On the "Level Z" to Haiti

I am a student from Hawkeye Community College studying abroad in Haiti for the week with 2 faculty members and 6 students and then 2 farmers traveling with us. We will be traveling from January 1,2016 to January 9, 2016.

Our trip has been a wonderful time starting with the airplane ride. When getting to the airport in Cedar Rapids, it was mentioned what we were doing and ended up on first class from Chicago all the way to Haiti. Our trip though was long because we spent a few hours in airports starting at Cedar Rapids then to Chicago, then out to Charlotte and then Miami before flying to Port Au Prince. After arriving in Haiti we took a 3 hour road trip up the mountains. According to JeanJean the roads here are not level B they are level Z. We got here and got settled in with a campus tour.

Today started out by going to a Sunday school with the little children and then a church session learning about god and his work preached by JeanJean himself. After that we took a bus that has been shortened out to a feeding center to hand out Christmas presents to little Haitian boys and girls. After the handing out of presents we took a drive out to an irrigated garden where the farmer was growing black beans and while we were there he was irrigating it with a pump and having trenches that he allowed the water to flow down. He mentioned that he irrigates the black beans every 8 days and plantains were every 15 days and it takes about 3 hours to irrigate his whole garden. During the dry season he grows black beans and in the wet season it is planted in corn. The beans take around 1 and a half months and corn takes 3 months before harvest.

The final thing done today was a delicious supper of chicken legs and some noodles made by JeanJean’s sister before finally taking a rest for the day under the shade tree talking to one another and having a guest named Nelson who used to be a voodoo witch doctor who is now converted over to the church.