|
 Erin
Stoy, Ross Kauffman, and Dustin Brubaker are in Danane. Erin
lives with Colette Yan, whom she finds to be a kindred spirit. They
live with Colette's son and two female cousins who are in their
early teens. The house is on the edge of town in a rugged landscape.
Colette runs a tailor school with boarding students. Though the
school is ending for the year, Erin has had the opportunity to do
some sewing. She is also observing at a local hospital and helping
to give vaccinations twice a week.
 Ross
lives with the family of Benoit and Edoxy who just had a baby. They
live on the farm which is a half hour's drive from town down a country
road which Americans might consider treacherous but fairly typical
for rural areas here. Benoit is one of the workers on the farm.
Ross has been involved in various projects on the farm but his chief
responsibility has been to collect the eggs from the 1100 chickens
which lay about 900 eggs a day.
 Dustin
lives with Alphonse Lieu, his wife Charlotte, their 5 children and
Alphonse's Uncle and Aunt. Alphonse is the director of a farm started
many years ago by a French Mennonite missionary. It is a large organization
trying both to grow cash crops and also to develop and promote farming
improvements for traditional village farmers.
 Rafael
Barahona and Andre King live in Biankouma among the mountains.
Rafael lives with pastor Pierre Gono and his wife Dorcas and as
many as 20 schoolchildren who stay with them. Rafael has been working
in an artisan center beside the mission compound where he lives.
There, much as an apprentice, he began by scraping bark off rattan
wood. This wood has a rubbery quality when freshly stripped making
it well suited to bending into furniture. He has since also made
a basket and hopes to progress to other things as well.
 Andre
is living with a family in town and working on a farm 7 km out in
the country. They grow cabbage, eggplant, corn, and raise cows and
chickens. He has found transportation to be an interesting process:
he takes a "taxi" which waits sometimes hours to leave until it
has six paying passengers. To save gas, the driver turns off the
motor when going downhill and pops the clutch to start again at
the bottom. After the taxi ride, Andre still walks about a mile
to the farm. He has planted and tends a cabbage patch and also mucks
out the cows daily.
|
