View from My Window
This is the view from my window. That’s my wardrobe on laundry day. In the distance you can see Ina’s garden that terraces the hillside. It is waiting for rain so that pwa kongo can be planted. When it is windy the dust rises up from this and many similar gardens and chokes us all. When it rains too much, the topsoil rushes down to the sea.
What can we do to control erosion? How can we improve the soils that deplete more each year. Ina and Tikiye have raised 14 children on this piece of land, growing food the way they have always done. The culture that I was raised in and my education make me eager to look for new ways to do things, ways that can make things better and different. Ina and Tikiye just aren’t like that. They do things the way they have always done. They regret the fact that that life in Haiti is hard and getting harder, but they accept it, too. “This is the kind of country that Haiti is.”