Haiti post = information overload! But then again, Haiti = information overload.
I was in a deep reverie,
wondering how best to use the money from the vaginas—I contemplated buying
computer equipment that would make all my subsequent medical illustration jobs
look more exquisite, and buying designer swimwear for every day of the week,
and buying this
at Nino’s—when Jesse asked if I wanted to go to Haiti.
A few months ago, Jesse
thought he needed more stuff to do. He wanted a service project that would
allow him to offer service without having to leave the house. At first, all he
could find were ads for cat sitters and vacancies in sewing circles that made
blankets for dementia patients and other ops that required public appearances.
Then he found Project HOPE Art (PHA). They needed a
financier/accountant/human being with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a
master’s in finance who could offer advice/opinions about very important things
via skype/email. Or in person if residence was in/near PHA’s U.S. headquarters
in California. Jesse likes art, and counting other people’s money, and not
dressing up unless he absolutely has to, so it was a good fit.
PHA directors visit Haiti
several times a year to work with kids in hospitals, orphanages, and schools.
They scheduled a trip for July 2013, and invited Jesse, and Jesse invited
me.
Because I didn’t know
anything about Haiti, and hadn’t followed much of the earthquake coverage, I
said, “Yes. Yes, I do want to go to Haiti. That would be really fun!”
Later in the travel clinic,
while waiting to get immunized, I was reading the country profile, scanning
information about cholera; malaria; yellow fever; rabies; typhoid; influenza;
hepatitis A & B; dengue; ciguatera poisoning; the warning to carry
loperamide and/or azithromycin for presumptive self-treatment of diarrhea if it
occurs because of a high risk everywhere, even in deluxe accommodations;
evacuation to Miami in the event of an emergency due to substandard medical
care throughout the country; the hazardous and unpredictable security
situation; armed gangs; murder/kidnapping/armed
robberies/burglaries/carjackings occurring in broad daylight; hours-long traffic
jams; the recommendation that travelers comply and not resist if attacked;
flooding and landslides during hurricane season from June to November; the
suggestion to avoid all forms of public transportation because buses are
mechanically unreliable and overcrowded; the lack of, or very limited
availability of water/electricity/police protection in some cities and towns…
etc.
I thought then, that maybe
this trip would be slightly less fun than I initially thought.
Monday,
July 8: PHA said someone
would be waiting for us with a sign when we landed in Port-au-Prince. But our
flight arrived 2 hours late so whoever was hired to find us wasn’t there. We
were herded out of the underbelly of the baggage claim and into the airport’s
crumbling parking lot to wait in the sun. As we emerged, a wave of bodies
jostled forward, offering to drive us wherever we were going. A particularly
aggressive man insisted that he knew exactly where to take us. He had one eye.
I thought of the travel advisory I read: Personal
and luggage security cannot be guaranteed at the Port-au-Prince airport.
Arriving passengers are often overwhelmed by the large crowd of loiterers
outside the terminal who pretend to offer porter or taxi services. I
fantasized about being in Harry Potter and
finding a port key that would take me home while Jesse tried to explain to the
one-eyed dude, who was denouncing our myopic foreign worldview for not trusting
him, that the polite thing to do would be to wait for whoever was expecting us.
Just when I thought he couldn’t yell any louder, a tiny lady with a crooked
back ambled toward us and held up a faded piece of paper with our names on it.
Our cab deposited us at the
“crumbling gingerbread hotel” Oloffson, a building made famous by a scene in Graham
Greene’s 1966 novel, The Commedians, in
which the dead body of a government official is found at the bottom of the
hotel pool. The Oloffson was a clean, quiet haven guarded by tall iron gates.
Outside was everything else—miasmas of sour, sticky air; streets teeming with
vendors selling mounds of charcoal, recycled tvs, baskets of shoes made from
old tires; emaciated dogs with shriveled nipples grazing the dirt; pigs rooting
through curbside trash mountains; chickens scratching in the rubble; motorcycles
zipping through traffic carrying bundles of screaming goats tied up by their
legs; little girls without shoes, the sashes of their dresses trailing in the
mud behind them; shanty towns of one-room houses without doors and ragged tarps
for roofs, so crowded and unbearably hot that their inhabitants find things to
do outside all day and return after dark.
Tuesday,
July 9: Cite Soleil has the
distinction of being one of the poorest, most dangerous areas of the Western
Hemisphere, and one of the largest slums in the Northern Hemisphere.
It was built in 1958 to
house factory workers for an industrial park. But even after industrial sectors
were damaged in political uprisings and Haitian products boycotted, people
still flocked to Cite Soleil. Thousands came looking for jobs that didn’t
exist, and thousands displaced by fires in the slums of Port-au-Prince came
looking for places to live. Now, the population is more than a quarter of a
million, and the living conditions are pretty much the same as ever—no water,
no sewage treatment, sporadic electricity (if any) siphoned from somewhere in
Port-au-Prince, a few makeshift hospitals and one government school (I think).
Most of the jobs promised by whatever factories are left—sewing bras, hemming
jeans, making baseballs—barely leave workers enough to pay for lunch and
transportation, and it often takes forever to get to/from anywhere in
Port-au-Prince. And gas costs over $7 a gallon. Haitian workers contracted with
foreign textile companies used to make 61 cents an hour, the Haitian minimum
wage by law but their employers, and the Obama State Department, reduced their
pay to 31 cents an hour, or about $3 for a ten-hour workday. Maybe Hillary
Clinton’s reasoning went something like this: “Well, 31 cents is better than
nothing at all.”
And an added bonus: armed
gangs terrorized the Cite Soleil communities for years. Even the thousands of
UN troops brought in to keep peace didn’t do much good until recently. In 2006,
Haitian police finally made it into CS (for the first time in 3 years) and
stayed for one whole hour while UN troops patrolled the city. Since 2007, gang
activity has declined, but the forces that maintain order have a long way to go
in completely eradicating gang behavior. The day we visited CS, children and
relatives of prominent gang members were students in the classroom.
Getting to CS was delightful. In Port-au-Prince the
quickest way to get around is by motorcycle, or moto-taxi, because they zip
between gaps in congested traffic, and if you squeeze your knees in tightly,
they won’t scrape the sides of adjacent cars. Motos uncomfortably seat 2
passengers and a driver. We needed 3 motos to transport art supplies and
teaching materials for the half hour ride. PHA director Melissa negotiated the
price of our rides in advance and made sure each driver knew the final
destination, just in case one of the motos in our caravan got lost along the
way. Our motos left the Oloffson in single file, with Jesse on the middle moto,
and me on the last one. The minute my driver pushed off, I could see us all
tipping over and slamming into a mud puddle, because public roads in Haiti are
rocky, muddy, and puddly. Luckily, I was squeezed in between the driver and the
other passenger, with significantly fewer odds of falling off when the moto
bounced over ubiquitous potholes.
Miraculously, we didn’t tip
over. But unmiraculously, my moto puttered out at the bottom of a hill, five
minutes into the ride, and the other two raced ahead of us. Our driver dumped
us off on a street corner behind a pile of garbage and said, “10 minutes! 10
minutes!” then drove away. While waiting for our driver, declining the advances
of four other drivers who swept in to take over once they realized we were
stuck, I wondered if he would really come back. I wondered if I would ever see
Jesse again. I wondered if the chickens pecking in the garbage at our feet
could possibly benefit from the diapers that supposedly offer “protection
against the inevitable!” on pamperedpoultry.com. But then the driver returned
much sooner than I expected and we caught up with the others.
PHA works with a teacher
named Luc Winter who started a small community school in one area of CS. He
raised funds to buy concrete and tools, and then figured out how to build the
school once he had enough people to help him. The concrete building was almost
finished when we arrived. Before the new building, the school consisted of a
tiny shack with a dirt floor and no windows, which meant it was really dark and
stuffy and could seat maybe 10 kids at a time. We took a 5 second tour of the
old school and could hardly stand up inside it.
Then we made our way to the
new building. Kids without shoes ran to us and held our hands, smiling and
leading the way to their school, then occupying every empty chair. When every
seat was taken, children and parents filed into the back. When there was no
more room inside, more gathered outside to watch through the windows.
Last year, when PHA came to
CS, one of their projects was a cross-curricular art and science unit in which
kids learned about the nutritional benefits of the moringa tree, a super plant
that grows quickly and is drought-resistant. Pretty much all parts of the tree
can be used for one thing or another: to purify water, combat malnutrition and
famine, and provide medicinal benefits. The kids helped plant over 200 moringa
trees in CS, learned how to draw trees, and compiled recipes and planting
guides to produce a book that is being published to raise money for supplies
and materials needed for their own future educational endeavors.
This year, the summer
project was to create art trading cards. PHA teacher Kathy Barbro, who has a fantastic
website with ideas for showing kids how to draw pretty much anything, collected
art from kids all over the U.S. and internationally. The art was created on cards
2.5” by 3.5,” and she brought these to show the kids in Haiti. Then we showed
the Haitian children how to draw and design their own cards. Eventually, they
submitted their art and traded it for a card of their choice created by
children in California, or Georgia, or Alaska, or Thailand. We later gathered
all the cards created in Haiti for an upcoming art show in California.
We expected 20-30 kids in
CS. But about 60, ages 2 and up, participated, each one hungry for attention,
and possibly a diversion from an empty stomach. This was a room crowded with
kids whose only meal of the day might be lunch, kids who were always thirsty.
This is why, when we gave them Dixie cups with a hint of water to wash their
paintbrushes, they drank it instead. With enough food and water, they would be
the best students I’ve ever seen. Even while being hungry and dehydrated, their
lives of little comfort make them genuinely interested in everything you say
and do. Deprivation makes it easier for a little to go a long way in a place
like Cite Soleil, where it is a gift to hold a pencil or a few crayons.
I love how the cards turned
out, each one unique and expressive. Interesting to look at on its own or as
part of a collage. I’m amazed by the variety that resulted from a simple lesson
for kids who don’t have traditional art supplies. But with a seemingly innate
sense of knowing what to do with paper and paint, they made stunning pictures
in a dusty, concrete schoolroom of one of the most desperate shantytowns in the
world.
Wednesday,
August 10: We went to Pastor
Jules’ House of Hope, an operation run by a Christian ministry that is mom and
dad to over 70 orphaned or abandoned children and has a K-10th grade
school. Although most of the kids here don’t have shoes either, they fare much
better than kids in CS. If they want to be doctors or nurses after high school,
they have many more connections to those opportunities. They have school
uniforms. They get more to eat. They get to sleep in beds, not in the dirt.
It’s a good place to be if you’re an orphan.
Like the CS students, the
House of Hope kids loved the art lesson and created cool pictures. We worked
with much fewer kids here than in CS, so we had time to play with them and make
little toy balls by filling balloons with sand. It felt like a stark version of
Christmas morning, with all the goods Kathy brought: the watercolor lessons;
sand balloon balls; a basketball, soccer ball, and Frisbee for the high school
boys; a tote bag full of new flip flops; and, the highlight of the hour,
Jesse’s iPhone. After we finished our lessons, it started to rain, so we waited
under cover and Jesse took out his phone to show the kid sitting next to him
the Mustachify app. Once the other kids figured out what was going on, they all
wanted to take their picture and try on a mustache, even the girls. The kids
were also fascinated by Jesse’s hair, gasping in awe as they touched it. Maybe
they were amused by the color and texture and non-afro-ness of his head.
After the House of Hope, we
went to Ti Kay, Dr. Megan Coffee’s tuberculosis ward at the general hospital in
Port-au-Prince. So here’s a bit of the context of Megan’s presence in Haiti.
In the wake of the
earthquake, hundreds of foreign doctors rushed to Haiti to treat victims. Many
of these doctors were trauma specialists and orthopedists who arrived on scene
and worked nonstop in triage tents. One of these doctors makes me laugh. Amy
Wilentz in Farewell Fred Voodoo: A Letter
From Haiti describes him on various occasions. Here, he’s talking to a new
group of volunteer doctors who just deplaned in Port-au-Prince:
At
the center of the circle, illuminated only by his headlamp, Hyman began an ad
hoc lecture, arms flailing and gesturing to accompany a dramatic account of
what he’d seen so far. He told the Haiti newbies that they were about to
practice medicine as it had last been practiced in the Civil War… He mentioned
doctors pissing into bags because the work was so unrelenting that you didn’t
have time to find a toilet….
And later:
When Hyman was working in Haiti, although
apparently he and his colleagues couldn’t manage to get to the bathroom, he did
manage to blog for the Huffington Post and
to appear on 60 Minutes, both of
which were arguably important to getting the word out on the enormity of the
catastrophe, and links to which can be found now on Hyman’s website,
drhyman.com. Here’s one thing he wrote in his first HuffPost blog: “Tomorrow we will start the first
surgery here after the earthquake; the first amputation with nothing but a
hacksaw and headlamps and a bottle of vodka to sterilize the equipment and a
few rusty instruments to start. But we will do it because it has to be done and
there is no one or nowhere else to do it.” In the 60 Minutes section, you can see the actual hacksaw
being used on a child, and hear Hyman lament the lack of sterilizing alcohol
and laud the appearance of the vodka bottle. It is a comment on the weirdness
of our word that a doctor flying down into an earthquake could blog for the Huffington
Post—via satellite phone or iPhone or
whatever—but have nothing better on hand for amputation than a hacksaw.
Hyman came to Haiti and
couldn’t wait to leave and get back to his “real life” in the states, according
to Wilentz. Megan, however, has remained “in country” since 2010. A graduate of
Harvard Medical School, with a PhD from Oxford for tracking the epidemiology of
HIV patients in the Bay Area, she’s 37 years old. She could probably do
anything she wanted, anywhere in the world. But Haiti called, and she answered.
Megan has been living in
tents, concrete bunkers, and small apartments paid for by friends since
arriving in Haiti. When her stay became permanent, she learned Creole and
French and sometimes lived on less than a dollar a day. This was long after she
and some nurses established a TB inpatient and outpatient ward in a group of
tents housed in the courtyard of the general hospital. Even when Hurricane
Tomas loomed over Haiti in late October and early November 2010, her patients
were still sleeping in tents. The day Tomas swept in, the hospital
administration decided to shelter them in stable, empty rooms of the hospital,
but only for the duration of the hurricane. However, it wasn’t long after Tomas
that the hospital built a semi-permanent building solely for the TB patients,
and Megan has been running a fully functional TB ward there since.
While providing free,
high-quality medical care to TB and HIV patients, she works 12+ hour days and
handles everything beyond patient care: grant writing, because her entire
operation is privately funded; the creation of healthy food systems,
transparent banking records, sourcing medical supplies; and management of
interns and volunteers. Her reputation for being generous with food, oxygen and
kind words, draw patients all over Port-au-Prince. People walk miles down from the
mountains to ask her advice. Everyone wants her care, but she has to turn them
away if they don’t have tuberculosis. She says, “I break people’s hearts all
the time by telling them they don’t have TB.” P.S.: she doesn’t earn a salary.
Also, every morning for
about a year, Megan used to get up early and boil a huge pot of clean water so
she could cook 10-12 pounds of spaghetti to feed her malnourished patients.
While the pasta cooked, she’d take a shower—if the place she lived in had a
working shower. The cooked pasta was then dumped into a black garbage bag, then
placed in a cardboard box, then loaded into the car that came to pick her up
for work. This morning ritual started about 6 months after the earthquake. With
blue latex gloves and mask over her nose/mouth, Megan took up the box of
spaghetti, and huge containers of generic ketchup and mayonnaise and
distributed the food. Each patient well enough to eat received a mountain of
spaghetti with a good splash of ketchup and mayo on top. And this would be
their favorite, every day. Eventually they’d get sick of it. Then Megan would
buy hotdogs from the market ladies outside the hospital. The sickest patients
got to have whole hot dogs, and the rest only pieces or halves.
We asked Megan how long she
planned to stay in Haiti. She said, “Until they tell me I have to leave.”
The day we visited Ti Kay, a
category 1 hurricane was in the works. The patients were agitated, anxious, and
nervous with the impending storm. So were the rats scrabbling around in the
rubble outside. The ward was more crowded than usual, with beds stacked up
against every inch of wall space. In the center of the room, a narrow aisle
functioned as a walkway perpetually congested with the traffic of hospital
staff checking blood pressure and oxygen monitors and passing out big bowls of
soup. We jumped into the stream of able-bodied people flowing up and down the
aisle, distributing paper, watercolor, and brushes for painting, and yarn to
weave into braids. The painting and braiding seemed to calm their nerves, even
if only momentarily. Even patients who couldn’t sit up or move their arms found
a little relief in at least being able to hold a paintbrush and a blank piece
of paper.
Melissa, the PHA director
who accompanied us on this trip to Haiti, has worked with Megan on many
occasions, but this particular visit to the TB ward was so overwhelming that it
got her to think about something we could do to help Megan. Something more than
giving paintbrushes to patients who could hardly lift their arms, because what
good is a paintbrush, when you’re starving and in need of oxygen? So Melissa
decided to start a fundraiser
to collect one year’s worth of rent so Megan could live comfortably in her own
private space with amenities. All
Melissa wanted was $2,000. All she asked was that donors give $10. But enough
people love Megan and her work in Haiti, so they gave much more.
Thursday,
August 11: After breakfast, we
visited the Organization of Young Girls in Action (OJFA in French). This
orphanage was started by two Haitian attorneys in response to the treatment of
girls who serve as “restavecs,” (house slaves) or prostitutes in the Carrefour
slum of Port-au-Prince. After the earthquake, the OJFA founders also took in
homeless girls who were living in cardboard boxes in the streets, and one boy
whose family beat him in the head with bricks until blood came out of his eyes.
OJFA provides a safe shelter
for these kids with bunk beds, a propane stove, a rainwater collection system,
clothing, books, and school fees. In exchange for this miracle of a life, the
girls express their gratitude in everything they do. The oldest girls watch out
for the youngest ones; they all take a shift of cooking and cleaning in the
house; they wash their own clothes; when they get to eat their main meal of the
day at lunch (usually a mountain of rice and beans or spaghetti), they all sit
at the table and wait with their arms folded until each girl has food, then
they say a prayer.
PHA has worked with these
girls for a few years and collects various items for them throughout the
year—feminine hygiene products, swimsuits, underwear, shoes. When PHA began
working with OJFA, Melissa and Kathy quickly saw that the girls needed clothes
because all they had were tattered dresses and worn flip flops. And so
commenced the Homemade
Dress Drive. Initially, the goal was to collect 30 handmade dresses. But
the response was overwhelming and 470 dresses were donated from moms,
daughters, schools, and girl scout troops all over the country and even as far
as Australia. A PHA policy is to hand deliver all donations to make sure the children
receive them, so someone is always taking the maximum 70 lbs allowed by the
airlines. Dresses were loaded into suitcases, along with sunglasses, flip
flops, and purses and after the girls tried on all their new gear, they had a
fashion show.
We didn’t bring the girls
dresses this time, but they were excited to see visitors anyway and greeted us
with a kiss on both cheeks. All we brought with us were balls of yarn so we
could show them how to make pompoms that they could wear on necklaces. But because
they never get to have yarn, it was a treat. What I loved best about these
girls was that they were willing to figure out how the pompoms worked just by
watching us make them once. They had more patience and persistence than most of
my American students.
After pompoms we took them
back to the Oloffson so they could practice swimming. It was a good day. It was
sad to say goodbye.
In the evening, we went to visit Atis Rezistans, a sculpture gallery in
downtown Port-au-Prince, where Claudel and Racine hang out with the other
artists associated with Atis Rezistans. Claudel and Racine are two of the
artists PHA contracted with for the 2013
Ghettos to Galleries project that Jesse wrote about a few months ago. At
the moment, I can’t explain what Atiz Rezistans is better than it’s described here, so check it out
sometime. The gallery is a courtyard with tarps for a roof, and sculptures line
the walls, floor to ceiling in every room. The whole space reminded me of a
demented I Spy book. If one of the
cats or chickens that roams around freely in there got lost in a pile of
sculpture, it might not ever be found.
Friday, July
12: This was the “best day
ever!!!!!” for reasons which shall soon
be made clear. We were scheduled to leave for Jacmel, a southern town that
Jesse and I knew nothing about, other than that we had to take a “tap tap” to
get there. From Jacmel, we would ride motos up a mountain to get to the village
where Pastor Baba lived because he would host us on Friday night, then take us
swimming at Bassen Bleu on Saturday morning. Last time Melissa rode a tap tap,
she said it was awesome, that she got a great view riding on top of the open
air bus, and that hopefully we wouldn’t mind that it was a 2 hour ride with
nonstop hairpin turns up the mountainside. “No big deal,” we thought, it will be awesome.
As it turns out, the
Port-au-Prince tap tap station is a big parking lot in the middle of the street
where buses and vans park anywhere and who knows how they get in or out because
it’s so congested. Market sellers swarm the doors of a bus that’s waiting to
fill with passengers before taking off. Four of us from the PHA group were
traveling to Jacmel together, but none of us had ever been on a tap tap.
The first mistake we made
was getting into the vehicle too early. Our tap tap was an old van that in any
country with driving rules, would legally seat 12 people with seat belts. We
didn’t know that tap tap drivers wait in the parking lot until their vehicle
has at least 20 people crammed inside. This makes the drive more economically
profitable, but deathly uncomfortable for all passengers. Had I known we were
about to experience claustrophobia in the most extreme sense of the word for
the next 2.5 hours, I might have chosen to sleep in at the hotel.
Jesse squeezed in first,
next to the window, and I sat next to him. A Haitian climbed in next to me.
Then two more people climbed into our seat and we were all sitting on top of
each other. With the heat and little ventilation (windows are not a luxury of
the tap tap), I’m surprised we didn’t pass out before the driver finally put
the key in the ignition. We sat around for 20 minutes, waiting for the van to
reach a capacity that satisfied the driver. Then we were off.
We were doing really well,
ignoring the numbing ache that surged up our legs, when Jesse heard it. Someone
behind us, sitting too far from a window, started throwing up in a plastic bag.
I was really surprised that we didn’t pass out then, either. And then Jesse saw
IT. I was zoning out, staring into space in front of me to distract myself,
when Jesse alerted me to the lady in the seat in front of him. She was throwing
up too. She didn’t have a plastic bag though. But she was sitting right next to
a window, so she opened it and stuck her head out. And you all know what
happens to the people behind you when you vomit out the window of a moving
vehicle. Jesse had to wipe slimy brown flecks off his shirt and glasses. And we
were still about half an hour from Jacmel.
In my opinion, the scenery
of Jacmel made up for being barfed on in the tap tap. Jacmel is considerably
less populated than Port-au-Prince, so there’s more space to breathe. There’s
more water and there are more trees and architecturally sound buildings.
After
the tap taps, we rode motos across the river and into the mountains.
Motorcycles apparently do really well in the water, since it’s common there to
ride with the exhaust pipes submerged. The river bottom was rocky and I was
banking on the tires slipping and all of us falling in and getting soaked. But
we had seasoned drivers who do this all the time without getting wet.
Pastor Baba organized a
school in his mountain village that services maybe 30 kids. They need five
teachers to meet all their needs, but currently have two. He told us teachers
make about $20 U.S. dollars a month and that hiring enough teachers or paying
them more isn’t really on the government’s to do list. So Pastor Baba does what
he can to keep the school going and whoever wants to learn will come and
participate.
We made more trading cards
with these kids, and then we drank coconut water.
That would have been the
end of our day if Pastor Baba’s wife hadn’t insisted on cooking dinner. It took
her at least 3 hours from start to finish, maybe because she was working in the
dark without electricity? But it was worth the wait because it was the best food
we would eat in Haiti. Haitians eat a lot of pasta; beans and rice; salads with
iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and avocados; spicy coleslaw; fried chicken; and
plantains. But good luck finding anything that isn’t fried to death in rancid
oil in Port-au-Prince. When we got tired of the hotel food in the capital, we
ate avocados and crackers with oil and vinegar, which worked in Haiti, but is
less appetizing at home where the avocados aren’t almost the size of ostrich
eggs. We all agreed that Pastor Baba’s wife should take over the kitchen at the
Oloffson. His wife reminded me of my mom, who also performed comparable feats
of kitchen alchemy, making gamey food taste exotic even when the facilities
were lacking in those early days of living in Alaska.
I’m not sure what time
dinner ended, but by then we’d been sitting in the dark for hours and were too
tired to change into clothes that weren’t caked in four layers of bug spray.
When it’s that late at night, and that dark, and there’s no toilet or shower,
and when you’ve been on a tap tap all day, you stop caring and just lie down
and hope you don’t have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Saturday,
July 13: We got clean the next
day when we hiked further up the mountain and jumped into the waterfalls of
Bassin Bleu. And this was the highlight of our day. For 15 glorious minutes, my
nails weren’t grimy and I didn’t smell like deet.
 |
| Pastor Baba's cute daughter, Cecilia. |
 |
| Family pet. |
 |
| More family pets. |
Also lesser highlights of the
day were the rides back. Instead of waiting for the moto to slip and fall in the
river, we got off and waded across instead; the donkey crossing the river at
the same time as us waited to pee until we walked all the way across. And while
people threw up in the tap tap on the way back to Port-au-Prince, they weren’t
sitting next to us.
Sunday-Monday,
July 14-15: Our meetings with
orphanages and schools were finished so we had a few days to process all that
had happened. I started reading Farewell
Fred Voodoo: A Letter From Haiti only to realize I’d started a month too
late. Had I read it before we left for Haiti, I might have been prepared to be
there without feeling guilty for having too much to look forward to after going
home. Wilentz says, in Fred Voodoo,
“My rule is don’t be full of pity and charity. Don’t feel sorry for them, rule
number one. Be glad you’re not in their situation, but don’t pity.” Of course,
Jesse told me the exact same thing the first night we spent in Haiti, long
before I read Fred Voodoo. I imagine
living in Ecuador for two years might have given him this perspective, but
maybe he always knew this because he has more common sense than I do.
Fred Voodoo
is full of unfortunate facts about international relations that have
facilitated the ruin of Haiti. A few notable examples:
1. Haiti is the
first black republic of the world, and before Haitian slaves revolted and won
their freedom from the French in 1791, they were the most profitable New World
colony. However, they might not have been so poor if France hadn’t forced them
to pay reparations debt for almost 100 years afterward.
2. Because the U.S.
still believed in slavery, they ignored Haiti and boycotted the independent
country in its infancy, refusing to integrate it into the world economy. And so
did everyone else. There wasn’t much use for Haiti without its economy of
plantation slavery.
3. The U.S.
occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934 didn’t help. Since 1915, Wilentz says, Haiti
has been viewed as a “rubber stamp” for U.S. policy, American businessmen, and
Haitian-run businesses inclined toward American interests. This is why for most
of the 20th century, only U.S. approved Haitians were presidents:
“The embassy looked the other way at internal political repression, to say
nothing of continuing starvation, as long as Haitian governments were friendly
or at least anticommunist…Only when friendly dictators became so kleptocratic
that people started fleeing the island en masse for the Bahamas and Florida did
the United States perk up and perform regime change.” Basically, any president
who’s tried to get something done for the common Haitian majority before
prioritizing the agenda of the elite Haitian business class has been
ousted. But this was even a trend
before the U.S. occupation, Frederick Douglass observed the same phenomenon in
1893:
The fault [for the instability] in Haiti is
not with the ignorant many, but with the educated and
ambitious few […who make] politics a business of their country. Governed neither
by love nor mercy for their country, they care not into what depths she may be
plunged. No president, however virtuous, wise and patriotic, ever suits them
when they themselves happen to be out of power.
I wish I could
say that these are the only conspirators against the peace of Haiti, but I cannot.
They have allies in the United States. Recent developments have shown that even a
former United States Minister, resident and Consul General to that country, has
conspired against the present government of Haiti. It so happens that we have men
in this country who, to accomplish their personal and selfish ends, will fan
the flame of passion between the factions in Haiti and will otherwise assist
in setting revolutions afoot.
To their shame be
it spoken, men in high American quarters have boasted to me of their ability to
start a revolution in Haiti at pleasure. They have only to raise sufficient money,
they say, with which to arm and otherwise equip the malcontents, of
either faction, to effect their object. Men who have old munitions of war or old
ships to sell; ships that will go down in the first storm, have an interest in
stirring up strife in Haiti. It gives them a market for their worthless wares. Others of
a speculative turn of mind and who have money to lend at high rates of interest
are glad to conspire with revolutionary chiefs of either faction, to enable them to
start a bloody insurrection. To them, the welfare of Haiti is nothing; the
shedding of human blood is nothing; the success of free institutions is nothing, and the
ruin of a neighboring country is nothing.
4. And one more for
good measure—“The
American Plan” initiated by the first Bush administration, although
arguably well intentioned, destroyed Haiti’s agricultural economy. In the 70s,
most of Haiti was rural and many of its inhabitants were peasant farmers who
were feeding themselves fine on their own. But incredibly high population
density + about 95% deforestation rate + so much land being used for farming
crops = severe erosion issues. Along with all the usual indicators of
underdeveloped nations (illiteracy rates, poor infrastructure, inadequate
healthcare, etc), the erosion situation inspired U.S. intervention. The basic
plan was to transition peasants from their “destructive” cultivation of beans
and corn to urban areas where they could be factory workers in U.S. affiliated
industrial parks. They imagined Haiti’s potential as the “Taiwan of the
Caribbean.”
And
another part of The American Plan involved the U.S. promising
political/financial support to Haitians who wanted the really, really, really,
corrupt president at the time (who had just been ousted in 1986) if they would
cooperate and lower tariffs on U.S. rice and make it super cheap to dump
subsidized American rice on the Haitian market. Haitians lost control of the
importation process, and the rice came in so fast, and so cheap that it was
practically given away and nobody wanted to pay more for Haitian rice when they
could get American rice for so much less. And then U.S. government
organizations funded reports that basically said Haitian farmers couldn’t feed
their country and if nothing more was done about it, Haiti would die of famine
and malnutrition. These reports circulated, even as another group of
researchers that was actually monitoring food production reported that Haitian
farmers were producing enough corn to more than feed the average family. Of
course, this report was ignored. So Haiti had to keep importing from the U.S.
and this continued with support of Clinton’s administration. It got so bad
that Haitians abandoned their farms, and moved to industrial sectors that later
shut down due to riots anyway. So it was one big mess that spiraled into lots
of other messes. Clinton apologized for the rice in 2011.
The
point of that digression was that reading Fred
Voodoo reminded me that if you want to help Haiti, don’t make Haiti's decisions for Haiti. Ask Haiti what it needs and enable Haitians to solve their own problems
because with the right kind of help, they can.
I
read an article recently that appeared in the June
2000 Ensign about an LDS couple
in charge of humanitarian efforts in Haiti. While it’s an old article, it
demonstrates the correct approach to helping in places with ongoing need. This
isn’t to say that the LDS Church has a monopoly on knowing how best to help
people—there are lots of organizations not affiliated with the Church that have
done good things. After the 2010 earthquake, every bit of aid that came to
Haiti was needed, regardless of where it came from. But you can’t take the same
approach to chronic need as you do in disaster relief. Aid for chronic need
must be sustainable. LDS humanitarian relief is so successful because it’s
sustainable, and based on the principle of self-reliance.
So
flash back to the year 2000, when Elder and Sister Kouri were serving their
humanitarian mission in Haiti. They were in charge of assessing local needs and
seeking out projects “where there would be meaningful participation on the part
of the recipients.” They could see that “there would be no end to food aid as
long as the Haitians did not become self-reliant.” So they decided to start
three agricultural organizations to represent 81 subgroups of farmers in rural
areas outside of Port-au-Prince. The Kouris talked to local people who helped
them understand that pigs = livelihood, but they needed pigs of their own
first. They didn’t have pigs partly because in the 80s, an African swine fever broke
out and guess who got rid of Haiti's pigs and replaced them with foreign breeds that required unaffordable feed?
The
Kouris designed a program that worked like this:
1.
Government
subsidy program helps purchase 20 young sows and 4 boars.
2.
Government
agronomist trains farmers to breed pigs.
3.
LDS Church funds
the building of the piggery.
4.
Farmers breed
sows, fatten male piglets for sale.
5.
Female piglets
given to family members who contract to breed them (instead of eating/selling
her) and then pass two female piglets to other subgroup families.
So
eventually, all families in the subgroups have their own pig-raising businesses
and another source of income. After two years, the original donation of 48 pigs
to three organizations of farmers was projected to give 1,160 families a female
piglet every year without requiring the Church to invest more money. One of the
locals they put in charge of one of the three small agricultural organizations
turned his small group into 40 subgroups representing about 3,000 people. Profits
earned from pig sales financed pig feed, fertilizers, and provided money for
other needs like healthcare and school supplies.
While
this happened long before the 2010 earthquake, it’s projects like this that
work in Haiti when so many other NGOs have failed to make a lasting difference
because they don’t invest in projects that make Haitians self-reliant; they
give too much money or too many supplies without holding recipients
accountable.
The
story about the Kouris reminds me why PHA is important. We support PHA because
to some extent, it has potential to be what the Kouris’ work was for Haiti. PHA
believes in self-reliance too, in enabling Haitian artists to be their own
problem-solvers and decision-makers. One example: PHA is training Haitian
artists to build their own photography program; some cameras donated for
students, plus $50 pays a teacher for a 13-week photography class for over a
dozen kids. The photos students take are put in exhibits and sold to make money
for future classes. Another example is the moringa tree project mentioned
earlier.
PHA
is a young organization with a long way to go in making itself truly sustainable
with Haitians working independently of the directors who live in California.
For now, it’s enough for us to know that we have time and resources to give to
a worthy cause, and that the recipients of PHA funds are good, hardworking
people who deserve to be successful.
