Return to Bayonnais & Lessons Learned

John and I return to Bayonnais after a very rough return drive down National Highway 2 and back up from Gonaieves to Bayonnais. The generator had gotten so bounced around during the trip that when we took it out of the crate we found that it was not operating. Since it is mostly mechanical we narrow the problem down to the alternator. Normally alternators are very robust, so this is a surprise. John took the alternator apart and found that a spring holding one of the magnets had gotten dislodged. He manages to repair it and put the generator back into operation.

For more pictures please visit: http://homepage.mac.com/sparklinggazzo/Haiti/PhotoAlbum79.html

Lessons Learned:

The project needs constant early stage supervision.

Mitigate by making the local in-country NGO act as the primary, on the ground manager. Negotiate with the NGO to put stake in the project. Assist the NGO with guidance from dissigno for best practices of operations to manage day-to-day operations. The NGO will then not only be accountable for milestones and targets based on their reputation with the community but also with the investment and technology partners.

Provide education material for the operator in Creole clearly explaining the terms of the rentals, including costs, terms, and consequences of damage to the lights.

Use deposit to mitigate against damage to the lights. One or two months cost to ensure that users understand that they will be financially responsible for any damage to the equipment. If the deposit is a hardship, then (if possible) allow the potential renter to work on another project and “bank” their pay for that project on the books for the deposit for the lights.


Inadequate accounting and operations management

Use Polaroid pictures and a numbering system to connect users to a specific light.

Maintain regular contact between operator, in-country management and end-users.

Provide extensive training for bookkeeping and best practices for accounting. Simplify this process to account for limited prior exposure and experience.

Sources Chaudes Community Meeting

This area is a very different environment from Bayonnais. It's like southern California desert; rocky and barren. Cactus and low brush cover the sandy/rocky soil. We drop off a friend of Demeter who has traveled with us from Gonaieves then continue through what feels more like trails through the desert than roads. The sun sets. We are driving towards the mountains. These paths branch off and split many times. If you didn’t know where you were going you would quickly and easily get lost. There are cacti and what looks like dried up riverbeds lit up by the headlights. The kitten that we found on the way to Sources Chaudes and named Bon Bagay (Creole for “It’s a good thing!) curls up on John’s lap. We arrive at the AMURT offices after dark, and have an impromptu dinner of spaghetti and rum and Sprite. We talk about Haiti and development, discovering that we have a lot of alignment of ideas. Community based enterprises we all believe are one good answer to Haiti’s problems. Ground up as well as top down answers will eventually meet in the middle and provide stability for Haitians to seize opportunities and develop their own economy. To change the course of Haiti a balance between investment in infrastructure and community based enterprise is needed. We talked about the need for a community bank in Sources Chaudes. A bank will provide loans to residents; provide credit to compete with the usurious rates local moneylenders charge, and provide a safe place to store cash. This will initiate fiscal stability for the community.

AMURT and Demeter have done a lot to provide stability for the area. They negotiated agreements to end the conflict over the water flowing from the mountains into the communities along the shore. Now instead of strategizing over how to divert water, maintain control and prevent others from using the water, Demeter has ensured that everyone has a fair and equitable use of the natural resources. In addition, they are working with salt manufactures to provide an improved process for salt cultivation. AMURT has built a medical facility and is currently constructing a school. The pedal generator and lighting enterprise fits very well with this vision of development. Downstream manufacturing would expand this idea by employing additional people driving the price of the generator down further, allowing other communities to benefit from it and the associated enterprise model.

Demeter organizes a community meeting to show interested people the pedal generator and lights. About forty people show up at AMURT’s office. They get very excited by the project and want to start that day! Demeter is very excited by the potential of the project too. He wants to make sure that in addition to the generator and lights the project can transition into manufacturing. The generator is quite simple; using readily available parts, and easy to obtain crank set and pedals. The circuit board (used to protect the battery from being overcharged) will most likely be imported at first. Manufacturing will employ additional people (not just an operator), bring more cash into the community, drive the price of the generators down, and provide a good base for bringing the generators to other communities in Haiti and the Caribbean basin.

Another AMURT project in Sources Chaudes is a factory manufacturing slow sand filters for home use. The factory is in an old school built under the Aristide regime. The design for the filters comes from the University of Calgary. The factory employs about 10 people building the filters, then selling and installing them in local resident’s houses. They charge a subsidized rate, which is supported by a grant. These filters are used on the local water supply, which is a natural hot spring that surfaces in the community. Like Bayonnais, this source provides water to the immediate area, allowing community members to focus on other wealth creation activities. The spring is cooled and fills a community swimming pool. A hotter stream fills a small soaking tub also used by community members. We swam one night in the pool and sat in the hot springs under a full moon on the second night.

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Sources Chaudes and AMURT

After four days in Bayonnais, John Dickey and I visit AMURT, an NGO working in the Anse Rouge region of the north. Demeter Russafov is one of the principals at AMURT, working out of the Haiti office in Sources Chaudes. AMURT is a “professional volunteer NGO active in community empowerment and sustainable development programs. AMURT focuses on facilitating community development projects in the areas of health, education, environment, cooperative economics, and water resource management in close cooperation with the management committees of 50 villages.” (© 2007 amurthaiti.org)

Source Chaudes, is a community of about 15,000 people located about 2 hours north of Gonaieves. We arrive there after a nearly two-hour drive on about 30 km of National Highway 2. The name highway is misleading. It is really a nearly impassable wide rocky path. AMURT’s diesel Toyota pick-up reigned supreme suffering only one flat tire. The vehicle of choice as a bus is a Mack dump truck with people standing in the bed! Motorcycles are preferred but are more dangerous. Wrecked vehicles litter the side of the road. As we wait for one of our crew to hitch a ride back about a half a kilometer to repair the flat tire, we watch people walk back and forth past us collecting water from the only sweet source within miles. The time spent in this simple task consumes a significant portion of each day. This task is usually conducted by women or girls, and often keeps them from attending school. We sit and watch the same woman walk past us several times. Behind her are “mountains beyond mountains”, of desert scrubland. Opposite the mountains is the azure ocean. No telephone lines, electric transmission lines, or airliners pollute the view. However this also indicates isolation and a dearth of development. The area is very beautiful. It's hard to believe that there is such suffering and deprivation of simple resources.

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Project - Specific Updates

Actionnel Fleurisima is very happy to have the enterprise here at OFCB. It employs Charles who in turn supports his wife and child, his brother and his brother’s family. Downstream Actionnel hope to grow the business so that others may be employed. People love the lights. During the initial deployment there was concern that the lights were a fad that people wanted to be like their neighbors. But after three months, during which most people have paid consistently, there is obvious value found in the lights.

Some users have cut the wires in an attempt to power other devices. Other people cut the wires in an attempt to avoid paying Charles for a re-charge. After speaking with Actionnel, I went with Charles and an interpreter to take the lights and batteries back from these people. Some customers were upset that the batteries didn’t do more. We discussed what had upset them and how we could improve the home units for future iterations. Many people wanted the battery to power other devices. I explained that we were working on that aspect. I explained that if they cut the wires or tried to connect the batteries to other devices they could damage both the battery and the other device. I asked Charles to refund their money and we took the lights back.

There were a few people who were in errors for their accounts. We visited four of these people. Two hadn’t paid for all three months, and hadn’t come back for a re-charge. Again with Actionnel’s consul, I asked them start from the visit date forward with the new user fee amount. With a handshake and promise they agreed. Most users wanted to keep the lights and promised to pay for the amount expected starting from my visit date. All in all these people were in the minority. I spoke to Charles and asked that in the future he take a more proactive role in caring for his customers. He agreed that he would try harder to accommodate them.

Bayonnais operations used to charge cell phones for about $.40 each. However, the cost was too little for the amount of effort required from Charles and he decided to stop this practice.

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Tools & Technology

Haitians want to pay their bills. It’s not just a point of pride, but more of an indicator of the level of development. It represents to the outside world that Haiti is a country worthy of not just charity, but more importantly a place for private investment. The Pedal Project started when John Humphrey from Sustainable Energy Partners came back from a trip to install a generator tied PV system. On the trip he ruminated with Kent Shell about harnessing the energy of the children that they saw running around. For a few months they kicked this idea around, realizing that in order to capture that energy the generator might look a lot like a bicycle. John approached me to begin preliminary research into solving this problem. After about two months and several different developers I settled on the Eco System Pedal Generator. It was the farthest along in the development phase. It was simple and robust. The package was complete; including technology for a lighting system, which was SEP’s original goal. Finally, Eco Systems was manufacturing test bed generators in Nepal, using developing world designers and builders, which in turn employed developing world people.

The Pedal Power Project is critical in helping to replace smoky, inferior lighting used in nearly every house throughout Haiti. This lighting is simply kerosene poured into homemade lanterns, with a wick made of twisted scrap cotton. The containers are often small, discarded jars with screw cap lids. The wick is lit and provides a weak, flickering localized light. The lanterns are incredibly dirty, belching out dirty black smoke. Inside the small houses this smoke collects, breathed in by everyone. Women use the lanterns to cook with and kids use the lanterns to read their schoolbooks. The lanterns are also dangerous, causing fires in the mostly wood and thatch houses. The kerosene is bought on an almost daily basis from local third and fourth tier sellers, each adding uplift for their own efforts. Pedal Power is also critical in creating reliable source of electricity that can be used to re-charge cell phones batteries, charge batteries for use in radios, power tools, fans and other sources of lighting.

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December 2007 Return Trip

Haiti is fantastic; turbulent, inspiring, beautiful, dirty, and cruel. It is a daily struggle for the nearly eight million people who call it home. Haiti’s population must accept unreliable or non-existent electricity, nearly impassable roads, and dirty water often far from points of use. The soil is exhausted, making food production and agriculture a challenge. Common sources of income include salt cultivated from the ocean, charcoal production for cooking fires, and the sale of peanuts grown on the small plots of privately owned land. Despite these overwhelming odds, Haiti is a land of opportunity.

The Pedal Power Project is a pilot to bring electricity and lighting to 65 families in Bayonnais, Haiti. The project was started in September 2007. It was supported by a partnership between SEP, Eco Systems, private investment, and OFCB the in country Haitian partner located in Bayonnais. John Dickey and Gary Zieff traveled to Bayonnais in December 2007 to re-visit operations, provide more lights, and explore other communities that could benefit from the project. John Dickey is there to take photographs and video. Of the 50 original home units, fours batteries failed and three went “missing”. All LED lights are still operating per spec and the generators are fully functional. The original price point, based on the average cost for kerosene fuel was lowered. This was decided at a community meeting between the 50 users and Actionnel Fleurisma the Pastor for OFCB and dissigno’s Haitian partner. At the meeting it was concluded that the original price of $0.11/day was too expensive. The cost was lowered to $0.06/day for the lights. Lights averaged about 30 day before needing a re-charge. In addition Bayonnais operations charged cell phones for about $.40 each. So far 88%of users pay regularly and in full. Payments are made to either Charles Gasmy the operator or direct to the community bank. The income pays Charles’ salary, which is commensurate with a teacher. The remaining cash is left in reserve in operations bank account in the community bank. Normally this revenue stream would be used to service the debit for the cost of the equipment. However, for now this cash is left in the bank. It provides loans to community members for other enterprise investment, and allows future investment by the enterprise to purchase additional lights for new users.

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