If you're planning ahead 100 years...

[bcholmes]

We spent a lot of Sunday in schools.

Here's a picture of a small school in Site Soley. It's probably at one extreme of schools. As you can see, there's a dirt floor, incomplete walls made of metal sheeting, and very basic supplies. Florence, who we met several days earlier, is involved in doing organizing for this school. Their need for any kinds of basic supplies is enormous.

In the late morning, we listened to testimony from a number of people who were victims of the MINUSTAH assaults on Site Soley. There are two key assaults (perhaps massacre is a better term) that are especially egregious in terms of violence: one of July 6th, 2005, the other on December 26th, 2006. Most of the stories we heard were from those two incidents. This woman was injured in one of those incidents (I don't have my notes with me at this moment). She was shot in the finger and the belly. She was five months pregnant at the time, and the baby took the bullet. Obviously, she lost the baby.

We spent a few hours taking testimony and photos. The stories were horrific: one woman came home to find that her husband had been shot by a bullet that passed through the walls of her modest home. Another woman lost two adult sons. A third lost an eight year old boy. All involving MINUSTAH attacks on the city.

The afternoon was quite a bit less sombre. We went to Petyonvil to visit SOPUDEP school. Some of you probably remember me mentioning SOPUDEP on my blog recently. The school's founder, Rea Dol, has helped keep us moving from place to place, and I've gotten to know her quite a bit better. I feel even better about the work that SOPUDEP is doing.

Petyonvil is a relatively middle-class neighbourhood, and as a result that there are number of largish houses there. However, that's not to say that there aren't a lot of poor people there. Poverty is everywhere. And SOPUDEP, itself, it pretty modest. They have the same mediocre quality desks and blackboards. The teachers accept a modest stipend in place of a salary.

We met with teachers, parents, and representatives of other groups. They felt very strongly about their work.

One last picture: this is a town called Jealousy (Jèlousi?), a neighbourhood that we could see on the far side of a valley as we were coming in to Petyonvil. The solid grey wall of buildings was a fascinating thing to look at.