Big Women, Big Guns

We have neglected our blog over the last few weeks, please except our apologies.


The prenatal program is grant funded by an organization in Canada called the Tides Foundation. This grant was acquired by the previous director of Children of the Promise about a year ago. The program took time to start because of the small numbers of volunteers at any one time. When Laura and I came this project was given to me.

The first two months here were spent preparing for the start of the program. This primarily was spent building a structure to hold the weekly meetings and developing a staff. With the majority of the pieces in place we started last week.

Once all the details of our first meeting were taken care of we began to see women gathering outside the gate. I was quite excited to see more than ten to be honest. I had no idea what to expect. The women kept coming and in time we had 65 women waiting for this meeting. We were prepared to take up to 35 women and therefore the remaining were put on a list for a new group that would meet on another day each week.

The women waddled in representing many different demographics. Age ranged from 18 to 42. 15 different villages were represented. For some, this was their first child while others had multiple children already. One women had as many as 9 children. As information was gathered many women did not know when they were due to have the baby.

We gave the women water as they listened to the professor. The professor was from Cap Haitien and she seemed to be quite seasoned in her approach. After prayer, she had the women sing 'How Great Thou Art'. (we have a video of it, of course in Creole) She followed the hymn with a song about the benefits of breastfeeding until your child is 2 that seemed to be new to the women. The rest of the class I had little comprehension of and was busy dividing vitamins.

Each women is given a bottle of 7 prenatal vitamins to last until the next meeting. They also receive an ID card that they must bring with them each time. Of course, the most exciting parting gift is the sack of rice and beans they get.

That concludes the first meeting which was deemed a success by the shear number of women interested.

Special thanks to all those who sent down prenatal vitamins.



The Citadel

This week we took two volunteers to the famous tourist attraction, The Citadel. (or, the only thing resembling a tourist attraction in Northern Haiti) The Citadel is a fort built by King Christophe in the late 1700's. The fort stands high atop a mountain and took 14 years to build. It required a mere 50,000 men to construct. From the top you can see the ocean and the city of Cap Haitien. The fort is packed with heavy artillery, but was never once used.

We drove our pick up through the city of Milot and up the winding stone road to a parking area. From this point you take a horse up or you hike up a stone path. We hiked and it took about 20 minutes for us to feel the effects of our physical fitness. It took another 20 minutes to get to the fort. We had a guide with us who I don't think took a heavy breath the whole time despite being 50 years of age. Our guide spoke some English and had only one eye. He was very good.

The fort was very impressive and we toured the whole place. We even ventured into the dark prisons. We were the only tourist there so we attracted a lot of attention. The safety standards for this fort were non existent and one could look down a 100 ft drop with no guardrail to protect them.

We finished our decent by bartering with some women selling souvenirs and headed back to the village.



We can't wait to take Bob and Sharon up there on horse back in a month.