Foothold: first steps in Haiti

It's been a busy few days. We met the Haitian-American Caucus, settled into tents in the upstairs of our compound, visited an orphanage, met the teachers and introduced them to our favorite activities on the computer, presented the computers to USAID, met local volunteers, met the teachers two more times to answer questions, and left just in time to participate in a photo-mapping exercise at Grassroots United.

Click any photo to see the full set:


^^ we don't live here; this is an orphanage a few miles away








Three breakthrough points for me:

• Going from pushing and shoving the people crowded outside the airport to hugging babies within a few hours. Nice kids.


• Listening to a teacher read the French OLPC guide out loud, and she stops a second to cautiously pronounce Google. The main OLPC guy, Adam, was about to continue, but I just had to know who here uses Google?. Teachers: 0/3, Administrators 2/2. Notable divide between the men and the women. Internet lessons start next week.


• This morning I met the teachers for a 3rd time and took photos (will upload later). One of the teachers speaks some Spanish so I finally could share a few sentences. I also tried some of my new Haitian Creole vocab to say, "Journal: history of activities" and "the neighborhood: connect radios".