Oof, off day; I was not feeling well, so I didn't blog about our second day or our trip to the market in Grison Garde.
We arrived early at the Maranathe Orphanage, so Bastien (Josue Bastien) offered to walk with us to town. Since we had already seen Grison Gard, we decided to stroll in the other direction to Tovar.
Walking the road is interesting. You are expected to get out of the way of moving traffic; the bigger you are, the faster you are, the more right-of-way you have. I got a little turned around for a second, and Bastien grabbed me (possibly saving my life).
We first saw a clinic. Definitely third world. Limited equipment, and the examination rooms and labs were dilapidated. The reason for this is interesting; they aren't priorities for the community. Yes, they would like newer equipment, but what they really want are supplies (medicines, tests, vaccines, gloves) and money to pay the doctor so that they can keep the clinic open more. It's only open about two days a week. Water-borne illness is still the leading cause of death
Next to the clinic is a church; the people in the area are very religious, and virtually all Methodist. Several women and a group of girls were washing the pews, chairs, and ornamental flowers in preparation for a party that night. They were also scrubbing the floor. Haiti may have dirty roads, but much of the country is just spotless.
Our next stop was a kindergarten class. The boys sat on one side, the girls sat on the other side, and they were all attentive and alert - remember, this is a Saturday - and they sang us a song. They were a little shy, but very smiley.
Our final stop was a cassava bread place. I say "place" because cassava is farmed, processed, and baked all in the same place. Facility would be the right word, but... well, it starts with the fields, which are all dug up at this point. The cassava is (from what I could see) a green fruit that is shaped and colored like a lime, but much larger (2-3 times larger). The cassava is manually broken into pieces, which are then dried. There were three women working, although not much (it was getting hot), and one of the women was quite old. After being broken and dried, the pieces are then milled to a very coursely ground flour; the mill seems to be hand-powered, and is in the center room. The front is sort a of patio with a roof but no walls; it has six large plates for baking the flatbread, but I didn't know it at the time. In the back room, a six foot stack of the bread sheets stood in the corner; the diameter was perhaps four or five feet.
Then it was back to the orphanage, which was fine, because it was getting hot.
I walked into the classroom and was shocked; the teachers were learning to program! It's a visual programming environment conceptually based upon logo, and some of the students were quite adept at using it. I was shocked because many of these people had never used a computer before this week. I spoke with Adam, who explained that Waveplace is really committed to producing a new model of learning based upon what I would call minimalist training with an empahsis on exploration. This is certainly not what we do in the US. One reason I really like this is that the whole environment (eToys) is built in Squeak, which is a smalltalk VM. That means that the user can modify the program at runtime, and not just using the visual level of the language. It would take time, but Adam had been visited last night by a group of four boys, none associated with the training, all of whom want to know more. They brought along a USB 3G modem, so they were able to use the laptops to connect to the world. The teachers and the boys wanted to see Google and Facebook; I suppose you have to start somewhere.
Katelyn asked about getting OLPCs for development purposes, and Adam excitedly explained the developer community and the monthly discussion and voting (via IRC) that is used to determine who gets the next set of laptops. All you have to do is provide an explanation of what you want to do. Later Adam and I talked about social media, and the OLPC community wants to encourage people to blog and tweet about OLPC and development. I guess I'm meeting that qualification as I type.
One issue came up, which is the procurement, transportation, and delivery of the laptops. Sadly, an earlier program had largely failed because of partnerships that (I understand) had some problems that weren't caught by the oversight processes. OLPC is not the business of giving the laptops away; they are committed to designing them, building them, and driving costs down while driving features up. There is clearly a place to spin off the procurement, transportation, and delivery process, especially with reference to customs duties. It's a complex world.
More later, but a much needed dinner awaits...
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