Final Preparations

I leave Monday, May 23 for Jeremie, Haiti, for another adventure. I will be there until August 13, doing an evaluation of a training for teachers, as well as a few other adventures. My cell phone and voicemail will be on hold from Sunday, May 22 until August 22. I will have email access (any of my addresses is fine) from time to time.

I've been running around like mad in the last few weeks, trying to get everything ready since school finished for the semester. Vaccines (typhoid, polio, tetanus, hep A and B) and chloroquinine for malaria. Insurance to get me out of the country and treated once I'm home. I now have a collection of skirts that fall past my knees (I'm a bit of a "creative" seamstress, my mother would now say) and shirts with sleeves, my uniform for the summer. A spare set of contacts and new glasses after I broke my old ones. Collecting sunscreen and bug repellent and mosquito netting to battle the elements. And on and on...

I'm still scrambling to finish a series of surveys that I'll administer in the schools, but we now have most of them in English and French. And what about Creole, you ask? Most Haitians speak Creole and only Creole. But very few read or write it, though this is changing. The literate population operates more often in French, so this is the language we will use in the secondary schools. Still, I hope to have all materials in Creole by the end of this project. AND, I hope to be speaking a bit of it by the time I come home!