BYU volunteers trying to sow hope in Haiti

LEOGANE, Haiti — Four BYU students wander through a sprawling Haitian marketplace toting a plastic 10-gallon bucket, two machetes and a small shovel to check out the local produce.

They pass over the fresh mangos, healthy coconuts and just-pulled carrots spread out under tarps propped up with bamboo poles. They're scrounging for squishy plantains, crushed limes and wilted cabbage. At one point, Dominique Stay even bends down to pick up a corn cob stuck in the mud.

James Barker, who speaks Creole, asks vendors, mostly women, if they have any fruit that's bad or vegetables they can't sell. Many do but some want him to pay anyway. He declines and moves on until he finds some breadfruit peels or bean pods for nothing.

After approaching several vendors, the bucket, which is all the group has right now to haul the withered scraps, is full.

"Eventually, we'd like to get a wheelbarrow," says Ammon Franklin, a well-traveled graduate student.

The bits of waste will go into compost used to make the nutrient-poor soil in this area fit for gardening as part of a Provo-based humanitarian aid project called Sustain Haiti. It is a tiny effort in the overwhelming task of rebuilding this earthquake-ravaged nation. For now, it begins with rotten tomatoes.

The project has four primary missions: a concept known as square-foot gardening, sanitation/hygiene education, micro-financing/micro-enterprise and clean water. Volunteers will soon teach classes and hold seminars for interested residents.

Leogane, a city of 150,000 people located 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince, was at the epicenter of the Jan. 12 earthquake. An estimated 80 percent of its buildings were damaged and 20,000 to 30,000 residents were killed. House after house was rendered to chunks of cinderblock and concrete. Rubble chokes the narrow dirt streets. People still live in makeshift shelters.

In Haiti since early May, the students, all of whom attended BYU, are an advanced team of sorts, making relationships with other nonprofit humanitarian organizations as well as getting their hands dirty.

So far, they have built garden boxes from old boards anchored with cinderblocks on the LDS Church grounds and at an orphanage just outside town. When the soil is ready, the 8-foot by 10-foot plots will be planted with a variety of vegetables — a different crop in each square foot, hence the name square-foot gardening. Volunteers plan to teach seminars to locals so they can do the same on their own land.