Autumn is here!

Yes, it's official - our Indian summer is over and fall has set in. It's my favourite season: crisp air, snug (and getting snugger) sweaters, and root vegetables galore! We had an amazing summer. Our travels included Ocean City with my sister, Christa; Winnipeg for our dear friends, Paul and Heidi's wedding (pic of us at the wedding, with the beginnings of a baby bump!), and Paris & The Hague for a mix of business and pleasure. I was presenting a poster at the Human Development and Capabilities Association conference in The Hague. It went really well and the conference as a whole was excellent and challenging. I wrote about one of the keynote lectures in our Chab Dai team's joint blog, Along the Paths of Justice.

This fall is full of new challenges. Backaches and sore hips are among them, but perseverence is the key, because Squeege still needs to cook for about 10 more weeks! We're getting more and more excited, and learning lots about patience, in this last trimester. We want to meet this squirmy, hiccough-y little person!

I am still working in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve at the youth center. Our financial capability project is growing; this year we have twice the number of teens in the project as last year! We're also trying an adapted version of the project with a group of parents that meet at the center. We have found an amazing and talented replacement to take over the project when I go on maternity leave in December. She will work with me this fall to learn the project and facilitate a good transition and then take it on fully when I leave. I'm so excited to start working with her and, although I am sad to leave the project, I feel completely confident handing over this baby to care for my new baby!

The Adventures Continue...

... this time with a baby on board!! I graduated from SNHU in May and am now just over three months pregnant (as if travelling to malaria and dengue ridden countries weren't challenging enough already!) The picture on the left is what Squeege looks like right about now!

I am still working with Christian Direction in Montreal on the youth financial capability project. I am also now working on a contract with Making Cents International, based out of Washington, D.C. (they are - not me) and their partner organisation in Haïti, Save the Children. The project we are doing is really exciting and closely related to what I did my thesis project on here in Montreal. I get to put the "International" part of my degree to work right away!

Next week, I will leave for a first two-week trip to Haïti, and I'll be in three different cities throughout my trip. The cities are squared in red in the map below. I'll start in the north of the country, Cap-Haïtien, for a few days. That part of the trip is unrelated to my Making Cents work; I'm going down with Jacynthe, whom I spent a week with in Haïti last August at the arts and music camp. We'll be doing some training for counsellors for the second camp this summer!


After Cap-Haïtien, I'll go back to Port-au-Prince and from there spend one week in Léogâne and one week in Jacmel for the Making Cents project. We'll be testing out a curriculum on financial education for young women and girls. The project will focus on training young Haitian women to become financial mentors to others girls in their community.

And so off we go, me and Squeege (who is currently approximately the size of my fist), on our first international adventure together. Right now, I'm still coping with low energy and regular bouts of nausea, so here's hoping I'm well into the second "honeymoon" trimester by the time I leave!

Birthday Month

Happy Birthday, Charlie!!!

We really have wonderful friends and family who spoiled Charlie rotten this month! Charlie actual birthday this year fell, as usual, on a day where I had to be out of town. I had to go down to the States for class (only 2 more class weekends left!) so I packed Charlie in my suitcase and we drove down together. Don't worry, I put my suitcase on the back seat so he wouldn't freeze in the trunk. We ate his birthday dinner at the Red Arrow Dinner in Manchester, a New England greasy spoon that makes their own twinkies. It was delicious and fattening.

The weekend before his birthday, we went out to our favorite Portuguese grill, Casa Manolo, in Verdun, with all our friends.

A large number of them even trekked to Gamer's Vault that day to purchase a few Trolls to add to his army. They really do love him! (And have some stories to tell of the adventure!)

This past weekend, a week after his birthday, we went up to Trois-Rivières with my family to the Domaine de la Forêt Perdue to skate on their 11 km of iced pathways. We also did some ice fishing, a first for all of us, and to feed the farm animals (an opportunity Charlie neverpasses up!)
We finished the day with a tasty meal of trou - which was touted to be the fruit of our ice fishing, but I think 30 minutes from pond to plate is bit short to believe ;)

The final stretch

Happy 2011!!

I am ashamed that I haven't written in such a long time. Part busy-ness, part laziness, and a dash of procrastination has kept me away from our blog in the last months. I have officially begun my last semester of my Masters degree, but before I can start woohoo'ing, I have to actually get through it! The next four months will be quite a challenge and here are a few reasons why:

1. I am taking 8 credits of courses to finish up my M.Sc., 4 of which are finishing project implementation, doing the project evaluation and finishing writing my thesis. I am also doing a 2-credit Organisational Management and a 2-credit independent study, for which I will write a research paper comparing taxation and micro-insurance for community-based savings and loans groups.

2. This month I am starting a 6-month contract through CDI for World Vision Canada to design a financial capability curriculum for their youth programs across Canada, based on my thesis research. YAY! I must admit, after being turned down by WVC for funding at the very beginning of my project, it feels pretty great to be sought after - after I've gotten positive project results, of course ;)

3. Chab Dai Canada is launching the national registry project this month, with our first steering committee meeting at the end of January in Toronto. We decided to go ahead with starting the project even if we hadn't gotten funding, and so advance we shall!

Personally, I am determined to combat my usual winter blues through an active workout schedule and healthy eating. Of course, a mid-winter tropical getaway would help, but I'll manage with what I have ;)

If I neglect to write regularly, please feel free to nudge me a little. I like blogging here, not only to keep in touch, but it does me good to step back and get a little perspective on what's going on in my life. I will also continue my quest to get Charlie to write now and then!

Haiti: some pictures

Because the internet connection in Haiti wasn't ideal (there was about a 4x4' area in the entrance of the hotel where you could get a signal) I wasn't able to post any pictures during my trip. Now that I'm home I can share a little piece of my trip to Cap-Haïtien. You will notice there are not many pictures of the kids at the camp, and none of individual faces, and I assure you it was deliberate. There are many reasons for this, and Charlie and I will elaborate our ideas on the subject at a later time, but one reason is that, in the wake of the January 12 earthquake, one of the most disturbing and pressing issues that has arisen is the drastic increase in child trafficking in Haiti. The most heard of case was when an American team tried to traffic over 30 children out of the country to be adopted into American families, even though many of the children still had known parents or relatives in Haiti. (See this New York Times article about that story.) But many traffickers do not have such "good intentions" for the children they traffic. All that to say that the less information about vulnerable children (e.g. names, locations, camp info, photos) I post on the internet, the less I may be contributing to a very well-connected, very resourceful network. You never know who may be looking, even at this relatively insignificant blog. So without further ado, enjoy some of the sights I did while in Haiti!

The view of the Cap-Haitien bay

The mountain overlooking Cap-Haïtien is more and more inhabited as the population grows faster than construction can keep up.

Girls jumping rope and boys playing soccer; so some things transcend culture and country!

Haiti: the unexpected {and then some}

Kids all speak a universal language. "Give me the ball!", "Let me hold your camera, just once, pleeeeease", "Me first, me first!" And thus was spent the first day of the Camp des Beaux Arts here in Cap-Haitien, among 100 kids aged 3 to 13. I was with the 3-6 year olds, and one thing is certain - 3- and 4-year olds are too young to come to camp for a whole day! By 11:00 a.m. we were all ready for a well-deserved nap, and so that will defintely go in the schedule for tomorrow.

The camp cousellors were much less prepared than we thought they would be, though in my group they were great wth the kids (at least two of them are the regular Sunday school teachers for that age group at the church). However, I felt that since they knew we would be there, the counsellors hadn't put much effort into preparing activities and they kept asking me what the next program was, when we were under the impression that they had a camp set up and we would just help the counsellors and present a few art workshops. My two colleagues were even left by themselves with groups while counsellors walked around, texted and talked on their cell phones.

As a development practitioner, some of what happened today is exactly what I don't like about short trips like this. On one hand, what we are doing fits into the long-term work that our organisation in Québec has been doing with our partner is Haïti, it's part of a "bigger picture." Also, providing a safe, fun space for children is an important part of their development, and contributes to the work our partner is doing for post-traumatic counselling in the aftermath of the earthquake (mane survivors came to Cap-Haitien after January 12). On the other hand, and I guess this is a risk whether you are going short- or long-term to another country, I don't like dropping in as the white person who may be perceived as having more power, more resources, more whatever, instead of being seen as a partner. I know the leaders in this organisation do see us as partners, but being seen as somehow superior by our fellow camp counsellors was hard, and I still don't know how to help change that mentality.

My hope is that through this week, we will be able to act as partners, be seen more and more as partners and equals, and share what we know so that next year they won't need our help at all to put on a great camp. I also need to say, despite my mixed feelings about us being here for this camp, I did have a great day with the kids. They played hard, sang hard, and were so full of love and excitement, that I did come away with a smile on my face.

Haiti: {second} first impressions

I have lived here before. So I keep having little flashback moments. We landed in Cap-Haïtien (CH) this afternoon after a longer-than-usual commute from Montreal and I’m pretty tired. Seeing Pasteur Voltaire again after so many years was a very welcome first sight. But what really hit me was, when driving through the city to get to the hotel, we passed by the bicycle repair corner - the bicycle repair corner – and I almost gasped because at that very moment, that very sight was exactly as I remembered it from 11 years ago. And it gave me a comforting feeling, like I wasn’t in a brand new place, and I began to find my bearings.

There’s something about how Haiti smells that will always be familiar as well. I’m not enough of a wordsmith (I’m a Brakesmith, remember?) to describe the smell but immediately after deplaning in Port-au-Prince (PaP), my nose knew exactly where I was. And being here is making me remember a lot of things about 1999 that I’d forgotten or hadn’t thought about in years.

My day can be described by one word with many meanings: chaos. Beautiful chaos. Unsettling chaos. I need to stay out of the way chaos. Keeping the many taxi drivers away from our luggage. Finding the right person to get us to our connecting flight from PaP to CH. Declining to tip the many “helpers” who had a hand on a suitcase while it was put in the car, even though they are very good at guilting you into tipping. (Being idealistic is so much easier from the comfort of my cush Montreal life.)

If there is one thing I learned today it’s that even though between being in Haiti 11 years ago and now I have travelled and studied a lot, I still have a lot to learn. I hope I keep remembering that.