Tales from Rohan

More than half the words in Creole are borrowed from French. However it is useful and kinda fun to understand how certain sounds shifted during the transition. It makes it easy to guess words if you know the word in French already.

First of all you change the spelling to be phonetic (e sounds like pray, ou sounds like hoot, and ch sounds like ship)

papa -> papa
café -> kafe (coffee)
machine -> machin (machine, car)
radio -> radyo
police -> polis
plastique -> plastik
piscine -> pisin (pool)
fois -> fwa (time—as in one more time)

Then you just drop those barely pronounced R’s and L’s the French love so much

filme -> fim
bible -> bib
rancontre -> rankont (meeting)
tard -> ta (late/later)
fort -> fò (strong)
ferme -> fèm (farm)
professeur -> pwofesè (professor)
ingenieur -> enjenye (engineer)
rendre -> rann (to make, to render)
quelque -> kèk (some)

an, en, and on are nasals (except when accented)

pain -> pen (bread)
bon -> bon (good)
fin -> fen (end)
Haïtian -> ayisyen (Haitian man)
quinze -> kenz (fifteen)
employée -> anplwaye (employee)

ro becomes wo

problème -> pwoblem
fromage -> fwomaj (cheese)
erosion -> ewozyon
environnement -> anviwonman  

u becomes i

plus tard -> pli ta (later)
bureau -> biwo (office, desk)
pleasure -> plezi
université -> inivèsite
epui -> epi (and then, therefore)

A lot of words you normally hear with an article or with the preposition “de” just integrate the sound into the base noun:

l’église -> legliz (church)
l’école -> lekol (school)
l’est -> lès (east)
de l’eau -> dlo (water)

Likewise many nouns is French that begin with a vowel that are usually plural, integrated an initial z sound in the base noun (from the liaison that is usually present when speaking about them in French)

les amis -> zami (friend)
les étoiles -> zetwòl (star)
les épaules -> zepol (shoulder)
les armes -> zam (weapon, “arm(s)”)  

Generally if you need to guess a Creole verb from a French verb, use the most common form of the verb in everyday speech in French, which will often be the past participle or the infinitive

changer -> chanje (to change)
manger -> manje (to eat)
chercer -> chache (to look for)
couper -> koupe (to cut)
aider -> ede (to help)
batir (bati) -> bati (to build)
finir (fini) -> fini (to finish)
faire (fait) -> fè (to make, to do)
venir (venez) -> vini (to come)
travailler (travaille) -> travay (to work)
apprendre -> apprann (to learn)
dire (dit) -> di (to say)
lire (lu) -> li (to read)
ouvrir (ouvrit) -> ouvri (to open)
prendre (prends) -> pran (to take)

Sometimes a verb becomes nasal for no apparent reason

connaître (connais) -> konnen (to know, also use for savoir in Creole)
fermer -> fenmen (to close)
aimer -> renmen

Finally Haitians love contractions and simplifying long words. This is especially noticeable with some common verbs.

oublier -> bliye (to forget)
entender -> tande (to listen, also to hear in Creole)
attendre (attends) -> tann (to wait for)
regarder -> gade (to look at)
arriver -> rive (to arrive)
demander -> mande (to ask)
retourner -> tounen (to return, to go back)
vouloir (voudrai) -> vle (to want)
devoir (dois) -> dwe (should)

Hope you found this interesting.

A friend and former boss asked me how he could help in Benin or Haiti. How silly of me not to write this up earlier!

Benin

Peace Corps Benin - Kate Puzey Girls’ Camp Commemorative Fund [donations]

One of the best and most important programs run by Peace Corps volunteers in Benin are the girls camps. To say that girls get shafted in Benin is a gross understatement. Many girls drop out of school around 8th grade and almost all drop out by 10th grade. The girls camps take girls in villages who are staying in school. They spend a week with Peace Corps volunteers and hand-picked Beninese women mentors from their communities. Last year, 179 girls participated in four girls’ camps. PCVs in Benin have the time and energy to have more camps, but the limiting factor is money. (An incredibly small amount of money.)

Kate Puzey was a volunteer in Benin who was killed on March 12, 2009. She was a model volunteer and especially active with girls camps and girls rights. The Kate Puzey Girls’ Camp Commemorative Fund was setup for donations to the girls camps. 100% of this money goes directly to PCVs in country to spend on the camps. It does not go into the PeaceCorps general fund, or even the Peace Corps Benin fund.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=680-CFD (when you fill out the donation form be sure to specify in the comments field that the donation is for the Kate Puzey Girls’ Camp Commemorative Fund)

Haiti:

Hands on Disaster Response

http://hodr.org/

These guys are a young organization who are doing very impressive work in Haiti. They are almost 100% volunteers. Most come for week to month long stints and clear rubble in Leogane (85% of the homes severely damaged), work as runners in a field hospital, or build transitional schools. Smashing rubble with sledge hammers and carting it away with pails and wheelbarrows is back-breaking hard labor. You have to be seriously committed to do this work. When they arrived immediately after the quake they had a few dozen foreign volunteers. Now they have about 120 foreign volunteers and 50 Haitian volunteers (they are going for a 1:1 mix).

Just the work they are doing in encouraging volunteerism within Haiti is fantastic. I spoke with a handful of their Haitian volunteers. They are mostly Haitian men in their 20’s who are intelligent, curious about foreigners, strong and hard working. Most don’t have any other job offers and want to help their country. (Unfortunately, a lot of poor or middle-class Haitians who want to clean up, don’t even have tools like wheelbarrows and sledgehammers). They get to practice their English, make a lot of new friends, and a lot of them end up getting jobs working with other aid organizations.

J/P HRO

http://jphro.org/  

This organization is running one of the largest camps in Port-au-Prince (about 50,000 people). It is also probably the best run camp in the country. It’s very close to my house. They have a handful of full time staff people and a small army of volunteers. Volunteers and staff sleep in the same kinds of tents as the residents. This organization is proof that you don’t need to have an aid background to be effective.

MSF

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/   and http://msf.org

Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) is one of the big boys in the aid community, but they continue to impress me. They arrived early and setup clinics all over the place. The clinics are all free, free to everyone, clean, and well run, but never extravagant. When I was living in Tombe Gateau I would see white SUV festooned with various logos driving back and forth between Jacmel and Leogane. One day I saw an MSF land cruiser with three Haitian passengers. One had a full leg cast, and one was on an IV drip. This is exactly what they should be doing—sending badly injured Haitians from smaller clinics to a larger hospital. That you don’t see this very often reminds me still how different and dedicated MSF is.

University of Fondwa

http://www.unifusa.org   and http://ufondwa.edu.ht (still waiting on the domain name registration)

The University of Fondwa is the only rural University in Haiti, and the only Haitian University to offer a degree in veterinary medicine. The goal of the University to stop the brain drain from rural areas and provide students with an alternative to moving to Port-au-Prince to get higher education.

While I believe in the students and the mission of the University, I hesitate to recommend making an unqualified general donation. The University definitely needs money to pay teachers salaries, but they need more rigor and planning before I feel comfortable that they will spend your money well. That said, if you are willing to make a donation for a specific purpose (ex: water catchment system, windows, etc), I can make that happen. The University will need computers (give me your poor neglected 3 year old laptops yearning to breathe free), but don’t have a dry, safe place to put them quite yet (stay tuned).

However I can mention two areas that I can recommend whole-heartedly.

If you have a background in agriculture, finance, or management and can come teach classes for one to three months under very basic conditions, then please come volunteer.

Secondly, there are a lot of good students who need scholarships or student loans. There is no student loan program available in Haiti. Even Haiti’s largest microfinance bank (Fonkoze: http://fonkoze.org ) does not offer student loans.

Inveneo

http://inveneo.org

Last but not least there is Inveneo. In rural Haiti you currently have the option of using a slow, congested, unreliable GPRS (cellular data) service for $40 per month and $50 upfront, or a high-latency, congested, lossy, and even more unreliable satellite solution for several hundred dollars a month and a few thousand setup. We are building affordable, appropriate wireless networks in Haiti to provide support for relief and recovery operations, education, healthcare, and microfinance groups.

An Unqualified Sermon

I rode in a minivan this afternoon from Port-au-Prince to Tonmgato where the guy sitting immediately next to me started giving an impromptu sermon at the top of his lungs right next to me. Everyone else ignored him as I tried to, until he said that according to the Bible, the earthquake was a punishment from God and that women exist “for” men. I jumped in with the end of the Noah’s flood story and the two versions of the creation of man and woman in Genesis and asked him how this figured into his beliefs. The guy had never heard of them. He didn’t even believe me that I said that there are two creation “stories” in the Bible and called me a liar. It turns out the guy can’t read (even in Creole) and hasn’t even heard the whole of Genesis read to him. Yet he feels qualified to spew his beliefs at the top of his lungs based on his belief in the absolute truth in parts of a book that he has heard only a tiny portion of and has never read personally.

It worked so well in their country…

You see UN troops driving through Haiti all the time. They are there to discourage looting, riots, and overall anarchy. You most frequently see Sri Lankans and South Koreans, but yesterday I saw two jeeps full of Iraqi UN soldiers. My “salaam alaykum got a big smile and a hearty “alaykum salaam” in response. I think it is ironic that Iraqi soldiers are helping to provide security here in the Western hemisphere in the backyard on the US. Meanwhile their own country has a huge security problem which would not have existed if the US hadn’t invaded. If we weren’t in the middle of two wars, we’d probably have a bunch of our troops available to provide continuing security in Haiti. But after so much US influence in Haiti (some claim the US military kidnapped president Aristide in 2004) maybe its better that we don’t have the troops to keep them here anyway.

Bringing cake to the wedding

I heard an unconfirmed rumor that some government or aid organization donated mangos and coffee as “food aid” immediately after the quake. These are the only two crops that represent a substantial export for Haiti.

Hi Everyone. Unfortunately I won’t have any new photos for a little while, as my camera finally decided to break down during a Thanksgiving fête. However I did want to share a few thoughts.

Here is Benin, how do I know it is almost Christmas? Is it a light dusting of snow? Christmas carols in every store? My mailbox filling up with requests for donations? Cards appearing and gifts going up under the tree? Not a chance.

Today I hit my head on a fist sized mango (still hard for about a month). The Harmattan winds are slowing down and the temperature is creeping up into the 90s. I’ve received almost all of my birthday cards. Students who were otherwise finished with University last year are doing their equivalent of a dissertation defense (called a soutenance) while their friends and family peer in through the windows in their best clothes and call out a big cheer when they pass. Yup. It must be almost Christmas.

I had a good time in Parakou celebrating Halloween with many other volunteers who were in town for a regional meeting. A volunteer in a town a few km North of me bought a few pumpkins in a village nearby which specializes in growing them. These pumpkins were promptly turned in Jack o’lanterns. Not to be wasteful, this weekend I baked some of the flesh for pie (well sort of pie cupcakes) and plan on making a Thai pumpkin stir fry with the rest tonight.

I’ve taken a few nice bike rides out on dirt roads from my house. It is good exercise, beautiful and fun, but I come back not only sweaty but coated in the red dirt that is everywhere here.

Here are a few assorted snapshots I like of village life near Parakou. You don’t need to go very far outside of town to find it.

time for homework…

I am now a Peace Corps Trainee (PCT) or a “stageur” as we are known in country. When my staging group of 56 people arrived, we got a very warm and enthusiastic greeting from large portion of Benin’s current volunteers. We stayed for a few days in Cotonou (the biggest city and commercial captial) at a retreat center so they could give us the most essential training (including learning how to ride a zemijohn motorcycle taxi), figure out what French class we would be taking, and get our shots and our malaria meds. Then we hopped in a few minibuses to meet our families for the rest of our 9 weeks of training.

We are each staying with a host family in Porto Novo, the second largest city in the country and the administrative capital. My host family are great and I am settling in well and very happy, though a bit tired. I had prepared photos of my host papa, my host sister Nora with a cousin, and my mama with the three granddaughters who are staying here over sumer vacation (Oceane, Afrisse, and Barbine), and my room. These pictures were taken on Saturday which was Benin’s Independence day, so everyone was already dressed up to party. Unfortunately the upload speed here to the Internet is much slower than dialup, so I will need to save photos for overnight trips or maybe just use the mail.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment here is the tempo of life. A very common phrase you hear here is “Doucement” which means literally gently or softly, but in Benin means “Take it easy” or even “chill out”. I was shaving getting ready to go out with the family on Independence Day when papa came in and said “Doucement Rohan. Il y a assez de temps.” Take it easy. There is plenty of time.

Of course, no good independence day celebration can be complete without a parade and speeches are appearances from various officials. I happened to get a decent picture of the king of Porto Novo (in the center under the umbrella) only to later have an audience with his majesty with my French class on Thursday.

Please don’t be upset if you get a letter from me with US Stamps and US postmark on it. I went to the post office yesterday and realized that enough stamps to mail one post card to the US costs half of my daily living allowance. US volunteers regularly hand carry letters to mail in the States, so I may be using that option a lot.

À la prochaine!

It’s official. After a very long application process, the US Peace Corps invited me to volunteer in Benin (West Africa) for 27 months.

Q: Wow! When do you leave?
I attend two days of “staging” in Philadelphia July 22-23 with a bunch of other Americans crazy enough to volunteer, then we get on a plane to Benin and arrive July 24.

I am leaving Santa Cruz on July 8th to go visit some family (my mom, my dad) before staging. I am renting out my house from July 1, 2009 until December 31, 2011 (to give me time to do some traveling in the region). I’ll probably do some camping and some rafting between the 1st and the 8th, but I may be on your couch instead!
Q: Where the heck is Benin?
Benin is in West Africa just west of Nigeria. (locator map courtesy of Wikipedia). It is entirely in the tropics. It might look small here, but it is actually about as big as Pennsylvania. From the Atlantic Ocean in the south (tropical lagoons) to the Niger River in the north (savannah) is about 700km. The capital, Cotonou, is at about 6º North latitude and almost on the Prime Meridian.

Q: Is it safe there?
Benin has been stable since multiparty elections in 1991. Wandering around on the beach in the biggest city Contonou isn’t recommended, but otherwise its quite safe.

Q: What will you do there? Where will you be exactly?
I will be an Information and Communication Technology volunteer and my title will be “Technology Development Advisor”. This means my primary program is doing stuff with computers / communications equipment. I’m not sure exactly what I will be doing or where I will be placed in country until after my first 3 months (we train in country for the first 3 months and learn a local language), but I will post an update here. The brochure I got said that I may:

• actively work with associations and small businesses at the grassroots level providing basic technology knowledge and skills.
• engage in activities that foster technological empowerment in women and youth.
• promote Benin (Beninese business, trade tourism, etc.) on the Internet.
• increase the effectiveness of Beninese communications technologies (Internet, radio, wireless, mobile, satellite, etc.)
• enhance the performance of institutions providing financial services by transferring relevant information technology knowledge and skills.

In addition, most Peace Corps volunteers take on several secondary programs once they get established, and everyone is trained in HIV/AIDS prevention.

Q: Where do you live and do you get paid?
Peace Corps volunteers are expected to live at the same living standard as their local country counterparts in their community. In rural areas volunteers often live in mud huts with thatched roofs. In the cities they can live in concrete multi-story apartment blocks. The community provides local housing (a private room to sleep in and a private room to wash in) and Peace Corps provides a stipend in local currency similar to what a middle-class person in country would have after paying taxes and housing expenses. Supplementing your living expenses with savings from home is frowned upon.

Q: What language will you be speaking?
French is the official language in Benin, so I am definitely brushing up on my French. In addition I will learn an indigenous language that you probably never heard of. I don’t know which one I will learn, since it depends on what part of the country I am placed in. Some of the languages there are Fongbe, Yoruba, Ge, Bariba, and Fulani.

Q: Where can I learn more about Benin?
Wikipedia and Lonely Planet are both a good start.

Q: Can I come visit?
Yes, but please be aware of a few things:

• I can’t have visitors for my first 6 months or last 3 months in country
• You need to be prepared to travel on local style transport: shared buses, zemi-johns (a motorcycle used as a taxi), walking, and perhaps bicycling. I will be getting around on a bicycle, zemis and busses and will not have access to a car. (Nor do I recommend renting a car.)
• You should also be prepared to eat local food, possibly from a communal bowl with your (right) hand.
• Locals don’t wear shorts or tank tops.
• There is not likely to be a western style hotel anywhere near where I am staying, but you are welcome to sleep on my bed or on a mat on the floor.
• I need to take vacation days each day someone visits me (including weekends) so please let me know before making travel plans if you would like to visit.

Q: When is the party?
Saturday June 20th I’ll have a big backyard barbeque and party 3pm to 3am at my house.
121 Ladera Dr
Santa Cruz CA 95060
408 307 1866

Q: When will you be back in the States?
I am planning to take some vacation time in September 2010. If everything goes well, I will be done with my service at the end of September 2011. I will probably take some time bumming around the rest of West Africa and then come home for Christmas 2011.

Q: How can I get in touch with you?
For now, send email to my gmail account (r o h a n DOT m a h y). For my first three months, you can get in touch with me at the address below. Letters generally take 3 weeks to a month to arrive from the US. Please don’t send any packages unless you talk to me first (I have to pay duty on incoming packages and they are much more likely to get stolen).
Rohan Mahy, PCT
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 B.P. 971
Cotonou, Benin
Afrique de l’Ouest (West Africa)

I went to CES (the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas) last week. As usual there were way to many enormous TVs and not much substance. The coolest thing I saw last week was in the tiny section reserved for “green” products where a handful of companies showed off solar gadgets (mostly useless) or some very innovative stuff.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies really impressed me. These guys are doing exactly what I thought we should be doing when I first learned about PEM fuel cells in the early 90s. I rode in a fuel-cell powered hydrogen car with metal hydride storage at the 1991 Willits Solar Expo and Rally and I have been waiting for good quality commercially available fuel cells and credible hydrogen storage ever since.

Horizon has PEM fuel cells from 12w to 5kw. They have tiny 10 and 20 liter hydrogen storage containers for small applications and they talked to me about custom much larger storage they had done for their jet project and for a car-sized vehicle. Finally they have a sodium hydroxide based storage system with integrated fuel cell called HydroPak that they use as a portable power system.

They are doing interesting stuff in so many areas. I thought the hydrogen powered e-bike with a 300km range was another nice touch.

Finally the guy I spoke with mentioned a vehicle they were working on with another company that had all the elements I would have put in my spec sheet: carbon fiber body panels, PEM fuel cell, 3-phase inverter, in-hub electric motors, regenerative braking, etc.

Also nice to see was the flexible solar panel folks PowerFilm Solar that Google helped fund making commercial progress.

A few days ago, I went to the South of Lebanon. To go south of the Litani river (other than to the city of Tyre) you need to get special authorization from the police. Four of us took a taxi from our hotel for the day. The taxi driver speaks excellent French so we talked about various things throughout the trip. Before we left, I found out he was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross during the civil war.

First we went to Sidon (Saida) which is a quaint town with a small Crusader castle built sticking out into the sea. There was a Roman city here as well (and earlier) so the Crusaders used “leftover” pillars extensively as building material–not just as lintels and for structural support in the castle itself, but also in the sea wall.

Next we saw the remains of an old castle (Chateau Beaufort) on a knife ridge that was held by the Israeli army for a long time and finally destroyed by Hezbollah. After that we went to the town of Khiam. This town had a small prison on a hilltop that Hezbollah was using as a local base, and this is were Israel launched the first ground offensive during the 2006 war. I looked around for a while and I could not find a single building that had not been bombed in this village. Most houses were being completely rebuilt or extensively renovated. A few others still showed their shell damage. At this point in the trip, our driver told me that he grew up in this village and that his brother was a Hezbollah soldier who died in 2006.

Cluster bomb says “Made in USA”. Taxi driver’s brother is on the far left in the second row on the “martyrs poster”



After leaving the former prison, we drove along the border with Israel/Occupied Palestine and saw UNIFIL tanks and trucks all over the place. We stopped to talk to some Indonesian UNIFIL troops at an overlook and one of them asked to get a group shot (unfortunately mine was blurry).

Israeli flag The border Lebanese, Palestinian, and Hezbollah flags

UNIFIL is out in force

Finally we stopped in Tyre (Sour) and saw the ruins there, including the world’s largest hippodrome (420m long).

Intense.