HOT OFF THE CYBER PRESS! KREYOL STORY BOOKS ON "If pigs could fly - Haiti!"

"Ranje kouv

è" is now available on www.ifpigscouldflyhaiti.org

Check it out, share with your families!

Maybe - just maybe - these materials will help jump start our literacy effort this summer, for adults and children, in Zoranje zone. This is just a beginning...

http://www.ifpigscouldflyhaiti.org/home/ranje-kouve

The Peace of Wild Things

God Bless you, Wendell Berry

"When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

Wendell Berry

"I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods."

 The healing shadow

Photo below: Goodbye, Columbus

Our lakou on Mon Bouton proper looks sad for the most part because it is the end of summer and I am leaving. others, however, are happy to be in a picture! I have used the term "Mon Bouton" to refer loosely and mistakenly to the whole mountain zone. From here, in the U.S., we seem always to be looking to label a "village," or a "center" for these mountains. It has been a struggle to explain that, there "is no there there," indeed. Homes are scattered like confetti, a goodly distance apart, along a scraggly, difficult path that winds and unwinds. occasionally, there is a cluster, a lakou, of closely related or in-marrying folks, such as those on Mon Bouton proper. We look in vain for the equivalent of our "Main Street" - what does that say about us!Imagine, Columbus was looking for India, didn't know what hit him, or what he hit..Good-bye, Columbus!

AMWE! WE NEED INPUT ON A SOLAR POWERED WATER PUMP FOR MOUNTAIN ZONE

WATER PUMP
Here is a schematic diagram of the Mon Bouton water system, based on the parts list that a board member obtained from one of our contacts on 1/17/2011.

This quote calls for a Dankoff Solar Force Pump #3020-24 capable of pumping "1,200 gpd with 5 peak sun hours and 220’ of head." Here is drawn a "processed water" tank with Bill Farrar's Fountains of Hope recirculating electrolytic chlorine purifier (however, I have some questions about this).

The critical unknowns are: (1) volume available at source, (2) height of pump above source, (3) height or pressure head from pump to storage tank, (4) length of pipe,
(5) diameter of pipe, (6) volume needed for domestic use (any excess to be used for irrigation, avoiding the need for a shut-off float valve in the storage tank).


ABOUT US: Ours is a (very!) small local NGO "If Pigs Could Fly -
Helping Hillside Haiti" . We are
planning to send a solar-pumped water supply system to the region of
Mon Bouton (not a town or even village, just a cluster of homes near
La Tournelle 3 hours walk up a dirt trail from the nearest road).
The objective is to reduce the time women have to spend fetching
water in buckets on their heads.

This is not a request for funds! Here's what we need:
We need to get height and distance measurements - and we are hoping through FB to connect with some boots and troops on the ground to collaborate with Elisee Abraham (our CEO - Chief Eternal Optimist) - up in the mountain zone and get us these details. Elisee (Toma) has told us that there are at least 3 possible sites for the pump.

Before sending anything, we are going to make sure it works, and has the
needed capacity - we will be piloting the apparatus here in northern California.

Please get in touch with us here or on FB? Thanks!
Randy Mont-Reynaud
Elisee Abraham
and board of If Pigs Could Fly Haiti!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY FROM MON BOUTON, HAITI

"Where there is great love, there are always miracles."

---Willa Cather.