jake lyell photography

Heavy, loud, and concentrated. These are words I use to describe Haiti’s assault on the American senses. But its more than the intense atmosphere and lack of polish that keeps westerners away. People from developed countries are a rare sight in Haiti due to its poor security and lack of infrastructure. Those that come remain sealed off in walled compounds and are sped away in the relative safety of a tinted-window, 4-wheel-drive rent-a-car. The warnings of violent crime issued from behind the desks of those at the US embassy in Port-au-Prince are not unwarranted; kidnappings, robberies and murders of the wealthy do occur. But the situation here is one that requires vigilance and common sense, not paranoia and seclusion. For those of us who step beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone, the rewards seem endless. Investing in a good insurance policy is also recommended.

700 miles to the South-East of Florida, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Occupying the western third of the Island of Hispaniola, it is a microcosm of the world’s humanitarian problems: unclean water, lack of health care, environmental degradation and an economy in shambles. These problems are interdependent and where solutions are brought about, new troubles emerge. As the nation’s fragile new government slowly takes hold and security improves across the country, Haiti is opening a new chapter in its restless history.

I left Port-au-Prince with my interpreter Romel the day after I touched ground, though I would return later to spend several days there. My thinking was that as the capital is the most unstable part of the country, and I had a greater risk of having my camera stolen there, I would prefer to have that happen after I had at least a week’s worth of images safe and backed up. Riding the crowded tap-tap (public bus) to the North, our destination was the city of Gonaives. Despite Haiti’s small size, (its area is comparable to that of the State of Maryland) traveling from one end to the other by tap-tap can take an arduous 48 hours. I decided to break the journey to Gonaives in the valley town of Mirabalais. Click the map below to trace the route of my journey.


We were fortunate to arrive in Mirabalais on market day, when people come from the town and surrounding countryside to sell or trade their goods while stocking up on needed supplies. Despite its bustling streets, people in Mirabalais like Etide Francois (shown below in her sewing shop) complained of low wages and not being able to make ends meet. Madame Francois’ story echoes national statistics. Over two-thirds of people in Haiti are unemployed or underemployed. Most people in Haiti have jobs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that income is being generated. Therefore, the term underemployment has come to best describe the economic disposition facing the majority. Many days may pass without a sale made or a service rendered. While more than 80% of Haitians live below the poverty line, I seldom encountered beggars on the streets.

Below, a woman named Yvette makes cornmeal near the market with the help of her daughters.

Though it was hard to judge at the time, the outlook in Mirabalais was brighter than in other parts of the country I was to visit. It seemed most people had electricity in their homes because of the town’s proximity to the same hydro-electric dam that supplies power to Port-au-Prince. Consequently, Mirabalais’ streets and shops remained busy well into the night. While most did not not have running water, communal water stations like the one seen below piped in fresh spring water from the surrounding countryside.

We were hard-pressed to find affordable lodging in town that did not double as a brothel. Luckily, a woman named Dada offered to put us up for the night in her home. That evening as I was editing photos in my room, much of the neighborhood came by to watch the town light up on my laptop’s screen. Some curious residents are shown posing below. We departed early the next morning for Gonaives.

Haiti was pounded by Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004. The damage was particularly severe in the port city of Gonaives. Rushing water from the passing hurricane emptied off the mountainsides surrounding flood-prone Gonaives killing over 3,000 of the city’s residents. The flood damaged every building in the town and left 250,000 people homeless.

Charles Luders, shown above, lives with his wife and seven children in the mountains that surround Gonaives. From his house you can see the entire town: the dusty hills that ring the city, the winding avenues that lead you through the cauldron of downtown until you reach the shoreline. Charles and his wife moved to the hillside 11 years ago. Moving to the outskirts of the city was the only way that they could afford a home and education for their children. “I have struggled a lot to provide a better life for my children than I have had” says Luders, who has made education a priority for his children. “With education you can make a life for yourself and earn a living.” Luckily, their move up the hill also allowed the Luders family to escape the destruction of Hurricane Jeanne. While they experienced mudslides and minor flooding in their home, the heavy rains had a far-worse impact on the downtown area.

Like the rest of Haiti’s countryside, the hills surrounding Gonaives have been stripped of the trees that once enlivened them. In fact, 98% of Haiti’s original tree cover has been lost due to the common practice of harvesting trees for lumber and charcoal. Neighboring Dominican Republic passed laws back in the 60’s outlawing commercial logging. Haiti followed suit by outlawing logging by unauthorized individuals but was never able to enforce such measures. Today, Haiti’s lumber regulation consists only of educational programs and minor replanting efforts instituted by the Ministry of Environment. Knowing the lack of trees in his neighborhood causes increased soil erosion and exacerbates flooding downtown, Luders and his neighbors have made an effort to plant trees throughout the neighborhood.

Although the residents on Gonaives’ hillsides have managed to escape the worst of the city’s flooding problems, the outlook for some appears no less bleak. Sylvia Hertel sells vegetables in the market while her husband is a tap-tap driver. She is shown above with three of her children (youngest to oldest: Wilson, Kenkenn and Dieukinet). Her and her husband’s combined income is not enough to send their four boys to school and two of them have had to stay home this year.

During my interview with Sylvia Hertel I noticed one of her boys, Dieukinet, had a nagging cough. Sylvia, rather gaunt herself, explained that two of her sons, Dieukinet (above) and Kenkenn are kept up in the night with coughing, fever and sweats. My interpreter Romel, himself a medical student, suspected the children of having Tuberculosis when Sylvia stated that they have been coughing up blood. Even though Haiti lacks universal health care, government hospitals will treat anyone diagnosed with TB without cost. Stressing the urgent need for care, Romel and I made arrangements to meet the family the next morning in order to accompany them to the hospital and cover and any fees that are incurred. (They didn’t show.)

Down at the waterside, Goniaves’ port is bustling as a handful of rusty freight liners and a shell of an American school bus lie grounded along the shore. It seems only the old wooden sail boats, some propelled by motors, continue to traverse the waters. The boats bring in goods from around the country and some goods from afar. As workers unload large oblong bags of charcoal from ships by the hundreds, buyers come to haggle with the managers. The charcoal sold here comes from the North-West province - places like Bombadopolis and Anse Rouge. As in much of the developing world, in Haiti charcoal is made from wood and is used for cooking in every household, street-side eatery and many restaurants. Imitating a practice begun by European colonists for the expansion of agriculture, residents obliterated Gonaives’ surrounding forests long ago. As demand for charcoal and lumber continues, new sources must be found further afield.

Above center, Tifamm Val, 30, has sold charcoal in the market since she was ten years old. Below, lumber vendors await a sale in Gonaives’ market district. With the exception of a couple of small protected (not necessarily enforced) areas, wood is free game in Haiti.

50 kilometers north-west of Gonaives, the town of Marmalade is the hometown of Haiti’s president, Rene Preval. Surrounded by brown, barren hills, Marmalade is an oasis of waterfalls and shade below towering trees from the blistering sun . Lush as it may be, Marmalade is the origin of the charcoal sold by an old woman on the street just outside my hotel in Gonaives. As Marmalade was only two hours away, I decided to make a day trip of it.

There I encountered what I had set out to find; though they weren’t the ruthless tree-choppers with gnashing teeth that I had expected. Charcoal makers worked all over the hills surrounding Marmalade, most of them on their family’s plot of land. Like other poor farmers in the area, Fritznel Silvain, harvests trees from his land, buries them under limbs and brush to keep the air out, and sets the mound to smolder. The process is a tricky one and if any oxygen gets inside, the batch is lost. Mr. Silvain has made a business out of selling charcoal to restaurants in Gonaives for the past two years. Between his charcoal business and growing bananas, he is able to provide for his family of five, as well as the two children (shown below) of his deceased brother and sister-in-law.

It should be mentioned that the FAO, (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) has a small office in Marmalade. They are responsible for environmental education and replanting efforts in the area. Despite their presence, Mr. Silvain, shown below, has never been contacted by anyone from the FAO or the Haitian government concerning his charcoal business.

Back in Gonaives, UN soldiers patrol the dusty streets where revolution flows in the blood of the city. It was here that Haiti declared independence from France in 1804. Exactly 200 years later, gangs opposed to the authority of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide began an uprising that led to the leader’s ouster. Gonaives has seen a return to near-complete calm in recent years and appears at peace with the Preval administration.

It seemed like the Haitian government was taking a proactive step in preventing another Jeanne-like catastrophe. In February of 2006, private contractors commissioned by officials in Port-au-Prince began to construct a series of gutters and canals throughout Gonaives to channel floodwaters pouring from off the surrounding mountainsides. Entire roads were shut down and bulldozed to make way for these massive canals. Somewhere along the way, officials forgot to finish the project; or perhaps more likely, used the funds for personal expenses.

Begun nearly two years ago, today these would-be canals dotted throughout the city are giant cesspools where people throw their waste and where mosquitoes breed. They stand as giant pools of filth and stench. Unconnected to any drainage network, the pools stand idle, save for the occasional passer-by falling in.

The canal that runs down what was once Vernet Street seems the most egregious of them all. Vernet Street borders Gonaives’ central market to the north. The Vernet canal bisects the former roadway leaving a small sidewalk on each side for the busy market traffic to negotiate. On the south side of the canal, waters run nearly to the doorsteps of houses and shops, climbing into the dwellings during the rain. Harold Previse, 31, who sells mattresses on the south side of the canal is especially incensed over its presence. Up until 2006 he owned a shop on one Gonaives’ busiest streets. Now he sits within two feet of the rank sewer and business is no longer booming: “My business has decreased since this was installed. No foot traffic, no tap-tap, no cars. So no one can see my business.”

Along the same block, a group of bored Haitian youth hang out on their doorsteps, most sporting white t-shirts. Among them is Desmite (above left), whose front doorstep faces the canal. Asked how life has changed since the building of the canal, he complains of flooding in his home and subsequent health problems for him and his family: fever and diarrhea and other digestive problems. Desmite goes on to tell that he sees people fall in the canal daily, especially at night as there are no streetlights to illuminate the area. As the canal is over 8 feet deep, several have even lost their lives doing so.

It seems officials have already forgotten about the destruction of hurricane Jeanne. Gonaives’ drainage system has remained incomplete for nearly the past two years and is now a ticking time bomb waiting to unleash squalor and sickness throughout the city at the next passing hurricane.

At the port, the bawdy seafaring mob continues on as it has for centuries past. The women smoke tobacco pipes as the dockworkers load sugar cane into old sail boats. An itinerant preacher bathes along the shore while calling out to the indifferent crowd for repentance. After washing his hands of them he moves along. I left Gonaives with a feeling that a force majeure more imminent than the Judgment was at hand.

Busy, chaotic Port-au-Prince has one foot in the door of progress. The other one will take a while to catch up. Take for instance trash cans. More than just a novelty here, they actually exist on street corners for people to dispose of their garbage. Furthermore, they are collected regularly. But that’s only for some neighborhoods. The automatic weapon-toting police presence on the street is also a sign that Port-au-Prince is entering a new era, however sluggish. Though many officers are more interested in flirting with women or trying on sunglasses than walking the beat, their actual presence on the street is something not seen a year ago. Even once impenetrable neighborhoods like Cite Soleil have shown improvements in security. This week Doctors Without Borders announced it was turning over operations in the dangerous seaside slum to the Haitian Ministry of Health due to the improving situation there. However, the announcement came back to back with a plea from President Preval to gang members that they may release child hostages and cease abductions in the city. Violent crime, while still rife in the capital, has decreased significantly in the last year.

Like many capitals in the developing world, Port-au-Prince has seen an influx of migrants from around the country, drawn by its wealth and infrastructure. Makenson Pierre (below left) is known by his peers as Baby. He left his home near the market in Gonaives several months ago to come live on the streets, taking his place along side what UNICEF counts as 7,000 other street children in Port-au-Prince. Baby looks to be around 9 or 10 years old, but he doesn’t know for sure how old he is; he’s never been in school or celebrated a birthday. The street kids always travel in numbers here for protection. Older boys often prowl the streets looking for kids to beat up just because they can get away with it. Baby admits that life in Gonaives was much happier for him, but he won’t return: “I won’t go back home because my mother cannot help me.”

A middle class was ubiquitously evident for the first time in Port-au-Prince. In Plaza Champ de Mars, just a block from the presidential palace, primary school children in uniform play on the steps while couples clad in business attire take an evening stroll. Men gather every evening under the shade of a large oak tree and form several circles debating politics. Listening in on their conversation, they are infuriated by the state of their country and the corrupt practices in the government ranks. Below, a man known as Petit Marx (hat) who spent several years in Cuba, argues the advantages of a communist system.

Port-au-Prince seems stricken with an identity crises. It is the most economically prosperous and at the same time the most crime-ridden place in the country, home to a large middle class but also home to one of the largest slums in the hemisphere. Yet as I watched the men debating politics in the park, or the youth painting a street mural on the eve of World Aids Day (see below), I encountered a spirit that I had not witnessed in other places in Haiti: an unyielding passion for change and the dedication to make it a reality.

…with thanks to Guillet Adolphe.

Sitting in an internet cafe in the steamy Amazon port city of Iquitos in North-Eastern Peru, I began to get a glimpse of what my life could be like if I continued to work hard… a nomad or a bedouin of sorts, but less romantic, with a hotel for a home and Sky Chef as my most-frequented restaurant. It was in Iquitos that with a bit of trepidation and negotiation I received my China assignment with Heifer International. There I was, halfway through my stint in Peru knowing that the second I got back to the states I had just over two weeks to submit my work, get a visa from the Chinese embassy and send my passport off to Philadelphia. Additional pages needed to be added to make room for the official stamps given at each border I might cross for the next few years.
I’d have no idea what was waiting for me on the other side of the immigration gate in Beijing. To begin with, my 13.5 hour flight direct from Washington was delayed for a bit, allotting me just two hours to pass through customs and immigration. After getting through what seemed more like a Russian bread line, I had twenty minutes to check in and make my flight. I resigned myself to the fact that if I made it, my luggage would not.
I sprinted to the Air China check-in, but after pulling out my passport and itinerary the two guys at the desk just kept scratching their heads at the screen in front of them. Finally they handed them back and said “ticket office” - never a good sign. I went to every Air China office I could find but no one seemed to know anything, and no one spoke English. Two hours later I was still frantically running around the airport, now with two hawks (whose aid I had not requested) carrying my bags while demanding in a primitive international sign language that I go to the nearest ATM to take out money for their services. I finally got to a small Air China desk that seemed to know perfectly well what had happened, promptly printing me a boarding pass on the next flight to Chendgu, (above) the hub of South Central China. I never found out what the problem was until meeting up the next day in Chengdu with Christian DeVries, a freelance writer with whom I’d be collaborating over the next two weeks. In an effort to cut air pollution ahead of next summer’s Olympic Games, the Chinese government had canceled a number of domestic flights and barred half the cars in the capital from driving on the roadways for the day. I wonder if mandatory conversational English crash-courses for all airport personnel are not somewhere in the list of all the draconian measures Beijing’s officials are enacting.

The day after my arrival in Chengdu, a city of five million, I was immediatlely catapulted off to a world I never knew existed. We headed south near the Tibetan border to the cool mountains of the Sechuan region. There Christian and I were to meet the Yi people, an ethnic minority whose way of life carries on much the same as it has for centuries past, in stark contrast to the bustling, westernized streets of cities like Chengdu. The Yi people are well known for their ornate traditional dress, still worn by most women and some men, but less known for their habit of sitting and even lying on the roadways during their down time. This can make for an interesting drive through the region’s winding mountain roads. The ease with which I could photograph people was somewhat hampered by the necessity to use two translators (English to Mandarin to Yi) to get my words across.

If you’re unfamiliar with Heifer International (HI), take a brief look at my Ukraine post from June or their website. Of the many development organizations working in poverty-stricken areas around the world, I have become partial to Heifer’s model of self-sustainability, having witnessed its effects first-hand. Heifer works mainly in rural areas, where China’s poorest live. It’s hard for us to imagine how a cow or a few goats can transform the life of a family, but as in most pastoral societies, wealth is measured by the amount of livestock one owns.

The Jieshuo family (shown above) has moved out of extreme poverty since receiving their 15 or so goats from Heifer. The goats provide meat for the family, and offspring are sold or bartered for additional food supplies: “Our children live better and better as the years go by. Before the project we only had potatoes to eat. Now we have rice, more meat, and eggs for the children,” says Chuomu Aniu, the wife and mother of three (above, far left). In addition to their three children, Chuomu Aniu and her husband Jieshuo Er’ri are able to care for their nieces and nephews, whose parents are deceased.

Within the Yi prefecture and to a greater extent in other areas of China, the young are fleeing the countryside and their agrarian culture to make new lives in the cities. Urban life offers higher wages, and for some, the chance to earn an income for the first time. However, this phenomenon creates problems on both sides: a lack of workforce and production in rural areas and overpopulation and unemployment in the cities. Above, Jiese Wujia (68, left) and her husband Mose Youha (71, right) will retire when their bodies do. Below, a man passes a sleeping street-child in early morning Chengdu.

I’m fortunate to have navigated the ropes of many developing countries with minimal physical wear and tear throughout the last few years. However, I wasn’t so lucky in rural China. On the third day of the trip, I asked our driver to stop so I could photograph a herd of water buffalo that was approaching our vehicle on the road. As I was shooting, I backed up straight into the vicinity of a dog chained on the side of the road who wasn’t so happy that I entered his territory. I ran back to the car pulling up the torn leg of my jeans, dismayed to see that his bite had caused some bleeding. Bei, our coordinator and Christian’s translator, was on the phone immediately as we drove back to town. Joy, my translator, offered endless condolences. The rabies vaccination was not available in our area but was to be delivered to the hotel later that night. The five-part vaccination required me to stop into the clinic two additional times while in China. Furthermore, since the vaccinations in China and the US differ, I had to bring the last two doses back with me on the plane in an ice-packed thermos. I just received my last dose this week. Below, I receive complementary medical care from The People’s nationalized health system.

The second half of our journey took us north of Chengdu to Nanbu County and east to the municipality of Chungqing. In this swelteringly hot region of the country where temperatures reached well over the hundred degree mark, villagers were harvesting their rice fields. Below, farmer Zhang Weishu separates rice grains from cut grass. Heifer donated pigs to his family, but also set him up with a bio-gas unit for his kitchen. Bio-gas is a method of cooking where manure from animals is placed in a pit outside the house. The methane that the manure gives off is transported to the kitchen’s cooking range just like natural gas or propane; with no observable odor. “Using bio-gas has saved resources; it is clean and saves time,” says Mr. Zhang.

Zhang Weishu’s neighbors, Zhang Weiping and his wife Xie Shutang (shown respectively in the following two photographs), are also Heifer project participants. In fact, most everyone in this village has been helped out by Heifer. (The name of the village is Village #12, can you get more Marxist than that?!) Residents say their village was all but forgotten by the government until Heifer started working here and began bringing families out of poverty. Only then did the government build a road through the village.


Not only has the Chinese government kicked in to help out where it previously hadn’t, but it has also mimicked the Heifer model of livestock distribution to needy families in places in China where Heifer is not already working. Below, Wen Yongqing and her husband Wu Yuantian sort silkworms given to them by HI. “Before I was not so hard working and my wife was always angry with me. Now she doesn’t get mad so easily because I am working hard,” says Mr. Yuantian. (We all know his wife is probably just too demanding.)

Driving around Chengdu at night with the windows down, Christian and I marveled at glitzy neon streets and the abundance of advertising billboards that often stretch across the width of entire skyscrapers. Western brands are popular here, from the ubiquitous Starbucks and KFCs to high end fashion like Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss, while BBC and CNN are banned. Homesick for American radio, Christian and I would often sing the songs of our homeland during long drives, perhaps sometimes to the chagrin of those in our entourage. That night we began to sing “Sounds of Silence” when after the first line, our driver, who spoke no English, immediately perked up and began fumbling through the glove box. He found a CD and slid it in. We waited to hear what it was: “Hello darkness my old friend…”
We almost lost it. Christian and I started laughing hysterically while Bei and Joy were perplexed. By the second line we were belting out the words right along with Paul and Art. Unable to discuss politics or religion or media coverage openly, it was as if we were sending out all that we meant to express in code: “Hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you.”

As China’s economy continues to open and grow, more and more people continue to climb out of poverty. In fact, if the UN reaches its Millenium Development Goal of cutting global poverty in half by the year 2015, it will be because of promising statistics coming out of China and India. Around 10% of the Chinese population is living below the poverty line. That sounds like a pretty good statistic until you figure that 10% of the population equals 130 million people, more than the entire population of Japan.

Cities continue to expand and quality of life there is, for the most part, better. But change is slow to reach the countryside where education is not yet a universal affair and where power lines and water pipes don’t always stretch.

Heifer.org




Words by Jake Lyell. Quotes provided by Christian DeVries. All images Copyright Heifer International 2007. Thanks to Christian, Bei and Joy.

Situated on an oasis along the Pacific Ocean, Lima is surrounded by desert dunes and dozens of ancient archaeological sites. Streams of settlers from the countryside come to Lima to make their homes on the miles of sandy bluffs that surround the city. They build them with whatever materials are available: cardboard, straw, tin sheets, driftwood. Such settlements are known in kind terms as pueblos jovenes, young villages. Other times they are called invasiones, invasions.

I’d seen pictures of these “young villages” during my research of Peru and was fascinated at the initial sight of them: row after row, mile after mile of makeshift housing perched on sandy hillsides and rough desert terrain attesting to the pioneering spirit of these settlers. I had to visit them for myself to find out if the transition to Lima was worth it for these immigrants.

One of the first people I encountered was Artemio Godoy, (shown above with his son Raul). His family lives near a district of Lima called the Villa el Salvador. Senor Godoy and his family are sqatting on land along the Pacific. Their yard is encircled with trash and debris, as well as herds of chickens and dogs that coexist remarkably well without the use of fences or chains. Senor Godoy was reluctant to talk to me. It seems another western journalist had come along earlier that year asking questions and photographing. “He promised that things would change…,” Artemio said, referring to his lack of water and electricity.

Undeterred by a colleague’s ethical breach, I persuaded Senor Godoy to let me take some photographs outside his home. I assured him that nothing was likely to change as a result of my reporting. (Shown above outside her home along the Pacific, Elizabeth Godoy, 17, Artemio’s daughter.)

Oscar Rojas (above), age 40, came to the Villa el Salvador from the countryside with his family when he was 6 years old. His family was one of the original settlers of the area. When he began to build his own farm and house seven years ago, the surrounding land was nothing but sand. Now the houses and farms stretch for miles in either direction.

Farmers, however, are limited to raising animals like chickens and pigs. Due to small plots of land and sandy soil, crops cannot grow and no pastures exist for animals to graze. Despite Rojas’ animal wealth (which includes his 70 pigs, several chickens, three sheep and a goat) he and his family still live in makeshift housing without water or electricity. The Rojas’ water is trucked in a couple times a week and sold to them in large buckets.

Despite these difficulties, Rojas still considers himself lucky to have land and be able to provide for his family. Shown above with a neighbor, Victor Rojas, age 20, and their station wagon (yes, it still runs).

Many make a daily commute into Lima’s more central areas to find work in construction, house-keeping or restaurants. Above, Josephina Cori and her son Wimer clean houses in Lima and live in the pueblo joven of Churias.

Lima’s wealthy suburbs stand in stark contrast to the villages that surround them. Note the tennis court, bottom right. Tales of such wealth reach the poorest villages in the Peruvian countryside and still spark mass migration to the city.

Building houses on the dunes creates a variety of infrastructure problems. It is likely that most houses built on those dunes closest to the ocean will never get plumbing. Above, neighbors pitch in to build a stone wall hoping to keep the houses above from sliding further down the hill.

Above, Anna Medina Valdez (left) and Geonila Rodriquez (right) knit sweaters for a living. They are squatters in an invasion in the Villa el Salvador; however, if they stay on the land long enough they’ll own it someday. Anna Valdez, 30, much prefers her life in Lima to working the cornfields in the mountains of Cusco. She’s lived here for ten years and while life is hard, she is glad she came: “I came to Lima because I didn’t go to school as a child and have an education. Now my daughters have the opportunity to go to school here in Lima.”

Trash disposal methods in the pueblos jovenes consist of community dumps in open areas that are sometimes collected by government contractors. Since many residents are without sewage utilities, these grounds often double as toilets .

Isabel Ramos del Valle, 18, is the only person I met who regrets her move to Lima. Shown above, she came to the area with her boyfriend from the South when she was sixteen years old. Securing employment in town as a maid, she was soon fired after she became pregnant. She hasn’t been able to find work since.

Isabel lives with her now husband and their daughter Liz (right) on the steep slopes of the pueblo joven of San Juan de Miraflores where the altitude is higher, the climate cooler and the hills steeper. Most homes including hers lack water or electrical connection. Water is delivered, at a cost, down on the roads running through the valleys of San Juan de Miraflores where communal clothes washing stations form.

Isabel’s neighbor Gallardo Toledo, 36, is happier to be in Lima, where she came to live at the age of fifteen. It took her years to save up enough to build a house, having had to return to home Piura (535 miles north) once for lack of funds. Having been through a few relationships in the last twenty years she now has three children. The oldest just started college; the youngest is four. The four of them share this room and bed. Toledo is proud that her children are able to receive a good education by living in Lima.

Children, Incorporated is a non-governmental organization (NGO) working in the areas around Lima by helping to fund children’s education and supporting schools that share their vision. I was privileged to be able to provide their photographic library with an update while in the pueblos. (Above) Gelson Mendoza’s school uniforms, lunches and tuition are covered by CI.

CI works all over the world, but doesn’t forget about their immediate area either, having similar programs in our shared hometown of Richmond, VA. Above, children receive a mid-morning snack at Nuestra Senora de la Misericordia, a school in the peublo joven of Ventanilla run by some wonderfully hospitable and generous nuns, and supported by CI.

The simple lives and constant struggle of the people of the pueblos jovenes draws my admiration. They are people that spend a lifetime trying to replace their cardboard walls with those of brick; people that, like machines, have little idle time. While I have no aspirations for such as house or lifestyle, seeing the pueblos jovenes of Lima and the slums of other parts of the world has narrowed my definition of necessity, while broadening what is luxury. Experiences such as these continue to impact my way of life back home, where I am learning the rewards of a strong work ethic and the meager value in the accumulation of things.

For the majority of people I encountered, it seems the move to the big city was beneficial. However, as Lima continues to increase in size, so do the headaches of a city that can’t cope with all its inhabitants: mind-numbing traffic jams, spiraling crime rates and pollution that makes LA seem like a Lysol commercial. Consistently ranked among the very largest urban population centers in the world, Lima would do better in the long run to go outside its boundaries to address conditions that generate such places as the pueblos jovenes.

The sun rises in Belen, and the dock workers prepare to go home for the day. They’ve been working all night to carry in the day’s produce, charcoal, iron, petroleum, you name it, in time for the 7AM customer rush. “Dock” should be thought of in loose terms. It really means where the water meets the shore at any given time of the year. Banana carriers have to be the most skilled of all the laborers. Balancing the bunches on their backs, sometimes three at a time, they transport them past the muddy riverbanks, up the hills of Belen and through the busy market alleyways, doing their best to evade the children who sneak up to pilfer the fruit from the stems.


As the Nile was and is to Egyptian civilization, the Amazon and its many tributaries are the lifeblood to the communities it penetrates, beginning in Peru at the Pacific Ocean and through Columbia and Brazil to the Atlantic. Iquitos, the largest city in the world unreachable by road, is situated between three rivers: the Amazon, the Itaya and the Nanay. The “island” within is only accessible by air or water. While wealthy residents pay to have their cars shipped in, the predominant method of transportation in town is the motocar, a hybrid of the rickshaw and the motorcycle. Beyond the rivers lies the Selva, the thick jungles and rain forests that are the source of fruit, vegetables, lumber, coal and many other resources that keep this city of over half a million almost literally afloat.



Puerto Belen, a neighborhood in Iquitos, is a suburb of +/- 25,000. Sprawled out along the Itaya River just before it intersects the Amazon, Iquitos residents refer to Belen as the Venice of Peru, due to the heavy boat traffic along its shores that during the rainy season moves up around the thatched-roof shacks, making the neighborhood a floating marketplace. The slum is a series of twisted alleyways and market stalls that begin in South Iquitos at 104m above sea level and wind down a hill to the stilt-elevated shantytown that straddles the riverfront. Bursting with energy, the largest market in Iquitos makes up the central-most blocks of the barrio. Anything can be purchased in Belen, from sex (legally), to pet sloths and tropical birds (illegally) to drugs (both kinds).



Despite the wealth of resources available from the various rivers and the surrounding Selva, life is desperate for many of those living in Belen. Because Belen is the hub of prostitution, drunkenness and gang life in Iquitos, local authorities and their contractors have long refused to expend resources to provide water, sewage or electric utilities to its citizens. It’s estimated that about 75% of people are living without running water in their homes, and many more go without electricity.

Above: Standard Belenese overindulgence.


The most common occupation for those living in Belen is that of the fisherman. The Itaya and the Amazon are home to massive river turtles and snails, sturgeon, piranha, tiger catfish, sting ray, cayman and alligator, all of which show up in the market stalls in mass quantities early each morning. But the chances of these showing up in a fisherman’s net are just about as likely as pulling up the rubbish thrown overboard by a passing steam ship or by Belen’s residents themselves. Venturing beyond the immediate vicinity of Iquitos is increasingly more fruitful for these fisherman.



Thick piles of garbage line the shores and alleyways of Belen and the riverbeds of the Itaya, as well as parts of the nearby Amazon. Trenches transport raw sewage from the farther areas of Belen into the river, though it shows up in the street sometimes as well. During five months of the year most of Belen is not accessible by motor car or foot, and canoe is the only transportation method around the palm-thatched shacks and market stalls. However, many dwellings line the riverfront and are floating houseboats all year long. Outhouses are built alongside or in back of the raft houses, emptying directly into the Itaya or into the trenches leading to it. Sailing along the river houses, one hears the sounds emanating from the enclosed rafts within. It is the river’s chaotic soundtrack: babies crying, pigs squealing and chickens clucking - all of which harmonize with the radio chatter blaring downriver from the central market.


Given the conditions, it’s inevitable that many of the residents here deal with constant health problems. Among the most common are parasites, dysentery, venereal diseases, tooth decay (soda is cheaper than water) and dengue fever. (Pictured above with her baby brother) Kelley Yahuaecannih’s parents are fishermen. Working seven days a week, together they earn 64 Soles ($20.24) on the average per month from selling their catch in the market. Unable to afford bottled water and with no access to running water, Kelly’s family’s situation is not uncommon in Belen; they drink from the river, bathe in the river, eat from the river, put their waste back in the river. Lora (Kelly’s mother) says that diarrhea is an ongoing sickness for her entire family. Of her household of six, two or three are usually sick and taking anti-diarrhea medication at any given time. Costing anywhere between 1.10 – 5 Soles (35 cents to $1.58) for a pack of ten pills, such medication is available in the market but eats up a significant income portion of any family living in the area.



Those that do have running water in the poorest areas often make a business of selling it to neighbors. Supplies are limited, however, as the water only runs in Belen for four hours or so each morning. Dora, 40, shown above with her youngest son Jackson, 2, lives in Belen and sells charcoal along with her husband. She has seven children, but only three are still living at home. She has no water or electricity at home but does not draw her drinking water from the river, figuring it is well worth it to buy water from a neighbor rather than keep stock of pills.

Above, an open sewer near Belen’s central plaza. Health problems are more widespread during the rainy season (Dec – May), when the sewers overflow and the water rises up to eight feet above street level.

Antibiotics, malaria medications, antidiarrheals and pain relievers are all available without prescription in Belen. However, without the advice of a pharmacist, medication is sometimes mis-prescribed and misused.

Above left, drug seller Cesar Garcia explains the different remedies available to a passing customer. Making an average of $240 per month, he makes a decent salary and lives outside of Belen.

Far from the river’s banks and back up the hill is a row of stalls of traditional medicine sellers. (Pictured above) One can find a cure for anything here from chuchuhuasa for dysentery (but also for arthritis when mixed with rum) to yellow boa oil for bronchitis. Some locals swear by these long-used potions while others prefer to buy pills, despite the greater expense. Other traditional healing methods that don’t usually require commercial exchange involve waving an egg over, or blowing smoke in the face of the infirm.

While sickness is prevalent in Belen, let’s not get the idea that the whole town is ailing at home in bed. Indeed, these people have strong stomachs and are hard working. I asked my boat driver if he knew anyone with Malaria and one man came to mind. But when he took me to his house, the man was out in the market working. It seems the people of Belen do not have the choice of not working if they’re to make ends meet.

Alicia Vela, shown above with her grandson Francesco, discusses her ailments in a port-side food stall while waiting for some customers. She has headaches every day and her husband, an alcoholic, deals with severe abdominal pains.

Leovina Perez is a college student in Iquitos studying child psychology. She grew up in Belen in a house with her mother Mercedes (shown above), father and Grandmother. Mercedes sells candy and the family is well off when compared to others that live closer to the river; they have running water and a toilet in the house. Ironically, they have no electricity despite Senor Perez’s status as a career electrician. When Leovina’s grandmother bought the house several years ago she discovered that the previous owner owed back-bills on the utilities and they wouldn’t be turned on until paid. The family scraped up enough to pay the water bills but never could manage to cover the former owner’s electric debt.

Leovina (above) now lives in housing outside of Belen provided by the People of Peru Project, a Humanitarian NGO (Non-Governmental Organization, a.k.a. charity) founded by American Paul Opp. It works specifically in the Iquitos area in a number of ways including health care projects, vocational training, educational sponsorship and child mentoring. POPP is also paying for Leovina to attend university, and in return for the housing and education she receives, she works as translator for volunteers that come to work with the NGO.

Only about 20% of the People of Peru Project’s work is done in Belen. They have outreach projects in other areas of Iquitos as well as in the jungle. “We focus on specific individuals, specific families and specific communities, because if you go around dropping good works everywhere, you’re spitting in the wind.” says Opp, referring to the “volunteer” teams that come down to Belen for a couple hours to hand out toys and (of all things) candy, or to put on a drama act for a couple hours before retreating back to their air-conditioned hotel rooms.

Belen is certainly a tough egg to crack because the poverty runs so deep, and people are often unwilling to change their habits. So the People of Peru Project takes it one or two families at a time. A good example of this is their transitional housing program. They own a two-story house in central Belen in which certain families live that need a boost to get going. Families, up to two, stay at the house and pay less rent than a house of its size would normally cost. POPP saves half the money they pay and when the family is ready to move on, applies it to the purchase of their own home. “If we didn’t help them buy a house, in the end we’d be just another landlord, and we’re not in that business,” says Opp. Families are held to certain standards when living in the house. Alcohol and drugs are forbidden, and children are not permitted to beg on the streets. Again, Paul Opp: “We have to hold people’s feet to the fire sometimes. If they don’t want our help they’re free to leave. People have turned down transitional housing because they would not give up their abuse of alcohol.”

When I visited the POPP’s house in Belen the Maitahuari family (above) had moved in two days before. “We are happy because we have more space, and living in the room was tiny.” says father Victor Maitahauri, 39. The family of six previously lived in one small room in an apartment with seven or eight other families, everyone sharing a communal kitchen and bathroom. You can bet living in their new home is a breath of fresh air and a step in the right direction toward a transition out of poverty.

Above, Nolberta Maitahuari leans out of the window of her new home in Belen.

Above left to right: Marjorie, Thalia, Zully and Luz Maitahuari hanging out on their front porch.

Officially a Humanitarian Organization, the PPOP is Christian-motivated and faith-based. Teams from around the world come into Belen regularly to run Bible schools for children. In addition to learning about the Bible, children are taught proper health and sanitation practices and Christian values to help them navigate the seedy and dangerous streets. Serving both Christian and non-Christian people in and around Iquitos, the POPP is able to learn through these school programs what kids are in abusive situations and what families are in crisis. Several girls from Belen have gone to live in a crisis center run by the POPP that houses girls that have come from abusive situations. Once girls at the center have finished their schooling, the POPP provides vocational training. The People of Peru Project are more than just a band-aid agency. Their operations address crises at hand as well as work through education to grow a better future.

Walking along Belen’s streets, Paul is warmly greeted by the passers-by. It’s obvious that his organization has a strong presence in the neighborhood. Paul used to own a logging business in Washington State but sold it in 2003 to found the POPP with his wife Sandi, who was in the US at the time I visited Iquitos. When I asked him why he chose this path, he responded “The first answer is feeding hungry kids, relieving human suffering, clothing the naked and taking care of orphaned children is just the right thing to do. But as a Christian I believe it’s the right thing to do because it’s what God instructed us to do. The people that have accepted the Christian lifestyle have done so because of our example and not our pressure. We don’t dangle the Gospel out there along with the medical help,” Opp says, referring to the NGO’s medical programs around Iquitos.

Last year over 400 volunteers came to work with the POPP from around the world. Many volunteers are doctors and nurses who establish mobile clinics, providing medical care and even performing surgery on patients in Belen when needed. Furthermore, they know what help (however little) is available to the poor from the Peruvian government and help navigate patients through the bureaucratic process of getting heath care.

Above, Paul Opp with members of the Maitahuari family.

The People of Peru Project’s ministries have grown significantly since its founding in 2003. The organization, a non-profit both in Peru and the US, now has a full-time staff of 20 Peruvians including two nurses. In addition to working in Belen they have outreaches in the Santo Thomas area of Iquitos as well as in the jungle community of San Jose Village, 50 miles by boat from Iquitos.

Outside Belen, the busy streets of Iquitos are dotted with billboards: the best Peruvian beer, the clearest mobile phone signal, the biggest bank in Peru. “Estamos Trabajando,” reads one of them, “We’re Working.” The advertisement, repeated several times all over town, is a horn-tooting PR campaign by Sedaloreto, a private company contracted by the Peruvian government to supply water to Iquitos. “Water in houses for all” it says, going on to list different neighborhoods in Iquitos, including Belen. The ad, complete with a happy girl being drenched with crystal clear water implies that it is a complementary service of Sedaloreto to provide water to all. However, the majority of Belen’s residents are without water, not because it is not available, but because it is unaffordable. A water connection is available to all who can pay, except those whose homes float on the river all year long. But as Paul Opp can attest, the process is expensive and sometimes mind-numbing. When connecting water to the POPP’s transitional house, they were forced to pay the connection charges twice because Sedaloreto at first mistakenly connected the house’s piping to a line that carried no water. Double charges are easy for an NGO to pay but crippling to a family living on $6 a week. Water from the tap is always hands-down preferable to river water. But Paul Opp, on visiting the Sedaloreto water treatment plant observed that the water of Iquitos is at times questionable: “When these companies are short on staff or supplies, the water sometimes goes untreated.”

Despite paying 15% of their income of $81/month to taxes, Sedaloreto is not working at all for the Natorce family. Jaimes, 32, (shown above with his son Andy, 18 months) works every morning from 3AM until 8AM unloading petrol and iron from ships in the port and carrying them on his back into the market, while Eloise (below, left) watches their three children. Unable to afford a water line and the subsequent monthly bills, Jaimes and Eloise buy their water from a neighbor when they can. They both know that the water in the river is dirty and shouldn’t be drunk, but they have several times resorted to doing so because supplies were limited or the line was cut off for maintenance. “My children have parasites,” says Eloise. The medicine she recently purchased in the market was ineffective and all the children have diarrhea. It appears that what Eloise purchased was a drug to temporarily stop the diarrhea but not kill the parasites.

Once in the past, Eloise took her children to see a doctor from the Peruvian NGO, CARITAS. The charity is funded by the Catholic Church in Peru and provides medical help and medicine to the poorest of the poor. The charity is most likely more cash-strapped than the Peruvian government however, and in that instance it did not provide free medication.

When Eloise (above) was asked what she would change about her life if she could, she began to cry. “I worry about my kids’ illnesses… I worry about food, my kids…” The interview became too difficult for her to continue.

With so little humanitarian assistance in Belen (I could only find the two companies I mentioned) the large-scale problems don’t seem as if they’ll improve any time soon. Organizations like the People of Peru Project are in need of funds to expand their services. Other organizations that are experienced at tackling deep-seated issues like those found in Belen must move in alongside them. We’re now seven years into the eight promises known as the Millennium Development Goals, made by the UN community and led by the world’s richest governments. Among them are to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty and halve the number of people without access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. However, it seems our leaders are more adept at making promises than keeping them as funding goals continue to fall short every year.

I’m sure if the folks in Belen were even privy to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, they would certainly like to be included somewhere in all that halving. People like Eloise and her family who are struggling financially, physically and emotionally every day appear to be among the very last in line to catch a break. For them, 2015 won’t come fast enough.

Visit the People of Peru Project website.

all images Copyright 2007 Jake Lyell

I’ve been going non-stop for the past nine days and my shutter has fired more times than I can recall in my comparatively young days as a photographer (I’m 26). Batteries constantly charging and files downloading, it’s good to have a rest. This time I’ve been in Ukraine, a country that for most part is off the beaten track, that is unless you happen to be a Mongol or Viking invader. As history has it, Ukraine is actually a much-traversed land situated in North-East Europe. I’ve been photographing for Heifer International in Western Ukraine, which was at various times in the past 500 years part of Poland, Austria, and the USSR, and has seen occupation from the likes of the Mongols in the 13th century to the Nazis in the 20th.

Of course, upon arriving my luggage was MIA. A message (that looked like it’d been sent via telegraph) had been delivered to the airport that said my bag had wound up in Orlando for some reason and may take a couple days to arrive. I had to leave the very next morning to travel South so I would have to go without. I always travel with my camera gear on board in case something happens and this time it was lucky I did. I didn’t collect my bag until four days later. By that time the clothes I had been wearing all along had traveled through four days of cow pastures, barns, hay fields and a rain storm. The writer I traveled with, Christian DeVries and I were up at 6 most mornings and worked until 11 or 12 at night. Ukraine is so far north that in the summer the sun rises around 4:30am and doesn’t completely get dark until after 11. Lots of time for pictures, not a whole lot of time for sleep. The cuisine was great, though marked by an uncanny knack to put excessive amounts of dill on EVERYTHING.

In case you’re not up to speed on your NGOs and development organizations, Heifer works in rural areas of developing countries providing needy people with what they can use most: livestock. Most of us live in the cities or suburbs, so it’s hard to imagine just how valuable livestock is to the rural family. With a cow or a few hens, a family can help provide for itself with milk and eggs and trade any excess products for goods or sell them for cash. This enables families who would otherwise live in absolute poverty to become self-sufficient. Furthermore, every participant agrees to “pass on” the first of their animal’s offspring to another needy family in the area. My primary assignment in Ukraine was to photograph the people and communities Heifer International has affected. Those we visited were hospitable, strong, proud and most of all, hardworking. They were bee-keepers, sheep-farmers, gardeners, parents and grandparents, and children (who especially love to goof-off of the camera).


Heifer’s system of passing on the gift transforms communities living in poverty, as I’ve recently seen first hand. Communities become self-sufficient over time and no longer require aid from other development organizations. Heifer is not a relief but a development organization. It can take years for the pay-off to happen and decades for communities to be transformed. But lasting change is not made overnight. They work at the community level, with local staff to monitor the progress of the community and provide initial training and veterinary services to farmers. Agencies like the Red Cross and UNICEF work to solve immediate needs. Heifer works over time to develop communities. Both long-term and immediate strategies are essential to bring up struggling nations.

Why is Ukraine a struggling nation? Why does 29% of the population live below the poverty line? Its harried past has a lot to do with it. Fiercely nationalistic, Ukraine has resisted rule by other countries for the past thousand years. When it resisted Stalin’s takeover in the 1920s, he inflicted famine upon the land by systematically locking the people’s wheat and grain in government storehouses, thus starving the population into submission. Over 5 million Ukrainians died during this starving, and over 13 million died throughout the greater Soviet Union. This genocide has never been formally recognized by the West.
In 1986, the Chernobyl incident, and Moscow’s subsequent cover-up and mishandling renewed nationalist fervor, spawned mass street protests and set the spark that led to the country’s independence in 1991.
Since then, Ukraine has struggled greatly in its transition to democracy. In 2000 it was rated the third most corrupt government in the world by the independent watchdog group Transparency International. The silver lining could be in Ukraine’s current President, Viktor Yushchenko, elected in 2004 amid a fury of pro-western style democracy fever known as the Orange Revolution. Yushchenko promised an era of new government with an end to corruption. The country’s standing on the corruption list has improved in recent years, but that’s not saying much. The average person on the street will say that nothing has changed since the 2004 election. People are still working for unbelievably low wages while the country’s wealthy are getting richer. However, Ukraine has seen the transition to a free press. Whereas during the last decade 13 journalists were murdered and a number of papers shut down for criticizing the government, today the press is free to chime in with its own opinion of how the things are being run. This is not quite the case in neighboring Russia, where Vladimir Putin has tightened the reigns on the media.

Putting strain on this uneasy transition, Ukraine also struggles to find its identity between Europe and its sister country Russia. Central and Western Ukraine are strong backers of the pro-west Yushchenko, whereas the East backs Prime Minister Yanukovych, Yushchenko’s rival in the 2004 election. Believe it or not, some people still long for that old-time, hard-line autocracy of yesteryear and wish to be part of Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has made several pleas to join the European Union but has now set 2015 as a target deadline to meet the EU’s lofty standards. There’s certainly a lot of catching up to do during that time. While life in most cities is improving, rural areas of Ukraine often function with the technology and health services available 100 years ago.


Though notorious for his religious persecutions, Stalin didn’t destroy too many of the country’s ornate churches during his rein and the land is still dotted with many beautiful steeples. The culture has also witnessed a revival of Christian traditions and the reemergence of the Orthodox church. Churches are again are filled with devoted worshipers and the smell of incense as they were during the country’s founding in the 11th century.

However jaded Ukrainians are about their political system, they compensate for it in their love of friends, their vigor of life and yes, their passion for vodka. ‘Wherever there are friends, there is vodka’ seems to be the motto people live by. It’s dangerous to accept a shot. In accepting the first you open yourself up to being playfully prodded into the next, and the next, etc…. (which is not pretty when you’re trying to take pictures). The hospitality warmth of the people I encountered and photographed was overwhelming and won’t be forgotten.

You can buy an animal for someone in Ukraine. Visit heifer.org

Words and photos by Jake Lyell.
All images Copyright 2007 Heifer Project International.