(MENAFN- Caribbean News Now) By Jean H Charles
If it is January 1, it is Independence Day in Haiti; it is also the time of the year when students from Purdue University descend on Haiti, not to escape the rigor of winter coming from the great lakes of Michigan into Lafayette, Indiana, where Purdue University is located; they came to bring technology transfer to students of Haiti and also learn from them, particularly those enrolled in the field of agronomy.
The whole process started with an idea. Dr Mark A Russell, a world renowned expert in agricultural sciences, a professor and a leading scholar in applied problem solving all over the world, developed a kinship with Haiti after its deadly earthquake on January 12, 2010, that may have killed some 300,000 people in its aftermath.
Dr Russell called on an alumnus of Purdue, Dr Eugene Branly, to guide him to a friend in the southern part of Haiti to introduce its international program of learned hands-on experience. Dr Branly informed Dr Russell it would be the blind leading the blind since he had no attachment to the southern part of Haiti, he suggested instead bringing his program to the northern part of Haiti where he would be able to count on strong roots to implant the project.
That was six years ago, the idea has germinated so well that every year around the time of the memorial of the earthquake you can expect Purdue and Haiti to be on the same wavelength of knowledge sharing under the label of: Purdue Engagement for International Food Security.
Haiti has a deficit of 400 million chicken eggs; since it consumes 411 million and it produces only 11 million eggs. The rest is imported from the Dominican Republic and from the United States. Raising chickens in Haiti is easy but finding all the ingredients to feed the chicken is the work of Sisyphus since one of the protein ingredients for raising poultry, soy, is not native to Haiti, making farm raising chicken in Haiti a prohibitive experience.
This year curriculum for Purdue was centered amongst other topics on the teaching of the techniques of producing your own poultry feed while the Haitian students were sharing the advantages of Moringa the green produce that has enough protein to replace soy in the composition of balanced chicken feed. There was also seminar on seed germination, methods of community engagement and water purification.
I am fortunate to be part of the Purdue family in the pursuit of the project since last year when I have invited the group of students from Purdue to visit my field of young mahogany and cedar trees growing near the town of Grand River. This field visit is now a regular staple of the students from Purdue who enjoy not only the rural part of this northern region of Haiti but also the hospitality of the town that bears the famous freedom fighter against slavery for the entire humanity, Jean Jacques Dessalines.
I told the students that Haiti could become as rich as Singapore with its green product that enriched the France of Louis XIV. Every year millions of mahogany seeds become dust in November and the same phenomenon is repeated in April when millions of cedar seeds become also dust because they are not harvested. I have done so, for the last three years, the seedlings grow like chickens once they are well rooted; they are ready to mature in 15 years!
In further field visit, the students from Purdue were in awe at the imposing Citadel Laferiere, a fortified monument on top of a steep mountain built by King Henry Christophe in 1805 to repel any effort by Napoleon Bonaparte to regroup and strike Haiti once more to reinstall slavery.
With Haiti's convulsive internal political imbroglio, the project could not have rooted so well but fot the effective leadership of Pastor Gedeon Eugene, the rector of Antenor Firmin University, who took the responsibility to inscribe the project in the curriculum and in the yearly funding of the school.
Upon inquiry I have found out the Antenor Firmin students as well as the students from some five other universities have to pay only $7 to attend the full three days symposium with a copious lunch every day for three days as well as receiving their Purdue certificate for the 24-hour course program. I asked Pastor Eugene how he could afford such a large expanse and he told me frankly it is easier for him to do so than go into the politics and the pitfalls of cost sharing with other universities.
The project has another grandfather, Dr Branly, who now occupies the national direction of the ministry of agriculture in Haiti. In spite of his many occupations all over the country he always found the time and the care to be with the students when the certificates are delivered on the last day of the symposium.
Purdue has been celebrating its 150th year of creation as a land grant university with almost an Ivy League standing. Its basketball team made that university a well known staple in the major college championship tournament. Cape Haitian will be celebrating its 350th anniversary in 2020; I told Dr Russell, Haiti is expecting more from Purdue in that occasion.
The city market in the center of the town, a well designed architectural monument built abroad and brought to Haiti around the time of the creation of Purdue, is in a situation so despicable that President Donald Trump may have seen the place when he characterized Haiti as a 'shithole country'!
Yet the grandeur of the market reminds me of the possibility of reproducing the Grand Central market of New York in Cape Haitian when it is restored and cleaned to mint condition and the vendors installed properly with all the amenities of a modern market in an historical and grand setting!
My wish is to have the interdisciplinary class of 2019 visit the Cape Haitian market and call on several disciplines of Purdue, such as students from the school of architecture, urban planning, social work and agriculture, to devise a plan to rehabilitate that market and make it as hospitable as the market of Grand Central in New York. I am familiar with both places; it is a proposition which is a possibility for both Haiti and Purdue!
Whatever man can imagine is already in the making of achievement! Dr Mark A Russell has already validated that proposition with his well designed yearly semester class at the university that gave a lifetime experience and deep positive emotional feeling to thousands of students from both Purdue and Haiti!
MENAFN1401201902110000ID1097970312
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.