Posts Tagged ‘Joel Robbins’

I can’t help but feel a little sorry for my dad who is serving in the Peace Corps in Azerbaijan currently.

When I served in the Peace Corps, only 8 years ago, I didn’t have access to a telephone, electricity, running water or sanitation systems. While having many of those things wouldn’t have changed my experience much, they are what make my experience unique. While visiting my father in Azerbaijan last year, I realized that cell phones would have changed my experience drastically, negatively.

During our visit (my wife went as well), my father was perpetually calling or texting other PCVs or Azeri friends. He was always in the process of contacting someone or being contacted. From my perspective, the ease of communication kept him too close to other PCVs in his area. It did help him stay contacted with his Azeri friends but I’m sure they would have found him without a phone.

Dad always complains about other PCVs missing text-scheduled rendezvous. Makes sense, you disconnect yourself from others through text. It’s not as if you stood face to face with someone and made plans to get together. While I was in Haiti, we made plans in person months in advance. We made sure we arrived at the occasion unless some Haiti-esque problem struck us down. Often, we would arrive and sit and wait around for hours at the rendezvous point. We would sit and talk with whoever was around, usually Haitian friends of your friend. We did this contently because, after all, we had only set a date for the rendezvous, not a date and an hour.

I can’t help but feel some of the PC experience has been lost by handing out phones to volunteers. Don’t get me started on allowing them to have televisions and DVD players. It’s my understanding that PCVs in Azerbaijan watched DVDs until all hours of the night and woke up every afternoon. In my humble opinion, if you’re going to do that, stay home in the U.S. and waste your own money on worthless movies. I regress.

I think I would recommend to volunteers going into the Peace Corps now to ditch the cell phones except in emergency situations or during working hours. Outside of that, spend your time getting to know the people and try living like they do. That is what Peace Corps is about.

My son I drove for 45 minutes from Jeremie over the worst roads I’d ever seen. He then turned the Toyota 4WD onto a path barely wider than the truck. After 20 minutes, the path go so steep and rutted that we couldn’t drive any farther.

We got out and walked about an eight of a mile to a school. It looked like a large chicken coop built from cement blocks covered with fresh stucco. The roof was corrugated sheet metal with the rafters exposed. Inside were many rows of o student desks – 12 foot- long, 10-inch-wide rough planks attached to stool legs for the seats with identical rough planks to write on. Tarantulas, other giant spiders, lizards and rats were frequent visitors. There were no in-door restrooms, no electricity, no playgrounds, no drinking fountains and no air conditioning or heating. There weren’t even any glass windows in the building, but a little light and air did come into the tow rooms through two doors and series of perforated blocks at about the seven-foot level of the outside walls.

School wasn’t in session because it was the middle of summer, but pictures I have seen showed clean-faced, happy, well-dressed students posing in front of the building. My son had spent a day at the school in the spring and said the rooms were so crowded that students often had to stand outside to listen to lectures though the windows. They were eager to learn even though most lessons involved rote-memory work, excluding dynamic, exciting, creative educational experience.

The location was the mountains of Haiti, which is the poorest and most densely populated country in the Western Hemisphere. My son is serving there in the Peace Corps, and I was visiting to meet the school director who needed a grant to fund the school for the next year. Textbooks and basic supplies for the approximately 240 students and pay for seven teachers totaled only $5600 for the entire school year. Donations from individuals and funds from my home church covered their needs. Now my son is working to start a goat project, which will supply the students with goats to raise so that when they produce kids they can be sold to fund the school in future years. The children will do almost anything to get a little formal instruction.

I’ve been involved with education most of my life and my only comment is : I thank God for organized Federal and State government, fine school buildings, well-trained educators and the support of local taxpayers.

Joel Robbins

- Driving a Toyota, 4WD king cab, beat up truck. No seat belts. No emergency brakes (this is mountainous country). Beat up seats.

- Family with lots of packages, etc., were so excited about getting a free ride that they threw everything into the back, with the help of bystanders, including a kid – we heard thunk, waaaaaa.

- Scared to death driving so close to people, goats, cows tied along the road, chickens, carts, motorcycles with no road rules.

- Lots of thatched roofs.

- Hear roosters all night, thought I heard an old door hinge squeak — yeeeee – then I heard haaaw, yeeee haaaaw — a mule. Also heard goats bleating and people talking as they walk the mountain paths.

- Taxis were motorcycles, running people from Jeremie to the mountains, then there are tap-taps, compact trucks whit benches on each side, called tap-taps because you tap to get off. Cost a few cents, then there are cameons, cattle trucks which act as buses, and once in a while there is a real bus.

- Roads are potholes connected by craters.

- 99.9% black, walked through Saint Marc at night and saw only floating clothes.

- Storms over the massifs each night – beautiful.

- Dogs all skinny and short haired. Almost no cats.

- Fruit pits, from whatever’s in season, all over the paths. Often mangos.

- Fruit juice, fresh from a colander, each morning included pear, mango, passion fruit orange, grapefruit, pineapple.

- I loved hiking in the hills, looking over the ocean. I want to go backpacking there.

- Avocado trees in yards, as well as plantain, banana, mango, etc.

- Purplish stalks of sugar cane for sale on streets as candy.

- Claren, alcohol made from sugar cane. Liqueur made from local cocoa beans and claren coffee from mountains is strong but seems to have little caffeine.

- Most houses were cement block, often made on site, one block at a time.

- Doors and gates made by metal workers with hammers, saws and welders were along side of road not in buildings.

- School director shows us his school rubber stamp (his only token of pride) as we talk to him about supporting his school – tears came to our eyes.

- Nicole, Mason’s sister was beautiful, sweet, alone, at a beautiful mountain site with no road and 8 little kids in the yard.

- Old large cemetery stones, beautiful, haunting.

- Voodoo church and music heard from Madam Jacques’ porch.

- People dress better than Americans, yet are the poorest I the Western Hemisphere, and living in one of the most densely populated countries in the world – you’ve got to love them.