in the market here

so
if
we
could
now
have
some

tree hugging
birkenstock
wearing
goddess worshipping
members of the
eco feminista
teamsters union

who would like to spend their winters in the tropics

come and join me on the hills of SAMANA

i
think that

we

might

just

SAVE TURTLE ISLAND

many many thanks to all for the generous contributions of gold and rubies and light and love

caught the high wind from Jamaica

now running free