Why for a School on a Remote Haitian Island?

Just prior to the hurricane season of 2008, and despite travel warnings issued by the U.S. State Department, we sailed Kai Ohana, to the island of Ile a Vache off the southern coast of Haiti to see for ourselves the poverty we have all heard about. While there, we delivered supplies and funds we collected for two elementary schools while traveling through the Caribbean, and for ten days, we helped the people there in any other way we could. (Read more about our adventure).

Hope for Haiti

In the past nine months, we have been on the east coast of the U.S. working to partner with a non-profit to raise money to build two schools for the villages we visited – La Hatte and Grand Barriere. Hope for Haiti, a Maryland based non-profit proved to be the perfect fit. They are currently building a school in the village of Grand Sable, Ile a Vache, and agreed to help us achieve our goals elsewhere on the Island.

NOW WE NEED YOUR HELP…

Without funds, nothing can be accomplished, but they don’t need much relative to our standards to provide a decent learning environment. The budget for the five room school house currently being built in Grand Sable plus two years of salaries, supplies and operating expenses is $20,000! Our Goal is to raise enough funds to build the school in Grand Barriere, then focus on the one in La Hatte.

FUNDS RAISED AS OF MARCH 15, 2009

Please take a moment and click on the Paypal Button below to contribute to the future of the children of Ile a Vache, Haiti. Then send your friends and family members an email to do the same. Thanks!

Because so much of the world is in such need, it didn’t take long for us to find our first project. 115 miles into our journey, we met Captain Beans, an entertainer on Marina Cay. Captain Beans had been marooned for some time on the island of Ile a Vache off the southern coast of Haiti, and after falling in love with its children, he committed to do for them whatever he could for the rest of his life. With a local from the fishing village of La Hatte, Jean Phelix Joesph, he co-founded the Good Samaritan Foundation that educates and cares for the underprivileged children on the small island. And after we got to know the good captain, heard his story, and felt his passion toward the children, we knew we had “been called” to help them in any way we could.

After the news of three hurricanes decimating Haiti during the 2008 season, Haiti’s plight should be well known to those throughout the world. But Haiti has been a country in severe poverty since its independence from France over 200 years ago. Though it appears the numbers are not quite as bad for the population of Ile a Vache, the Mercy and Sharing Foundation (www.HaitiChildren.com) who works extensively in the poorest neighborhoods of Port au Prince, claims that the statistics for the 9,000,000 inhabitants of Haiti are alarming:

• 10% of the child population in Haiti will die before the age of 4.
• 7% of the children in Haiti are enslaved. That’s 300,000 children as young as 3 years old who often suffer sexual, emotional and physical abuse.
• 45% of the Haitian population is illiterate.
• 70% of the population lives below poverty level
• 30% of the population is either ill and or underweight

With these kinds of statistics in mind coupled with Captain Bean’s descriptions of the grating poverty the islander’s experience, we really found ourselves with no other choice but to help these folks in any way we could. So despite travel warnings issued by the State Department for Haiti ten days prior to our departure from St. Thomas, the family decided to sail to Haiti to specifically help the future of the country, its children, starting with those on Ile a Vache.

After a couple of weeks of preparation, we sailed nine days to Port Morgan Bay on the Northeast corner of Ile a Vache and met up with our contact, Mr. Joseph. He acted as our tour guide while we were there and scheduled several outings for us including a trip to meet the children of his village, the fishing community of La Hatte.

On our first full day there, we didn’t quite know what to expect, so we packed the dinghy with everything we thought we would need to document the journey and motored our way down the western coast of the island to La Hatte. As we anticipated, the villagers were very gracious and after introductions with the village elders, they led us up the trail through town to the school.

We were surprised to see that there was only one classroom for the kindergarteners and another small building that housed the “library”, which was a stack of books on the floor, but no others. There was a foundation of a building they had started, but they had run out of money before erecting the walls and a roof. The older children sat and worked on rough-sawn benches and desks and were sheltered from the sun and weather by rusted tin sheets laid over rickety pole lean-to structures. While watching these children focusing on the instructor at the chalkboard, we couldn’t help but mentally compare our schools back home with these.

After we observed the students at work and received a beautiful welcome song from each class, we asked Phelix to assemble all the students in the courtyard; we wanted to observe how they were in their most comfortable environment – the playground. We broke the ice by producing a couple of hula-hoops and some jump ropes and after our few lame demonstration attempts at the hula-hoops, they showed us their innate talents. No demonstration was necessary, however, for the jump rope, as these kids had obviously been jumping rope since they could stand up. The biggest curiosity unexpectedly ended up being the little flip screen on the video cameras. These children had obviously never seen a TV and to see themselves in a moving picture was truly a treat.

The following day, Phelix had arranged for us to travel thirteen miles east of our anchorage to the other school he serves. There is absolutely no infrastructure on Ile a Vache – no roads, running water, sewer systems, or electricity – so the only way to travel is by walking, or by horseback. Since it had rained the night before and the trails were nothing but mud, we were happy to have access to the local transportation.

We rode about three hours to the school, which ended up being a lean-to constructed on the north side of a home. Phelix had leased one room in the home for the kindergarten and the space at the back of the home, but the owner wanted to have his property back and was in the process of evicting him at the time we arrived. The superintended of the school was obviously upset at the prospect of having to close the school, and after we visited with the administration and completely distracted the students, he took us to a piece of property that they hoped to one day purchase for the school.

We were very impressed with Phelix and the work he has done for the children of Ile A Vache with such precious few resources. His schools are ill equipped and most of the classes are held outdoors. Not only do the students need uniforms and lack the bare essentials like books and supplies, many of them show up for classes without having eaten a morning meal.

For those of us who have been privileged enough to be raised and educated in the first world, it is hard to imagine the hardships these people endure just to feed themselves, much less to get a basic education. We traveled to Ile a Vache to help the children on the island, yet we cannot do it alone. We need your help. Won’t you please help Phelix and the children of Ile a Vache by donating $5, $10, or $20 to their schools? If we can get a lot of people to each donate a little, it will make all the difference in the world to these young lives (to read the full article on our adventures in Haiti, click here). To make your small contribution, please click here.

Read the full article here and the short article here.

We left St. Thomas for Ile A Vache at 1:00pm after lunch at the fuel dock with our friends, Tom and Christie from s/v Ashlana. The wind was blowing out of the Southeast at 14 to 17 knots as we left Long Bay under a full main and the staysail. As we left the protection of Muhlenfel’s Point, we started rolling in the four-foot seas and everyone went below until their respective watches started.

5/11/08 Sunday

At sunrise the wind was unchanged and the night had gone by without any notable events. Two very large, light gray porpoises came to visit at 9:30am; they were longer than our fourteen-foot dinghy. Thirty minutes later, we were visited by a pod of 30 small porpoise. At 10:45am, after breakfast, we raised the mizzen and standing jib. The boat totally leveled out (not rolling from port to starboard) and we more than doubled our speed. By 11:12 a.m. everyone was up and feeling better and at 1:00pm, 24 hours later, we had gone 61.5 miles. The wind had been dropping all afternoon, and when I took my watch from Alexis at midnight, it was horrible. There was little to no wind and we rolled in the windless swell with the rigging banging and squeaking into the early morning hours.

5/12/08 Monday

By midmorning the wind had picked up again and at 1:00pm, we had traveled 97 miles in the past twenty-four hours. At 1:30pm the wind had picked up to 20 knots with a building swell as well. I took Tracy’s watch that afternoon, and toward the end of Preston’s watch (8:00pm), we reefed the main two points. The wind blew all night up to 20 knots. During my watch a flying fish hit the back of the settee and flopped on the deck for a while. Then about an hour later, another hit a pole holding up the hardtop and sent a shower of scales over me. Had the pole not been there, it would have hit me, and by the sound of it whacking the pole, a direct hit would have hurt a lot. I turned off the overhead light over the CD player that apparently had been attracting them onto the boat.

5/13/08 Tuesday

The wind had slowly been shifting to the east, which pushed us further south, and by 1:00pm, we had traveled 118 miles in the past 24 hours. We jibed to take advantage of the easterlies and to make a more northwesterly course. As the afternoon wore on, the wind decreased and by sunset we started to roll heavily, which continued throughout the night.

5/14/08 Wednesday

By sunrise, the wind was holding at eight knots and we were still rolling heavily from side to side, and by 9:45am we had made 92 miles but were now virtually at a standstill in a dead calm. We kept the sails up for awhile, hoping for wind, though they were taking a beating, and by 11:00am we gave up and brought down all but the staysail. I then sent my first email via the SSB radio to my mom to tell her we weren’t going to be making it to Ile a Vache today. That afternoon we tried to “heave to” but the boat just sailed to windward at one knot so we left the wheel lashed down and took single two-hour ship watches all night as the boat heaved relentlessly in the four-foot swell.

5/15/08 Thursday

By sunrise, the winds increased to between 5 and 7 knots and by 10:00 they were up to 11 to 13. We raised the sails and started off once again toward Ile a Vache. It ended up being a beautiful afternoon to sail — clear skies and consistent medium wind. At 12:00 noon I checked the bilge, and by 1:00pm we had traveled 13 miles in the last twenty-four hours. At 1:30pm I turned on generator and had it back off by 4:30pm. The wind had been steadily increasing all afternoon, and just as the sun had gone down, we noticed lightening off our starboard side over the Dominican Republic. On Lauren’s watch, Alexis woke me at 11:30pm to tell me the wind was gusting to 20 knots and the squalls were increasing and getting closer. I took over at midnight and had a white-knuckle ride in the consistent 25-knot wind until I couldn’t take it anymore and woke Preston and Lauren at 1:40am to reef the main, drop the standing jib and the mizzen.

5/16/08 Friday

At 10:00am the following morning we jibed again and took a heading toward 330 degrees, 200 miles to go for Ile a Vache – maybe 2 days away depending on the wind. It was currently blowing at 16-18 knots and the seas were rough from the night of high wind. By 1:00pm we had traveled 135 miles in the last twenty-four hours. As the evening wore on, the wind slowly fell off. I slept like a rock from 4pm to 12am. During my watch at (12:00am – 4:00am) it was blowing 10 to 13 knots and the seas were abating. At 2:00am I woke Preston and Tracy (for her watch) to shake out the double reef in the main and hoist the standing jib though we could clearly see thunderstorms pounding the landmass of Dominican Republic.

5/17/08 Saturday

As the sun rose we could barely make out Isla Beata off the southern-most point of Dominican Republic. By 1:00pm, we had traveled 92 miles in 24 hours. We had 108 miles left to go to Ile a Vache. We turned on the generator at 1:45pm. Two tankers passed between the island and us, and we were visited by two dolphins today. We sailed through a huge flock of feeding seabirds and threw out a lure, but to no avail. The wind clocked its way back out of the south-southeast at 11 to 15 knots causing us to steer in a more northerly track than we wanted to go so we jibed, turning more toward a west-southwest track over our rhumb line. The wind fell off to under ten knots after dark and we rolled once again all night.

5/18/08 Sunday

By morning the wind had increased to 15 knots and we were back under way in mild seas. All day the large mountain range of the southern peninsula of Haiti loomed on the horizon, and a co

Leaving Great Harbour caused me the most apprehension I’d had about leaving an anchorage since St. Martin. I had gone through The Narrows and the Windward Pass (never a good labels to see on a chart), the Pillsbury Sound (I guess the rocks would be soft here) and Current Cut (another ominous sounding name) on a ferry from Road Town, Tortola to St. Thomas to get our visas extended (once again). The ferry ride confirmed my suspicion, the actual conditions were far more worrisome than the charts reflected.

So I spent the departure morning with the owner of one of the restaurants pouring over charts and talking about the most favorable routes. He wasn’t much help when it came to currents and wind directions (the items I was most concerned about); he basically ended up giving me the old worn-out Caribbean nonsense I’ve heard so much of in the last couple of years: “Just head on down this way, through these cays and then you’ll round these rocks here, then you got to squeeze through here, then you’re home free, it’s easy mon, but whatever you do, don’t follow the ferries because they end up on the rocks all the time.” Oh great, how encouraging to hear that pilots who navigate these waters daily “end up on the rocks all the time,” but I scarcely believed it. Thousands of boats navigate these waters every month without incident. We would just have to stay diligent.

After checking out of customs in Great Harbour, which by the way, was to date the worst customs experience we had in the Caribbean, we headed back to the boat to check on the crew and the progress they’d made to ready the boat for the voyage.

We’d weighed anchor by 11:00am, two hours after I had wanted to be off, and headed southwest toward the Windward Passage. The light wind and seas were pleasant, though our progress was slow, and by the time we made it between Lovango Cay and Durloe Cays (the actual Windward Passage) and approached The Brothers (two rocks sticking out in the middle of the Pillsbury Sound – the soft ones, I presumed), the wind backed off to 3 knots and the current was pushing us backward – exactly what I had feared.

As we fired up the engine and motored toward Cabrita Point, the entrance to Current Cut, the wind shifted out of the south-southeast (the Island effect I anticipated), and we shorten the sheets and beat through the narrow channel between the southeast corner of St. Thomas and Great St. James Island.

Just after exiting the cut, and breathing a sigh of relief, we turned west and continued motor sailing downwind to Charlotte Amalie when the transmission failed once again. So we turned of the engine and sailed the remaining way to our anchorage.

Fortuitously, we arrived after the last cruise ship had departed Long Bay so we sailed into the anchorage unmolested while putting more oil into the transmission. We started the engine and ran it just long enough to maneuver around the anchorage, drop the hook and get it set.

He convinced us to make a side trip to Great Harbour, Jost Van Dyke, BVI to talk to his boat-building students while they were all there working during spring break. We both thought it would be great to have his kids talk to my kids about their mutual experiences at being apprentice shipwrights. Unfortunately the timing of our arrival didn’t quite work out (the students had gone back home the day before), but we got to see the project and talk about it with Kevin (go to www.sloopnews.org for more info on this fantastic project).

So the stay on the island ended up being all about relaxing after a month of work and intense activity at Nanny Cay. OK, the non-work activity was mostly partying, but it was still intense. The first order of business upon our arrival was to send the crew ashore for a “search and seizure” mission (finding everything of necessity on the island — dinghy dock, grocery store, laundry, internet, telephones, bank, etc.) But to their dismay, civilization on Jost Van Dyke consists of a few homes, lots of famous bars, a few rooms for rent and one really old church – the perfect place to put your feet up, Caribbean Style.

As a result, most of our days were spent wandering around Great Harbour, chatting up the locals, enjoying the company of new friends (and some old) and fellow travelers, skin diving off Pull And Be Damned Point, getting in some internet time at “the office” (Foxy’s), or lounging at the beach at White Bay.

Next stop, Charlotte Amalia, St. Thomas to provision for Haiti.