permaculture

[Charles Knoles <charles@growfood.org>]

Dear Permies,

In August, my design partner Liddy Arens and I travelled to Haiti to work 
on a village design project.   Since some of you helped out with ideas for 
the project I thought I'd give you all an update on how things went down there.

Brief synopsis of the project:  La Saline, a small village of approximately 
200 people was washed away by floods associated with Hurricane Lili in 
2002.  The village was located on the Ravine du Sud near Camp Perrin and 
somewhat near the regional capital Les Cayes.  Some of the villagers were 
members of a remarkable group called AJEC, (an acronym for the "Young 
entrepreneurs of Camp Perrin" in kreyol) and this group proceeded raise 
funds and buy land at a higher elevation and rally support from a Local 
N.G.O and a peace corps volunteer to get a new village designed.  Liddy and 
I were brought in as Permaculture consultants and we worked alongside Eric 
Davenport, a young eco-architect.

When we began the design we were unsure of how the villagers felt about 
designing the village to be ecologically sustainable when they had been 
homeless for over a year and really just needed a place to live. Our 
concerns were put to rest in our first meeting with the villagers who 
expressed their desire that the village be "designed around recycling and 
composting" and for it to have a lot of green space.  In addition to this 
it was quite a relief to be in a culture where the value of planting trees 
for food and medicine around the home is well understood.

Our design emphasizes rainwater catchment, composting toilets, small scale 
agricultural processing, capturing cooling breezes, swaling and community 
building.  A PDF file of the latest version of our designs are up on the 
web at http://www.oreworld.org/laroche.htm, please have a look at it. It 
would be very nice to hear any suggestions for the project.

I would especially like to hear suggestions regarding how to build 
rainwater catchment tanks where metal and plastic are scarce, building 
constructed wetlands for secondary waste treatment for 200 people.  In a 
few months we will be going down there to oversee construction which is 
something that none of us have any experience in so any suggestions in that 
area would be very helpful.

There is also enormous potential for bio diesel in Haiti as diesel is the 
sole automotive fuel used there.  If anyone on this list feels like this is 
their area and wants to get their hands dirty doing on site education they 
should contact me off-list.

All Love

Charlie Knoles