Goats to Guano

Our time is flying by in Haiti! Hard to believe that we only have one full day left in Haiti. We started off our day by returning to our energetic 5th and 6th graders to elaborate on our agriculture lesson from the day before. After further discussion we had the students build an agriculture chain. Students had to write agriculture facts on strips of paper and hook them together to make a chain that we hung around the classrooms.

Next we made our way to the university where we spent much of the morning discussing livestock production focusing on hogs and dairy goats with a little bit of chicken production. There was discussion on all aspects of production from breeding to meat production. The students had many questions for us and we're very appreciative of all that our students shared with them. 

Following lunch we had brief English lessons with the 3rd and 4th graders before we met back up with the university students. They took us to their goat production area where most goats are Alpines or have some Alpine blood in them. We covered topics from feeding to health. We discovered they battle many of the same issues we do in the United States such as mastitis. We were shown an interesting way of checking pregnancy as well. 

After our time with the goats we hiked to a cave where guano is collected for use as fertilizer. This was a great workout and many enjoyed exploring the cave. We then returned to campus where we attended a Wednesday night church service before meeting around our favorite tree to plan our lessons for Thursday. It is great to see the magnitude of learning taking place by both sides, Hatians and Americans!