I am an urban planner turned student of real estate development at Columbia University.
I spent the past three years working for Architecture for Humanity in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Prior to that I worked in London, Hamburg, Stuttgart, New York and the Twin Cities.
I started this blog to document and share my experiences of living and working in Haiti, but it has evolved into something like a travel guide based on my own trips and excursions. I like to explore all sorts of places, whether remote without electricity and running water or right there where I live. I write about the stuff I like to discover about these places – the architecture, art, history, food…
I also like to share the great off the beaten track places I’ve stayed and the cheaper or safer ways of getting around. I hope that by doing this I help send some business their way. Because truly the best way for a country like Haiti to grow out of poverty is through small business that sustainable takes advantage of the beauty, culture and history the country has to offer!
best,
Rickie
The Nerdy Nomad 
Hi Rickie,
I’m really looking forward to revisiting Viet Nam and Cambodia with you. You have already reminded me of blindly trusting our lives to the thousands of motorcycles, the street hawkers, and the bowls of pho. And then there was the second morning when the only way I was able to get Judy out of bed was when I told her that we were going to the Gucci Tunnels (it worked).
Hopefully you’ll get further up north before you head to Cambodia. Angkor Wat is the most beautiful rubble to see. It’s beauty is that it seems that it hasn’t been repaired in any way for thousands of years. Talk about urban planning!!!
Please, please, keep up the blog. I wish that I would have written a diary when we were there a few years ago. Thankfully we have a thousand photos, but we would have been better off had we written along the way.
Enjoy everything.
Love,
M
Hi Rickie-
I am currently a volunteer in P-a-P working on an Urban Ag. initiative. We are eager to get in touch with local cooperatives or individual restaurants to look into the availability of steady markets for our vegetables grown here in the city.
It seems it has been more than a year since you have been here, but let me know if you have any relevant information or contacts!
Thanks so much- great blog!
Stephanie Rayburn
Urban Ag. Specialist
J/P HRO
Hi Rickie,
My name is Thomas and I am an international development student at the London School of Economics. I am working on a consultancy project on land tenure in Haiti and I read your online interview with Haiti’s Property Law Working Group. I was wondering if I might be able to ask you some questions about land issues in Haiti to complement my research. If you’re interested or available, please send me an email to t.coleman@lse.ac.uk. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Best regards,
Thomas Coleman
MSc Development Management
London School of Economics and Political Science
hey ricki! i am leaving for PAP tomorrow morning. and after reading your blog would really like to meet gerome and stay with him in the fisherman village at iles aux vaches. ive tried calling him a gazillion times… no avail.
do you know anyone else?
thanks!!!
andrea
I want to thank you for the wonderful write up on Ile-a-Vache, but would like to know when you wrote it, if possible. I will be going back to Haiti on non-profit business at some point this year, and we were thinking about adding a Scuba diving adventure. So far haven’t been able to get good info on that piece, but getting to the southwestern region was a primary concern.Your article was very enlightening!
Thank you for your comment. Yes this post is very outdated at this point unfortunately, and I am not in Haiti anymore to be able to update it. If you speak Creole or French, I would recommend that you get in touch with the Centre Communautaire de Kaykok. The guy running it,
Exerre Jean Dieunest, is very much on top of all the new developments on the island. Centre Communautaire de Kaykok has a facebook page and Exerre is on google+.