OUR BLOG is constantly changing - please check with us again soon enough, we have plenty of stories to share from our experiences in Haiti.
Molly's Blog
Eric's Blog
Note: Molly and Eric are our most recent volunteers. Hailing from Minnesota, they are full of inspiration to make a positive difference here, yet also easy-going about it, taking Haiti one stride at a time. They are kind yet focused, non-imposing yet assertive, smart yet humble. We have already grown to appreciate them and look forward to the moments we spend together, whether at work or having fun. Agh, and BTW, they are excellent photographers, so we all are looking forward to some beautiful images from the NW of Haiti coming to this website pretty soon...
Our friends and family have been begging us to start a blog for a long time now. Someone once noted that we could easily do a reality show with our real-life experiences here, and then we quickly looked at each other and laughed, probably relieved that we are far away from cameras and reality shows, or maybe relieved that we were finally away from our much celebrated culture of abstractions and complexities often beyond our understanding. Molly and Eric's arrival is probably a good timing also in terms of finally having sb on board who actually cares about keeping in regular touch with life "over-there". It is very likely that our friends and family will soon grow to appreciate their blogs and begin to keep in touch with our lives here through Molly's intriguing lines and Eric's photos. And as far as our own bogs are concerned, when they do start taking shape they will probably include stories such as these:
One would think that leaving your family and country and coming to help make a difference in a corner of the world forgotten by its own people would be easily recognized as... an honorable act of high consciousness. Well... One fine November morning we woke up and the world was not the same any more - the attention of the press and governments from Haiti and abroad suddenly zoomed in on our "extremist" lifestyle and past "terrorist" acts. The article pushed us on stage and within the spotlight, and it suddenly reached the highest levels of gov't and international aid organizations. This of course has not been the first time that yoga and meditation have been branded as a dangerous cult, what was more interesting was the sequence of events that unravelled over the course of the few months following this sensation-seeking article...
> MORE coming soon
The first time we went to this isolated mountain village some of the kids ran away - they had never seen a foreigner before. During the ensuing visit with the village elders we began negotiating AMURT's first big project for the area, which was so controversial that both the gov't and UNICEF had decided to withdraw after years of inter-village conflicts and violence, leaving their ambitious water projects in shambles. During this first visit the local strongmen threatened to cut our heads off with machete if we returned to "steal" their water, and the local voodoo priest tried to impress us with his special mental powers. We had nowhere to return to but home - to a dusty fishing village 10 km down the mountain, whose residents had been forced to walk for 3 hrs each day to find drinking water...
Follow 12 months of fascinating experiences - from negotiating with villagers and funding agencies to the ensuing year-long struggle against all odds to rebuild a mostly destroyed water supply line linking 7 thirsty villages to an abundant and pure spring guarded jealously by a small community of freedom loving strong-heads. Those were the days when nobody had heard about AMURT in the conflict-torn post-Aristide Haiti, and terrorism was not such a buzz word, and certainly its association with yoga and vegetarianism was as far fetched as it could ever be. The only thing that mattered was the water, abundant in one place and scarce in another next door, and the only goal was the successful building of an invisible bridge between warring communities. Or perhaps the only thing meaningful, later realized, was the searching for a subtle space within us, a tacit ground shifting our world of ideas from the self-centered mindset we had been raised to believe in to a mental flow oriented towards service to humanity and self-realization. Those were the days when we realized that the more we give up the more we gain, and that this process of sacrifice defines our mental expansion, and that what carries us with more force than anything else are the wings of subtle inspiration and the desire to help make the lives of others easier and meaningful.
> MORE coming soon
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