Our Mission
When foreigners come to Haiti it is usually to try to help, but service projects are often ineffective because Haiti does not lack for willing workers. Or they come to perform missionary work, which can be destructive because it seeks to supplant the spiritual traditions that underpin Haiti’s strong, independent national character. Cultural Capital Haiti is working to advance a third option for foreigners seeking to help: come to Haiti and learn a piece of the cultural tradition, then return home and share a positive impression with the wider world.
Our mission is to take small steps toward alleviating Haiti’s material poverty by highlighting its cultural richness. We believe that a false perception of Haiti works to keep the island impoverished. In the scramble to address the dire needs of its people, we feel that the positive things that Haiti has to share with the world are all too often ignored. We seek to redress this imbalance by leading cultural education exchanges, currently focusing on the Haitian martial art Tire Machèt, and hopefully soon expanding to include programs in drumming, dance, painting and the carnival arts.
The Haitian Fencing Project
In Haiti, the traditional art of machete combat goes by many names, among them Tire Machèt (“Pulling Machetes”). Tire Machèt has roots in the Haitian Revolution, when the revolutionaries were often forced to fight with fewer guns than soldiers. Its combination of African stick-fighting techniques and European fencing proved highly effective both in battle and as a method of individual self-defense. Since that time, a multitude of styles and training methods have proliferated. Though many of these practices remain shrouded in secrecy, Haitian master fencer Alfred Avril has extended an invitation to foreigners who are serious about learning this martial art to come to Haiti to train with him. To that end, the Haitian Fencing Project facilitates annual training programs by providing in-country transportation, accommodation and cultural excursions, in addition to a four-hour daily training. See our video demonstrations, read more about Tire Machèt or read below for information on the 2012 Summer Training Program.
News
We are now accepting applications to join the Haitian Fencing Project for our 2012 Summer Training Program in Jacmel, Haiti. We’ll be conducting things informally this year, which means you can come for as long or short a period of time as you’d like between the beginning of July and the end of August. As always, we’ll be training with Haitian master machete fencer Alfred Avril around four hours per day, seven days a week. On our down time, we’ll be hanging out at the beach, eating lots of amazing fruit, visiting other local non-profit organizations (with the option of volunteering our time), and going on cultural excursions into the countryside.
There will be no set fee for the program. Payment will be handled on a per-service basis. The only payment we will require of you is $70 per week of fencing classes, payable directly to our teacher Alfred Avril. The other prices are as follows:
$125 per week for accommodation at Reginald Turnier’s modest hotel in the center of Jacmel. This pays for a single room with mosquito net, cold showers, drinking water provided. Reginald is my partner in this project. He is from a well-respected Jacmel family and has been living in Haiti full-time for the past ten years. Aside from the low cost, the advantage of staying at Reginald’s place is that it is the center of our tight network of family and friends, putting you at the heart of the community in downtown Jacmel. Other accommodations in Jacmel are available, including the nearby Hotel de la Place, the beautiful Hotel Florita, up to the high-end Cap Lamandou Hotel, but you will pay much more.
$100 each way car service between the airport in Port-au-Prince and Jacmel. Depending on traffic, it is a two to four hour trip. This may seem expensive, but it is actually the best price available. If more than one of us are coming or going at the same time, we can split the cost, so we will make every effort to coordinate arrivals and departures. If you feel competent to navigate the bus system, you can make the trip for a lot less, but I would not recommend it unless you are already familiar with Haiti of have experience traveling in third-world countries.
In addition to these costs, I recommend you budget at least $10 per day for food and incidental expenses. We’ll be traveling each day from the city of Jacmel to Professor Avril’s house in the countryside by motorcycle taxi, which costs about $3 round-trip. If there is interest, we can pool our resources and have the hotel staff prepare us traditional Haitian meals at a very reasonable price.
As always, my services as guide and translator are free. I am doing this project for two reasons: 1) to help promote Haiti’s cultural richness in an effort to ameliorate in some small way its material poverty, and 2) to pay a debt of loyalty to my teacher, master fencer Alfred Avril, by connecting him with additional students. If you’d like to be part of this year’s Summer Program, email me (at generalrelative@gmail.com) with some basic information about yourself: your age, your experience with martial arts and international travel. If you have any questions I will be glad to answer them.
-Mike Rogers, Program Coordinator
