Throughout Haiti’s impoverished, mountainous interior, barefoot peasants haul plows across barren hillsides in a losing battle against nature.
Decades of deforestation have taken their toll, transforming this once-fertile region into a parched wasteland. Farmers are forced to rely increasingly on chemical fertilizers, further sapping the soil’s capacity to produce. When that fails, they cut down the few remaining trees to sell as charcoal.
A new private university is working to break that cycle by teaching sustainable agricultural methods to the sons and daughters of peasant farmers. In January 2004, the University of Fondwa opened its doors to its first 20 students in this mountain town 40 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital. While tiny, the institution has ambitious plans, and offers a focus on rural development that is largely absent among Haitian universities, as well as free tuition and room and board. The students, who come from rural areas throughout Haiti, are working toward bachelor’s degrees in agriculture and agribusiness, as well as the country’s first degree in veterinary medicine.
“The philosophy is that they will go back to their home communities to help promote development,” says Renate Schneider, the university’s German-born rector. “You have to do development in the rural areas before you can solve the problems in Port-au-Prince.”
The university grew out of the Association of Peasants of Fondwa, a rural cooperative founded in 1988 by the Rev. Joseph Philippe, a Roman Catholic priest. The success of the group, which is supported largely by private donations from Americans, inspired Father Philippe to create Haiti’s first free rural university.
Most Haitian universities are concentrated in the capital, a two- to three-hour drive from here thanks to roadblocks and traffic in Port-au-Prince’s western slums. Students, including agronomists, typically remain in Port-au-Prince after they graduate, if they do not leave Haiti altogether. As a result, there is a critical shortage of trained professionals in the countryside, where most of Haiti’s eight million people live. The dearth of veterinarians is even more acute: There are believed to be only 10 of them, all foreign-trained, in the entire country.
“Haitians think vets are for the rich, to treat their cats and dogs,” says Manuel Rubio Limonta, a professor of veterinary medicine from Cuba. “They don’t understand the importance of good animal medicine in raising animals. If there aren’t vets, any sickness can turn into a plague.”
Mr. Rubio is helping students operate several pig and chicken farms in the town, as models of viable, small-scale agribusinesses. Students are also teaching local farmers how to combine crops to maximize their tiny plots. Under the university’s community-service requirement, they are expected to return to their hometowns for two months each year. (When applying, applicants write essays proposing detailed solutions for problems in their hometowns, to demonstrate a commitment to rural development.)
“The people in my community are producing a lot, but they are not reaping the benefits, because they don’t know how to manage them,” says Sterlise Fénelon, 23, a business major from the southern coastal town of Les Cayes. One of seven children, she dreams of earning a graduate degree in the United States and returning home to help local farmers set up their own businesses.
The university covers all the students’ costs, including meals and lodging in cheerful concrete houses along Fondwa’s sole paved road. The students live four to a room — a major improvement over the mud-floor huts where many grew up.
Most speak French and Creole, but are expected to be fluent in English and Spanish by the time they graduate, to improve their job prospects in the region.
Despite initial plans to enroll 120 students, administrators failed to meet their fund-raising goals. With a $10,000 monthly budget, the university plans to offer only 20 spots for next year’s class, says Ms. Schneider.
Like most of the roughly 15 staff members, who include professors from Cuba, France, and the United States, she is not here for the money. Professors earn, on average, $400 per month, while Ms. Schneider and a few others are volunteers.
Ms. Schneider, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, first came to Haiti in 2001 on a trip sponsored by a Roman Catholic group, and was so impressed with the project that she agreed to serve as the institution’s first rector.
Aid From Cuba
The project is modeled after Cuba’s University of Guantánamo, which trains local farmers in sustainable agriculture. In 2003 several Cuban educators came to Fondwa to help set up a similar program.
While the climates and topographies of the two countries are similar, Haiti’s problems are far more extreme. Health care outside the cities is virtually nonexistent. And many areas lack roads, so the sick must either walk or be carried to the nearest clinic, sometimes miles away.
Fondwa’s paved road was built about 20 years ago to link the capital to the southern coast. But the town lacks electricity, and water is scarce. The university relies on gas-powered generators to run its half dozen computers, which are only available for three hours at night.
Such hardships are familiar to the students. Manouche Douze, a 22-year-old agronomy student, comes from a village in central Haiti that is so remote that farmers carry their produce to market on horseback. While the region has abundant water, her village lacks the means to trap the water for agriculture, she says.
Ms. Douze is happy to be studying away from Port-au-Prince, where political violence has left thousands dead over the past few years. But she hopes to return to her village after graduating to help resolve one of its most urgent problems.
“The first thing is to set up an irrigation system,” she says, smiling at the thought. “If we can just do that, the situation will definitely improve.”
