Ben and Lexi

Obama Beach Hotel: there and back again

2012-01-23T09:43:00.001-05:00

There's a short-cut out to Route National One, a dusty paved track that cuts along the edge of Cité Soleil, past the landfill at Troutier and past Zoranj, where expensive pre-fab houses have sat empty since a farcical housing expo last year. Once a hotspot for hijackings, UN soldiers patrol here with regularity. The left turn onto the "highway" is now marked by a new, under-construction sewage treatment facility.

I find the stretch of road from here to Arcahaie endlessly fascinating. The road runs along the coast, through desert dotted with the bright blue tarps of displacement settlements. (This blue, also the hallmark color of the new telecommunications giant Natcom, is a discernible part of post-earthquake Haiti's color scheme). The road winds through Titanyan, with its sulfur springs and the area recently re-named Saint Christopher (as if re-naming a place erases its history), body-dumping grounds for presidents and gangs, and of earthquake and cholera victims. Now, Titanyan is covered with a patchwork of stones marking out plots claimed by landless people from Port-au-Prince.

Randomly, the desert contains a sports complex here, a satellite university campus or orphanage there, a few industrial parks, a village of colored houses built by Food for the Poor and the mission compounds of Samaritans Purse and Mission of Hope. Other unidentifiable and out-of-place buildings sprout up among the cactus, weird mirage-like oases surrounded by green and flowering trees.

The next sizeable town after Titanyan is Cabaret, formerly Duvalierville, a failed development project built by Papa Doc Duvalier in 1962. Saturday is market day in Cabaret and the road is lined with market women selling used clothes and goods brought down from the mountains - vegetables, handwoven rope, mats and baskets. Ben has to squeeze our motorcycle between a stake body truck overloaded with plantains and second-hand yellow school buses, then narrowly avoids hitting an errant goat.

The community of Ti-Sous is on the Côte des Arcadins (the name of this stretch of coastline) after Archaie, after the cemetery and the watermelon stands (where you can buy watermelon almost all year-round), but before the long string of beach resorts: Kalico, Wahoo, Moulin-sou-Mer, Indigo.

You can't possibly miss the turn to get where we're headed. "Obama Beach Hotel" is emblazoned loudly on a white sign with a giant arrow pointing across the street, and then again on cement posts on either side of the gravel road leading down to the beach.

Obama Beach Hotel is on a cove of pebbled beach with absolutely crystal-clear water and the dying remnants of a coral reef. It's cheaper and simpler than the resorts to the north (though still overpriced, as all hotels in Haiti tend to be) and even though it's Saturday, we're among the only guests. Fine by us - we get pick of the best beach chairs for reading, countless games of backgammon and to watch the sun set over La Gonâve.

On Sundays, the tranquil hotel transforms into a beach party. By 10:00 AM the place is swarming with a significant portion of the UN's Brazilian battalion, in speedos, with BBQ grills, coolers and speakers in tow. So, following breakfast and coffee overlooking the sea, we head back down the coast.

Back again through Archaie and Cabaret, into the desert past the missions, the industrial parks...

Two Years after the Earthquake in Haiti, “Housing Is Our Battle”

2012-01-21T07:58:00.000-05:00

On the second anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, a protestor's sign reads, "If there is land for factories, there should be land for housing." [Photo by Ben]

By Alexis Erkert

January 19, 2012

Remember, you are marching today for those who couldn’t be here,
To say to them, “We haven’t forgotten. We’ll never forget.”
And to say to those that are still here,
We will take a stand for the rebuilding of Haiti.
- Right to Housing Collective, January 12, 2012

Onthe morning of January 12, 2012, a group of women, children and men wound theirway through the city wearing white, the Haitian color for mourning. Partmemorial, they deposited wreaths of flowers on sites that had become massgraves during the 2010 earthquake, and part protest, they carried a banner thatread “Two years later: Enough is enough.” They alternated between singing afuneral dirge and chanting, “We need houses to live in!”

Haitian socialmovements have reclaimed douze janvye,January 12, as a symbol of moving forward. Two years later, 520,000[i]continue to live in appalling conditions in displacement camps. And so, onJanuary 11 and 12, thousands of Haitians – peasant farmers, activists, anddisplacement camp residents – took to the streets to denouncethe situation in tent camps and the forced evictions of residents, and to callon the Haitian government to undertake land reform, provide public housing, andprotect women's rights.

Althoughpolitical and social divisions have long fissured Haitian movements,organizations from across historic divides are demanding many of the samethings. One clear, common emphasis is the immediate need for land and housingfor the displaced.

Excerptsfrom declarations and speeches on or around January 12, all with a focus on theright to housing, follow.

From a joint press conference of theInternational Lawyers’ Office (BAI) and residents of Camp Mariani, denouncingthe threat of illegal forced eviction by the landowner in complicity with thelocal government:

We raise our voices to denounce with all of our might, before thenational and international community, the threat of forced eviction, andarbitrary and illegal acts of violence being carried out against us by themajor. We can’t take the pressure anymore. We ask all the institutions involved(the president, the government, the mayor, NGOs assisting displaced people,human rights organizations, etc.) to press, press our case, to take this issueinto consideration so that the government and mayor sign a moratorium to blockthe aggression against people living in this camp, to plan what should be donewith regards to displaced people, to respect the rights that we have as people.As Article 22 of this country’s constitution and Article 25 of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights declare, “All people have the right to housing.”

From a speech given by Marie FrantzJoachim of Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA), on behalf of the NationalCoordination of Women’s Organizations (KONAP), composed of a wide variety offeminist organizations, during the January 12, 2012 memorial march:

Out of respectfor the battle our ancestors carried out, we too undertake the struggle toforce our leaders to take responsibility for… the people living under tents.The housing problem is a structural problem and demands a structural response.Displaced Haitians cannot continue to live in the chicken cages that are beingconstructed for them. Haitians should be living in dignity… And so we say, “This is our battle: theright for people to live in adequate housing.” And we ask that everyone in thesocial movement, all organizations, come together so that we can clearly,collectively, respond.

From theEye-to-Eye Platform (Platfòm Je nan Je), a 12-member grouping that includesfour of Haiti’s largest peasant associations, in a declaration to the HaitianParliament following a march attended by thousands of protestors:

The Eye-to-EyePlatform supports people from all four corners of the country by submitting thefollowing demands and recommendations to the government:

Remove people from under tents as quicklyas possible; but that doesn’t mean to send them back to pre-existing slums orto the shantytowns created after the earthquake;
The government must implement a disaster riskmanagement plan to identify safe construction sites, with land for farming setapart from land for housing;
The government must create and implement ahousing policy, with urban planning and zoning; In this plan we must clearlysee what needs to be done in both urban and rural areas; This plan needs todesignate responsibility for land and housing to state institutions;
Guarantee the security of displaced people,especially in the places to which they are being relocated…

From the report by the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), one of Haiti's most prominent human rights organizations: Advocacy for the Situation of January 10, 2010 Earthquake Victims:

Recommendations of RNDDH to the relevant institutions:

Plan an effective re-location strategy with the participation of displaced people;
Develop a public housing policy with the involvement of the Haitian government's own Public Enterprise for the Promotion of Social Housing (EPPLS);
Strengthen state institutions necessary to effectively control the situation in camps and relocation sites;
Insist that all actors involved in rebuilding the country adopt a human rights-based approach to everything that they do.

From a speech by Colette Lespinasse and Reyneld Sanon of the Right-to-Housing Collective, made up of 30-some Haitian organizations, grassroots groups and displacement camp associations.

We, organizations of survivors living in internally displaced persons [IDP] camps, as well as social and grassroots organizations, state:

The government must define a land use policy for the country;
The Parliament must draft and vote on a law to guarantee the right to housing;
The government must look for and acquire land though expropriation [eminent domain] so that there is sufficient space to respond to the housing needs of the population;
Women, children and the disabled, and the population in general must participate in decision-making regarding housing;
All neighborhoods should be places where people can live in dignity and security

We resolve to remain mobilized in the struggle to change our society and our government. We resolve to regainthe sovereignty of our country to construct a society in which we can enjoyguaranteed access to housing and all our fundamental rights.

From apresentation on housing in Camp Carradeux on January 12, 2012 by Olrich JeanPierre of Noise Travels, News Spreads (Bri Kouri Nouvèl Gaye), an alternativemedia group doing advocacy and public education:

Whenwe struggle for housing, we’re not just asking for houses. There are otherservices that should accompany housing. A house in an area where potable waterisn’t available does not respect the right to housing. People need access tohealthcare. The battle for housingis not simply a battle for 4 square meters to live in. It’s a battle for publicschools to educate our children so that they don’t have to go work infactories. It’s a battle to have access to healthcare when we’re sick.

We’re not just mobilizingto denounce the situation. No, the struggle before us is the struggle topressure the government, to ask them, “Where are the houses that you’veprepared for us?” And then to ask if there are toilets inside of them. Becausewe are a people with dignity. And with rights that need to be respected.

[i]HAITI Emergency Shelter and Camp Coordination Camp Management Cluster,Displacement Tracking Matrix V2.0 Update, November 30, 2011.

See OtherWorlds’ recent article, Home: FromDisplacement Camps to Community in Haiti, for more detail on the right-to-housingmovement in Haiti and how Haitian organizations are responding with advocacyand alternatives.

Copyleft OtherWorlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Pleasecredit any text or original research you use to Alexis Erkert and Other Worlds.

Anniversary Blues | By Edwidge Danticat

2012-01-13T14:33:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from Edwidge Danticat's essay in the February 2012 issue of The Progressive

Anniversaries hurt. They brutalize the body. They pummel the spirit. Especially the anniversary of a catastrophe, where we are remembering the death not just of one or two people, but hundreds of thousands: 300,000 to be precise. Just when we thought our pain had subsided, it emerges again, it expands from a daily ache, which we hoped would one day disappear, to the throbbing agony we experienced at the moment that it seemed the world ended.

Two years ago in Haiti, the Earth opened, buildings collapsed, and people died. Armies descended, displaying military might worthy of a war zone. A flock of nongovernmental agencies came, too, growing from an estimated 10,000 to 16,000, making Haiti host to more nongovernmental organizations per capita than almost any other country in the world. Money was pledged by the world’s powers, great and small, $9.9 billion worth of promises, with less than half of that actually delivered.

Two years ago, I watched all this unfold from my home in Miami, mostly with an infant in my arms. Three weeks later, when I was finally able to travel to Haiti, my chest nearly exploded in spite of the pumping and bottling one must do when away from a nursing baby. During that first trip, seeing so many people—including friends and family members—sleeping on the streets, in the shadows of shattered houses, cramped next to each other in public places in makeshift tents, I dreaded the first rain.

Since then lots and lots of rain has fallen. Even a hurricane has blown through.

Two years worth of rain and sun has thinned out the tents. Wherever they could, people abandoned the pretense of temporary shelter and converted cloth and tarp to tin and wood, even where the land was not theirs. Some have been forcibly evicted. Gunmen have come in at night—some sent by private landowners, others by the state.

You will hear that the number of the displaced has been reduced in half since the earthquake, that it has shrunk from 1.5 million to 600,000, but you will not hear where the displaced have gone.

In a devastated city of mostly renters, where unemployment is at nearly 60 percent, the displaced have been accused of purposefully squatting in squalor, living in open spaces where the heat dehydrates babies, and women and girls are raped, supposedly just to catch the attention of nongovernmental organizations. As if they had mansions that they were neglecting, hidden food and water that was going to waste, schools for their children that they were hoping to trade up for a better one, as if they had anything but their dignity left intact.

Sometimes it can feel as though none of us is doing enough. That feeling, especially among those of us children of Haiti who are living in the diaspora, is the opposite of donor fatigue. It is sometimes hope and sometimes guilt. Hundreds of friends and family members rely on us. We finance homes, clinics, schools, weddings, and funerals, but there is always more to do for, and with, people who are eager to get a foothold themselves and do so proudly every day.

On this anniversary, while remembering the dead and celebrating those still living, I also want to recognize more than ever the marginalized members of Haitian society—people like my grandparents and their grandparents, poor, urban and rural, self-reliant and proud men and women who are the backbone of Haiti. Without their full inclusion and participation in the reconstruction of their country, Haiti will never fully succeed.

Originally published here.

January 12, 2012

2012-01-12T15:01:00.001-05:00

Re-posted from January 12, 2011. Though another year has passed, I'm struck by how similar Haiti feels today. In brackets I've made changes that differentiate the situation today from one year ago.

[Two] years ago today, at 4:55 PM, we heard a deafening sound and our house started to shake violently. For the next 35 seconds, we struggled to stay standing as it seemed like the world was collapsing around us.

Today, we mourn the hundreds of thousands that were killed in the earthquake, the millions displaced, the loss of massive amounts infrastructure, of schools and hospitals and government buildings. We mourn the ongoing tragedy of an inefficient response, mired in bureaucracy and corruption and exploitation. We mourn that [half a] million people are still living in tents, that foreign companies are benefiting more from reconstruction contracts than Haitians. We mourn that such a devastating disaster did little to uproot the social, economic and political structures that oppress the majority of Haitians.

The city feels as though it's wrapped in a shroud. This morning the streets are empty, but churches are overflowing with Haitians wearing white and black, the colors of mourning. The government is launching [their program to re-locate one of the city's largest displacement camps]. A ceremony is taking place [in Titanyan, the site of the earthquake's mass graves], masses being held at cathedrals around the city. We grieve.

We also celebrate. We celebrate life, our lives and the lives of the people around us that are active and engaged in trying to shape Haiti’s future. We celebrate a vision for how things could be different for this country. We celebrate what has been done, the rubble that has been moved, the houses that have been repaired, the small businesses that have been rebuilt. In the midst of the mourning, I can also hear people singing.

[And we protest. Haitian social movement are reclaiming douze janvye, January 12, as a symbol of moving forward. Yesterday and today, thousands of people have marched through Port-au-Prince, denouncing the situation in tent camps, and calling on the Haitian government to undertake land reform, provide public housing, and protect women's rights.]

Please pray for this country today. Pray that today Haiti will recapture the sense of solidarity that was so prevalent in those first weeks after the earthquake and, along with that, the energy to move forward towards healing and real, just and participative reconstruction.

2-Year Link Round Up

2012-01-10T23:35:00.003-05:00

Memories are powerful. Today I opened a random Haiti article that popped up on my twitter feed and upon reading the first line ("Two years ago this Thursday, at least 150,000 people died one evening in Haiti"), promptly dissolved into tears.

Probably, Ben and I should have escaped to Kenscoff or the beach this week to ignore the anniversary buzz and nurture ourselves. Instead, I am torturing myself by reading every 2-year anniversary article, editorial and reflection that crosses my desk [meaning my lap, really] via google, twitter, facebook, email and the local newspaper. Believe me, there are a lot. Haiti-philes are usually prolific in their research and analysis; aid groups have a lot of explaining and defending to do; and the mainstream media is capitalizing on the anniversary as a time when more people are paying attention.

A random assortment of things that I've read have stood out to me.

For reality (& sobering statistics):
Haiti 2 years later: Half a million still in camps (Trenton Daniel, AP)

Haiti: Seven Places Where the Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go (Ramanauskas and Quigley)

Did you drink Soup? Strains on Solidarity in Haiti (Mark Schuller, Huffpost)

For overall depth of coverage:
Haiti Experiences Progress, exasperation 2 years after quake (Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald)

For passion:
Two Years Later, Where is the Outrage? (Let Haiti Live, Melinda Miles)

For contrast
Les Nanti's d'Haiti (Paolo Woods' photographs of Haitian elite in Le Monde)

For thought:
A Stubborn Savior: Is Bill Clinton Haiti's Hope for Salvation? (Marc Hujer, Der Spiegel)

For laughs:
It's Haiti Week over at the Cartoon Movement, a great collaborative of political cartoonists from around the world. Today's cartoon, Haiti: Paradigm Shift, was especially excellent.

An awkward translation from English into... English of the article I co-authored last week on grassroots housing alternatives:
http://world-disaster-news.com/new/haiti-earthquake/beverly-bell-home-from-displacement-camps-to-community-in-haiti

And for a truly bright spot in a week of mostly tragic, condemning news coverage:
Haiti Can be Rich Again (Laurent Dubois and Deborah Jenson, NYT op ed)

Smoke Signals

2012-01-10T10:26:00.002-05:00

[I (Ben) have been working in the Dominican Republic for the past week and my bus trip back to Port-Au-Prince on Saturday (usually a 7-hour trip or so) took 22 hours. My bus arrived in the border town on the DR side, Jimani, around 3pm and most of the town was out in the street burning tires - trying to smoke signals to local politicians, perhaps? We couldn't drive through so we waited, but the border closes at 7pm. A few people left the bus on motorcycles to try and make it through the border, but they didn't make it either. One was held up but only had 30 pesos so he was let go, another couple got caught in some shooting between an angry driver and protesters and they hurried back, terrified. The bus parked in front of a police station and we all slept on the bus. Thankfully, there were restaurants nearby with food and plenty of Presidente.]

Ginger Honey Mead

2012-01-06T20:09:00.000-05:00

Mead is the ancient liquor of gods and men, the giver of knowledge and poetry, the healer of wounds, and the bestower of immortality.
-- Robert Gayre, 1948 (from Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation)

the first ferment - started a week ago

strain

soak ginger to remove the peel

ginger and water in pressure cooker to speed things up

strain

add the honey and water

watch Luna watch

airlock it

wait for bubbles

Home: From Displacement Camps to Community in Haiti

2012-01-04T17:49:00.000-05:00

Displaced Haitians are actively claiming the right to housing through

advocacy and alternative housing models. Photo by Ben Depp.

By Alexis Erkert and Beverly Bell
January 4, 2012

As 2012 begins, a growing movement of displaced people and their allies in Haiti is actively claiming the right to housing, which is recognized by both the Haitian constitution and international treaties to which Haiti is signatory.

Haitians displaced by the earthquake two years ago face many crises, but perhaps none worse than ongoing homelessness. One of the 520,000 people still living in displacement camps, [i] Dieula Croissey describes conditions where she lives in Cité Soleil: “We’re living in insecurity, our lives are threatened, our daughters are used.” In addition to insecurity and violence, especially against women, people living in camps face deteriorating shelter materials – shredding plastic tarps and tattered tents – hunger, and lack of adequate water or toilets. Despite Haiti’s declining rates of cholera infection,[ii] the dearth of sanitation options leaves real risk for contracting the disease.

Meanwhile, reconstruction projects, especially permanent housing projects, have been slow in materializing. According to figures furnished by UN-HABITAT, only 13,000 houses have been repaired and 4,670 permanent homes built for the more than half a million people originally displaced. Though current numbers are hard to come by, approximately 100,000 temporary shelters have also been built.[iii] Tiny (less than 100 square feet for an entire family), with few windows, and usually made of untreated plywood or heavy plastic sheeting, these do not provide a long-term solution for people in need of housing.

The first step toward a real solution, according to the housing movement, must be development of a comprehensive national housing policy by the government, with broad input by displaced people themselves. Currently, no such policy exists; instead, homeless people’s fates are in the hands of piecemeal efforts from groups ranging from respectful community churches to profit-motivated businesses. One component of a national policy is that the government begin invoking eminent domain, exercising its right (guaranteed by a Decree on the Recognition of Public Interest in 1921) to claim private property for public use.

The second urgent need, activists say, is for the government to create public housing on the claimed land. The governmental Public Office for Public Housing Promotion (EPPLS by its French acronym) exists for this purpose, but currently has no budget or authorization to move forward. Housing activists stress that the residences built must be safe; have access to roads; provide water, electricity, and sewage; offer community and recreational spaces; be accessible to people with disabilities; and provide women with equal access.

The housing rights movement is also calling on the government to:

Pass a law guaranteeing the right to housing. While Article 22 of the Haitian Constitution recognizes the right to decent housing, it does not guarantee it;
Enforce existing rent control legislation. Renters report prices rising up to 17 times higher than pre-earthquake;
Take proactive measures to sort out land tenure and create a registry of ownership, as a first step toward an urban and rural land redistribution program;
Define a land use policy that prevents housing speculation and facilitates decentralization from Port-au-Prince by encouraging rebuilding outside the capital;
Give small grants and credit to help people repair or build their own houses, where the government doesn’t provide public housing. The movement is calling on foreign organizations to do the same;
Tackle gender bias in housing and land ownership, so that women’s names are consistently included in titling and their legally protected right to own and inherit land is enforced; and
Ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This covenant, recognized by 160 countries, has been signed by the Haitian government but not yet passed into law. Doing so would hold the government responsible for providing housing, education and other human rights accountable to international standards and monitoring.

While urging systemic and legislative solutions, Haiti’s right-to-housing movement is also constructing transformative paradigms of housing and community. This is especially important because what little housing has been created since the earthquake has largely missed the mark in terms of need. Colette Lespinasse, director of the Support Group for Repatriates and Refugees (GARR by its French acronym) says, “What we were seeing in terms of housing plans has come largely from foreigners, with proposals for pre-fabricated houses that responded more to the interests and needs of businessmen. In general, the proposals don’t correspond to Haitian culture or our climate, and also don’t give people a chance to learn techniques themselves that they can use to continue building on their own.”

In public forums and in interviews, women in camps make a distinction between housing and homes. They point out that while lodging can provide a roof over their heads, what they want is a nurturing space that is free of violence, where the common good is prioritized, and where power dynamics between men and women can shift. In the absence of initiative by the government, some Haitian non-profit and human rights organizations have stepped out of their normal missions to provide different kinds of housing. They have teamed up with local communities to create do-it-yourself solutions. They hope to inspire others, including their government, to envision and to dare to create viable community spaces with local participation.

Colette says, “You can’t just denounce what you don’t want. We’re meeting with others, as well as drawing inspiration from housing movements, networks and cooperatives in other countries. We want to propose alternatives that our country’s leaders could use as models.”

In one of these alternatives, the peasant support group Institute of Technology and Animation (ITECA) in Gressier, 90 minutes or so west of Port-au-Prince, is building 1,700 permanent homes for residents who lost theirs, in an approximately ten square kilometer area. With funding from Caritas Switzerland, the houses offer water and electricity, almost unheard of in the countryside, and moreover in environmentally low-impact ways - through a rainwater collection system and solar panel on each roof. Each is equipped with an outdoor latrine. They are earthquake and hurricane-resistant and use local building materials, like stones, to the degree possible. Another rare feature is that the home-owners themselves do all of the work that doesn’t require specialized skills. ITECA is also working with the mayor to ensure that each owner will receive proper land and housing titles.

Chenet Jean-Baptiste, director of ITECA, explains, “We aren’t building houses to meet a need for housing, but rather as a work of community process. For us, housing is an entry point for re-organizing concepts of land ownership and social and economic relationships. Our fundamental mission is to accompany communities and encourage them to become principal agents of change. After all, what’s the point of giving someone a house only for them to die of hunger inside it?”

A second initiative is GARR’s dream to create land and housing cooperatives. The vision springs from a 40-year-old experiment in Uruguay, where 25,000 members of housing cooperatives manage their housing and land communally. It is also reminiscent of land reform communities in Brazil and elsewhere. In this model, according to Colette, “the very poor pool their money together and pull their internal resources to resolve their own problems, to find land and care for the land together. Everyone is responsible for the community.” GARR has started two model cooperatives, made up of 42 families on the Haitian-Dominican border. One is a landowners’ cooperative where families with small properties merge their properties to manage together. The second is cooperative housing, on land donated by the government. With assistance from Christian Aid, GARR has constructed 15 out of 40 projected houses on this land. The visionaries hope that the cooperatives will continue to grow and that “villages of life” will evolve, thriving communities with on-site or nearby clinics and schools, and job opportunities in agriculture or small business.

In Cap-Rouge, in South-eastern Haiti, the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) is working together with an organization called Hope for the Development of Cap-Rouge (VEDEK), to repair 500 destroyed homes using local building materials. According to Franck St. Jean, coordinator of PAPDA’s Food Sovereignty Advocacy Program, core principals of the project include strengthening local wisdom, culture, and economy; conserving biodiversity; and empowering community. Though currently funded by European non-profits, PAPDA and VEDEK are ultimately trying to create a model that doesn’t depend on external funding or knowledge.

Similarly, the Support Group for Rural Development (GADRU) is repairing homes around the towns of Carrefour and Kenscoff in Haiti’s western province. Their objective? To promote community development wherein konbits, or volunteer, collective labor teams, of 10 families each build one another’s homes. GADRU, too, is working with local construction techniques and materials – wood, stone and earth – and designing the homes to withstand natural disasters.

As with every other element of reconstruction from the earthquake, displaced people and grassroots organizations are insisting that they must have input in developing solutions. Calling on the Haitian government to provide a comprehensive solution to the housing crisis, they are also paving the way with participative models of what that solution could look like. Reyneld Sanon of the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA) says that people have to be part of planning the reconstruction of “their neighborhoods, of their cities, of their country, and of their dignity.”

“People have needs and they have ideas, they have visions for the way that houses can be built,” he said. “Go into a camp, and ask any child to make a drawing that shows what kind of house they want to live in. And you’ll see. You’ll see. Even children have ideas and ideals.”

[i] This is the most recent figure available. (HAITI Emergency Shelter and Camp Coordination Camp Management Cluster, Displacement Tracking Matrix V2.0 Update, November 30, 2011).

[ii] When rainy season ended, the number of new cholera cases declined from an average of 500 a day to 300. As of November 18, 2011, 521,195 people have contracted cholera and of those, almost 7,000 have died. (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Humanitarian Bulletin (19 November -19 December 2011), December 19, 2011; Republique d’Haiti Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population, Rapports journaliers du MSPP sur l'évolution du choléra en Haiti, January 3, 2012, http://www.mspp.gouv.ht/site/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=1).

[iii] In August 2011, the Haiti Shelter Cluster reported that 9,4879 temporary shelters had been constructed. (Haiti Shelter Cluster, Shelter Report by Municipality, August 31, 2011).

Alexis Erkert is the Another Haiti is Possible Coordinator for Other Worlds. She has worked in advocacy and with Haitian social movements since 2008.You can access all of Other Worlds’ past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti here.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance and is working on the forthcoming book, Fault Lines: Views across Haiti’s New Divide. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Alexis Erkert and Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.

It's a New Year

2012-01-04T09:15:00.000-05:00

We danced 2012 in around a fire with a bunch of earthloving friends in Kenscoff, in the mountains, with drums, flute, tambourines, maracas and a massive bamboo rain stick. It was cold and we drank mango-infused cane liquor, ate chiquetaille [my favorite Haitian party food], goat stew and cake soaked in rum, and set off some dangerous-looking fireworks. After midnight, when it was officially Haitian Independence Day, we shared a pot of pumpkin soup.

I love the symbolism of the new year - transformation, improvement, fresh starts - and all the better combined with the birthday of this revolutionary nation. I'm sorry to say that excitement about this year is being tempered as the second anniversary of the earthquake looms, and anxiety and sorrow are surfacing in ways that I didn't expect.

Still, it's a New Year and if our entrance celebration of 2012 was any indication, it's going to be a good one.

How much can you fit on a motorcycle?

2011-12-30T20:57:00.001-05:00

All this, plus the two of us.
(After a visit to the market in Kenscoff and the bakery in Fermanthe).

Santa Sightings!

2011-12-24T22:16:00.002-05:00

On Thursday, Ben and I went on a Christmas photo scavenger hunt around Pétion-Ville. Here's a smattering of what we found:

Celebrating Hope

2011-12-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

Christmas card we just sent to friends and family:

You can't see it well in the photographs, but Alexis's necklace - gifted to her by a new, dear coworker and friend - spells out espwa, Creole for hope.

Sunday will be our 4th Christmas in Haiti, a place that is unfortunately known less for its beauty, generosity, spiritual vitality, dancing, art and revolutionary heritage than for violence, insecurity and material poverty. Though (or perhaps because) our years here have been marked by multiple hurricanes, an earthquake, a cholera epidemic, political instability and some difficult personal experiences, this place has taught us a lot about the power of Hope.

In a meditation titled "The Gates of Hope," Minister Victoria Safford writes:

"Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of self-righteousness … nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of 'Everything is gonna be all right,' but a very different, sometimes very lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle — and we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see."

What a fitting meditation for this season. In this exciting year, people around the world have taken to the streets demanding change to the systems that create poverty, violence and oppression. All of creation groans for a new heaven and a new earth, a world recreated with peace and justice. At Christmas, we are reminded of Hope and reminded, too, of our responsibility to be gate-keepers of Hope, to imagine both the world as it could be and ourselves as co-creators in building that world.

Hope is in part what has kept us in Haiti. We continue to take joy in Haiti's beauty, spirit, generosity and dancing. That joy usually balances out the daily heartache - and, let's be honest, the frequent frustrations - of living here. Alexis started a new job in July, working for a group called Other Worlds. Ben is still taking pictures. Our garden is green and flowering, Luna (the cat) is still spoiled, we go hiking in the mountains as often as possible and we're still blogging at www.blexi.blogspot.com. We remain infinitely grateful for the love of our friends and family.

Merry, Merry Christmas!

Love, Joy, Peace and HOPE,
Alexis and Ben

“Those who lived in a land of deep darkness — on them light has shined.” Isaiah 9:2

Ben, Sean and Oprah

2011-12-21T16:42:00.003-05:00

Last week Ben was featured, along with Sean Penn and Oprah Winfrey, on the cover of Haiti's progressive newspaper, Haiti Liberté.

Okay, so Ben might be just a little bit harder to pick out... but he's there (right above the microphone). This picture is from the protest in Saint Marc on Human Rights Day and the headline reads, "MINUSTAH: Victims Demand Justice and Reparations." See here for news and updates related to the IJDH/BAI cholera lawsuit against the UN.

Oprah was here last weekend, as were Kim Kardashian, Louis Farrakhan, Ben Stiller, and Maria Bello. Sean is usually around here somewhere, too. Happy Holidays, Haiti.

Oh hey, 'tis the Season

2011-12-20T17:48:00.002-05:00

We're gearing up for another Christmas in Haiti, but have hardly had the time to do the things that usually put us in the spirit. This is what our living space looks like right now, this minute. There's a pile of work right there that I should get back to.

(But at least it's being illuminated by a lovely tree branch).

I hope you, this week, are loving on family, meditating, worshiping, celebrating, singing, snuggling, eating Christmas cookies, and possibly partaking of the other kind of Christmas spirits. We'll be joining in the fun shortly.

[I feel like I should add a disclaimer saying that Ben is not here right now, this minute, and so it was I (Alexis) that took these grainy, weirdly-lit pictures. By the way, and since a few of you have asked: did you know that you can look at the end of each of our posts to see which one of us posted it? Here's another good guideline: pictures of our cat - me; pictures that you might see in a glossy magazine - Ben.]

“Haitian Peasant Women as Poto Mitan, Central Pillar”: An interview with Iderle Brénus Gerbier

2011-12-20T15:12:00.001-05:00

Interview by Alexis Erkert, Other Worlds
December 20, 2011

"Haitian women are the poto mitan, or central pillar, of economic activities," says Iderle Brenus. Photo: Ben Depp

Iderle Brénus Gerbier has worked with many peasant organizations in support of women's rights and food sovereignty. She is a member of the Haitian National Network for Food Security and Sovereignty (RENHASSA), campaign coordinator for Food Sovereignty in Haiti, advisor of the National Confederation of Peasant Women (KONAFAP), and organizer for the Haitian Social Forum for Food Sovereignty.

In Haiti, peasant women play a special role in the home and in agriculture. We consider peasant women as the poto mitan, central pillar, of economic activities.

When neoliberal structural adjustment programs are imposed on the Haitian government, like they have been for 20 years, they affect our peasant women. They require that the state implement fundamentally anti-peasant programs that threaten to destroy the whole peasant sector. They mean the Haitian government doesn’t adequately fund our agriculture and has left the small farmers unable to compete [with cheaper imported goods] in the local market. Many farmers are forced to abandon agriculture to go work in factories or other activities, in the cities or in the Dominican Republic. And when a man leaves the rural community, the whole responsibility falls on the back of his wife.

The Haitian society is essentially macho, and the Haitian politicians and international interests oppress Haiti’s own children. Farmers become victims again and again and women are always held back. But these women continue to support their country.

Our goal is to achieve respect for the rights of Haitian women. Despite their position as poto mitan, as the main carriers of the national economy, rural Haitian women always suffer in our society. Most of these women have no direct access to agricultural lands and income is strictly controlled by men, despite their role in agriculture.

Many rural residents are forced to give away the children they love because they don’t have the financial capacity to keep their children at home and send them to school. The majority of these children become the slaves of women living in Port-au-Prince and in other cities. If women farmers could earn income from their hard work, they’d be able to keep their children at home.

The majority of the women working in the informal economy in the city come from the countryside. Many rural residents lost their lives because they were at the heart of the earthquake looking for employment in Port-au-Prince, working for pennies at a factory or selling bottled water in the streets. The earthquake increased the responsibilities that were already too heavy for these poor women.

I’ll repeat over and over that these women who lost their lives, their children, their husbands, and other loved ones in Port-au-Prince, lost them mainly because of lack of infrastructure resulting from the neoliberal policies in the country. But they’ll never be discouraged. They’ll always be involved in all kinds of constructive activities and keep supporting their country. After the earthquake, they went to Port-au-Prince searching for their children and ended up offering help to others who were in need. In the cities and in the countryside, these women work without rest.

We need to advance the struggle of women by redefining the concept of feminism in Haiti. To do this we have to reshuffle the cards and reduce the differences between our urban and peasant women. Right now there are two kinds of women: women with a capital W and women with a small w. Even within the women’s struggle, there are a lot of contemptible practices that have yet to be overcome. Most of the urban well-off women look down upon the poor countryside women, calling them tèt mare, wrapped head, because of the kerchiefs rural women often wear on their heads. The rich and educated town women forget that the poor peasant women make up the core of the rural communities that constitute the greatest part of the country. It’s not fair that a small minority have the privilege of monopolizing almost all of the society’s resources and wealth.

Peasant women are always present in all activities to win human rights, respect for life, and food sovereignty. October 15 was declared “Day of the Haitian Peasant Woman,” but unfortunately this day has never been commemorated. We have to recognize and appreciate women farmers for their significant socio-economic worth. We have to give them the compensation they deserve and support their efforts. We need to increase their visibility in efforts to build food sovereignty in the country. Rural women and those struggling with them, here in Haiti or overseas, need to shore up their strength. We must advocate for the rights of women.

Many thanks to Joseph Pierre for translating.

Alexis Erkert is the Another Haiti is Possible Co-Coordinator for Other Worlds. She has worked in advocacy and with the Haitian social movement since 2008. You can access all of Other Worlds’ past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti here.

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Alexis Erkert and Other Worlds.

Human Rights Day

2011-12-10T13:52:00.003-05:00

Today, folks all over the world are celebrating the 63rd anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

This week also heralds the 20th anniversary of several Haitian human rights organizations, including the 7-member Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations (POHDH) and the Action Group for Repatriates and Refugees (GARR). The timing is no coincidence. A military coup d'etat took out democratically-elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide in September 1991 and the period following the coup marked a time of mass popular resistance against the civil and political repression of an illegimitate military regime backed by the United States.

POHDH: 20 years of struggle for the respect of Human Rights

Yesterday I attended a commemorative event at POHDH. Although members of POHDH's executive committee talked about the pressing human rights needs in Haiti today, lack of government accountability and the structural and ideological barriers to economic & social rights, they also emphasized that huge gains have been made in the last twenty years.

Human rights discourse has seeped into politics, entertainment and even general conversation in a big way as Haitians are in general more aware of their rights. Many more media outlets exist, demonstrating increased liberty of expression, and popular organizing is commonplace in all sectors (small farmers, factory workers, displaced people, women, youth...).

And, as evidenced yesterday, more protests are taking place. In St. Marc, cholera victims demonstrated in front of the MINUSTAH (the UN peacekeeping mission) base, asking that their claims for reparations be acknowledged and responded to by the UN. The event was organized by the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI). BAI and their stateside partner, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) have recently filed a landmark case against the UN on behalf of over 5,000 cholera victims.

Yesterday, too, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) a women's rights group supporting victims of rape and gender-based violence, hosted a sit-in in front of the Haitian Parliament during which they delivered an open letter on women's protection to the President of the Senate. Meanwhile, GARR hosted a packed-out day of remembrance for renowned Haitian-Dominican activist Sonia Pierre who passed away last week.

Towards the end of the event yesterday, Antonal Mortimé, POHDH's Executive Secretary, pointed out that increased awareness, free media and popular protests are quantitative versus qualitative in terms of impacting people's access to very necessary social and economic rights like education, food, water, healthcare and liveable housing. Still, he said, they are important steps towards a society in which human rights and dignity are respected.

Here's to twenty years of struggle towards that vision.

Day of Thanks

2011-11-28T23:17:00.002-05:00

We started the day Thursday with a nippy bike ride on our 70's-era Motobecane roadies, pulled out from their storage spot above Ben's parent's woodpile. Whenever we get on these bikes, I marvel that they once took us all the way across the United States. (Check this video out. That's us!). And I give thanks for my best friend, the adventures that we've had and the adventures that we keep having.

This week's adventure? Thanksgiving in America. It's been a few years since we spent a holiday here and I didn't grow up in this country, either. So, there are things about "the holidays" that seriously creep me out. Like lines of kids waiting to talk to people dressed up as Santa Claus. And Black Friday. Driving to my sister's house Thanksgiving night I was amazed (and let's be honest, a little bit self-righteously horrified) by packed out store parking lots.

I also think dedicating an entire day to the glossing over of our nation's history is weird. Did you know that the original Day of Thanksgiving was declared by the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in celebration of the massacre of 700-some native peoples? Just saying. It's important that we acknowledge the truth about our heritage and holidays...

So that we can then reclaim them! Because I think it's wonderful to have a day once a year to dwell specifically on the things that we're thankful for. We probably need more than one day. I came up with quite the "thankful for" list, myself.

Near the top of my list, I give thanks for our families. Spending time with them these last two weeks has been fantastic. My parents are in Cameroon and it's very sad not to be able to see them, but we've gotten in good quality time with my sis, Ben's parents and some of his siblings (big family, 10 kids). The food our families have been feeding us has also been fantastic. (Seriously, that bike ride was not just for fun. And we probably need to go on about ten more, except that with broken front brakes and a chain that needs replacing, my bike is sadly more out of shape than I am). My brother-in-law went so far as to brew beer and butcher a rabbit in anticipation of our visit.

Maybe with enough coaxing, Ben - who tonight is sleeping in the JFK airport en route to Haiti - will post a picture or two of family time.

North Carolina in November

2011-11-17T00:09:00.000-05:00

October in Photos

2011-11-16T22:58:00.003-05:00

We're posting this from North Carolina. I know, our trip snuck up on us, too! I found myself calling friends and a few colleagues on our way to the airport Saturday to let them know that we would be out of the country for a few weeks. Oops.

October was such a busy month that we didn't get around to blogging about some really important stuff. Like the worrisome fact that grocery stores in Port-au-Prince had Christmas decorations out by mid-October. And the excitement of finding shallots sprouting in the compost pile.

Like friends getting hitched.

And like the peasant women's association celebration we attended during which I, in all my plaid-shirt and hiking-booted glory, was asked to give an impromptu speech.

Hide 'n Seek Kitty

2011-11-03T22:09:00.000-05:00

Guede/Ghede/Gèdè/Gede

2011-11-02T18:55:00.001-05:00

In Haiti, Gede (or any of its alternate spellings) welcomes us to November. November 1st, All Saints Day, and November 2nd, All Souls Day, are national holidays. The gede are the somewhat raunchy spirits that preside over death... and sex.

Here is a picture Ben took last year in the National Cemetery:

Also, check out these photos from Day of the Dead celebrations throughout Latin America. I think Port-au-Prince needs a zombie walk.

Natural Medecine

2011-10-31T14:31:00.000-05:00

I was way out in the countryside a few days ago and I met this doktè fèy, leaf doctor. I bought a small bottle of her medicine after this amazing sales pitch: "It's cold medicine. It works great on children. It's also good for any type of pain you have. The ingredients are sugar cane liquor, honey, and all of the leaves that make good pain killers." I took a capful and it numbed me for the following few hours I spent bouncing down dirt roads. I just tasted it again to remember what it tastes like and it made me not want to type anymore...

"Spotlight on Ben Depp" at The Image, Deconstructed

2011-10-29T11:10:00.001-05:00

"BEN: Try to be a human before being a photographer - if you have the chance to save somebody's life, do it. Walking away from a malnourished child on the edge of death or a cholera victim that needs transport stays with you."

An interview with Ben about taking this picture and on shooting cholera in Haiti is featured over on Ross Taylor's The Image Deconstructed today: http://blog.imagedeconstructed.com/2011/10/spotlight-on-ben-depp.html

I ♥ Haitian Art

2011-10-27T18:05:00.001-05:00

(Detail shot from a Martial painting)

This is a tèt zetwal, the head (or face) of a star. Isn't that a lovely image?

Around Here

2011-10-24T18:48:00.002-05:00

It is getting dark now at 5:30. Even at summer solstice it is only light until 6:30 or so. Still, an hour makes such a difference in our hectic lives.

No matter how hard we try to create space, things never seem to slow down.

Today, Ben is off to the North for three days. He's taking pictures of agricultural work supported by Groundswell International. Check them out. We are increasingly critical - on our worst days acrimonious, even - of the international humanitarian aid and development world, but there are still plenty of organizations out there that humble and re-inspire us. Groundswell is one.

The manuscript for the book that I have spent the last four months helping to edit, research and fact-check is due on October 30th. Let's just say I'm a wee bit stressed out.

Thankfully, Saturday and the annual Artisanat en Fête provided a nice break from my computer and a chance for me to acquire yet more Haitian art (eeps).

Now that the mayor of Pétion-ville is repressively cracking down on street vendors, some of my favorite market ladies - think pumpkins, piles of gleaming shallots and vine-ripened tomatoes, sour oranges and bunches of chard - have been pushed from their usual spaces to a spot approximately 500 feet from our front door. Are we spoiled or what?

Meanwhile, Luna's new favorite napping spot is among the bright orange impatiens that I planted last week. She spends her days looking like she's posing for a cat calender. It's seriously too cute.

Now, it's back to fact-checking I go!

almost too beautiful to eat

2011-10-24T06:22:00.002-05:00

almost. #thelightreallywasfunkyorangelikethat

"Looks like it's cholera!"

2011-10-20T17:40:00.005-05:00

Kids in Desarmes, in the Artibonite valley, have made up a song that they sing to the tune of Shakira's "Waka Waka":

Diri ak sos pwa, // Rice with bean sauce,
mayi moulen ak pwa, // cornmeal with beans,
yon sache dlo, de ji dola // one bag of water, two ice pops,
landan legliz la. // in church.*
Ou fin manje, // You finish eating,
ou kouche, // you lay down,
gen diyare // have diarrhea,
ou leve. // you get up.
Vwazen mwen, sa w gen la? // My neighbor, what you do have?
Vwazen mwen, sa w gen la? // My neighbor, what you do have?
Vwazen mwen, sa w gen la-a-a? // My neighbor, what you do ha-a-ave?
Genlè se kolera! // Looks like it's cholera!

*It's unclear why they are eating the rice, cornmeal and ice pops in church.

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the introduction of cholera into Haiti. As of the beginning of October, 465,293 cases have been reported and 6,559 deaths. Ben - who has spent a fair bit of time photographing cholera in the countryside - thinks that in reality there have probably been four times that many deaths.

Although it was tapering off, cholera has spiked again with heavy rains that began in August. Doctors without Borders (MSF) reported that in Port au Prince in the last month, cases in their clinics have increased from less than 300 admissions a week to more than 850, while "resources for adequately preventing the disease remain rudimentary and at the mercy of the uncertainties of life in the country." Resources remain "rudimentary" in part because many NGOs withdrew from the cholera response shortly before the rainy season. [See this excellent August report from the Center for Economic Policy Research explaining why Haiti's cholera epidemic is the worst in the world despite the outrageous number of NGOs working here.]

Haitian and international human rights groups are calling on the United Nations to acknowledge that the epidemic was brought to Haiti by peacekeeping troops, a fact that has been corroborated by multiple experts and researchers, and asking that the UN pay restitution to Haiti. As one Haitian social activist put it, "The irony is not lost on us that a Chapter VII peacekeeping mission [which are often deployed in response to crimes against humanity], is refusing to acknowledge their complicity in the deaths of so many people. Cholera is a crime against humanity in Haiti."

In protest, some of the organizations that we collaborate with marched yesterday from Fort National to the National Cemetery. We met up with them at the cemetery, arriving just in time to join the protestors as they rushed into the graveyard with exuberant ra ra instruments, a spray-painted goat [a popular nickname for UN soldiers here is "volè kabrit," or goat thieves, after a soldier stole a goat a couple years back], and a miniature wooden casket to symbolize the peacekeeping mission.

The casket is painted with the words, "Down with MINUSTAH: goat thieves, fags." (Even among activists, homophobia is so strong in Haiti that is more of an insult to call soldiers "fags" than it is to call them rapists. This, of course, is in reference to the incident in Port Salut in September.)

After speeches, someone threw spray paint cans into the casket, poured kerosene in and lit it on fire. Amid much cheering, the casket exploded. And as the crowd disbursed I heard someone yell, "MINUSTAH is finished!"

On the contrary, the mission's mandate has just been extended for another year. It doesn't seem like the UN will be taking responsibility for Haiti's cholera epidemic anytime soon. [In fact, last week when Ben was in Mirebalais taking pictures outside of the UN base that was the point of origin, he was detained and, as he puts it, "diplomatically threatened" not to publish the pictures in any stories related to cholera].

Fun Times with EDH (Electricite d'Haiti)

2011-10-19T17:47:00.000-05:00

We haven't had electricity at home for four days. This morning I finally got around to wiring a generator straight to our water pump so we could have running water again. An hour later there was a guy climbing the power pole in front of our house to hook up a line. I told him we didn't have any power so he used his pliers to shake our power line, and our lights came on immediately.
A week ago a woman was electrocuted a few houses down from ours in a yard where they do a lot of welding.
If you plug in any Mac Book Pro at our house and touch it while barefoot you get shocked. I have to put my feet on a wooden table or lie on the couch if I want to use my computer without shoes on.
Apparently only 200,000 people pay for electricity in Haiti. Meanwhile, power lines are a tangled mess of cut and spliced wires threading to people's homes.
We are not part of the 200,000. Though we are officially connected to EDH (and get regular visits from the meter men), we've lived in this house for two years without paying a power bill. There was an outstanding bill of three years when we moved in to this house that the landlord needs to pay before we can pay for the rest (which we do intend to do). EDH is not organized enough to know whether or not we are paying.

Gifted

2011-10-14T21:03:00.132-05:00

I'm starting to ask myself more and more why it's "better to give than to receive." In North American culture, giving is more comfortable. There's an awful lot of power inherent in being a giver. Receiving, on the other hand, can be humbling, sometimes even shaming.

And, well, aren't most foreigners, even those of us that want to believe otherwise, in Haiti out of some [often misguided] sense of altruism? Whether of money, time, resources, expertise, even solidarity... we're here to be givers and, without meaning to, we reinforce the power dynamics that have been created by our very presence here as givers.

Paradoxically, one of the things Haiti is teaching me over and over again is how to receive. Like with these beautiful tart seriz (barbados cherries) from the garden of an extremely resource-poor friend, seriz he went expressly to Léogâne to pick so that he could gift them to us... I swallowed my pride (and the feeling that I should be giving something to him instead) and used them to make delicious cherry juice.

Ten Things to Love, October Edition

2011-10-10T17:42:00.005-05:00

Lest you think I am the eternally cheerful optimist that Ben claims I am, you should know I came this close to drafting a Ten Things to Hate list today. From my sprained ankle to Martelly's plan to reinstate the army to my theory that the NatCom (the end result of privatizing the state telecommunications company) is sabotaging Digicel, our current cell phone provider, so that almost every call I try to make these days gets dropped... it would have taken me far less time to spew onto screen the myraid of things currently upsetting or aggravating me. It seemed like a better exercise in positivity to come up with Ten Things to Love. Right now I am loving:

Snuggly kitten on rainy days.
Snuggly husband on rainy nights. (I recently told a friend that I have come to measure weather by a cuddle index. October, finally, brings temps that do not send us to far and opposite ends of our bed.)
Marigolds, recently planted in garden.
Pumpkin milkshakes. (Oven roast a pumpkin. Add to hand-crank blender with vanilla ice cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, allspice and cardamom. Crank until arm is sore. Savor. Of course if you don't live in Haiti, you can use a regular blender and enjoy your milkshake without a sore arm.)
572. The first emergency response system dedicated to sexual violence in Haiti has recently been launched.
Kurt and Wilda's wedding on Saturday.
My sister's hilarious chronicles of maintaining a backyard farm, though most of her time seems to be spent admiring adorable bunny rabbits: carolinabackyardfarm.blogspot.com.
Fresh local carrot juice, discovered recently in a restaurant near Champs Mars.
Today, Columbus Day, has the web busting with thoughtful posts and commentary acknowledging the pitfalls of HISstory. My personal favorites are the e-card that says, "Let's celebrate Columbus Day by walking into someone's house and telling them we live there now" and the #OccupyColumbusDay twitter hashtag.
Other Worlds most recent publication, "Birthing Justice: Women Creating Economic and Social Alternatives." Downloadable here.

Fèy

2011-10-07T17:39:00.003-05:00

My ankle is sprained. (Yes, because I tripped over a pothole. Yes, again). Today, two lovely friends came by to check on me and brought fèy, leaves, which they massaged onto my ankle to make the swelling go down.

In contrast to conventional ankle-sprain-wisdom chez nous, I've been told repeatedly by Haitians NOT to put anything cold on the sprain. (Ice, anyone?) And because everyone here - from my neighbor to the MCC cook to my housing activist colleague - has prescribed that I rub on lwil masketi (castor oil), I did a little poking around on the web and what do you know, Lance Armstrong concurs.

"We are Tired of Living under Tents"

2011-10-06T12:08:00.001-05:00

Originally published at Daily Kos, October 6, 2011
By Alexis Erkert, Another Haiti is Possible Co-Coordinator, Other Worlds

On Monday morning, October 3, ten women stood across the street from the Ministry of Social Affairs, waving their arms, wailing and chanting. They were calling on Osany, of the pantheon of vodou lwa, or spirits, for assistance. The lyrics of their chant, repeated over and again, were patently simple:

Stop stealing this country’s money
This country’s money belongs to the poor.

The Creole word for “poor,” malerè, also means miserable. And the litany of the women’s sources of misery is overwhelming: aging tents, shredding tarps, heat, rain, wind, high blood pressure, colds, body aches, cholera, rats, cockroaches, raw sewage, no potable water, no privacy, no security. One is a single mom with a 2-month old. And they are all facing eviction from Vilaj Fratènite, Brotherhood Village, the displacement camp where they have lived since the earthquake.

Monday was World Habitat Day, established by the UN in 1986. The month of October is annually one in which movements and organizations around the world mobilize for housing rights and in opposition to evictions.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 595,000 Haitians are still living in camps – half of the total number displaced by the earthquake 21 months ago. And, despite last year's ruling by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the Haitian government impose a moratorium on all evictions, the government has not stepped in to keep private landowners and local government officials from forcing displaced people off both public and private land. IOM reported that the number of camps under threat of eviction increased by 400% per cent between July 2010 and July 2011.

Although conditions in the camps are abominable, residents that remain in the camps - facing the challenges that the women from Brotherhood Village enumerated above - do so simply because they have no better options. Summed up one member of the group, “That’s how we live now. But where will we go when we are evicted? We have nowhere to go.”

Homeless people and their allies have begun to vocally insist on their democratic right to participate in planning the reconstruction of their homes, communities, and nations. It is acknowledged in the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement that displaced people should be able to participate in the “in the planning and management of their return or resettlement.” Yet the government has consistently excluded the vast majority, including those directly impacted. Although various housing plans are being drafted by the government and international agencies, human rights lawyer Patrice Florvilus says, “If it’s decided without us, it won’t help us.”

President Michel Martelly’s housing plan, referred to as “sixteen-six,” includes provisions for the relocation of six larger, more visible camps to sixteen rehabilitated neighborhoods. As for how those ten women calling out to Osany might benefit, there may as well be no plan. The same goes for residents of the 184 other displacement camps that are not addressed by Martelly’s program.

Patrice went on to point out that the housing repair projects being led by many international agencies throughout earthquake-damaged areas benefit those who were homeowners before the earthquake. While this is helpful, it does not address the needs of the renters and homeless, who are the most vulnerable. “What housing projects are targeting the people that need housing the most?” he asked.

In response, the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA), a collective of 30-some committees and associations from displacement camps, formed to advocate for secure and dignifying housing for all, as well as to combat forced evictions. More recently, a group called the Housing Rights Collective, which includes FRAKKA and other organizations, have been attempting to create possibilities for camp residents to organize, collectively determine their needs and priorities, and form strategies to achieve them.

Nou bouke viv anba tant, We are tired of living under tents, was the slogan for three days of events, from October 1-3, planned by the Housing Rights Collective to mark World Habitat Day. Events included a forum, skits and cultural activities in Camp Corail-Cesselesse, and a rally in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs. Allies from the International Alliance of Inhabitants, the Zero Evictions Movement, COOPHABITAT in the Dominican Republic, and housing cooperative movements in Puerto Rico and Cuba came to Haiti to lend support, reminding displaced Haitians that they are not isolated in their struggle. They also shared strategies from their own successes in winning housing.

Forum participants included approximately 120 camp residents and members of camp committees or associations. An emphasis in the discussion was on evictions. Testimonies from camp residents who have already experienced forcible and often violent evictions resonated deeply with others in attendance. With no clear housing strategy in place, most expressed fear that they will eventually be forced to leave the camps without being provided alternative places to live.

“We have rights! Just like everyone else, we have the right to see our children live like other children. We have the right to sleep like other people, without rats crawling over us or rain dripping on us,” Marie-Helene Moïse, 32 years old and with two children, who has been living in Camp Kid since the earthquake, stood up and said. “When you say you live in a camp, people look at you like you’re inferior. We suffer and our people are not standing up for us. Morning, noon, night… it’s not possible to live well in the camps. The Haitian government needs to remove us from these conditions because we can’t keep going. My friends, this is why World Habitat Day should be so significant to those of us living in tents. Today, we’re reflecting, but there will be action to come.”

During the rally, some of that action was visible in front of the Ministry. Spirited protestors, mostly women, including the group from Brotherhood Village, waved hand-written signs:

“We are not made to live under the rain.”

“There is no liberty without well-being. There is no well-being without adequate housing for all. Housing without discrimination.”

“January 12 took most of what we own. We won’t let rain and hurricanes wash us away with the little that is left.”

“We are people. We want homes.”

“Ministry of Social Affairs, fulfill your responsibility.”

As for solutions? A letter drafted by camp committees and other grassroots groups and delivered during the protests requested that the Ministry: help to apply the Inter-American Human Rights Commission ruling to stop forced evictions; take leadership in creating a national housing plan, complete with zoning regulations; begin public housing projects for earthquake survivors; ensure that a housing fund be part of the national budget; and, finally, give the Public Office for Public Housing Promotion (EPPLS by its French acronym) the means and the power to execute a public housing plan.

More advocacy initiatives are being planned, including meetings with the parliament and chamber of deputies to discuss budgeting for public housing initiatives, and meetings with local magistrates to request their assistance in curbing forced evictions. FRAKKA and the newly formed pro-bono legal office started by Patrice Florvilus, Defenders of the Oppressed (DOP), are joining forces to provide legal training to camp residents. The International Lawyers Office (BAI) is carrying out similar work, conducting advocacy for housing rights and fighting forced evictions.

Today the Haitian popular movement (the succession of grassroots groups and progressive non-profit organizations that have led movements for alternative social, economic and political systems) is small and faces numerous challenges. The movement still bears the scars of past political divisions and for many, the risk of being outspoken is great. Despite relative civil liberty in Haiti today, ongoing beatings and arrests of activists at anti-eviction demonstrations have been a reminder of that risk. Progress is also often obstructed by lack of resources.

Given the size and desperation of Haiti’s displaced population, right to housing and anti-evictions work is necessarily one of the main foci of the popular movement. As time passes without adequate solutions from the government and international agencies, camp residents are growing increasingly exasperated.

In her introduction to Saturday’s forum, Lisane André of GARR reminded participants of the proverb, Se kolòn ki bat, It is a column that wins. She explained: “When we are faced with a struggle and we separate, each working individually, it will take a long time to achieve results, if they’re achieved at all. Instead, if we all come together, if we create a chain, if we stick together, if we form a column… We can achieve victory despite the odds.”

“We are a collective,” she cried, her voice ringing out, “And we invite everyone to join us in the movement for housing.”

Click here to participate in calling for an end to forced evictions.

For a more in-depth look at the current housing situation, see the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti’s new report, “Haiti’s Housing Crisis.”

Alexis Erkert is the Another Haiti is Possible Co-Coordinator for Other Worlds. She has worked in advocacy and with the Haitian social movement for the past three years. You can access all of Other Worlds’ past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti here.

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part. Please credit any text or original research you use to Other Worlds.

Old News

2011-09-30T19:00:00.000-05:00

I am constantly torn between (a) my desire to provide you [reader(s), aka mom] with in-depth, interesting analysis and updates on Haiti and (b) the fact that it's just.so.much.easier to post pretty pictures. If you come here for the former, please stick around. I bring you "Old News" to encourage you with the fact that we're still posting at all.

What seems like ages ago - while Ben was still on his way to Perpignan to hobnob with other photographers - I took a fun trip, too. Our friends E & C (who, like everyone we adore, we see far too rarely) are building a house on Île-à-Vache and E needed to check on the progress.

Here's how Lonely Planet describes Île-à-Vache: "...In the 16th century it was a base for the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan as he terrorized Santo Domingo and Columbia. Three centuries later Abraham Lincoln tried to relocate emancipated black American slaves here, but it was a short-lived and ill-provisioned experiment. The island today is scattered with rural houses, plantations, mangroves, the odd Arawak burial ground and some great beaches."

Pirateous intrigue aside, not a fantastic review. It probably helps that I was with E, and that we were staying in her home and not at a resort, but nothing about our trip - from the hour-long boat-taxi (appropriately named "Christ is Capable") ride to the island, to our reception in Kaykok, to beautiful beaches and clear water, to our meals, to the size of the tarantula we discovered, to E's friendly neighbors, to our failed attempt to watch a women's soccer game in the pouring rain, to the sailboat we had to take back to the mainland when we missed the boat-taxi - was short of fantastic.

More than a few photos, to prove my point:

There and There

2011-09-25T22:55:00.002-05:00

I've spent the last month in Paris, Perpignan, Port-Au-Prince, Port Salut, Les Anglais, Bomòn, Pestel, Cap-Haitian, Milot, Limbe, Fondes des Negres, Fondes des Blancs, and have gone to Leogane twice.

Now I'm back home, happy, safe and sound. Traveling in Haiti can be a little unpredictable. The day after flying into Cap-Haitian a local airline's plane crashed and burned trying to land there. The next day we came across a guy just hit and killed in the road. The day after that I saw a teenager get really banged up rolling down the road after falling off a truck, and the following day we ran over a dog - one of the few I've seen in Haiti wearing a collar. (I wasn't driving).

Scarier than traveling in Haiti is the carbon footprint I'm racking up. My round trip flight from Port-au-Prince to Paris produced 5.81 metric tons of CO2. Sorry, Bangladesh.

Ben, come home!

2011-09-23T14:33:00.001-05:00

Confession: Last night my dinner came out of a box. I came home, dumped the contents of a box into a saucepan and, once it was thoroughly heated, I ate.

Confession Number Two: I ate while watching a seriously stupid movie on my laptop.

Every value and ideal to which I cling revolts against this kind of eating. Which is why I must make Confession Number Three: We keep boxed food on hand for occasions such as this.

Occasions such as – Ben has been traveling for most of the month, I have been working my ass off (though I could not love my work more), we have had a string of houseguests for two months straight and now I find myself alone in my house and it is raining outside.

Two weeks ago I pickled beets and turnips, made sauerkraut and turnip kimchi (turnips are the new trend around here), omelettes, stir fries for the kimchi, and hosted a dinner party for which I made hummus, tabouleh, baba ghanouj and tsatsiki. Last week, I baked bread and made spaghetti sauce and mango chutney and curried lentils. This week, I have subsisted on avocadoes, the rest of that bread, and oily take out from up the street.

The point being? By gastronomic standards, I clearly need people around me at all times.

Take Two Minutes

2011-09-14T14:17:00.002-05:00

And sign this letter: A Call to End Sexual Violence in Haiti. Actually, it'll probably take you more like 30 seconds.

The Haitian women behind this letter - most of them themselves victims of assault - are fearlessly and tirelessly organizing to support victims of sexual violence and to make the world a safer place for their daughters and granddaughters. That, my friends, is something every single one of us should get behind.

The letter supports "the demands of Haitian women for medical and psychological care for rape survivors, increased security and lighting in the camps, and meaningful participation by grassroots women's groups in decisions about combating sexual violence in the camps where they reside."

Use these links to forward it to your Creole, French and Spanish-speaking friends:

French
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5095/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8044

Creole
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5095/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7911

Spanish
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5095/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7755

Flight

2011-09-11T21:22:00.001-05:00

by Edwige Danticat
The New Yorker 9.11.2011

My family in Haiti has been removing rubble from a school that was shattered during the earthquake of January 12, 2010. In the process, they have found bones, human bones. Because they are not scientists or DNA experts, it is impossible for them to trace the bones back to the bodies to which they once belonged: active, lively people who spoke and laughed and danced and loved.

Whose bones are these? they wonder. Do they belong to the bright student who was always first in her class, to a parent with whom a teacher had an appointment? Are they the teacher’s bones?

Listening in on phone conversations about the bones, I think of fossils dug up thousands and even millions of years after death. There is Lucy, the three-million-year-old Ethiopian; Otzi, the five-thousand-year-old Ice Man; and the casts of entire families buried beneath Pompeii.

It is the burden of the survivors and the curious to decipher final moments, whether they occurred a year, ten years, or a thousand years ago. Do they speak to the reality of a particular time, to the nature of death itself, or to an individual’s final instincts during his or her last moments on earth? In cases where we have a personal connection, we want to know whether our loved ones suffered. Did they have any regrets about things left undone, words unsaid? After two years, after ten years, there are still people around to look back and to remember. However, after a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand years, the bones and images will have to speak for themselves.

The image that lingers most in my mind from September 11, 2001, is that of human beings attempting to fly—men and women catapulted from or fleeing a volcano-like inferno of fuel, fire, heat, and smoke, then cutting across a clear blue sky, down toward the ground. Some were alone. Some were in pairs. Some tried to make parachutes of ordinary things—curtains, clothes. One woman held on to her purse, perhaps thinking that she might need it on the very slight chance that she landed safely on the ground.

Televised tragedies make death—that most private of departures—public, national, global. No deaths were more public on September 11, 2001, than those of the so-called “jumpers,” a word that many have rightfully called a misnomer, because these were certainly not the deaths these people would have chosen for themselves.

We are often told that we must not compare tragedies, but how can we not when we experience them in the same body and with the same mind? Past horrors give us a language with which to define new ones. Worldwide terrors become personalized.

My father, for example, who woke me from a deep sleep in another part of New York, to tell me that the World Trade Center had been destroyed, died four years later, of pulmonary fibrosis—a disease that also struck many 9/11 first responders. He had spent part of that day in downtown Brooklyn, picking up people fleeing Manhattan and chauffeuring them home. That eerie coincidence is one more thing that links September 11th to all the other horrors that my father endured in his life, including a brutal dictatorship.

My father was extremely critical of the television stations that showed the so-called jumpers. Yes, the images were shocking and deeply unsettling, but they also rendered undeniable the true horror of that day, even though, like bones, they mostly tell one story, the final one. The job of reconstructing lives belongs to the living, the memory keepers, which is what all of us became that day, willing or unwilling witnesses, unable to look away.

A few days after September 11th, when I ventured near the still smoky ashes of the World Trade Center, I kept thinking about a clear blue sky that had rained lives. I got on a bus filled with other ordinary New Yorkers whose eyes were still teary and red, and whose mouths and noses were covered with dust masks. Besides the shared sensation of having been shattered, though, there was also a feeling of community: having gone through this with the city, wherever in the world you had been born you were now a lifelong New Yorker. Those of us who were from countries that have always been, in their own ways, terrorized could now be counsellors to our previously sheltered friends, but only barely. For, no matter how much we immerse ourselves in communal grieving, we all carry within ourselves our own private memorials of loss and an increasing fear of future ones.

Watching any disaster, from near or far, makes us aware that memorials are not only places but also experiences. Acts of remembrance can surface out of daily rituals, even interrupted ones. A place setting left unused at a dinner table. An oversized shoe into which we slip a foot. A prayer whispered over unclaimable bones.

Though I occasionally suffer from a fear of flying, during the past ten years getting on an airplane has become for me an act of remembrance. Each necessary surrender to every new, sometimes frustrating security measure is an acknowledgment that I, too, am attempting to glide on wind currents on borrowed wings while also hoping—praying—to land safely on the ground.

Original at //www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/09/12/110912ta_talk_danticat#ixzz1XhHQpW8f

Z is for Zaboka

2011-09-08T18:49:00.002-05:00

It's avocado season, folks! The two (yes, two) avocado trees in our yard are laden with fruit and Ben has devised a genius device for picking them. The connecting piece is, of course, a bicycle brake lever:

Full disclosure: it's actually been avocado season for awhile - a month at least - and these avocado fiends have already consumed the easy-to-pick fruit. So now Ben has to use his picking device and climb impossibly high into the trees. He's become the hero of every child under ten in our neighborhood.

Port Salut, Numerically Speaking

2011-09-05T21:36:00.005-05:00

6 hours to procure 1 rental car
1 alarm clock set for 4 AM
2 companions
9 hours of driving
5 gas stations ($100 worth of gas)
1 hour of waiting for anti-MINUSTAH protest to begin
3 hours of interviewing, recording, watching & listening
1 phone stolen
300 or so protestors
10 PNH officers
1 accidental dropping of a canister of tear gas
1 speech given by notorious drug trafficker and advocate for reviving the Haitian army (who also happens to be a current Senator)
1 lovely lunch by the sea
1 rental car return deadline missed
1 $50 late fee
1 day of unsuccessfully trying to make sense of hidden agendas and complex political motives
1 aching head

On Responding

2011-09-04T17:39:00.009-05:00

This week it seems that more than the usual number of incidents have taken place in Haiti about which I wish I had the time, skill and understanding to write in a balanced, nuanced way.

Perhaps the most significant has been the circulation of a fuzzy cell phone video of Uruguayan peacekeepers perpetrating an alleged sexual assault in Port Salut. The boy's and his family's claims that he was assaulted have been corroborated by a medical examination, revealing a nauseating and evil abuse of power in which armed soldiers violated of the body, dignity and future of an 18-year old boy. It is further infuriating that per a UN agreement with the Haitian government (called a Status of Forces Agreement), the perpetrators cannot be legally tried or prosecuted in Haiti.

Disappointingly, though, I find that much of the dialogue surrounding this incident has itself been vitriolic and hate-mongering -- similar, in fact, to much of that which has been written concerning the UN's refusal to take responsibility for the introduction of cholera [yet another conclusive study here], other incidences of physical or sexual abuse carried out by soldiers, and indeed of the Peacekeepers' presence here in general.

I often ask myself where this kind of journalism and/or activism will get us? Who (other than the people who already agree that MINUSTAH should have withdrawn yesterday) will read some of these pieces - which often carelessly throw around the "-isms" that we on the left (myself included) so love to use - neoliberalism, imperialism, neocolonialism, class-ism, elitism - and be convinced that perhaps the "occupation" is unjustified, oppressive and a gross misuse of resources? How many of the diplomats and policymakers who have the power to make decisions regarding MINUSTAH's future in Haiti will get beyond the first paragraph of a letter that decries them as imperialistic, exploitative technocrats in order to learn more about the real issues at stake?

And, indeed, are these responses - when the line between journalism and activism gets blurred and journalists are inciting protests or shaping people's responses to fit within the dictates of their own social and political views - not imperialistic in and of themselves? As an advocate/activist married to a journalist, I am especially sensitive to (and ofttimes culpable of) this. How often do I pressure Ben to go take pictures of some protest or event because I want coverage of it to seep into the mainstream media (especially that one picture that sort of makes it look like there might have been more people there than there really were). Only a slight manipulation or exaggeration, but for a good cause, right? You should all be thankful that Ben is too thoughtful and careful to fall for my cunning.

This morning I listened to Krista Tippet interview Richard Mouw on the APM radio show On Being.
A fierce proponent of what he calls "restoring political civility," Mouw said a number of things that struck me in the context of Haiti activism - especially a comment regarding the temptation to distort the truth about those we see as enemies. Although he spoke specifically of the need to bridge theological and religious divides with "gentleness and reverence," I believe that social activism that has any hope of changing what is most broken in our societies must be carried out in the same way. I do not believe that violence can effectively be countered with violence (even if that only takes the form of violent language). And, of course, the same goes for manipulating the truth in any way whatsoever.

Mouw says, "Every human being is a work of art... Even in expressing our disagreements (and this can be a very complicated thing), we're dealing with people who are precious works of divine art." And yes, that even extends to the soldiers that make up the Peacekeeping Mission.

Let's do just be clear, though. Rape, attempted rape and even simulated rape are NEVER, ever okay, nor is it okay that this Chapter VII Peacekeeping Mission (which authorizes the use of force) exists in violation of Haiti's constitution and operates in legal disregard of the nation's justice system. [Perhaps it should also be noted here that several weeks ago a community association in Port Salut wrote a press release charging that Uruguayan soldiers were exchanging food for sex with underage girls].

I guess what I am trying to say in such a long, roundabout way is that the way we respond to these incidents matters. The way we respond to the people we disagree with matters. And unless we're careful, those responses (a) are not likely to help us achieve the end goal that we seek (in this case, MINUSTAH's withdrawal) and (b) may not be so far removed from the systemic abuses of power that we are fighting against.

Tomorrow morning there is supposed to be a protest in Port Salut, in which the residents of that community will ostensibly demonstrate against the presence of soldiers who are violating [instead of protecting] their children and will demand legal restitution from the UN. My hope is that the protest will be an example of how collective action can shed positive light on abuse (and I hope to be there myself).

[Note: As I was about to publish this post, I learned that the Uruguayan naval chief was fired and 5 soldiers have been detained. Score for the good guys! *wink, wink*]

Tonight,

2011-08-29T20:28:00.004-05:00

I am parked in front of my laptop making up for 3 glorious internet-free days.

Hoping to skype with my globe-trotting husband, who by last accounts has bruised feet from walking around Paris, a stomach full of filet mignon, rabbit, cheese and wine; and is now camping with gypsies in Perpignan.

Tonight I am also:

Unpacking my smelly, damp weekend bag -- a result of hastily packing my still-wet bathing suit and towel this morning on Ile à Vache (while my fears of missing the morning's motor boat taxi run were being realized), said wet bathing suit and towel permeating the rest of the bag on an hour-long sailboat ride back to the mainland (main island?), and finally, wet bathing suit, towel and rest of damp bag fermenting on top of a bus for the 6 hours it took me to get back to Port-au-Prince.
Applying aloe.
Alternately charging my laptop and plugging in the internet, since I don’t have enough power to do both.
Scrounging up dinner that doesn’t require cooking, since I’m out of propane.
Cursing my anti-paper napkin snobbery, since I’m out of toilet paper.
Changing sheets and preparing guest room for tomorrow’s arrival of our fifth house-guest in a month.
Going to bed early since (a) I am exhausted by the day's travels, and (b) I will spend tomorrow morning translating for an MCC group visiting TIMKATEC (Timoun Kap Teke Chans), a homeless shelter and trade school for youth, followed by a working lunch with a friend that I need to interview and then two back-to-back meetings downtown. At some point I'll also need to get our propane bottle filled. Oh, and buy toilet paper.

Birthdays and Anniversaries, Oh My!

2011-08-26T18:06:00.003-05:00

Another post late in coming. My birthday and our anniversary are both in the first week of August and, sandwiched in-between the busyness of our respective jobs, it was fun to spend a full week celebrating. Since Tropical Storm Emily was threatening us on the 4th, I had a quiet birthday at home and we went hiking over the weekend. For our anniversary on the 11th, we took advantage of a long weekend and took the motorcycle to Jacmel.

My Mom sent a sweet email last week saying how much she loves it when we post pictures of ourselves. So, this picture-heavy post is for you, Mom!

Birthday:

In-Between Days:

Anniversary Days:

Daily Minutae

2011-08-21T19:20:00.000-05:00

Our weekdays have been replete with lotsa work and a steady stream of houseguests, not to mention gifts from Luna (on Friday alone: a snake, a mouse and a giant green lizard) which tend to necessitate a fair bit of chasing around the house.

Recently, Ben seems to be providing the entire city and its environs with composting worms. Today we went up to Kenscoff to deliver a batch of worms, pick wildflowers and visit J's fledgling strawberry farm. Who can't wait for December and strawberries (fertilized with compost à la Ben)? Me! Me!

Among other destinations, Ben's worms have also made their way to Cité Soleil -- to fertilize a Pax Christi urban gardening program. Oh, and remember the Kabrit? The Kabrit has also found a happy home in Cité Soleil:

(The banner above the bike reads "Another Haiti is Possible: look further")

Coming soon: Ben will be spending 2 weeks in southern France at a photography festival. And even sooner: We're hoping that we will dodge Tropical Storm Irene just like we did TS Emily. The National Hurricane Center advisory isn't looking too good for tomorrow. Boy, does hurricane season have us perpetually on edge around here.

Today we are also grieving the death of Ben's uncle Fred, who passed away yesterday. Fred Fay became quadriplegic in an accident at the age of 16 and was a leader in the Disability Rights Movement. A PBS documentary, A Life Worth Living, showcasing his life will air on October 27th. Fred's death has us thinking a lot about Martha today, too.

Bassin-Bleu

2011-08-21T16:01:00.003-05:00

Last weekend we finally made it to Bassin-Bleu, about 40 minutes (+ a deep-ish river crossing) into the mountains above Jacmel. I won't bother with any more words since it is obvious from Ben's photos how incredibly worth the trip it was:

p.s. Apparently the pools are usually much, much bluer!

to wrap up this long week

2011-08-19T10:00:00.008-05:00

Artibonite valley at sunset

Better to Buy Local

2011-08-18T17:25:00.003-05:00

A perfect example of when good intentions are not always enough, or, as a friend put it: good intentions + desire to help + lack of engagement with the people you decide to help = Church to send more than 20,000 jars of peanut butter to Haiti.

And, I quote: ""What we are hoping to do is send about 28,000 jars of peanut butter to Haiti. The children there just don't have a good source of protein. Peanut butter is a wonderful source..." says the church's associate minister, Mike Cohoon."

It's true that many children in Haiti are malnourished - in fact, according to UNICEF, up to half of child deaths in Haiti are caused by malnutrition. But, peanut butter? There is peanut butter produced in Haiti. I know a beautiful woman in the mountains above Port-au-Prince that struggles to support her family making the most delicious peanut butter, called mamba (sometimes spicy, sometimes sweet, with your choice of added ginger or sesame). Imagine what a boon it would be to peanut butter makers like her if the Landmark Christian Church in Lake Hallie would contract 28,000 jars locally. Imagine how much it undercuts the living she and others are trying to make when peanut butter is sent to Haiti by well-meaning but oblivious donors. We also know folks in Northern Haiti that work for Meds & Foods for Kids making medika mamba, a nutrient-enriched peanut butter designed specifically to treat malnutrition.

I wrote the following article in December 2009, not about peanut butter, but about shoes. Shoes are another popularly donated item that risk undercutting local entrepreneurs.

**********

Re-thinking shoes for Haiti this Christmas

There's a cobbler at the end of our street. Lukner Clernier sells beautiful handmade sandals for men, women and children for a little over $7.00. He has five children, two of whom help him cut out, glue and sew together soles and straps. Business has been pretty slow lately - Lukner tells me he has a fraction of the sales he had this time last year.

Part of my job as MCC's advocacy coordinator and educator in Haiti is to analyze how actions and policy in North America affect the lives of Haitians. In order to do that, I read a lot of newspaper articles that reference Haiti. Recently, an increase in the number of North American shoe drives, requests for shoes to shod Haiti's barefoot children, has been bothering me.

For Lukner’s sake, I am asking you not to send shoes to Haiti. Here's why: sending your used shoes (or, alternatively, new shoes mass-produced by cheap labor in a country like Haiti) makes it really hard for Haitians like Lukner to stay in business.

Although well intended, this kind of international assistance works a lot like food dumping. When subsidized agricultural goods produced in North America are “dumped” on overseas markets they disrupt local markets, depress crop prices, and discourage local food production. In this case, shoes are being sent to Haiti for free and Lukner can't begin to compete with free. Many donated shoes also end up being resold on the street at prices that, compared to the cost of Lukner’s materials and labor, may as well be free.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be trying to put shoes on the feet of Haiti's barefoot children and I'm not trying to single anyone out for criticism. I know that the intentions behind shoe drives are loving and good and the children on the receiving end of these shoes are ecstatic to receive them. It’s just that when I talk to Lukner, I realize how desperately we need to rethink the way we do aid, not only on a macro level but on a personal, church and/or community level. When people send anything free to Haiti - shoes, blankets, soap - that Haitians are trying to produce for themselves, it doesn't address the deeper, structural reasons for the fact that many Haitians don't have shoes, blankets and soap. What it does do is constantly put Haiti on the receiving end of our leftovers and cheaply produced goods. Instead, let's encourage entrepreneurial and visionary Haitians like Lukner who in turn will reinvest the profit from his business into his local economy.

Especially now at Christmastime, if you're thinking about ways to give shoes to children in Haiti, I challenge you to go about it in a new way: raise money, get in touch with someone here that can order locally-made shoes from a Haitian cobbler with a business to run and a family to feed and know that you'll be making a creative and sustainable difference in someone’s life.

**********

In my mind, the same principles most definitely apply to peanut butter. If you're interested in delving deeper into this issue, Pooja Bhatia wrote a fantastic article last June, A Tremor for Haiti's Aid Industry, about the ways that outside organizations are threatening Haiti's production of medika mamba.

Living

2011-08-16T21:39:00.001-05:00

growing

praying

blooming

fermenting

resisting

partaking

imbibing

sleeping

dancing

Étang Saumâtre (in English, brackish pond)

2011-08-16T14:00:00.001-05:00

The largest lake in Haiti, on the border of the Dominican Republic.

Keep Spraying

2011-08-10T08:00:00.002-05:00

I keep telling Alexis it will take more than just graffiti to become president. But I could be wrong.

Evictions Continue

2011-08-09T08:30:00.004-05:00

We're a little behind the game on this post, but, still, the forced evictions of already-displaced people from camps is an ongoing issue and one that we need to make sure isn't dropped from public discourse.

A week ago the residents of Camp Django, on Delmas 17, were facing eviction. So, with the solidarity of 4 other displacements camps from around the city, they protested:

They laid on one side of Route Delmas, singing and effectively blocking off traffic for several hours with signs that read, "Justice for people in tents," "We ask for justice," and simply, "Justice."

Later that night, the landowner came anyway, with thugs and machetes, forcing people off of the property with threats of violence. UN officers stationed nearby, theoretically to protect camp residents, claimed not to have known that the eviction was occurring. Al Jazeera produced this short film* with footage that was shot by Bri Kouri:

Today there are still more than 600,000 people living in displacement camps. It's been 18 months since the earthquake. Conditions in the camps are abysmal and residents have had to cope with security issues, including high incidences of rape and violence against women and children, a cholera epidemic, lack of access to basic services such as latrines and potable water, and are now in the midst of their second hurricane season.

A recent survey conducted by IOM finally refuted the all-too-popular theory that many people are choosing to live in camps. A summary states, "The Intentions Survey found that 94 per cent of people living in camps would leave if they had alternative accommodation. Most of those surveyed said if they had to depart immediately, they would not have the means to pay rent or the resources to repair or replace their damaged or destroyed homes."

Although the government is implementing a plan to relocate residents of six of the most visible camps (one of which was Sylvio Cator...), there is still no plan in place to provide housing for all IDPs. So far, the amount of money being given to families to relocate does not come close to enough to allow them to pay rent somewhere or to repair or replace a damaged home. So when they are evicted, where will they go?

For more about the eviction of Camp Django, and the exclusion of displaced people, read Inactions Speaking Louder than Words: Hurricane Emily's Near-Miss Too Close for Haiti's IDPs by Mark Schuller and Mark Synder.

* In the film, Mark Snyder of International Action Ties is erroneously depicted as Mayor Wilson Jeudy, the mayor of Delmas

Port-Au-Prince

2011-08-05T17:41:00.000-05:00

Port-Au-Prince. Photos from the archives.

The answer is not in logbase or in your email.

2011-08-03T09:55:00.001-05:00

Bathroom wall, UN Logistics base. January 22, 2010.

pic of the day

2011-08-02T18:19:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday to me?

2011-08-02T09:34:00.001-05:00

When I catch myself pouting that Tropical Storm Emily is slated to hit Thursday morning (and will presumably obstruct our plans to go hiking and have a birthday picnic), I am ashamed of my selfishness. We have a roof over our heads.

It's a jungle out there!

2011-07-30T06:00:00.004-05:00

On Tuesday morning, Luna chased a snake out of the dense vine that grows over one wall of our lakou. It struck at her, she hissed, it slithered around, I'm pretty sure I yelled and am absolutely sure that Mirlonde screamed and jumped around in terror. And then, of course, I grabbed my camera and followed it out onto the street for a photo op:

Mirlonde refused to go back out into the yard. She said that her neighborhood is better than ours, safer, because it's all concrete and the houses are so close together that there is no space for trees or weeds where snakes can hide. I didn't tell her that Ben picked up the snake and set it loose in our neighbor's yard (empty because their house collapsed in the earthquake).

Everyone says that there are no poisonous snakes in Haiti, but in Cameroon venomous snakes abound and a fear of snakes has been embedded into my subconscious since childhood. I am continually grateful to live in a rare Port-au-Prince neighborhood that is shaded by trees, with vines thick enough to harbor snakes, but am definitely watching my step in the garden these days.

Regarding MINUSTAH

2011-07-29T16:02:00.002-05:00

One of the last things I did before I left MCC was co-author this position statement on MINUSTAH, the UN's peacekeeping mission in Haiti. If you're inclined to read it, get a cup of coffee and find a comfortable place to sit - it's lengthy. It draws from the analysis and research of many people, from former MCC service workers to MCC's Haitian partner organizations to research students and international human rights groups. For some reason the formatting of this blog didn't allow me to copy and paste the footnotes, so if you'd like a legit copy, complete with citations and the Appendix (Benchmarks for MINUSTAH’s withdrawal, as outlined in the August 2008 Report of the Secretary General), please let me know.

Submission to the UN Security Council
Recommendations for Future of the MINUSTAH Mission to Haiti
June 30, 2011

It has long been acknowledged that Haiti needs sustained commitment from the international community for socio-economic development, and this need has become more pressing since the devastating earthquake in January 2010. MCC and LAMP commend the attention being given to Haiti in this regard. However, we wish to highlight that insecurity in Haiti is not a result of warring groups or armed conflict, but rather a byproduct of poverty with deep historical and structural roots. We believe, along with the Haitian civil society organizations with whom we work, that stability, rule of law and socio-economic development in Haiti are not, nor should be, dependent on an international military presence. Therefore, we urge the United Nations to work towards the termination of the MINUSTAH mission in Haiti as soon as possible with a strategy that can build long-term sustainable peace.

In the upcoming deliberations concerning the renewal of Resolution 1944, we ask the Security Council to review MINUSTAH’s presence in Haiti, addressing five specific concerns: 1) mission legitimacy, 2) the inappropriate use of military forces, 3) allegations of human rights abuses, 4) the need for greater mandate clarity, and 5) the feasibility of current benchmarks for timely withdrawal. Finally, we recommend that the Security Council to prepare a concrete timeline for the mission’s full withdrawal from Haiti.

1. Mission Legitimacy
MINUSTAH violates articles 8.1, 263-1, 98-3.3, and 139 in the Haitian Constitution, which affirm Haitian sovereignty and note that any international agreement, treaty, or covenant must be ratified by the Haitian National Assembly. MINUSTAH was authorized in 2004 by former Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, an unelected official, who did not seek the proper approval of the Haitian legislature for the mission’s presence. The lack of this legislative endorsement enforces the perception within the Haitian population of MINUSTAH as an unwelcome occupying force.

2.The Military Component
The military component of MINUSTAH’s presence is inappropriate in the current Haitian context for the following reasons.

Perception of MINUSTAH
With no warring parties, armed conflict, peace agreement to enforce, or threat of civil war, a military presence is unnecessary. The utility of MINUSTAH is countered by the perception by the Haitian population of MINUSTAH as being a heavily armed occupying force conjuring fear rather than a sense of safety. A well-trained police force of Haitians serving and protecting Haitians would be more effective and appropriate given the situation.

Relative Peace in Haiti and Comparable Countries without Peacekeeping Missions
There are countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region with much higher levels of insecurity that are not host to Peacekeeping Missions. In Jamaica, with a population of 2.6 million, there were 1428 reported murders in 2010. It is reported that approximately 700 homicides, out of a population of almost 9 million, took place in Haiti in the last year. Haiti has had a democratically elected government in place since 2006 and the recent peaceful transition of power to an opposition political party can be cited as further indication of the country’s relative stability. In fact, this fulfills one of the key benchmarks elaborated in 2008 for MINUSTAH’s withdrawal [see Appendix].

Government’s Request to Remove Chapter VII from Mandate
Prior to the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1840 in October 2008, President Rene Preval requested that reference to Chapter VII of the UN Charter be removed from MINUSTAH’s mandate , which would effectively eliminate the mission’s authorization to use force for reasons other than self-defense.

Responding to the Most Pressing Security Needs
A military component is inappropriate to meet protection needs of the most vulnerable in the Haitian population. An example of this is the persistent lack of preventative measures within the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in Port au Prince. Lack of security and lighting has exacerbated gender-based violence (GBV). MINUSTAH itself has recognized that its mandate and the wider responsibilities of the international community require a reinforced effort to protect IDPs, including women and children, from their exceptionally vulnerable circumstances.

As of January 6, 2011, KOFAVIV, a Haitian grassroots women’s organization, documented over 640 cases of rape since the earthquake. SOFA, a Haitian Women’s Health Organization, documented 718 cases of gender based violence in their clinic from January to June 2010. Doctors without Borders reported 68 cases of rape in April 2010 at one of their clinics in Port-au-Prince. The vast majority of women living in camps who were interviewed reported being raped by two or more individuals, almost always armed and at night.

All of this occurs despite the presence of 8,651 military personnel and 3,146 UNPOL members on the ground. There is still a troubling lack of internal patrols within Haiti’s approximately 1,100 IDP camps. Since Human Rights Observers have started critiquing the lack of security in camps there has been in an increase in camp security. Currently there is a permanent presence of a 200-strong UNPOL force in 6 high-risk camps, in combination with daily patrols in 70 other priority areas. However, that leaves over 1,000 camps without any permanent presence or daily patrols. GBV in the camp is a much more real security risk than civil war, further highlighting the ineffectiveness of a peace-keeping force versus FPUs and civil police forces.

FPU’s as a More Viable Solution
Formed Police Units (FPUs) are more suitably trained for the security situation in Haiti than military forces. Military soldiers are not trained to handle the kind of civil unrest that frequently occurs in Haiti and this has been demonstrated time and again.

Most recently, during the first round of the 2010 presidential elections, MCC election monitors in the Artibonite were present in multiple voting centers when partisans stormed the centers, ripped ballots and stole ballot boxes while MINUSTAH soldiers stood by. A similar situation occurred in Cite Soleil. LAMP election observers in Soleil 19 were present when INITE party representatives took over a polling station and refused to allow non-INITE supporters to vote. A massive riot broke out, while dozens of MINUSTAH soldiers present were unable to respond. In such a situation, civilian police or FPUs would have had the training and experience to safeguard the election process. Military soldiers are not trained or equipped to make arrests, protect perpetrators and victims, investigate offenses, or submit police reports and fact finding papers that are the basis of criminal cases. It has been our experience that soldiers trained for combat actually pose a danger in situations of civil unrest. As such, we recognize that the military contingent should no longer be a part of the mission.

The perceived lack of legitimacy combined with the perception of the UN as an “occupying force” will persist so long as there is a presence of military personnel and equipment. Increasing the civilian police presence while decreasing the military presence would strengthen the PNH and allow them to begin taking over some of the roles currently carried out by soldiers and FPUs.

3. Human Rights Abuses
It is of additional concern that MINUSTAH soldiers have been implicated in human rights violations. We acknowledge that MINUSTAH’s mission is difficult and that causalities can occur, even when forces are attempting to protect a population. However, we believe that when unnecessary force is used, international agents in Haiti must be held accountable. LAMP’s co-founder and legal director first began documenting MINUSTAH human rights abuses in Cite Soleil in 2004 following the coup d’etat. Since then, LAMP has discovered and reported on abuses of power by MINUSTAH forces including use of excessive force to counter demonstrations. Other studies and reports have identified MINUSTAH soldiers as issuing threats of death, physical harm, and sexual violence. To date these allegations have not been investigated or addressed.

There have been numerous allegations of sexual exploitation perpetrated by MINUSTAH soldiers, none of which have been prosecuted by Haitian or international authorities. The Sri Lankan battalion was repatriated in 2007 after numerous allegations of transactional sex with underage girls and with the promise that Sri Lanka would pursue the case. To date there has been no information available on the prosecution of the battalion.

MINUSTAH soldiers in Haiti must respect Haitians’ human rights. Failure to investigate and prosecute human rights violations only delegitimizes the accomplishments of the mission.

Cholera
On October 21, 2010, Haiti’s Health Ministry recorded over 1,000 cases of a cholera-like illness and 135 associated deaths in the Artibonite region. These were the first cases of cholera reported in Haiti in at least 60 years. By February 9, 2011, the Ministry of Health recorded 4,549 cholera-related deaths and 231,070 people infected. In early May, a UN panel linked cholera to a UN base in Mirebalais housing Nepalese soldiers. To date, no definitive responses have been carried out to address the violation of the Haitian population’s right to adequate water.

4. Mandate Clarity
Since MINUSTAH does not have a traditional peace-monitoring mandate, it has been difficult to determine specifically how the mission ought to operate. Similar peacekeeping missions in Africa have been implemented to monitor peace agreements. Such is the case in Sudan, where UNMIS ensured implementation of the country’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where MONUC was invited to observe the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement. In the absence of such an agreement, MINUSTAH’s mission has been difficult to define and carry out.
The successes of MINUSTAH, such as decreased kidnapping rates and gang activity, have not hastened their departure, but rather expanded their role. The March 2011 Report of the Secretary General (S/2011/183) and current MINUSTAH mandate (S/RES/1944) describe the ever-increasing roles filled by MINUSTAH that are outside traditional peacekeeping and security-provision mandates, such as HIV/AIDS training and counseling programs, building dams and water catchment systems, managing cash for work programs, media campaigns for female legislative candidates, repairing schools, building roads, environmental awareness-raising on diaspora television stations in the United States, etc.

These are necessary objectives that will certainly affect sustainable growth in Haiti and that merit funding, but they do not require military personnel, and MINUSTAH’s highly publicized involvement in these efforts risks compromising the rest of the UN’s relief and development work in the eyes of much of the population. United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has programs in place to foster economic growth and strengthen the police and judicial systems such as the Rule of Law program to train magistrates and legal professionals.

MINUSTAH’s role in dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake and in reconstruction efforts, has been heavily criticized by aid workers in Haiti and Haitian civil society, who fear that the militarization of aid unfairly criminalizes Haitians. Globally, soldiers are not trained to carry out relief with tact and compassion but rather operate in the mindset of a conflict scenario. We would reiterate that a military response to social and economic problems often leads to increased violence and is ineffective in dealing with the root of structural problems.

As such, we question proposals to further integrate international efforts to reconstruct and develop Haiti with the existing mandate of the mission.

5. Benchmarks for Withdrawal
The August 2008 Report of the Secretary General (S/2008/586) outlines benchmarks for MINUSTAH’s withdrawal. Paragraph 74 of the August 2008 resolution states, “It is clear that if the benchmarks are met, Haiti will still need long-term support. However, they should help to identify a critical threshold of stability beyond which a peacekeeping presence could be progressively reduced and ultimately withdraw, and the country could contemplate reversion to a normal framework of bilateral and multilateral assistance.”

Despite the vague nature of the benchmarks, we are concerned that little reference has been made to them in subsequent mandates and reports. It would appear that there are currently no indicators by which MINUSTAH is measuring its effectiveness with the goal of eventual withdrawal from Haiti.

At this juncture it seems unclear whether or not all of these benchmarks need to be met before MINUSTAH can withdraw. MCC and LAMP respectfully question the appropriateness of requiring that socio-economic benchmarks be met by a military operation.

A MINUSTAH mandate that eliminates the military component of the mission and places more emphasis on police training and monitoring would create measurable indicators allowing the for the mission’s withdrawal.

Recommendations
Based on the above discussion, MCC and LAMP would like to make the following recommendations to the UN Security Council concerning the future of MINUSTAH.

Short-Term Recommendations:

Address the absence of legal legitimacy for MINUSTAH’s presence by seeking approval for the mission from the Haitian National Assembly in accordance with Article 139 of the Haitian Constitution.
Eliminate the Chapter VII Military Component of MINUSTAH and focus on police training and monitoring.
Separate the security and humanitarian components of MINUSTAH’s mandate, so that other UN agencies and NGOs can fulfill humanitarian and development functions independently from the mission and thus discontinue any further militarization of aid.
Respond to allegations of human rights violations perpetrated by members of MINUSTAH by investigating credible allegations and responding appropriately.
Improve security in the IDP camps, particularly against gender-based violence, through additional patrols of camps, installation of lighting and other security measures.
Re-evaluate and re-introduce benchmarks for MINUSTAH’s withdrawal into MINUSTAH’s 2011-2012 mandate.

Long-Term Recommendation:

Formulate an explicit timeline for MINUSTAH’s full withdrawal in coordination with the Haitian government. Close collaboration with the Haitian government will enable both parties to identify priority structural and capacity needs that must be addressed before MINUSTAH can be successfully terminated. Long-term sustainable development and peace is dependent upon the ability of the Haitian government to continue state-building activities in the absence of MINUSTAH.

About the Submitting Organizations:
____________________________________________________________________________________
MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) is the relief, development and peace building arm of Anabaptist churches in the US and Canada and has been working in Haiti for 53 years. MCC Haiti’s advocacy program seeks to address the root causes of poverty, injustice and violence in Haiti. MCC also supports partner organizations engaged in education, job training, literacy, conflict resolution and human rights.
MCC’s United Nations Liaison Office strives to be a voice for those with whom MCC works around the world.
____________________________________________________________________________________
The LAMP for Haiti Foundation Human Rights Program (LAMP) advocates for the respect and protection of basic human rights in the areas of greatest misery and poverty in Cite Soleil, Port-au-Prince. LAMP works at the cross section of human rights and medicine, housing both a human rights law office and a medical clinic in Bois Neuf, Cite Soleil, a slum of Port-au-Prince.

Saut d'Eau: Behind the Scenes

2011-07-27T16:25:00.003-05:00

We go early, at 6 AM, to avoid the crowds, ra ra bands, and drunken afternoon revelry. While Ben takes pictures, I am perched on a rock overlooking the waterfall.

I revel in watching people take part in the festival. It's like watching a diorama, made up of a dozen flowing, shifting scenes, each separate but somehow all interconnected. There is something breathtaking about watching hundreds of strangers bathe together, communally worshiping by means of [what is to me] an extremely intimate act. And with such inhibition, too, because by bathe, I mean: sudsing up with soap and shampoo, scrubbing the callouses off of your feet, shaving your legs, brushing your teeth.

A Haitian friend likes to talk about the power of the Haitian collective. I've never seen that demonstrated so vividly. A woman at the top of the waterfall begins to sing and, collectively, instantly, the energy intensifies, rippling across the crowd and people are frantically praying, waving their arms, dancing... and then just as suddenly, they all stop. And a father picks up a bar of soap and resumes washing his baby, while the group of women next to him are gossiping and laughing, brushing their teeth, and occasionally breaking into song. Just past them, a young man is taking big swigs of rum as water from a cascade pounds his back.

Discarded clothes litter the waterfall. Empty bottles, candle stubs, broken kwi (the half-gourd bowls used in ceremony), and soap suds swirl together.

************

My pictures of Ben taking pictures:

************

Randomly, I am interviewed for television. My interview (in Creole) goes something like this:

Q: What is your name?
A [inciting confusion, always, since Alexis is a man's name]: Alexis
Q: When did you arrive in Haiti?
A: In July 2008.
Q: Do you live in Haiti?
A: Yes, I do, in Port-au-Prince.
Q: How long have you lived in Haiti?
A: For 3 years, since 2008.
Q: Are you here with your family?
A: Yes, I live here with my husband.
Q: And your children?
A: No, we don't have any children
Q [incredulous]:You don't have children?
A: No, no children, [adding for approval]... not yet.
Q: Are you a doctor?
A: No, I'm not a doctor.
Q: What is your profession?
A [stumbling]: Um, ah, I, um, work with an organization that, um, supports Haitian civil society and the Haitian social movement, advocating for human rights and...
Q [cutting me off]: What do you like about Haiti?
A [attempting to redeem myself]: There are so many things to like about Haiti! I like the people, I like the culture, I like the food, I like the art and the music, I like the language, I like the beautiful countryside - like where we are now, I like...
Q: Okay, thank you.

No kids, not a doctor. Why did I do feel like I am a disappointing interviewee? I have got to figure out to explain what it is that I do.

************

After last year's Saut d'Eau festival, Ben wrote this in an extended caption to accompany his photographs:

"Haitian pilgrims gather at the waterfall at Saut d'Eau on July 16th, the anniversary of the 1983 sighting of the Virgin Mary, alternately identified as the Vodou loa, or spirit, of Erzulie Freda, the Goddess of Love. The waterfall at Saut d'Eau is the site of the largest Vodou and Catholic pilgrimage in Haiti. A second sighting of the Virgin was reported during the American occupation. Each year, thousands of Haitian pilgrims make their way to Saut d'Eau to bathe in the sacred water and revel in the presence of the loa, particularly Erzulie and Damballah the Serpent, father of all life and keeper of spiritual wisdom, who is said to live in the falls. The water is believed to be curative and many women come to Saut d'Eau seeking fertility."

************

There is so much happening that I want to try to understand, but when I ask the people around me, they howl with laughter. What are the leaves that people are bathing with? - They're leaves. (Someone tells me that there are 7 different kinds. Basil is all that I recognize). What do they do? - They cleanse. Cleanse from what? (More laughter).

Saturday in Saut d'Eau

2011-07-21T06:00:00.006-05:00

It rained last night.

2011-07-20T08:17:00.002-05:00

And while we were sheltered inside with our generator, all I could think about were these families and our courageous friends that are mobilizing against the unlawful and inhumane evictions of displaced people.

"Just far enough to be forgotten": Follow this Amnesty International link to make sure that the 514 families of Sylvio Cator are not forgotten.

Now that we're back in Haiti

2011-07-19T22:19:00.002-05:00

Ben's anti-social tendencies hit an all time high this morning when, after his computer crashed and we ran out of propane, he built a fire on our driveway to make coffee. To be fair, later we both braved rush-hour traffic on the motorcycle to get our propane tank refilled. We were 10th in line at the gas station and it only took 45 minutes.

We know have been so.bad at posting. We plead busyness and over-heatedness: the heat has been sweltering, resulting in multiple showers a day and restless nights.

We've both been working from home since I started my new job, which at the moment has me all tied up in research, interviews and editing for a very exciting project. Being at home all day is taking some getting used to and also has us using more electricity than previously. Sadly, our power inverter has not risen to the challenge.

We're actually feeling quite clever tonight, since it finally occurred to us to stoke up the portable generator that F&J gave us when they left Haiti. THANK YOU. Since it probably hasn't been used in a year, it took a few starts (okay, 2 hours) and a trip back to the gas station, but now we are happily recharging our feeble batteries so that we can keep sitting in front of our computers. And a fan.

We are glad to be back. Really.

On Assignment

2011-07-13T19:13:00.002-05:00

I spent last Monday and Tuesday shooting the beautiful empty beaches in the Southwest of the Dominican Republic.

My flight from Charlotte to Miami - incidentally, on the airline that paid me to take this trip - was delayed by 45 minutes because the luggage wasn't calculated when they loaded the plane. They had to re-calculate it while the pilot made a joke about his trigonometry being rusty. Because of the delay I made it to the gate in Miami as my plane was boarding, but then something happened to the engine next to me as we sped up to take off - there was loud bang and then the airplane stopped on the runway. The pilot said maybe a compressor blew out (whatever that means) but that we would be fine and not to worry. After ten minutes, he got back on the intercom to say that they had checked the book and we would be fine - it was just a problem with the autopilot and us accelerating too quickly - so they turned the plane around and took off successfully. The engine still sounded really strange and I've never been so sure that my flight would crash into the ocean.

I did get to the DR in one piece, rented a car, drove six hours to the Pedernales region, took a couple pictures, slept in my car next to a big lagoon in a national park and then took more pictures the next day of a bunch of different beaches, all hours apart. I filed my pictures by 3 PM and drove 6 hours back to Santo Domingo in time to have a beer at a gas station where I slept in my car again. I returned the car at 6am Wednesday morning, motorcycle-taxied, bussed and motorcycle-taxied again to the bus station. I bought my ticket to Port-au-Prince right before the bus boarded. 7 hours later, I arrived home to my beautiful wife, an indian meal and an avocado tree full of avacados.

I was hungry and in a hurry, so I bought this frozen pizza at a supermarket in Santo Domingo. At a military checkpoint, a fat soldier asked me for some and instantly produced a huge kitchen knife to cut himself a slice.

Livin' it up in Carolina

2011-07-08T17:36:00.000-05:00

Prelude to a restoring and energizing (though not entirely relaxing) month of vacation, in which we:

Why do we leave everything to the last minute?

2011-07-03T14:10:00.001-05:00

On today's to do list:

Clean and pack away our camping gear, which we sadly do not have opportunity to use in Haiti
Clean and pack away Ben's mountain bike
Cut Ben's hair
Clean downstairs bathroom, post-haircut
Laundry, 3 loads
Drop our little diesel Rabbit off at my parent's house
Final internet downloads before we leave the land of fast internet
Take one last hike in the woods
Scour attic for Ben's health insurance information
Call my grandmother
Make lots of other calls
Pack
Weigh suitcases
Re-pack
Print flight itineraries
Rest up for our 4 AM departure for the airport. Who ever thought 5:50 AM flights were a good idea?

We both fly out tomorrow, but Ben is leaving me to hand-carry motorcycle tires and smuggle a kombucha scoby into Haiti on my own. He's headed to the Dominican Republic for a 2-day photo assignment for American Airlines' in-flight magazine. I'll be cuddling with Luna and cursing mosquitoes and our slow internet connection by tomorrow afternoon.

Pictures of our fun vacation month coming soon...

Female Journalists & Researchers Respond To Haiti PTSD Article

2011-07-02T12:37:00.000-05:00

http://jezebel.com/5817381/female-journalists--researchers-respond-to-haiti-ptsd-article

GOOD magazine recently ran a piece written by Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland in which she details her disturbing experience in Haiti, subsequent PTSD, and her healing process. The crux of her story — that engaging in violent sex helped aid her recovery — is deeply personal, complicated, and unsettling. But so is PTSD, and recovery is never simple.

For all of its raw honesty, however, there's a real issue with the article: a lack of context. In absence of any real details about McClelland herself, it is all too easy to conclude that it was Haiti itself that pushed her over the edge. The dark and violent imagery she uses only serves to further that conclusion.

To 36 women who would know, that's a problem. Herewith, [our] open letter to the editors of GOOD.

To the Editors:

As female journalists and researchers who have lived and worked in Haiti, we write to you today to express our concern with Mac McClelland's portrayal of Haiti in "I'm Gonna Need You to Fight Me On This: How Violent Sex Helped Ease my PTSD."

We respect the heart of Ms. McClelland's story, which is her experience of trauma and how she found sexuality a profound means of dealing with it. Her article calls much needed attention to the complexity of rape. But we believe the way she uses Haiti as a backdrop for this narrative is sensationalist and irresponsible.

Between the 36 of us, we have lived or worked in Haiti for many years, reporting on and researching the country both long before and after the earthquake. We each have spent countless hours in the camps and neighborhoods speaking with ordinary Haitians about their experiences coping with the disaster and its aftermath. We feel compelled to intervene collectively in this instance because, while speaking of her own personal experience, Ms. McClelland also implies that she is speaking up for female "journalists who put themselves in threatening situations all the time," women who have "chosen to be around trauma for a living," who she says "rarely talk about the impact."

In writing about a country filled with guns, "ugly chaos" and "gang-raping monsters who prowl the flimsy encampments," she paints Haiti as a heart-of-darkness dystopia, which serves only to highlight her own personal bravery for having gone there in the first place. She makes use of stereotypes about Haiti that would be better left in an earlier century: the savage men consumed by their own lust, the omnipresent violence and chaos, the danger encoded in a black republic's DNA.

Sadly, these damaging stereotypes about the country are not uncommon. But we were disturbed to find them articulated in Ms. McClelland's piece without larger context, especially considering her reputation for socially conscious reporting.

Ms. McClelland's Haiti is not the Haiti we know. Indeed, we have all lived in relative peace and safety there. This does not mean that we are strangers to rape and sexual violence. We can identify with the difficulty of unwanted sexual advances that women of all colors may face in Haiti. And in the United States. And everywhere.

Unfortunately, most Haitian women are not offered escapes from the possibility of violence in the camps in the form of passports and tickets home to another country. For the thousands of displaced women around Port-au-Prince, the threat of rape is tragically high. But the image of Haiti that Ms. McClelland paints only contributes to their continued marginalization. While we are glad that Ms. McClelland has achieved a sort of peace within, we would encourage her, next time, not to make Haiti a casualty of the process.

In our own writings, we have gone to great lengths to try to understand and address the issue of trauma—as well as sexual violence—with sensitivity. As women who know and love Haiti, we are deeply troubled by Ms. McClelland's approach.

Sincerely,

Lisa Armstrong, freelance reporter, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting grantee

Amelie Baron, freelance reporter, RFI and Radio France

Pooja Bhatia, journalist and lawyer

Edna Bonhomme, PhD Candidate, Princeton University

Carla Bluntschli, Haiti activist

Natalie Carney, multimedia journalist, Feature Story News

Edwidge Danticat, writer

Alexis Erkert Depp, Haiti activist

Natasha Del Toro, video journalist, TIME

Isabeau Doucet, freelance journalist and producer, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, CSMonitor

Susana Ferreira, freelance journalist

Allyn Gaestel, freelance reporter, CNN, Los Angeles Times

Leah Gordon, artist and photographer

Michelle Karshan, Haiti activist and researcher

Kathie Klarreich, Knight International Journalism Fellow and author of Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou and Civil Strife in Haiti

Sasha Kramer, SOIL

Nicole Lee, Esq., President, TransAfrica Forum Inc.

Carmen Lopez, filmmaker and journalist

Melinda Miles, Founder and Director, Let Haiti Live

Eleanor Miller, freelance journalist

Arikia Millkan, Community Manager of Haiti Rewired

Carla Murphy, founding editor, Develop Haiti

Maura R. O'Connor, freelance foreign correspondent

Leah Nevada Page, economic development consultant

Claire Payton, PhD Candidate, NYU, Haiti Memory Project

Nathalie Pierre, PhD Candidate, NYU

Andrea Schmidt, Producer, Al Jazeera English

Jeena Shah, LERN Fellow, Attorney at Bureau Des Avocats Internationaux, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti

Alice Smeets, photojournalist

Alice Speri, freelance journalist

Maggie Steber, photographer, educator, curator, author of Dancing on Fire

Chelsea Stieber, PhD Candidate, NYU

Ginger Thompson

Emily Troutman, freelance writer and photographer, AOL, AFP

Amy Wilentz

Marjorie Valbrun, contributing writer at the Root.com and blogger at Slate.com

Note: The views expressed in this letter represent those of individual authors and signatories and do not necessarily represent the opinions of their organizations.

Hello North Carolina

2011-06-05T09:00:00.004-05:00

And hello family, fireflies, friends, gin and tonics with orange mint, bluegrass music, Abe and Karen's chickens, peaches, woods, bicycles and whole wheat waffles.

And now we're off to Virginia to go backpacking. Later 'taters!

Where's Luna?

2011-06-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

Luna was no-where to be found (possibly hiding under the flipcharts again?) when we left for the airport yesterday morning. See you in a month, you rascally kitty!

MCC Send-Off

2011-06-02T14:01:00.001-05:00

A fancy surprise cake enjoyed by all, lots of hugs, a few tears shed by me, the rest of the day spent frantically working... and I am officially unemployed until July.

A Weekend in Photos

2011-06-01T15:21:00.000-05:00

Housing Rights... or Forced Evictions?

2011-05-31T07:25:00.003-05:00

So last week wasn't all birthday parties. On Monday the 23rd, the mayor of Delmas (a municipality amalgamated with Port-au-Prince) sent his security forces, BRICOR - trained by a sketchy American security company - and national police officers to destroy a displaced people's camp in Carrefour de l'Aeroport, or Kafou Ayopo, where people have been living in tents and makeshift shelters since the earthquake. More than 100 families were threatened, some residents beaten or arrested, and evicted from the public plaza.

Ben got there about 2 hours after they smashed the tents but the BRICOR were still there pulling stuff into the street so that a bulldozer could scrape it into a dump truck. He was told by an officer that they don't want any abri proviswa (temporary shelters) in the Delmas area because they needed to clean up the streets for tourists. While Ben was there, about 100 people were trying to salvage their belongings.

One woman that he spoke to, 52-yr old Yvonne Andre told him, "I've been here since the earthquake. We don't have anywhere to go - if we had homes, we wouldn't be here." It infuriates me that a popular narrative regarding Haiti's IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) camps is that people want to live in them. Want to live under a tarp, in rainy season, in unsanitary conditions, with no privacy, and almost a year after food aid has ceased being distributed. A newspaper ad just months after the earthquake featured a picture of a tent camp with "No to squatters and anarchists!" stamped across the photo. Can you imagine?

Evictions continued throughout the week, increasing in intensity, and some Haitian human rights activist friends trying to hold a press conference in a camp were victims of attempted assault by police and BRICOR armed with machetes and shovels. They were protected by the camp residents.

Pressure from concerted national and international efforts have resulted in a halt in evictions, for now. Nigel Fisher, Haiti's UN humanitarian coordinator, sent a letter to the Haitian president, Haitian grassroots groups and activists mobilized, several Congressmen and women issued a statement and many concerned individuals reacted (thank you if you responded to alerts on facebook asking you to call your representative or to call or write the Haitian embassy).

You can read more about what happened on CommonDreams.org , and on Bea's blog, or see more photos taken by Bri Kouri Nouvel Gaye.

In stark contrast, we had the privilege the week before of attending a 3-day forum on housing rights, organized by FRAAKA (Fòs Refleksyon ak Aksyon sou Koze Kay). Since she has already written about the forum so eloquently, I'll quote Other Worlds' Beverly Bell:

"Two days before the Delmas camp demolitions began, several hundred displaced people rallied against evictions in Camp Karade. The event was part of the International Forum on the Housing Crisis, held May 19 -21 and attended by hundreds. More than 40 grassroots and Haitian non-governmental organizations from throughout the capital region and five other towns, as well as 35 displacement camp committees, were represented. In the first broad-based gathering led by impacted people since last year’s disaster, Haitians strategized with each other and with housing activists from elsewhere in the Americas about how to win their guaranteed right to housing.

Sanon Reyneld from FRAKKA, the main organizing group of the forum, said in the opening address, “The right to housing is a debt that the government has toward the poor for the responsibility it never took on housing that caused so many people to die.” The toll from the earthquake, an estimated 225,000 to 300,000, was in large part this high because so many inferior quality houses collapsed.

The final declaration of the forum read in part, "We ask: [1] for the authorities to stop the violence that is accompanying evictions…; [2] for the authorities to arrest and bring to justice all those engaged in violence against those living in camps; [and 3] for them to take all measures to help people find permanent housing so they can relocate out of camps." "

The last day of the forum, a rally in Caradeux.

According to Bell, "Displaced persons are protected by both Haitian and international law. Article 22 of the 1987 Haitian constitution guarantees “decent housing” for everyone. Article 25 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees every individual a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including… housing.” Many sections of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs declare protection from displacement, notably for victims of disasters. In a ruling last November, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights directed the Haitian government to stop evicting IDPs unless it provided them safe alternative shelter." Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration reported in April that nearly 170,000 displaced people living in camps are facing the threat of imminent eviction.

FRAKKA and other grassroots organizations trying to deal with the housing crisis have advocacy activities planned for the coming weeks to raise general awareness and put pressure on the government and NGOs to take these issues (and the basic rights of displaced people) more seriously.

It's My Party (and about moving on...)

2011-05-28T12:06:00.003-05:00

Nevermind that my real birthday is in August, on Friday I got to have a party! We do a great job at MCC of celebrating birthdays, but in 2009 Ben and I were in North Carolina for my birthday and in 2010 I was traveling with our regional policy analyst. So, when I was asked what I would like to do for my going away party, I decided that instead of going away speeches that would unavoidably make me cry, I wanted a birthday party. Here's how it works: if it's your birthday, you get to choose what you want to have for lunch AND what kind of cake you want. Since I chose tchaka for lunch (pumpkin soup with corn, beans and carrot), and that is apparently not fancy enough for a birthday meal, we also had cookies in the morning.

When I walked into the office first thing, I was greeted by choruses of "Happy Birthday!" and was basically treated like a princess all day. It was a perfect, hilarious send-off (especially since Ben and I will be back in Haiti in a month and I'm sure I'll still be hanging around MCC a fair bit). The only sad thing is how many people couldn't be there: Kettly and Kurt are both sick; Margot, James, Simon Michel and Herve were all out; Ben had an assignment and Anne is in the States for a wedding. And of course, the whole Desarmes team is out in the Artibonite Valley (where Josh and Marylynn JUST had an itty bitty baby girl named Vienna!).

posing with Loulou

cookies and fresh passion fruit juice in the morning

Eklan, manman vant nou (the mother of our stomachs)

Jim serves up the tchaka

lunchtime

my favorite Haitian meal: meatless tchaka and fresh cherry juice

my all-time favorite: cheesecake

cheesing it up over cheesecake with Meagan

the office I'll be leaving behind

my corner (how I wish I had taken a picture before I took down my bird mobile, pictures and the rest of the mess that has made this space "mine")

Tuesday is officially my last day. I realize that I haven't explained yet in this public space why I'm leaving MCC and what we'll be doing next. It was not an easy decision for me to move on. I think highly of MCC and have loved (almost) every minute of my job. I'm not sure I will ever work for another organization that blends and matches my own social values, faith, and perspectives on "development" so well. Based on my experience, MCC's commitment to working towards real peace and defending justice and dignity for all of god's creation (even when that means speaking out against the status quo, ie. very powerful governments, corporations and institutions) is somewhat of an anomaly for relief and development organizations, even among many that claim to work in advocacy. It's been an honor to spend 3 years with MCC and I am truly going to miss my MCC family. But, with Ben wanting to keep working freelance, it is time for us to have a little more financial stability and for me to have health insurance. (Not to give you the wrong idea, MCC does provide full health coverage for all of its service workers. Our situation is a little different because when Ben left MCC last year, I had to switch to being national staff and lost those benefits.)

And, well, the stars aligned themselves just perfectly for us (as they so often seem to do, wink, wink) and I was offered a salaried, part-time position with Other Worlds. Other Worlds is a cool group of creative and energetic women social activists whose perspective on and work in Haiti I have long admired. Beginning in July, I will be co-coordinating their Another Haiti is Possible program and happily continuing to work with many of the same folks here that I have been working with for the past 3 years. Other Worlds is based in New Orleans, and they graciously agreed to let us keep living here for now so that Ben can continue with his work AND offered me full health benefits.

In the meantime, we'll be in North Carolina and Virginia for the month of June where we have a backpacking trip, photography festival, camping, and visiting with friends and family on the agenda. We're also looking for a way to get our hands and knees as dirty as possible on someone's farm or vegetable garden (consider that an offer for free labor, Mom Depp, Karen Kovach & Alyssa Rudolph!).

-Alexis from Ben's account

fennel tea

2011-05-21T12:48:00.001-05:00

Working for human rights in Haiti: A struggle with wide scope and deep roots

2011-05-20T09:05:00.000-05:00

Published in the Peace Office Newsletter, April-June, 2011, Vol 41, No 2 (Note: Obviously since the presidential inauguration took place on Saturday, the context in Haiti has changed a bit since I wrote this piece. Still, I think the fact that voter turnout was so low - 16.7% - and that the OAS basically reversed the results of the election's first round without conducting a ballot recount - which is what allowed Martelly into the second round - makes the discussion of the right to vote every bit as relevant).

“Until the first time I went to do an interview in a prison, I didn’t think it was possible to break the Haitian spirit,” recalls Meagan Peasgood, an MCC worker seconded to RNDDH, Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, or the National Human Rights Defense Network. “It’s that spirit that attracted me to living here—the pride and strong sense of history that prevail over Haiti’s difficult reality.”

Meagan found herself waiting in a hot, foul-smelling room. The back door opened and a prisoner shuffled in, head and shoulders down, back bent. He didn’t make eye contact and never once raised his head. He barely answered her questions. He was nineteen years old, and had been in prison for more than five years after being accused of stealing a telephone. Two years after his arrest he was taken to court, but the judge never saw him. He was transferred to this particular prison after the earthquake in January, 2010, and did not know if his family was still alive.

“I had to tell him that I wasn’t there to get him out of prison. I didn’t know how to show him that I think he is a human being, so I offered to call his family for him.” Meagan left the prison having absorbed the despair and brokenness of the place. When she returned to tell the prisoner that his family now knew he was alive, she experienced a redemptive moment—he finally looked her in the eyes and thanked her for treating him like a person.

This experience was key to Meagan’s understanding the importance of RNDDH’s work: the tedious but important work of interviewing prisoners, the advocacy work carried out by legal staff in connecting with prosecutors, and following up to make sure that case files exist for each prisoner. Meagan draws hope and energy from the human to human interactions that she believes sets RNDDH’s work apart from other human rights organizations in Haiti. “How we understand dignity and respect has much to do with how we understand who we all are as created in the image of God. We are all deserving of basic human rights. That’s an applicable concept even when you’re sitting across from a prisoner that might be charged with raping a minor.”

While Haitians have been fighting for their rights since Haiti’s inception as a nation of freed slaves at the beginning of the nineteenth century, their ability to exercise political and civil rights has been limited. Indeed, human rights organizations could not function openly for the twenty-nine years that Haiti was ruled by the brutal dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier between 1957 and 1986.

Nonetheless, even under the Duvalier regimes, clandestine groups of rights advocates fought to regain public freedom. One such advocate was Antonal Mortime. “On February 6, 1986, Haitians once again proclaimed our liberty in the document that is our constitution and that we call the Maman Lwa, or Mother Law, of our country. That’s what tells us that we have our sovereignty.” Mortime is now the director of another MCC partner organization, Plate-forme des Organisations Haitiennes des Droits Humains (POHDH), or the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights, a collective of eight of Haiti’s leading human rights organizations (including RNDDH). MCC Haiti began partnering with Haitian human rights organizations in the early 1990s.

Mortime stresses that from 1987 up to the past decade, “everyone concentrated on the promotion of our civil and political rights because we had lost them; that’s why these rights are historically considered more important in Haiti.” And yet he notes that Jean Jacques Dessalines, the hero of the Haitian revolution, asked the question, “‘How will these new Haitians live?’ and started promoting economic rights through equalized land distribution.” As Mortime puts it, “That’s the same question we need to be asking today.”

Thus Haitian human rights organizations have increasingly shifted their focus to rights categorized as economic, social and cultural (ESC). According to Mortime, “Since 2000, Haitian human rights activists have realized that if we don’t promote our ESC rights, our civil and political rights are also menaced. This is why, today, it’s necessary for us to work towards all—the rights of people to food, to housing, to education, to healthcare, to live in a safe environment—all of this is the package that makes up our sovereignty, that makes up a country where every person is a full citizen.”

Kurt Hildebrand, MCC Haiti’s country representative underlines this point. “In recent years, the problems Haitian organizations identify stem more often from an unresponsive government than a repressive one.” This is increasingly the case after the earthquake on January 12, 2010, that killed over 200,000 people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes and buildings. As a report by POHDH put it: “It’s normal for the earth to shake, but not normal for it have the results it did here; and the way that the State has responded has been even more catastrophic than the catastrophe itself.”

It is not only the Haitian government, but the international community—foreign governments, non-governmental organizations, and multi-lateral institutions—that has inhibited the human rights of Haitians in the wake of the earthquake, according to both POHDH and RNDDH. The fundamental issue they highlight is a lack of sovereignty or self-determination—the need to allow Haitians to decide what is best for their country and themselves. Pierre Esperance, the executive director of RNDDH, believes that one of the largest challenges to human rights work in Haiti is that “the international community doesn’t work through Haitians or Haitian civil society to try to reinforce key state institutions. They don’t consult Haitians [in order] to correct any of the structural problems in Haiti.” With MCC’s support, both organizations are currently monitoring international assistance to ensure that it is carried out through a human rights framework that truly takes into account the needs of the people.

The most recent challenge has been Haiti’s presidential and legislative elections, marred by irregularities, incomplete registries, charges of fraud, and widespread protests. According to Esperance, this was the most undemocratic election in Haiti since 1990. After having reviewed RNDDH’s election monitoring reports (including those of MCC staff) from each of Haiti’s ten departments or regions, Esperance says that the polling deprived people of one of the most basic civil rights of a democracy, the right to vote. “These elections have been a step backwards for Haiti.” As three-quarters of the cost for the elections was provided by the international community, he believes that it is a failure not only of the Haitian government but of the UN and the Organization of American States, who are both present in Haiti with a mandate to support the electoral process.

“We’re ready for democracy. It’s the institutions here to accompany us that aren’t able to help us get there,” says Mortime. “We’re so ready that people in the countryside walked for miles and miles to vote. In the city, they came out in spite of violence.”

For this very reason, human rights education is an important component of both organizations’ work. Systemic change in Haiti, the kind of change which would afford all Haitians access not only to the right to choose their leaders, but also to secure housing, adequate food and clean drinking water, requires change from the bottom up. It requires that Haitians are aware of their rights and of how to fight for them. In addition to measureable improvements that can be linked to the work of RNDDH such as a marked decrease in prolonged pre-trial detention and rights violations in prisons, Esperance says that Haitians have a better understanding of their rights. “Many citizens now know their rights and responsibilities. And they are also aware of the international conventions in place to protect those rights.”

Both RNDDH and POHDH are active reminders that, as Mortime reiterates, “There are many Haitians that want to fight for change. They believe in change. They may just need help in making their voices heard.” And so, through funding, material aid, and staff secondments, MCC assists in giving voice to our partners. “We’re honored to stand alongside these brave organizations that are defending the rights of all Haitians, especially the most vulnerable and disenfranchised among them,” says Hildebrand. But MCC supports human rights work in Haiti in many other ways as well. Esperance reminds us that “It’s not just in partnering with Haitian human rights organizations” that MCC supports human rights. “MCC’s work in agriculture—that’s human rights work. Everything that MCC does in Haiti, directly and indirectly, helps to uphold human rights.”

Alexis Erkert Depp is MCC Haiti's Advocacy Coordinator.

Fèt Drapo

2011-05-18T13:45:00.003-05:00

It's Flag Day, y'all! Last year I celebrated with Bryan and Sharon by paying some beautiful pink birds a visit. On the way out to Trou Caiman we chanced across several parades (including a boyscout march. Scouts in Creole are "scoots," which is just so endearing).

Unfortunately, there's no day off or parades for me this year. While I intend to write a blogpost soon about our upcoming plans, in the meantime I'll just tell you that May 31st is my last day at MCC. Suffice it to say, I have a lot to do between now and then. Today, for example: I spent the first part of the morning giving a really fun workshop on Canadian intervention in Haiti and advocacy for a visiting MCC group. The second part of the morning was my last conference call with MCC's advocacy offices (I think I just shed a little tear - what an amazing group they've been to work with!) and at 3:00 I have another conference call with some other people to talk about something else. Meanwhile, I am trying to deal with the invasion of mosquitoes into our home. We always have skeeters, but lately they've been unbearable. The strategy:

Spray myself all over with Herbal Armor (it's one of the most effective DEET-free repellents we've found).
Drink a prestige to compensate for blood loss. It's a holiday, after all.
Find and empty all sources of standing water in our lakou. This will include cutting open some of the tires stacked outside for the planned expansion of our tire garden. Turns out, tires make great places for pesky mosquito larvae to grow...
Burn eucalyptus leaves, incense etc (Mosquitoes hate the smoke and smell. We like the smell).
Mix up a mosquito deterrent of thyme, lemongrass, lavender and eucalyptus oils and put it all over the house. (I use this book all the time and would highly recommend it if you're into natural remedies.)
Take my 3:00 call in bed, under the mosquito net.

We've been asked a lot about malaria. We don't take anti-malaria prophylaxis because we would rather take a course of chloroquine when we get sick than be on an antibiotics full-time, which kills all the friendly bacteria in our bodies. Malaria mosquitoes (fancy name, Anopheles) are really only out at night, so we just sleep under a net. However, the mosquitoes that give us dengue (which we've both had here and it totally sucks) are daytime fliers... thus the concerted effort to repel them.

The Road (now) More Traveled

2011-05-16T20:49:00.001-05:00

The Inter-American Development Bank is funding this road project in the south of Haiti, aiming to cut travel time and transportation costs, and to improve living conditions in the southern provinces. This 50-mile stretch of road connects Les Cayes and Jeremie and several villages in between. A Brazilian company, OAS, is doing the construction. The road is far from complete, but is already transforming commerce and daily life in the area. Travel time has been cut in half; fewer trucks are breaking down, so less food is spoiled; and farmers are planting more crops in anticipation of more dependable farm-to-market transportation.

All of this is great, but in reality the project's impact is a little more complex. I was hoping to find a solid development project to photograph that had a clear cut, positive impact (and perhaps cure some of my own disillusionment about development work). Instead, I came across locals displaced by the road who have yet to be reimbursed for their houses and land by the government. OAS is responsible for reimbursing those whose land and houses are unintentionally damaged by the construction and they have; but the government hasn't come through on their part of the deal. The road also improves transportation into the most forested part of the country, and the forests will probably diminish with increased access to the charcoal market in Port-Au-Prince. One of the heavy equipment operators told me he thought that the way the road was being built was terrible and it would wash away quickly.

Time will tell what this road does for the region. Most of the folks I talked to were really excited about the improved road, but I'm not sure I've found my perfect project yet.

-posted by Ben

Prayer To Live Mercifully

2011-05-15T13:42:00.000-05:00

O God, teach me
Not to envy, to hate, to justify, to imitate, to support, to ennoble, or to kill for,
Those who take the food from the table of others and then teach contentment,
Those for whom the taxes are destined, who demand sacrifice,
Those who eat their fill, who speak to the hungry of good times to come,
Those who lead humanity into the abyss, calling
Hate, love,
Unfaithfulness, faithfulness,
Lies, truth,
Slavery, freedom,
Too much, not enough,
Homicide, heroism,
Evil, good.

And, O God, teach me
when I have food, to remember the hungry;
when I have work, to remember the jobless;
when I have a home, to remember the homeless;
when I am free, to remember the imprisoned;
when I am without pain, to remember the suffering;
when I am loved, to remember the unloved;
when I am living, to remember the dying;
when I am dead, to remember the living.
And remembering, help me to destroy my complacency;
bestir my compassion, and thereby
spend my time and my eternity doing good upon earth,
helping by word and deed, by prayer and sacrifice of self
those who cry out for what I take for granted.
Amen.

Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, is a priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and a co-founder of Pax Christi USA. To receive prayers for peace from the Mennonite Peace and Justice Network: http://peace.mennolink.org/prayersforpeace.html

Awash in Pink

2011-05-13T20:11:00.003-05:00

Port-au-Prince has been getting a new coat of pink paint in anticipation of the inauguration of Michel Martelly, Haiti's new, right-wing president, tomorrow.

sometimes it's the little things

2011-05-10T15:53:00.004-05:00

...like the first little tomatoes that appear,

a homemade dreamcatcher,

the golden color of fermenting honey mead,

the banner for a campaign I'm helping with,

or mango season.

Istwa m melanje ak rèv mwen yo/My history, mixed with my dreams

2011-05-06T13:20:00.004-05:00

Reposted with permission from http://storiesfromhaiti.wordpress.com/ Check out the site for more writings from the Konbit des Jeunes Penseurs (Gathering of Young Thinkers) or follow them on Facebook for updates. Scroll down for English translation.

Mwen se Ayiti. Depi lontan mwen ekziste, mwen te toujou gen gwo solèy ki t’ap klere m men sa pat enpeche m rete fre.

Mwen te gen pye k’ap pile m, ki vle di mwen te abite pa yon bèl ras yon nasyon po wouj.

Christophe Colomb ak solda li yo te vin dekouvri m kòm yon dezyèm paradi.

Depi lè sa yo wè ke lanati mwen bèl yo wè bèl pye bwa, bèl plaj, yo tonbe de pale yo banm pot non hispanyola; ki vle di petit espay.

Epoutan se blofe yo t’ap blofe m, yo te vle gaspiye m epi piye m.

Aprè kèlke mwa yo retounen debake pa pil pa pakèt ak yon bann gwo bato pou yo ale ak sa manman yo ak papa yo te kite pou yo

Yo te mete bèl pitit mwen yo nan esklavaj nan travay fòse. Yo fini pa mouri pase yo pat abitye, se kouche yo te konn kouche tout la senti jounen epi manje vyann boukannen.

La frans tande gen yon ti île, yon ti peyi li batay ak espanyol jiskaske yo twouve yo antant.

Yo siyen yon trete pou yo ka maltrete m.

Lè pitit mwen yo fin mouri (endyen yo) yo debake ale achte nèg an Afrik yo rantre vini ak yo sou yon gwo bato ki rele Negriye.

Nèg sa yo te vrèman imilye, maltrete, yo bay yo non esklav, ki se yon byen mèb, ki gen yon mèt. Esklav sa yo travay du lever au coucher du soleil, yo menm konn touye yo bay bèt manje.

Tout byen m ak ekonomi mwen te repose sou do esklav sa yo nan travay nan jaden kann, nan sikreri, nan boulanjeri, kòm esklav a talan, esklav domestik.

Se yon delivrans lè dwa de lòm te deklare tout moun fèt pou viv lib pa dwe gen kesyon esklav ak mèt.

Sa pot enpeche yo kontinye.

Sou abitasyon breda te gen yon ti nonm ki te rele Toussaint li lite jouk li kapab pou wè sil te ka delivre nèg sa yo men elas lit la te mal pase olye de dyalòg se te zam li te dwe pran.

Mwen kwe dyalòg tap pi bon pou mwen paske ti rès richès ki rete yo tap ret pou pititi mwen.

Dessalines repran lit la pou pi rèd ak yon sistèm koupe tèt, boule kay, aprè seremoni nan Bwa Kayiman anpil kay boule, anpil kout zam tire.

18 novanm 1803 nan batay Ravin Akoulèv anpil blan franse tonbe, anpil richès gaspiye.

An 1804, mwen gen yon peyi. Yon peyi ki plonje nan kriz ekonomik, kriz politik, kriz sosyal.

Kriz politik ak sosyal la fè anpil san koule. An 1805 Dessalines te touye ti rès franse sou pretèks yo se espyon ansyen metwopòl la.

E poutan yo pral touye nonm an 1806 poutèt tè li te vin ak yon sistèm gran pwopriyete tèrèn.

E poutan ti peyizan ki te libere m yo t’ap reklame ti lo tè, ti tè pa mòso misye te kont koripsyon administrativ li te sezi tout tè san papye.

Nou konnen nèg milat yo tap mande tè papa yo te kite pou yo, milat sa yo te mete ak ti peyizan yo.

Yo te rive touye Dessalines 17 oktòb 1806. Aprè sa te vin gen batay de Sibè mwen te vin gen 2 prezidan yon nan lwès ak sid, lòt la nan nò. Lè nèg sa yo fin mouri, Boyer pran la relèv, li peye dèt mwen yo li reyini île la ki te divize an 2 pati kanpay de lès e kanpay lwès.

Si nou wè mwen rakonte nou tray ak tribilasyon mwen, se paske mwen bezwen chanjman.

Chanjman sou tout pwen ke se swa politik, ekonomik, sosyal. Fòk nou respekte konstitisyon mwen an.

Ki vle di:

Fòk eleksyon onèt e kredib, òganize chak fwa yon gouvènman fin pran manda li.
Fòk nou sispann sistèm gwo pòch sa kraze kès leta = ogmante plis soufrans.
Fòk nou kraze sistèm chomaj, chomaj sa ki lage pèp la nan zak malonèt tankou nan fè manifestasyon pou yo ka dechouke.
Fòk gen inivèsite ak lise pou jèn yo mwen ka edike.
Fòk gen yon rekonsilasyon nasyonal pou tout moun egal e fòk ekzile nou rantre lakay pou kontinye ede m sitou nan kesyon rekonstriksyon m.

Si nou fè sa map vin pi bèl, mwen p’ap debuloze, m’ap ka konbat siklòn ak tranblemanditè.

Gen de bagay ki pase devan je m ki pa fè byen, tankou lè yon ap touye lòt oubyen lè siklòn ap fin pote pitit mwen na lanmè sa fè m mal anpil.

Mwen vle sot nan eta mwen ye ya men sa depan de nou.

Nan tèt ansanm, nan viv tankou frè ak sè, nan konn soufrans youn ak lòt n’ap rive rann mwen bèl.

Lè sa tout lòt nasyon ap vle frekante m ansi nou menm tou être ayitien veut dire avoir un drapeau.

Yon drapo ki senbolize lape, dyalòg rekonsilasyon, libète, egalite, ak fratènite.

I am Haiti. Long have I existed, and I have always been shone upon by the bright sun, but it never hindered me from staying cool.

Long ago, my land was trodden by many feet, which is to say that I was inhabited by a beautiful red-skinned race.

Christopher Columbus and his soldiers discovered me and found that, next to heaven, I was the closest thing to paradise.

From that moment they saw my beautiful nature, my beautiful trees and beautiful beaches, they christened me Hispaniola, which means Little Spain.

And yet it was nothing more than trickery and lies — they wanted only to lay waste to me and plunder me.

After some months they returned, they came on and all, with everything their mothers and fathers had left them.

They enslaved my beautiful children, put them to forced work. And they all began to die, my children, because they weren’t used to that kind of work — they were used to lying around all the blessed day eating roasted meat in their paradise.

They signed a treaty so they could mistreat me.

When at last all my children, the Indians, had died, the foreigners left to go buy Africans. They returned with them on great ships known as Négriers.

These men and women were so humiliated, abused. They were calles slaves, which is like being an object, a piece of property with a master. These slaves worked from sunrise to sunset, and could even be slaughted and fed to the beasts.

All of my wealth and economy rested on the backs of these slaves, working in the sugar cane fields, in the sugar factories, making bread, as “slaves of talent,” as domestic slaves.

It was salvation when the Rights of Man were declared, saying that everyone should live free, that there would no longer be slaves and masters.

This was the beginning of the end of slavery in Haiti.

On Breda’s plantation there lived a man named Toussaint. He fought as hard as he was able to deliver his countrymen from slavery, but alas, the struggle was greater than his ability to create dialogue, and in the end he had to take up arms instead.

I think that dialogue would have been better for me than armed struggled, because what remained of my riches would have been better preserved for my children.

Dessalines, again, took up the struggle for a better system. He beheaded, burned houses. After the ceremony at Bois Caiman, many homes were burned; many shots were fired.

On November 18, 1803, at the battle of Ravine-à-Couleuvres, many French fell, and many of my riches were destroyed.

In 1804, I was born a country. A country plunged into economic crises, political crises, social crises.

The political and social crises made a lot of blood flow. In 1805, Dessalines killed what remained of the French on the pretext that they were spies of the former métropole.

However, he too would be killed, in 1806, because of his land reform policies.
And nonetheless, the small peasants who had liberated me claimed my land as their own, and Dessalines was against administrative corruption and seized all the ownerless land to be controlled by the state.

We knew the mulatres would demand the land their fathers had left for them, and those mulatres joined forces with the small peasants.

They killed Dessalines on October 17, 1806. After that, there was the Battle of Sibert, and I had two presidents, one in the west and the south, and one in the north. When they at last died, Boyer took advantage of this respite to pay my debts off and reunite the island that had been divided in two.

If you see that I am telling of my trials and tribulations, it’s because I yearn for change. Change in all realms, political, economic, and social. You must respect my constitution.

Which is to say:

Elections must be honest and credible, organized every time a government has finished its mandate.
We must stop this system of politicians filling their pockets from state coffers; it only leads to more suffering.
We must break this system of unemployment. Unemployment leads people to commit dishonest acts, to protest in the streets, to engage in violent dechoukaj.
We must have universities and high schools so my young people can be educated.
We must have a national reconciliation so everyone can be equal, and the dyaspora should come home so they can help me, especially in this period of my reconstruction.

If we do all this, I will become more beautiful, I will not fall apart, I will be able to withstand hurricanes and earthquakes.

There are things that pass before me that hurt me — when people kill one another, or when hurricanes carry my children out to sea, this hurts me greatly.

I want to escape from this state I am in now, but that depends on you.

In putting your heads together, in living as brothers and sisters, in knowing one another’s suffering, you will make me more beautiful.

And when that happens, other countries will flock to me, your desires will be realized, and being Haitian will mean having a flag.

A flag which symbolizes peace, reconciliatory dialogue, liberty, equality, and brotherhood.

– Wescando DUVERT

Prints

2011-05-04T17:41:00.000-05:00

I just started selling prints which is exciting for me. A few will be up for sale in Mennou Gallery in Petionville in the next couple days. I'm also trying to market these pictures online...

Surprise!

2011-05-02T23:46:00.000-05:00

: we haven't actually dropped off the face of the earth.

We have, however, made blogging less of priority as we deal with life and work and some major decision-making... (as well as taking some family/community time and time on the beach in Port Salut). Some big changes are in the works, which we will share soon.

surprise pak choy coming up in the oat grass

surprised that a pineapple can be growing in a small pot

Last Sunday the truck broke down as were coming back from the South. We found a mechanic in Miragoane whose shirt read, "SURPRISE" on the back in block letters. Underneath was an advertisment for a funeral home. Surprise, indeed.

Luna is 2 for 2

2011-04-09T19:41:00.000-05:00

We originally got Luna because she was such a cute and promising rat deterrent. When she was still a kitten she would hesitantly chase rats her same size around our yard. She's all grown up now and there are no rats.

But there are birds. Yesterday morning at 6:00 AM she brought a gold finch into our bedroom and let it go so that it could half fly around our room for her to chase. When I finally got a hold of the bird Luna jumped 3 feet in the air and grabbed it back out of my hand. This morning, I came home from running errands and found a huge dove dissected on our bedroom floor. I have to admit she's pretty good at hunting. I feel a little bit of pride mixed with disgust - probably how a parent feels when their child wins an MMA fight:

Two Actions for Global Economic Justice

2011-04-06T10:38:00.001-05:00

Take two actions today for global justice:

Call on the International Monetary Fund to use their extra profit for debt relief for poor countries, and
Urge your faith leader to sign a letter to President Obama in support of just economic policies!

Background: Citizens all over the globe are suffering from multiple crises they had no hand in creating: the global economic downturn, high fuel costs and food prices now spiking to all-time highs.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is sitting on $2.8 billion in excess cash, due to higher-than-expected profits from the sale of some of its gold. This week, the IMF Executive Board will discuss what to do with it.

The IMF hardly needs the money, since it already received a $7 billion endowment from gold sales and will bring in $500 million in profits this year from increased lending to countries in crisis. They’re doing so well that they are even planning to refurbish their Washington D.C. headquarters.

While the IMF has extra cash, the World Bank estimates that 44 million people have already been pushed into extreme poverty due to rising food prices. Many of the poorest countries are taking on heavy new debt burdens. Payments on these loans could divert critical resources away from health, education and food for years to come.

Faith Reflection: Scripture teaches us that God is the owner of all creation, including the land that gives us food and yields income for us. In the cycle of jubilee commanded by God, we are taught to support our neighbors in times of difficulty (Leviticus 25). Let us ensure that our leaders implement just economic policies for the least among us.

Please take two actions today:

1) Join thousands around the globe in calling on the IMF to use its extra profits for debt relief to help poor countries in crisis. Sign the petition today, and Jubilee USA staff will deliver your signature at the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC, April 15-17.

2) Urge your faith leaders to sign a letter to President Obama to adopt just economic policies which expand debt cancellation to more poor countries. Low-income countries continue to pay high debt-servicing fees to the wealthiest countries through international financial institutions. For many of these countries, servicing such a debt means that they can't provide social services for their own citizens.

The letter calls for: an extension of debt cancellation, a neutral platform for future decision making around debt, the establishment of responsible standards of lending and borrowing, and the reform of international financial institutions to make them accountable to the people most affected by their decisions. If you are a leader of a religious community, please sign the letter here.

Alert prepared by Ebuka Mefor, MCC international affairs intern. Adapted from alerts prepared by Jubilee USA Network, of which MCC is a member.

Martha

2011-03-25T21:07:00.002-05:00

My sister Martha passed away yesterday after her two year struggle with ovarian cancer. Her death is very sad for us, but a relief for her given her physical condition.

A friend said yesterday, "part of me is smiling knowing she's already planted a garden and painted a masterpiece in heaven" and it reminded me of the page in her sketchbook with a drawing of her dream house in heaven. The house is two thirds studio space and most of the rest is a greenhouse... She has had a very rough past few weeks and knowing that she is in a better place is a comfort. She is already sorely missed, though.

I put together the video posted above a few weeks ago. Editing it created meaningful time for me to remember her and process her dying. She was able to see an unfinished version and was happy with it, which was really cool.

Meanwhile, heading out of Haiti...

2011-03-13T22:20:00.000-05:00

We are not likely to be here for any of the drama looming on Haiti's horizon (not even for election monitoring this round). Ben left for North Carolina on Friday and I have a ticket on hold for Wednesday. Martha is at the end of her earthly life, which we know is a relief for her, but it's a pretty sad time for us and the rest of Ben's family so we'd appreciate whatever prayers, thoughts or energy you're willing to send up for us.

Also heading back to Haiti...

2011-03-12T22:33:00.001-05:00

My last post mentions deportations that will be resuming (again) to Haiti after a temporary review in February. There's been some great press on this issue (and of course, if you agree that current conditions in Haiti are such that deportations should remain suspended, please contact your policymakers to let them know):

The Guardian: Stop these inhumane deportations to Haiti
AP: Deportees from US struggle in quake-hit Haiti
Uptown Radio: Deportations of Haitian Convicts Set to Resume
MCC signed on to this letter as part of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition on Friday.

Also heading back to Haiti... Yesterday the AP reported that Aristide's return was "imminent" (ie. before the second round of the elections, which will be on March 20th) and his lawyer told CNN as much today.

MCC Haiti Opposes Deportations

2011-03-12T22:12:00.002-05:00

Letter sent on March 10, 2011 to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in response to ICE's proposed Policy for Resumed Removals to Haiti.

"Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Haiti believes that no one should be deported to Haiti at this time.

In 2008-2009 MCC Haiti, through our partner organizations, sat on the National Consultation Panel for Deportee Issues, hosted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and funded in part by U.S. government funding. Although no longer active, the panel produced concrete policy recommendations for the re-integration of deportees to Haiti, which the Haitian government has yet to implement. At that time, Haitian deportees were subjected to horrific detention conditions once they arrived in Haiti. Those conditions have only been exacerbated by the January 2010 earthquake and ongoing cholera epidemic.

Haiti does not currently possess the economic capacity to absorb deportees and has no system in place for reintegrating deportees into Haitian society. Until comprehensive immigration reform can take place and Haiti’s economic situation improves, deportation will continue to be a destabilizing factor for Haiti.

In addition, deportations to Haiti violate international human rights standards such as the right to life, the right to family integrity and the right to fair and due process.

Conditions in Haiti are dire; 1 million Haitians remain homeless and living in tents or under tarps in and around Port au Prince. Lack of food, water, and other necessities is an ongoing crisis throughout Haiti. The cholera epidemic has infected more than 231,000 people and claimed approximately 4,500 lives, so far. No one should be deported into these conditions. Cholera is widely present in Haitian police station holding facilities and lack of functioning toilets, crowded conditions and other factors make contracting cholera more likely. These conditions led to the tragic death of Wildrick Guerrier, who was deported by the US on January 20, 2011.

ICE’s characterization of deportees is at odds with the testimonies given by deportees, in the media and elsewhere. Some of the deportees are convicted of minor drug offenses or misdemeanors; others did not even receive jail time in the US. ICE’s claim that it needed to resume deportations because it could no longer legally hold these men and women in detention is also misleading. Most of those currently facing deportation were Haitians who had served their time years ago and were living law abiding lives in their communities as legal residents in the US and who were suddenly and unexpectedly rounded up before the holidays in December.

ICE has rounded up many Haitians who had served their time years ago and were living as legal residents in the US.

Many of those awaiting deportation have family members, including dependent children, who are US citizens in the US. Many deportees lack family or any loved ones in Haiti. Deportees who have spent a significant amount of time in the United States face intense culture shock upon returning to Haiti. They tend to speak little Creole and no French. They also face considerable stigmatization in Haiti, are labeled as criminals and are regularly discriminated against and often violently mistreated by the Haitian National Police.

Until conditions in Haiti are improved and there are sufficient policies and programs in place to assist deportees in reintegrating, it is this organization's opinion that ICE should not continue with plans to resume deportations to Haiti."

You can contact President Obama regarding this issue here.

What's in Your Wallet?

2011-03-09T08:26:00.001-05:00

A Port-au-Prince man shows me the 4 images he carries with him at all times: Images 1 and 3 - Jean Bertrand Aristide; Image 2 - a rooster, symbolic of Fanmi Lavalas; Image 4 - a combo of Jesus Christ and Aristide.

Thinking of Myriam

2011-03-08T08:50:00.000-05:00

My coworker Myriam is 25 weeks pregnant.

Early on Wednesday morning, Myriam's water broke. After an incredibly frustrating morning of trying to get any medical attention whatsoever (even from her own doctor), she was finally told that she had lost her mucus plug, but that her amniotic sac was still intact. Due to fibrous cysts, it's been a high risk pregnancy and since she's a legal resident of California (most of her family is there), Myriam had been planning to travel to the U.S. to deliver. She couldn't wait any longer to travel, though, so Margot accompanied her to Miami on Thursday. Upon arrival, Myriam began having contractions, learned that her water did break and that there was no fluid left in her amniotic sac.

Baby Clarens is still alive and Myriam is currently hospitalized at Jackson Memorial in a specialty clinic for premature births and is intermittently on an IV. Clarens is being given antibiotics to guard against infection as the doctors don't want him coming out any sooner than need be. In the meantime, Myriam's husband Gary (who has already been denied a visa once) is applying for a visa to be able to be with her.

Please join us in praying for Myriam, Gary and Clarens.

Myriam and Gary, May 2010

Time for Two

2011-03-07T21:15:00.002-05:00

As you climb the road into the mountains above Petionville, packed-together houses and bumper-to-bumper traffic slowly gives way to the smell of pine trees, to wild impatiens and nasturtiums, mountain views and of course, stone walls and impenetrable gates guarding the fancy houses behind them.

I'm enjoying a 5-day weekend for Carnival. It was great to spend the day together on Saturday sleeping in, working in our garden, cooking and watching movies, but Ben and I still felt the need to get away (mostly from the eternal time-suck that is our email). We're seriously not used to spending as little time together as our busy schedules here allow. Even though we took a six-day road trip at the end of December, it felt like ages since we had intentional alone time, so Sunday morning we decided to head for the mountains.

We wanted to spend the night here. The first time we went, Ti Kay Kreyol charmed us with its gardens, Haitian art, bright Creole colors, and locally-produced menu. Unable to reach anyone by phone beforehand, we showed up on a holiday weekend to a locked gate. Since we weren't willing to turn around and head for home, we continued on to the Lodge in Furcy. I kid you not, we spent more last night than we have ever spent for a hotel room in our lives (wait for upcoming post on why we don't travel much in Haiti). The price might not seem unreasonable to many of you, but we tend to be more camping-for-free-under-bridges kind of folk.

We've only ever heard amazing things about the Lodge - its lush grounds, nearby hiking trails, great restaurant.... So, we figured we'd splurge a bit. Maybe we're hard to please (in fact, I know we are), but we weren't overly impressed with our overcooked dinner, staff that pretended not to speak Creole and having Jean-Claude Duvalier dining at a nearby table.

We spent the afternoon hiking around, albeit with a small crowd in tow trying to sell us everything from cut flowers to horseback rides. More than anywhere we've been in Haiti, we felt like the fact that we'd parked our motorcycle at the Lodge before we set off marked us as wealthy intruders, part of a social and economic elite that we're uncomfortable being associated with. The reception we received walking through the village, especially when we didn't purchase anything, was markedly hostile.

But - and maybe this is ultimately what made us uncomfortable - we can afford to spend a night at the Lodge. And did. We can afford to eat dinner there, in such close proximity to a former dictator. We went hiking on the steep mountain paths that surround the Lodge for fun, not out of necessity.

And to be fair, we loved getting a chance to go hiking. We loved seeing the stars come out from the Lodge's balcony as it got dark. At 6,000 feet, Furcy is cold and we loved being able to sleep under a heavy quilt. We loved falling asleep to the tinkling of those little frogs that sound like bells. Mostly, we loved having nothing to do but spend time together.

There are no deer in Haiti, which may beg the question, Was this the last one?

Ben's Carnival Picks

2011-03-06T11:52:00.000-05:00

"Carnival is dead. Long live Kanaval."

2011-03-02T17:42:00.000-05:00

For all of its pumping music, beautiful dancing women, advertising, free t-shirts and fantastic paper mache artistry, Jacmel's Kanaval is intrinsically political.

The characters and costume partially betray their roots in medieval European carnival, but the Jacmellian masquerades are also a fusion of clandestine Vodou, ancestral memory, political satire and personal relevation. The lives of the indigenous Taino Indians, the slaves' revolt and more recently state corruption are all played out using drama and costume on Jacmel's streets... [Haitian culture] is a vibrant, living avatar for not only Haitian history, but for all our histories. - Leah Gordon

Smeared from head to toe with a vile concoction of cane syrup and powdered charcoal, they dart at the crowd, snarling like wild, rabid animals... They swing long hemp whips through the air in whistling arcs. Adorned with Beelzebub's horns, these demonic metaphors for the experience of slavery... are the [lanse kòd], the "rope-throwers" - Richard Fleming

These are the chaloska, "thick-lipped snaggletoothed personifications of dictatorship and torture," named after brutal military commander Charles Oscar, whose significance during kanaval changes each year according to popular perception of Haiti's political situation and its central players.

The form these characters will take each year; the emergence of new actors, and the messages they will spread might seem sublteties lost in the apparent chaos of the streets, but the political history of Haiti is always inscribed in its Carnivals... The masked theatre of Jacmel's kanaval is an annual opportunity to discuss the country's latest political skullduggery, its economic woes and environmental catastrophes, and the many military incursions it has suffered. - Fleming

Endyen, or Indians, represent the island's indigenous inhabitants, the Taino, exterminated by Spanish colonists at the beginning of this island's recorded history.

The Zel Mathurin (Wings of Mathurin), are winged devils that act out the battle between good and evil (pictured here with 3 paste, or pastors). They terrify children as caricatures of the demons that fight with the archangel St. Micheal (in blue).

Other revolving characters that make up the cast of Jacmel's kanaval are the lwa (vodou spirits), the ancestors, zombis, Yahweh (a savage beast that lives in the woods and gets whipped as he makes his way through the kanaval parade), trannies (traditionally to mock effeminate French colonial lords), prophets and saints, birds, animals and fantastical creatures of the imagination, traditional dancers, the comedic Jwif Eran (Wandering Jew), the members of a courtroom (judge, jury, prosecutor and defense and accused), the heroes of the Haitian revolution, caricatures and parodies of poverty, illness (this year, cholera), imperialism and current social issues, and last but not least... making their debut in 2011, heads advertising the local driving school:

Death by cholera

"Down with Violence"

According to the artist, these masks juxtapose misery with peace

Foreign imperialism

There have been many times [2010 notwithstanding] that the future of Jacmel's Carnival has appeared unstable, but it continues to struggle and survive.... Carnival is dead, long live Kanaval.

Kanaval is not dead. -Gordon

All italicized quotes in this post are from Leah Gordon's book of photography and oral history, Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti

It's That Time of Year Again

2011-02-25T23:50:00.004-05:00

The U.S. Embassy Port-au-Prince issued the following Warden Message on February 22, 2011:

"The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is issuing this Warden Message to inform that this year’s Carnival celebrations are officially scheduled to take place in Port-au-Prince from March 5 – 8. As part of these celebrations Ra-Ra Bands will be out in the streets, with increased frequency on Sunday afternoons and evenings leading up to Carnival. Bands generally remain non-violent, but band members may crowd around vehicles, blocking them in, banging on windows, cracking bull whips, twirling knives and machetes, and making a lot of noise. It can be a potentially dangerous situation."

Should you get caught in a ra-ra*, "Keep windows rolled up and the doors locked. Put the car in park until the band passes. You will be in the most danger if you attempt to drive through the crowd."
(http://haiti.usembassy.gov/service/us-citizen-services/warden-messages/carnival-season-security.html) This of course assumes that you will be trying to drive through the crowd as opposed to dancing in the street with the crowd.

Indeed, Haiti is full on into Kanaval season, which starts on the second Sunday of January and gains intensity each week until the 3 official Kanaval days culminate on Fat Tuesday. Jacmel's Kanaval celebration - famous for its characterization of Haitian history and culture with elaborate paper mache costumes and street theater (check out our pics from 2009) - is always the weekend before the celebration in Port-au-Prince. That makes it... this weekend. We'll be there, wearing lots of sunscreen and close-toed shoes so that we can dance without getting stepped on. I can't wait!

* Not to be picky, but technically ra-ras are only thus called after Ash Wednesday, when ra-ra season coincides with Lent. Until then, they are simply bandapye (literally, foot bands). Ra-ra music is played on wooden drums, whistles, horns made out of sheet metal (each of which only play a single note) and bamboo flutes. It's a totally distinctive sound with a complex religious, political and social significance.

Where the Bodies Go

2011-02-19T07:24:00.001-05:00

In Haiti, parents sometimes threaten their misbehaved children with abandonment in Titanyen. A place where the dead outnumber the living, Titanyen is a settlement on the outskirts of Port-Au-Prince sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean. Past dictators and presidents including the Duvaliers and Aristide used Titanyen as a dumping ground to disappear the bodies of political dissidents. While those buried Titanyen used to be victims of political violence, today they are victims of economic violence, be it poor construction on unstable hillsides or lack of access to clean water and medical services. Thousands of victims of the January 12th, 2010 earthquake were buried here in mass graves and every day, cholera victims are dumped unceremoniously at the same sites.