I Dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended

For anyone unaware, I flew out of Haiti two days ago, as my time as an in-country volunteer with KCH is now up. I'm moving on to exciting new things in and out of the organization.

In: I passed the baton to two awesome new volunteers, Travis Carter and LeeAllie Buchanan, who will work for KCH likely for a period of about a year. Our program is in good hands with these two, and I wish them all the best. As for me, I'm taking a position on the KCH board as an aducation program advisor, which is related to...

Out: In a week, I'm moving again to South Africa, where I'm planning to spend two months working in a research internship for the University of Cape Town and hanging out with a girl who I've spent the better part of the last 8 months at least 3000 miles away from. I'm a little excited.
After South Africa, I'll be training for and then working in the Teach for America program in Miami, FL, hopefully keeping up the Kreyol. And speaking of this, I have to go take my Social Studies certification test!

Stay tuned for one last blog post about Ayiti to come later in the week!

Le Paix

Once upon a Time

“There was a time when, if I wanted, I could just climb a tree and take all the fruit I wanted. Mangoes, coconuts, anything – I could eat them until I had no more room in my stomach. Even, for example, in a place I was not from. I am from Okay, but I have a friend in Leogane. If I went to visit my friend, there would always be a big basket of fruit waiting when I arrived, and I would take as I pleased. 

Now, it is not so.  Those times are gone, here and everywhere.  Everything is commerce, money.  Even in prosperous places, people don’t have all they need. I lived for a time in New York. You know, even there, people are sleeping in the streets. Even in New York some people don’t have enough to eat.

Our hardship will continue, I think, for the earth is punishing us now. There are too many of us here, and we have mistreated the earth for too long.  And the earth is all that matters. Apre mwen pase, apre w pase, apre nou tout pase, late a se anko la. After I pass, after you pass, after we all pass, the earth will still be here. And it is angry with us for cutting the trees and destroying the soil. I do not know if there is anything we can do to stop the earth’s anger now. So I wait.

I await the return of Jesus. I await God. Paske lavi pa ka kontinye konsa. Because life cannot continue like this. What can we do?

 

And yet, this is still a good place. Always it is a good place. It is home, and so mwen renmen Ayiti.”

Lekol

“Come on, I need your assistance if I’m really going to help you learn anything. What are some words we use every day?”

“Well, good morning is something.”

“Yes, it is, you’re right.  For bonswa? Do you know how to say that?”

“Good… afternoon.”

“See, I’m telling you, you know how to speak this language. Now how about nouns – like things or objects that you talk about every day?”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“Ok, I’ll give you a few examples. House, that means kay; clothes means ràd, food means manje, bed means kabann –“

I pause, looking up from the little list of words I’ve prepared for our English lesson to find Guerline in a fit of giggles. “What?” I ask her, “What is it?”

“Oh, Chris, I don’t have one of those. I sleep on a piece of carpet.” She’s laughing hysterically.

Taking her cue, I begin to laugh easily as well. “Well tapi is carpet in English, dear.”

“Caaarpet,” she repeats slowly, still holding the ‘r’ in the back of her mouth, as is habit for a Francophone such as herself. Her laugh dies off, but her huge smile remains.

I’m happy when she turns her head down towards her notebook for half a second; it gives me a little time to release the embarrassment I’ve been hiding behind my eyes as I glance at my own paper. And, after the brief moment, we continue.

“Desk,” I say, “that means biwo. School, you know that already. It means lekol.”

Inescapable

“Always when you live in Ayiti, your life is not good.  Because even when you are doing well yourself, you can arrive another place to find that the people you love are suffering. Even when you are becoming someone, doing good things, upon reflecting you understand that others are hurting.  And then you cannot be happy yourself. In this country, it is always happening around you.

When I am lot bo a, in the other place, I am making money, doing well for myself, and learning. But today I return here to find that my family is not well.  My father is sick, my brother and sister cannot find work, and my family does not have enough food to eat. This will always stay in my head, taunting me.

Everywhere you go in Ayiti, you cannot escape this reality. It is always there. It is not a life.” 

Fighting the Tide

It is nice to occasionally affirm one's role as someone aiding others, but it is equally if not far more important to recognize and constantly re-acknowledge the enormity of the challenge. The following comment took place in a conversation with a middle class Haitian businessman who had just heaped a torrent of undue praise upon me. This is only a small segment of the problems we really have to tackle in serving our youth, and a small segment of the concerns that he presented.  As we continued to think about our options after the following comment, the last words in the conversation were, "Support your local revolutionary forces." It was a good reality check.

“I liken it to a prison.

"Here you are with access to exercise equipment, books, educational materials, and what have you. But you’re locked up for 30 years. It’s going to take a hell of a lot of focus, determination, patience, and what have you to actually follow through and continue to read those books, be invested in your education, in yourself. It’s going to take someone special even to stay interested in following a sit com, because here you are watching people do things you’ll never be able to do, at least not for 30 years. People driving cars, going to basketball games, and just generally being comfortable; these are all things that you realistically can’t do.

“So you say, 'You will make it if you work hard and try hard,' but you realistically have no idea if that can be true. There's certainly no way you'll make it without that, but even with you doing all these things, life is likely to be a pretty uncertain situation. And we can't say there's anyone looking out for them in the political structure. You're on your own.

"That is what it’s like being 22 in this country right now."

Di djab, 'Bonjou,' l'ap manje ou.  Pa di djab, 'Bonjou,' l'ap manje ou.

Say to the devil, 'Good day,'  and he eats you. Don't say, 'Good day,' to the devil, he eats you.

Haitian Proverb

DLO/EAU/Water

Today, as I passed Route Frere during one of the 5 hours I spent in the taptap, I heard a familiar noise. The usual noises of trucks, cars, and buzzing motos was interrupted by what at first what I thought was a novelty horn. Except it kept repeating, and quickly I recognized the drone of - could it really be? - the song of an ice cream truck.

But of course, it was not an ice cream truck. It was the water truck. Try to imagine running ecstatically after the man bringing clean water to your neighborhood. A slightly different thought than cold, sugary, delicious snacks, no?  

This past weekend, I walked from Kenscoff to Seguin, a 6-8 hour walk. The Haitians that take that walk often do it on a routine basis; for example the ladies in Segiun will bring their big baskets of oranges to sell at the public market in Kenscoff. We even saw a guy carrying 3 trees he would sell in Port au Prince. Almost no one brings water, and by almost no one I mean I saw one person with water on the whole walk.  One old man stopped to ask us for some, and upon receiving it, the 10 ounces disappeared in seconds.

Imagine walking from here over the mountain in the background without a single drop to drink... in the middle of the Caribbean heat. 

 Also, Cholera continues to threaten the Haitian people, especially in the poorest areas where there is not good sanitation.

"Can't we just get some affordable water into this country?" you say. A decent question. Although really clean water should be free, consider this: already, for a 5 gallon jug of treated water, the standard price is 60 gourdes. That's $1.50 (meaning a bottle of Fiji might cost 3 times that).  In December, a student of mine in Cite Soliel came to the office having not eaten in 2 days and having missed school because he got sick from drinking bad water.

That, when with $1.50, he could have had safe water to drink for a week.

If I saw the water truck, I would scream like it was ice cream too; talk about things to be thankful for.

Respe

What's in a Phrase

"The wealthy suburb of Petion ville, in the hills above Port au Prince..."

The above phrase occurs in almost every major news story that involves Petionville, part of the greater metropolis of Port au Prince.  And it does not make me happy.

It’s time to find something a tad more creative and explanatory beyond this recycled cliché that inevitably leads to, “where the bourgeois sip their French wines,” or, “where the upscale houses of the rich tower over the city,” or some other analogy in which the rich people of PV scoff at the poor down in Port au Prince.  First off, just get a new phrase; cutting and pasting from your last article is lame.

Second, and more importantly, this phrase that seeks to paint a Dickensian picture of the capital of Haiti is obnoxiously oversimplified and missing some vital contextual information.  In their desire to turn a catchy, illuminating phrase, journalists are missing the heartbreaking realities in Petionville.  For anyone who might think I am an overcritical nitpick, well maybe you’re right.  But the constant use (or misuse) of this phrase to me is endemic of a bigger problem: that mainstream media coverage of Haiti often fails to capture the realities of this country that just over one year ago was the focus and concern of the whole world due to the tragedy of January 12th, the tumultuous history of the nation, and the swath of problems that continue to multiply.

Let me start by acknowledging the truth in the generalizations. Petionville is indeed a place where more money is exchanged than down in Laville (meaning ‘the city’). There are indeed French restaurants, hotels, nightclubs, banks, grocery stores, gyms, tall office buildings, and nice homes.

Every morning, I walk through Petionville down to my office, which is almost in another close suburb, Juvenat. So every morning I pass Place St. Pierre, where sits an enormous tent camp that helps fill the air with the smell of trash. I walk down through streets filled with trash and dirty water that is always running (If the women in need of water can find the broken water vein that morning, they will congregate around the old snapped pipe and gather liquid to use for washing, showering, or cooking). The nice homes are hidden behind one foot cement walls with razor wire over top of the fence. The grocery stores (the banks, hotels and offices too, actually) are staffed by at least one guard with a shotgun. By the time I arrive at work I’ve passed another dusty tent camp with no drainage systems; another camp is a minute’s walk away, next to a trash dump.  When I look out the back window of my office, I see a few of the much talked about villas.  But mostly modest cinder block houses, patched tin roofs, and a few tents fill my field of view, taking up 3/4ths of the mountainside.

It seems that the point of the phrase that catches my scorn is to illustrate, with a small explanation, the irony of the rich-poor separation in Haiti. However, the use of this phrase by people whose occupation is to build our knowledge and understanding of current events is the real irony.  The phrase connotes vilification of those well off enough to be able to enjoy a night out; something that most of us, including many of the people writing these pieces, do in our home countries without a second thought.  To condemn “the rich” in a general sense is easy and shortsighted, just as it is to condemn the poor.  To talk in diminutive cliché phrases in the forums designed to promote knowledge and discussion certainly does not help people see through the issues that hurt Haitian society.

To me, the irony and tragedy is not that the rich can look down on the poor from another neighborhood, insulate themselves with fine things, or separate themselves entirely from the plight in their country. Instead, it is that often well meaning people pass wretchedness and suffering every day; it exists literally outside their front door or across the street.  The irony is that the pieces that make up a civil society are moving around in the same places; they are present, capable, and often well-meaning.  But they are not engaging in sustained, meaningful interactions that help one another comprehend and relate. 

Part of the problem is that the same goes for several members of the media reporting on stories in Haiti.  Their assignments are too often not investigative but to search out the quick, dirty piece (so oftentimes they stay in upscale Petionville hotels).  This is vital work, too, but only if it is complemented by far reaching examinations of the environment in which these things are occurring.  Otherwise, media consumers have the luxury of consumption without the challenge of understanding.  In many ways, so do reporters.

When reporters write about the challenges of aid groups without noting the problems that the presence of an aid group provide specifically (for example, several microcredit groups in Haiti provide low cost loans, but do so at an extremely high interest rate, making it difficult for participants to build really significant businesses off of microcredit), they negate the voice of the people. When reporters (or bloggers) search for what makes the story and not what is hard to do, see, and write, they skip past providing their readers with things that might carve a path to understanding (for example, the way that many people talk to/about foreigners based on stereotypical preconceived notions is indicative of  a xenophobia that has caused a ton of problems for this country). When these people do not or cannot immerse themselves or use their investigative talents to dig out a story, we are all left with summary explanations that lead us to forming surface level opinions.

Haiti needs sustained, investigative media coverage from national and international contributors. Only then can we begin not only to get the information out, but to get it out in ways that will build the understanding of the concerned people giving their time, energy, and money to supporting the country from near and far.  Only then can we really tell the story of the Haitian people in a way that allows us to share in their humanity. What's more, maybe if we can make this kind of media accessible to several groups of people inside the country, we can contribute to the formation of a true civil society within the country.

What nobody needs is the phrase, “The wealthy….”

I can’t even write it. Oy

Goumen pou sa’w kwe