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

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:

1. Fòk eleksyon onèt e kredib, òganize chak fwa yon gouvènman fin pran manda li.
2. Fòk nou sispann sistèm gwo pòch sa kraze kès leta = ogmante plis soufrans.
3. Fòk nou kraze sistèm chomaj, chomaj sa ki lage pèp la nan zak malonèt tankou nan fè manifestasyon pou yo ka dechouke.
4. Fòk gen inivèsite ak lise pou jèn yo mwen ka edike.
5. 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:

1.  Elections must be honest and credible, organized every time a government has finished its mandate.
2. We must stop this system of politicians filling their pockets from state coffers; it only leads to more suffering.
3. We must break this system of unemployment. Unemployment leads people to commit dishonest acts, to protest in the streets, to engage in violent dechoukaj.
4. We must have universities and high schools so my young people can be educated.
5. 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

What's in Your Wallet?

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.

"Carnival is dead. Long live Kanaval."

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

Where the Bodies Go

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.

Perspective: How Haiti can rise from the rubble

Antonal Mortimé
January 12, 2011


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Antonal Mortimé is the executive secretary of the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights (POHDH), a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) partner in Haiti since 2005. Advocacy was a primary focus of MCC’s work in Haiti before the earthquake and it continues now as MCC encourages its constituents to speak to the governments of Canada and the U.S. on behalf of basic human rights — food, housing, education and healthcare — for Haitians.

MCC also supports POHDH in its efforts to teach Haitians about the rights afforded them by Haitian law and to monitor national reconstruction plans to make sure they respect international human rights laws. MCC Haiti invited Mortimé to share his perspective about the situation in Haiti one year after the earthquake.

In January 1804 Haiti claimed its independence from French colonizers to become the first black republic in history. For this, we view Haiti as the mother of liberty. Many human rights activists use Haiti as a reference point for the concept of universal rights because the enslaved people of this land defended their rights with courage and determination to live as free human beings.

On Jan. 12, 2011, Haiti faces many difficulties. Haiti has long been known as the poorest country in the Americas, but one year ago, when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, the country was made even more vulnerable.

We have to look at 20 years of history to set the context of Haiti’s vulnerability. The earthquake wasn’t a catastrophe. It is normal for the earth to shake, and so it wasn’t an earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people. The last 20 years of Haitian government policies, which have caused degraded social-economic conditions, are to blame.

In spite of poor governance, the Haitian government has received the backing of the international community, so the failure of the Haitian state is also the failure of the international community. Many international policies, trade agreements and even plans for Haiti’s reconstruction benefit the countries of the Global North more than they benefit Haiti.

Now, a year later, Haitians live in more fragile conditions than ever before. Nevertheless, I believe that change is possible in this country, real change that represents the interests of all of Haiti’s children.
I have hope and a vision that Haiti will rise up from under the rubble, not just the rubble from the earthquake, but the rubble of colonialism, the rubble of neocolonialist policies (the economic and social policies that countries use indirectly to maintain their influence over other countries), and the rubble of poor governance. I have hope that we’ll rise up from the rubble of violated social rights, the rubble of exclusion in all of its forms.

This hope is drawn from the strength and energy with which Haitian men and women claimed our freedom in 1804 and with which we have persevered during this difficult year.

For more than a week before international help arrived, we, Haitian men and women, mobilized on our own to save the lives of family members, neighbors and even strangers trapped under rubble. We had no heavy equipment, but we did this with our bare hands.

We are not passive.

We have endured a year of living in displaced peoples’ camps — during hurricane season and in the midst of a cholera epidemic. And now, in the current political crisis, the right of Haitians to choose their next leader is being threatened.

The right of self-determination of peoples is a fundamental principle of international law. According to this principle,the Haitian people have the right to participate in the democratic process of governance and to influence our political, social and cultural future. We have the right to make decisions that are not imposed on us by Canada, the United States and other countries that make up the international community.

Currently this right is not a reality. Foreign governments and financial institutions are in control of the reconstruction process and are not taking into account the opinions of Haitians. International money promised to Haiti after the earthquake has strings attached so that foreign companies benefit more than the Haitian people. Our country, once again, is being bound to external debt, so that it cannot address the needs of its people.

My vision for Haiti is to see us, as Haitians, govern ourselves. The only way for this hope to become a reality is for the majority of the Haitian population to become principal actors in the struggle for social and economic change. The nongovernmental organizations that work in Haiti, the Haitian government and the international community must empower the people living in tents to become active participants in the decisions affecting their country.

We ask, therefore, that the worldwide declarations of solidarity, of kinship and of sympathy that were expressed for Haiti a year ago be realized. We ask that citizens of other nations put pressure on their governments to work with financial institutions to annul Haiti’s external debt and to revise the international policies that have negative consequences on the Haitian people. And we ask that citizens of other nations put pressure on nongovernmental organizations that they support to make sure they are empowering Haitians to direct their own recovery.

We ask everyone to respect this nation’s sovereignty — a historical symbol of freedom, the mother of liberty. In this way, Haiti will finally be able to rise out of the rubble.

Antonal Mortimé is the executive secretary of the Platform of Haitian Organizations for the Defense of Human Rights.

More than an Earthquake: Conversations with Haitians

This article was written by Adrienne Wiebe, MCC Policy Analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean, after she participated in the advocacy delegation I hosted in August. In it, she does a much better job than I ever have of introducing you to some of the people and organizations that MCC has the privilege of supporting and to the vision of Haiti they are working towards.

“We are working for life against forces of death.” “Planting trees is giving life.” “Change happens as we heal from our slave past, and restore dignity and pride in ourselves.”

More than a month after a visit to Haiti with an MCC Advocacy Delegation in August this year, I can still hear the voices of the people I met.

Haiti has been at the centre of world news because of the devastating earthquake that struck the capital city, Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010, killing 230,000 people, leaving one-million people homeless, and destroying much of the city’s infrastructure and economy. The primary purpose of the trip was to explore the advocacy issues in the aftermath of the earthquake. However, I got a glimpse of a country that is much more than the most recent political or natural disaster that we hear about on the news.

“Beyond the mountains are more mountains” is a well-known Haitian proverb describing a country that is seemingly more mountainous than Switzerland. This lush, tropical island was known as the “Pearl of the Antilles” during the 1700s; the richest French territory in the New World. Sugar and coffee were produced by a brutally efficient economy based on slaves imported from Africa after the indigenous population had been exterminated. Yet by the 1980s, this bountiful land was environmentally ravaged; 98% of the land has been deforested as a result of an impoverished population in need of cooking fuel and land to cultivate for food. Deforestation has caused severe loss of topsoil, declining agricultural productivity, and increased flooding and landslides.

Jean Remy Azor, Reforestation Program Coordinator of a project that MCC has supported since 1983, is working to change this situation, one tree at a time.

“We all have an obligation, especially Christians, to repair the destruction that we have brought about in God’s creation. Birds and animals live on the earth and haven’t damaged it; we humans have done the damage. So in this sense, planting trees is giving life. ” The 22 communities involved in the program Remy coordinates now produce and plant approximately 450,000 years per year. This part of the Artibonite Valley has become a delicious green oasis in contrast to the surrounding barren hills.

Nixon Boumba, an energetic advocacy worker with MCC and a university student, told me about Haiti’s powerful history. His determination to continue to work for change is evident despite the fact that he lost hundreds of classmates in the earthquake as university buildings collapsed, and his family still lives in a makeshift shelter with no running water seven months after the disaster.

Boumba situates Haiti’s current situation within a broader historical context. “The whole history of Haiti is a confrontation with imperialism – Spanish colonialism, French colonialism, slavery, racism, American occupation [1915-1934] and now neo-liberal economic and political systems...The slave rebellion against France and becoming the first black independent country [1804] was of extraordinary significance on the world stage,” says Boumba. He points out that Haiti set the stage for the independence movements of other Latin American countries in the early 1800s and was a critical influence in dismantling slavery in the United States.

More recently, Haiti set a precedent in Latin America as the only country that had the audacity to twice elect a former priest with a liberation theology perspective, President (Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2001). He advocated a "preferential option for the poor" and his government strove to move Haiti from "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty." Aristide was also twice removed violently from office (1994, 2004), a common fate of Latin American leaders who attempt to change the status quo. Despite setbacks, Boumba believes that: “We Haitians [need to] continue working for life against forces of death.”

Haiti has a predominantly Black population, and the dynamics of racism and social class that exist throughout Latin America are intensified here. A social hierarchy continues to exist in Haiti that privileges light skin over dark skin, and foreign over local. For example, Haitian Creole is based on 18th Century French mixed with African and Ameri-Indian languages, Arabic, and Spanish. It is spoken by 90% of Haitians. Yet until about 20 years ago, French was the only official language and was used in the educational system, the media, and the government. French is still viewed widely as the only language of status, though only a small percentage of Haitians speak French fluently.

This social history continues to impact Haiti today, according to Ari Nicolas, Coordinator of MCC partner organization, Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal/Support Local Production, (KPL). Nicolas thinks that Haitians have internalized a sense of inferiority. “Haitians are raised to believe that they are inferior. This is a product of being slaves. For 500 years we have been taught this. Whatever comes from outside is better. For example, our hair is not good because it is black and curly, not blond and straight. There is a lack of self-confidence and pride.” Nicolas works to promote the consumption of local food and goods, as a means of rebuilding a sustainable local economy, but also as a means of “creating a new mentality [and] a new society.”

Walking through a noisy street market with Junya Eugene and Margaret Baron, also staff members of KPL, they explain how Haiti has gone from being basically self-sufficient in food production to dependent on imported food in just twenty years. This is partly because trade liberalization imposed by international financial institutions has made imported (and subsidized) American food cheaper than locally grown food, putting farmers out of business. Two live chickens that will eventually be our lunch dangle upside-down from my fingers as we check out rice prices: locally produced rice costs 1.5 times more than imported American rice.

Haitian lack of self-confidence and pride is part of the problem, according to KPL staff. Imported American rice and other foods are widely viewed as superior to Haitian rice and traditional foods. For example, Haitians say they do not eat corn, but they love eating Corn Flakes. In response, KPL has produced a dramatic series of videos filmed in the market that are regularly aired on national television to demonstrate the importance of purchasing local goods and services (available for viewing on the web).

Haiti has the unenviable distinction of being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. An estimated 80% of Haitians live on less than $2 per day. Health indicators are the poorest in Latin America. Life expectancy is 61 years in Haiti compared to 82 years in Canada and 78 in the USA. Over 12% of children die before the age of 5 years old, compared to less than 2% in Canada and the USA. Adult literacy is 53%, and parents struggle to pay private school fees because of destruction of the public education system due cuts to government spending on service imposed by the international financial institutions in the 1990s.

“The earthquake exacerbated the pre-existing problems of housing, security, and food,” according to Antonal Mortime, Executive Secretary of POHDH (Plat-forme des Organisations Haitiennes des Droits Humains/Platform of Haitian Human Rights Organizations). Haitian activists, like Mortime, have an integrated view of human rights that includes political rights as well as social rights, such as the right to food, education, and housing. For Mortime post-earthquake reconstruction is an opportunity to build a more equitable society. ”Our priority is now to advocate internationally regarding social rights, such as education and food, and to create a base to launch a new Haiti.”

Rosy Auguste and Vilès Alizar, at RNDDH (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains/National Human Rights Defense Network) also emphasized the need for profound change in the reconstruction process. According to Alizar, “The word ‘reconstruction’ for Haitians, is not about rebuilding the National Palace and individual houses, rather it is about building a new Haiti with everything, services, schools, and so on… what would redeem the earthquake would be to construct a new society. The priority now is decentralization and participation.”

Many Haitian civil society organizations stressed the need for decentralization in the reconstruction process because all services tend to be concentrated in Port-au-Prince. Haitians must come to the city for everything: schooling beyond elementary levels, documentation (i.e. land titles, driver’s licences), other government services and jobs. As a result, thousands of people have migrated to the city, though the urban infrastructure cannot support the current population. The earthquake’s impact was all the more devastating because of over-crowding and lack of quality building construction.

“The earthquake not only shook the earth, but also the hearts and minds of people… not only on January 12, but they are still shaking,” says Jean Valéry Vital-Herne, the National Coordinator for Defi Miche/Micah Challenge, another MCC partner organization. “If the church would stand strong for six months, we would have a social earthquake.” Vital-Herne recognizes the challenges for Protestants, Catholics and spiritualists, practitioners of Vodou, to work together. Vodou is a belief system based on a syncretism of the African culture brought by slaves and historic Catholicism. Catholicism has been the official religion of the country since 1860, and Protestant churches have been established in Haiti for about 100 years. Vital-Herne thinks that, “The church is Haiti has been a conformist church… but it needs to be an alternative; be the light of the world, and salt of the earth.” Most importantly for me as a foreigner, Vital-Herne asked that, “the global church stand in solidarity with Haiti and respect the Haitian vision.”

What sticks with me, weeks after my visit, is that for five centuries, Haiti has experienced the destructive impacts of the major global developments: colonialism, racism, environmental exploitation, unequal economic growth, and, most recently, devastating natural disasters exacerbated by poverty. Despite all this, I discovered that there is much more to Haiti than just the latest crisis, and there are many, many Haitians who are working to build a more life-giving society . I hope that we as North Americans listen to what they are telling us, learn from them, and walk with them as they continue to work “for life against the forces of death.”

Perspective: The place of peace in constructing Haiti

by Rebecca Bartel and Alexis Erkert Depp

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – As the world rallies in response to the catastrophic earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, in Haiti, the global Christian family is invited to consider the place of God’s shalom, God’s peace, in the rebuilding of Haitian lives and infrastructure.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is doing just that, as we provide immediate emergency support, but also plan for medium- and long-term efforts.

MCC’s commitment to working toward the holistic well-being of communities and churches around the world stems from God’s vision of peace and dignity for humanity. The prophet Micah describes this as instruction that goes forth from Zion, “the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” that “they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” (Micah 4:4, NRSV)

This vision holds central basic human rights, such as access to food, health care, meaningful employment, security and education.

It also underscores the necessity of justice for the vision to be fulfilled, and the importance of human empowerment.

To understand the strategies needed for Haiti’s construction, it is appropriate to consider the obstacles this country has experienced. Natural disasters are beyond our human control, but the vulnerability of Haiti to their horrific consequences is human-made. There is nothing natural about poverty, hunger and political unrest.

Poverty. Beginning with the exorbitant debt of 150 million francs (the equivalent of $21 billion U.S. today) forced on the population after independence from France in 1804, to more recent structural adjustment policies and conditions on foreign aid, Haiti has been under the heel of external economic policies that exacerbate and systematize poverty.

Until June 2009, Haiti was paying $56 million to $70 million a year to service debts to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Close to 45 percent of that debt was incurred during the U.S.-backed Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986). Until the forgiveness of $1.2 billion of Haiti’s foreign debt by the IMF and the World Bank last year, the government spent $4 per person on health care and $5 per person on education each year, while paying $5 per person in debt service.

Hunger. Until 1985, Haiti was self-sufficient in rice production – a staple in the modern Haitian diet. Under the tutelage of international financing institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, Haiti liberalized its economic policies, opening the door to foreign exports, such as rice.

In 1994 conditions on foreign aid to the country and the reinstatement of ousted President Bertrand Aristide by the U.S. chiseled Haiti’s import tariffs on rice from 35 to 3 percent, the lowest in the region. Because of U.S.-subsidized rice entering the country at half the price of locally produced rice, and because these aid conditions prohibited the Haitian government from subsidizing local production, thousands of rice farmers were put out of business. Many were displaced to urban centers such as Port-au-Prince, where weak infrastructure and the lack of jobs forced millions of people to live in shanty towns and poorly constructed housing.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, now U.N. special envoy to Haiti, publicly apologized on March 10 for championing these policies. Quoted in The New York Times, Clinton said, “It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did; nobody else.”

Dependence on foreign food imports magnifies misery in times of crisis.

Political unrest. Haiti has a history of foreign military intervention. This usurping of national authority has weakened state institutions and civil society.

While the foreign troop presence in Haiti is decreasing from the early days following the earthquake, there is still confusion about its mandate. MCC’s Haitian partners say they want military personnel to refrain from carrying assault rifles in public, and for Canadian and U.S. troops to clearly articulate their mission within the framework of the United Nations Mission in Haiti.

Principles that guide MCC response. God’s vision of shalom, for the people of Haiti to sit unafraid “under their own vines and under their own fig trees,” calls the Christian family to consider the long-term investment that must be made for Haiti to rise out of the crisis it faced even before the earthquake of Jan. 12. In response to this call, MCC has developed internal principles to guide its part in the work.

These include emphasis on local and sustainable development, Haitian-led decision making about development and investment priorities, demilitarization of aid efforts, and immigration policy that respects the Haitian Diaspora and dignifies the migration process.

It calls us to respond immediately, but also to consider how our governments and institutions make policy decisions that victimize the world’s marginalized people.
It calls us to witness to policymakers, faithfully sharing God’s vision for justice, peace and dignity for all people, and encouraging policy decisions that bring life, not death, to our brothers and sisters around the world.

As relief efforts continue, more opportunities will arise to work for human dignity in Haiti. We cannot control the movements of the earth, but we can control how our voice is heard in government.

The Haitian people call us to share our prophetic voice, as does Isaiah 62:1:

“For Zion’s sake, I will not be silent.” “Jan m' renmen mòn Siyon sa a! Se pou m' pale.”

--

See http://ottawa.mcc.org/haiti or http://washington.mcc.org/haiti/ for more information about the advocacy principles that undergird MCC’s response to the Haiti earthquake.

Rebecca Bartel is MCC policy analyst for Latin America and the Caribbean. Alexis Erkert Depp is MCC policy analyst for Haiti.

Debt and Haiti

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” –Matthew 6:12

“It must be right that a nation buried in rubble must not also be buried in debt.” - Gordon Brown, UK prime minister

BACKGROUND

Haiti, once known as the Pearl of the Antilles, has long been one of many nations bound by enormous debts owed to other countries or international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Debt winds its way through the nation's history. A former French colony, Haiti was founded in 1804 after a slave rebellion. After gaining its freedom, it was ordered to pay France 150 million gold francs (the equivalent of $21 billion) as retribution for the destruction of colonial plantations. Haiti did not finish paying off this debt until 1947.

As of last year, nearly half of the country's $1.4 billion debt was accrued from 1957 to 1986 under the Duvalier family dictatorships. These funds were used to finance the Duvaliers' lavish lifestyle and support their brutal, 29-year rule. Yet the Haitian people continued to pay interest on those loans — money that could have been spent on health care or education in a country that only spends approximately $5 per capita on education.

In June 2009, the World Bank, IMF and countries including the UK and Canada forgave $1.2 billion of Haiti’s external debt. This action was celebrated by Haitians and human rights organizations worldwide.

TODAY

• January 11th: Haiti’s outstanding debt still totals $890 million.(1) This breaks down to approximately $100 per Haitian citizen.
• January 12th: Haiti is hit by a devastating earthquake that displaces some 500,000 people and affects an estimated total of almost 4 million people.
• January 14th: the IMF gives Haiti a $100m loan for emergency assistance. The IMF has since pledged to turn this loan into a grant.
• February 5th: US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner indicates that the US will seek to “reach an agreement” for the funds Haiti owes to the multilateral donors, which include the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the International Development Association.(2)
• February 7th: the rest of the countries of the G7 group - Canada, the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – pledge to forgive the debt owed to them by Haiti.

Jubilee South, of which many Haitian human rights and faith-based organizations are members, released the following statement after the January 12th earthquake:

“We call on governments and international organizations to immediately and unconditionally cancel the external debt claimed of Haiti, the servicing of which affects millions of lives. We also demand that the resources allocated for relief and reconstruction do not create new debt, or conditionalities that are imposed or any other form of external imposition which vitiates this goal... We also reject the intervention of private multinational companies who seek to take advantage of this tragedy to reap multibillion dollar profits in the reconstruction of Haiti… or to exploit cheap labor and continue to plunder the country’s natural resources.”

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

• Commend your government for their decision to cancel Haiti's external debt and request that they follow through by encouraging the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the International Development Association to do the same.This will allow Haiti to stop paying interest on odious debts and free much-needed resources for the country to rebuild itself in the aftermath of the January 12th earthquake.
• Call on your government to honor its commitment to provide any further assistance to Haiti in the form of grants, not loans.
  

HOW?

• Pray for wisdom in the halls of power as policy-makers determine how to continue responding to Haiti’s needs for financial assistance.
• Send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
• Find out at at www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml who your elected government officials are. Write them a letter, email or postcard to share your views.
• Contribute to and join organizations that support debt cancellation for Haiti.
• Use this information sheet to explain the situation to family, friends or your church community and encourage them to use their voices to get Haiti’s debt canceled.
  

RESOURCES FOR FURTHER ACTION

Jubilee USA Network : www.jubileeusa.org/haiti
“Joining hands to break the chains of debt”

Jubilee South Network : www.jubileesouth.org
“Shifting the balance of power to achieve basic social changes in our countries and in the global system”

Oxfam International : www.oxfam.org
“Act now: Now more than ever, Haiti needs to have its debt canceled”


For more information, contact alexiserkert@haiti.mcc.org.


(1). Wynn, Rebecca. “Cancel Haiti’s Debt and Ensure Poor Areas Don’t Miss out on Reconstruction.” Oxfam International. http://e-activist.com/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=142&ea.campaign.id=5499

(2). “G7 Nations Pledge Debt Relief for Haiti.” BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8502567.stm. February 7, 2010.

Amy Wilentz does it again

If you've read The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier (highly recommended if you haven't...) or any of Amy Willentz's features and articles on Haiti, you'll agree that her perspective is pretty well spot-on.

This article, The Haiti Haters, was published in The Nation on 21 January and is one of the best things I've read since the earthquake. Go Amy.

Oppression

you prey on us when we sleep
you chase after the tired, the poor, the weak
you know you mean only harm
you reach out with your long arm
but oppression
I won't let you near me...

oppression
you may have the dollar on your side
from the gospel truth you cannot hide
and oppression
I won't let you near me, oh no no
you shall learn to fear me, yes you will -Ben Harper

When we were home in August a number of people asked us about the spiritual oppression in Haiti, about vodou. Before we moved here we heard Christians say you can cross the border from the Dominican Republic into Haiti and literally feel the spiritual oppressiveness of this place. Not too long ago, I overheard a missionary telling a group of highschool students on a mission trip that the country of Haiti has actually been consecrated to Satan. This perception of Haiti, especially by people who live here, makes me really uncomfortable. I grew up in Africa and very much believe in the presence of spirits (or whatever you want to call the forces of good and evil). And while I believe that Haiti IS oppressed, I think that we too easily confuse spiritual and economic oppression. To say that the situation in Haiti is a result of some relationship that the country has with Satan (when by the way, virtually every Haitian I know considers themselves to be a Christian) lets us ignore the role that we play in keeping Haitians economically oppressed.

In the context of this discussion it’s also interesting to look a little bit at Haiti’s history. The Haitian revolution took place in 1804, a time when the development and wealth of the United States and Europe was very much dependent on slave labor. The Haitian revolution provided hope for slaves throughout the Americas, which in turn scared the poo out of plantation owners and slave masters. Because it was (and is still) rumored that the revolution was sparked by a vodou ceremony, many argue that those trying to suppress slave uprisings in the States intentionally used the word “voodoo” as a pejorative word associated with worshiping the devil and other derogatory images. In his essay, “Haiti’s Impact on the United States,” Greg Dunkel writes: “The historical context of [the word voodoo’s] introduction into US society was the uprising that began in the French colony of St. Domingue… The US, which was in large part a slavocracy, was completely shocked that the enslaved Africans of Haiti could organize themselves, rise up, smash the old order, kill their masters, and set up a new state that was able to maintain its independence. This rebellion was such a threat to the existence of the slavocracy if its example spread, and so inconceivable in a politccal framework totally saturated with racism and the denigration of people whose ancestors came from Africa, that the only explanation that they could see for enslaved people participating in it was that they were ‘deluded.’”

A Haitian activist friend of ours (a Christian) believes that vodou is a cultural tradition that stems from exclusion. Because slaves and after them, the poor majority, were excluded from church because they didn’t speak French and from access to social services because they didn’t have money, the combination of their traditional understanding of herbal medicine and African cultural backgrounds became vodou. He argues that vodou was above all a way for the majority to valorize themselves as people.

Regardless of whether or not there’s any truth to his theory, it’s actually amazing to me that so many Haitians have been able to embrace the God of their ancestor’s colonial masters. My experience here is that Haitians believe more openly and more fully than we do. We wake up every morning (or did before we moved) to the sound of hundreds of people participating in a 4 AM prayer service (whereas my own faith is admittedly not activated until about 7 AM); and knowledge that God is in control seems to underlie almost everything about Haitian culture.

I am not making the claim that vodou is never used as an oppressive force or used to exploit people. I do, however, believe that it’s no more spiritually oppressive than the worship of materialism. Before we judge the syncretism in other cultures, I think we need to look hard at the syncretism in our own. To be honest, I feel more spiritually uncomfortable in a shopping mall in North Carolina than I do when I hear vodou drums beating in the night or see a clay pot tied to a tree. I know that I’m not exempt from any kind of idolatry and I believe it’s important for me to think about the ways in which my lifestyle, built on centuries-old systems of colonialism and neocolonialism, might be an agent of oppression in other parts of the globe (and in the United States, too).

Love and Haiti

by Amy Willentz

This is a love song. It's a Haitian love song, played on three drums and an electric slide guitar that never sounds quite on key. No question, you can dance to it.

I'm writing this song not just for me but on behalf of the thousands who have come to Haiti over the centuries and been touched by it, moved by it, even changed forever: the writer Zora Neale Hurston and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was the first U.S. ambassador to Haiti. The actors John Gielgud, John Barrymore, Richard Burton, and, more recently, Danny Glover, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie. I'm writing for rock stars Mick Jagger and David Byrne and for rapper Wyclef Jean (who's actually Haitian-American, and who introduced some of the aforementioned to his homeland), and for the great anthropologist, physician, and author Paul Farmer.

I'm also writing this love song for Maya Deren and Katherine Dunham, both of whom documented traditional Haitian dance and were bitten by the Haiti bug. This song goes out, too, to director Jonathan Demme, whose son was named after a Haitian shantytown, whose walls are covered with Haitian art, and whose films always have a Haitian touch. In this eclectic group are other writers, also: William Styron, Lillian Hellman, and Haiti's greatest foreign fictionalizer, Graham Greene.

Let's not forget eternally optimistic Congressman Dick Durbin, longtime lover of Haiti, or Bill Clinton (the third U.S. president ever to visit—and now the UN's special envoy to the country), or Jimmy Carter, who came to monitor elections, or possibly the grandest of foreign dignitaries who fell for Haiti, Franklin Roosevelt, who drafted one of the country's many constitutions (that's how we conducted foreign policy back then) and was the first U.S. president to visit—in 1934. Hats off, too, to the late pontiff Jen-Pol Dè, as we write his name in Creole; he came to Haiti during the time of the dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and said that things had to change.

Not to be too arrogant, but I am also writing this song on behalf of Christopher Columbus.

Haiti is not a place you just visit, as Columbus would surely have told you (he shipwrecked there in 1492). It's not a stream into which you just dip a toe. Here, you dive in headlong. It drives you crazy—with love, with anxiety, with desire. You fall into its arms as if it's been waiting forever to receive you.

It hasn't. And as with any great unrequited love, Haiti's indifference only makes you crazier for the place.

Haiti is the Cleopatra of countries, a destination unparalleled on so many levels. It has eccentric history and a tri-continental culture. Its syncretic art is singular and explosive, tender and transcendent. In Haiti, even a pile of garlic for sale, a row of plastic bowls from Taiwan, a display of brassieres (locally manufactured), black bags of charcoal standing at drunken angles cheek by jowl, can be a delicate, devilish masterpiece. There is an ethos of making do with what you have that leads to an ability to make much out of little, to make magisterial statements out of the least materials: With two or three beans, a chicken feather, an old rag of worn-out satin, and a hollowed-out gourd, a voodoo priest can make a whimsical charm that wards off evil.

For sheer unspoiled physical beauty, no place can beat Haiti—from white cliffs that rival Dover's to untouched islets, from the fertile Artibonite Valley to cresting emerald mountains like brawny-shouldered Herculean brothers one after another, and from long white beaches to blue pools set improbably in a crackling-dry forest. To say nothing of its handy location: The Pearl of the Antilles, as travel agents called Haiti in its tourist heyday back in the 1940s, is just a dropkick off the coast of Florida. Yes, of course there is deforestation, and desertification, and all sorts of problems, both ecological and man-made and often both. But if you travel to the magical, transforming heights of the piney forests of the mountain above Port-au-Prince—the capital city that's speckled with slums and racked by occasional unrest&madsh; even it looks like a sparkling fairyland.

Which it's not. Downtown is like this: You can't tell what's old or new because everything is crumbling, and—as in other developing nations—new two- or three-story buildings sometimes get only halfway constructed before the workers leave because the builders ran out of money. Low buildings often have hopeful rebar sticking out toward the sky like exposed bone. Overnight, it seems, entire new slums receive people moving into town from the countryside. Here's one climbing up a crevasse like a Cubist canvas being painted before your very eyes. Like guardian angels, two inflatable Santas stand in a broken corner of a new wall—for sale, of course—and look out impassively at the standstill traffic.

On another corner, two African officers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (known as minustah) stand a different kind of watch. It is minustah's job to keep the peace, although Haitians complain that the UN officers have come down selectively on certain political elements. The two officers peer inside cars as the traffic inches by. Formed in 2004, after the rough ouster of the democratically elected but controversial president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, ­minustah has been begrudgingly tolerated by some as a bulwark against crime. minustah soldiers can also be seen tootling around Port-au-Prince in pickup trucks—two guys in the bed pointing a very serious piece of artillery out at the Haitian population. This, as many have noted, makes it hard to distinguish whether you're being threatened or protected. In Haiti, this kind of ambiguity is pervasive.

The best-kept and most beautiful wall, gate, and garden belong to Haiti-Securité Assurances, a company that provides vehicles, drivers, and armed bodyguards for visitors and locals, from dignitaries to just plain Haitians who come back for vacation. Not everyone hires protection: I did not—I hired a driver who knows the place well and left it at that. Wyclef does use security, of course. Clinton does. Ban Ki-moon does. For a normal trip to Haiti, Wyclef hired 120 security people.

Pétionville, just a few thousand feet above the bewilderment of downtown, is a traveler's dream in many ways. Although this wealthy suburb seems cut from another cloth, it retains enough that's authentic to keep it interesting. Here's where the fancy restaurants are and the good boutiques. The dazzling art galleries are strung out in the blocks around the central intersection, Place Boyer, named after the president who signed Haiti into debt for a century. There are electronics stores, big supermarkets, and small specialty shops, as well as crafts stores like Gingerbread and Men Nou, which do business with Haitian artists who create the most beautiful things, among them radiant sequined voodoo flags big enough to fill a wall, featuring the gods of marriage, the seas, agriculture, love, and the cemetery, and detailed like a Hieronymous ­Bosch, as well as baroque found-object sculptures from a school of Dickensian sculptors—both grown-ups and children—who live and work in crowded conditions down on Grande-Rue, next to the old market and the slums.

One day I go to lunch at La Coquille, in Pétionville, with Jean Cyril Pressoir, who runs Tour Haiti, a small company he founded in 2004. La Coquille is so Haitian that it's almost too much. As Cyril says with a shrug, "It's very typical." The chairs are wooden and painted blue. On the tables are bright cloths, the walls are pink and blue, the windows framed with shutters. Lunch, served buffet style, might be riz nationale, which is rice cooked with red beans, tchaka soup (with corn, beans, and pork or oxtail), poulet kréyol, poisson gros sel (fish with onions, herbs, and salt), griot (super-fried marinated pork bits), and many other traditional dishes. The crowd is plump, local, prosperous. The hot spices make you a little warm, but a nice breeze is wafting in, and Prestige beer is flowing. It's all trés Caribbean.

Cyril is running tours around Haiti. He's setting up his own fleet of tap-taps, the colorful Haitian buses, and has hired local artists to decorate the vehicles. He wants everything very real. On one tour, he'll take you and your group in his tap-taps down to the southern town of Aquin. You'll stay at a small hotel ("Clean and basic," he says, "not fancy") and eat marinated oysters, then go down to the town square to a place where you can drink and dance. The next day, the tour will take you to Morisot Beach, and you'll go island-hopping by boat.

"We do a major stop at a deserted beach," Cyril says. "We bring a cooler and water, and we have a totally local lunch on a fishermen's cay, with plantains and boiled or grilled fish or lobster. Then we go to a bird-watching cay. At the end of the day, we look back from a high point down onto the cays we've visited." He takes people to nightclubs in the provinces and to play cards and dominoes, and then to a cemetery to see a voodoo ceremony, or to a cockfight or a bassin, one of the inland pools that dot the island. "Then we walk back to a creek and have a picnic under the mango trees." He sounds as if he's fantasizing, but it's all real.

I find myself longing for a trip like this—all pleasure, sand, and sun. The problem is that the hard life of Haitians interferes with my enjoyment of the country's beauty. When I'm having a dish of poulet kréyol in Jacmel, or a big bowl of tchaka with Cyril, I can't help but be disturbed by the idea of all the Haitians who are not having this meal. Who are not having a meal. Who maybe haven't had a meal in twelve hours.

But as Cyril points out, one of the fastest ways to create jobs and help people in Haiti is to spur tourism, especially the non-exploitative, socially friendly tourism that Tour Haiti envisions.

There's a stop on a Royal Caribbean cruise that's called simply Labadee®. The real name of the place is Labadie, a fishing village on the northeast coast of Haiti, but the cruise line has registered the name in the Anglicized form. Although Royal Caribbean now acknowledges that Labadee® is actually in Haiti, when they describe it in their literature and on the cruise, they say only that it is on Hispaniola, the cartographic name Columbus gave to the island that includes both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At Labadee®, everyone gets off the ship and spreads out over a gorgeous white beach. Royal Caribbean even offers a drink called the Labaduzee. Many cruisers never realize they are in Haiti.

Haiti, the birthplace of black power, is unique in the Caribbean. In 1791, Haitian slaves, led by Toussaint l'Ouverture, rose up on sugar plantations throughout Haiti against Napoleon and their French masters. After a protracted and bloody war, the former slaves declared independence from France in 1804—a year after Toussaint died, cold and alone, in a French prison in the Jura Mountains. The French withdrew. Just a year earlier, this by now more than a decade old military engagement, so costly and distant, had forced Napoleon to sell the enormous Louisiana Territory to the youthful United States. With one elaborate stroke of the imperial quill, the First Consul turned the United States, a former British principality, into a continental and world power. In a very real sense, America owes its greatness to a courageous band of eighteenth-century rebel slaves.

As for Haiti, it fell into poverty and remained economically isolated. France did not recognize its independence until 1825, compelling Haiti to pay 150 million francs (about $25 billion in current U.S. dollars) for damages incurred during the revolution. This agreement to pay reparations, signed by President Jean-Pierre Boyer, contributed to Haiti's impoverishment well into the twentieth century. It is argued that the already strained Haitian economy never overcame the crushing weight of that debt.

Because of its revolution, and consequent pariah status among the white nations of the world, Haiti has remained largely undiscovered, known only to a few elite outsiders (artists, dancers, writers, anthropologists, journalists, businessmen, free spirits, diplomats, development workers, missionaries, and adventurers) willing and even eager to brave the country's centuries-old reputation to find out what lies beneath.

"I mean, Haiti has culture, it has music, it has white sand beaches that have barely been touched," Wyclef Jean says. "But nobody knows this yet." Jean is at Platinum Studios in New York, eating his dinner and chatting on the phone. But as ever, he's thinking about Haiti. He knows about its poverty because he grew up in a village outside Port-au-Prince, but he also knows Haiti as a playland because when he goes down to visit—he does concerts where tens of thousands come out of the shantytowns to listen to his music—he takes time off to fly out to the spectacular islets scattered around the coast like sparkling little satellites: Île à Vache, La Tortue, and even, he points out, the larger La Gonâve, which is very poor and very beautiful.

"The future for Haiti, for tourism there, is very bright," he says. "Once it's discovered."

He laughs.

One day, early, I set out for Ranch Le Montcel, a new hotel described as a vacation horse ranch—a new concept in Haiti—located on the mountain that crouches over the capital like a vigilant guard, wearing a hood of clouds and fog in almost all seasons. Farm people from the interior are finishing their long march from on high to the markets of Pétionville. As I ascend in my giant, noisy, white four-by-four, they descend on foot in silence as if headed for a funeral. One woman, a tall person with a somber regard and a woven basket on her head, wears a T-shirt that reads, EASILY DISTRACTED. T-shirts almost always provide unintended commentary here, where cast-off clothing from the United States is sold by the pound and many of the people who buy it are illiterate.

The Baptist Mission in the town of Fermathe, farther up the hill, where there are bunches of very white visitors on religious mission, is a pleasant place to get a snack and use a rare bathroom. With a jar of mamba (Haitian peanut butter—I like the one with hot pepper mixed in) in my bag, and a cup of strong Haitian coffee in my bloodstream, I proceed up to Fort Jacques, sister of the more legendary Citadelle La Ferrière, which is up near Labadie. These mountain fortresses, scattered around the country in various states of renovation and disrepair, show how frightened Haitians were about a return to foreign control and enslavement. The walls, made of fitted masonry, are several feet thick and come complete with secret passageways, soldiers' barracks, cooling water systems, and of course dungeons. Fort Jacques looks down over Port-au-Prince, its twelve cannons aimed at Haiti's greatest harbor and the surrounding countryside. But for more than a century after the revolution, no foreign power came by sea to retake Haiti.

Out again on the winding dirt road on the way to Le Montcel, I feel—even in my bulky four-by-four—as if I'm climbing stairs rather than riding on tires. I pass the Glory to God depot and the Red Pelican Bazar, a general store housed in a cast-off freight container with a door cut out of the side. Around and ahead of me are trees, ghostly in the cloud cover, and down below is sunshine. As in a Haitian painting by the master Préfète Dufaut, people in bright clothing dot the roadside nearby and far off, walking single file. The fog opens for a moment—on terraced hillsides, coffee plantings, and a tiny village with more people walkin—and then closes again. I put on my sweater. A boy with a bag of rice on his head wears a T-shirt that says, LET'S PUT ALZHEIMER'S BEHIND US. Down the road hurtles a red-and-green tap-tap; its name is To Be or Not to Be. On the back, as it fades into the fog, I see written the words, as on so many of these chipper, death-defying jitneys, MESI JEZI ("Thank You, Jesus").

When I arrive at Le Montcel, it's closed. It is Thursday, and Le Montcel is more a weekend place for Haitians than a resort for weeklong vacationers from abroad, but that should change. After declining for the past twenty years, tourism in Haiti is on the upswing. The World Travel & Tourism Council predicts that over the next decade, tourism will grow from its current 6.9 percent share of GDP to 7.1 percent. That's not such a big leap, obviously, but an upward trend is, in Haitian terms, a remarkable thing, and cause for moderate optimism.

Le Montcel is unbelievable, unthinkable. It looks like an Adirondack resort: Amid lush greenery are tennis courts and lovely, simple wooden cabins with long balconies. Le Montcel has its own reservoir, stables, and a great house built of stone with a peaked red tin roof, ivy-covered walls, dormers with paned windows. There's also a game room and a soccer field as well as Ping-Pong tables, wine caves, big fireplaces, conference rooms. It's unlike anything you can find at sea level, in the heat and sun of the tropics.

"Either you hate Haiti from the first time you come, or you love it," Christophe Lang says. He's thirty, and he and his family have run Cyvadier Plage, a hotel on the outskirts of the beachside town of Jacmel, for at least fifteen years. "If you love Haiti," he says, "you can't get it out of your skin."

We're sitting on the terrace of Cyvadier's restaurant, watching the sun set over the Caribbean. A TV is on over the bar. Some inane Haitian show is on; the television hostess is wearing red sequins. I ask Lang what kind of people come to Haiti.

"Oh," he says, "people who used to go to the D.R. and are sick of it. Germans, Englishmen. Beyond your nice hotel room, Haiti is a strong experience. Possibly it's not quite ready for average tourism. The culture shock can be hard on people." Lang is a real son of Haitian tourism. His father was a German who led charter tours to Jacmel from the Dominican Republic and the United States in the 1970s, and his mother was the head waitress in a popular restaurant called The Pub. He grew up near Frankfurt and studied cooking in Hamburg.

The beach at Cyvadier is in a little cove at the foot of a set of stone stairs. At sunset, the water is pink and gray. A woman has parked herself here and laid out jewelry across a bit of old stone: Now the beach is a shop! The rocks that surround the cove are tattooed with bad Haitian art for sale—pictures of fat peasants (of which there are virtually none in Haiti), pictures of wild animals (ditto) in abundant jungles (ditto): Now the beach is an art gallery!

On the sand nearby sits a small blue-and-red fishing boat called Victwa Malerèz ("Victory of the Poor"). A silent fisherman sits on the gunwale, wearing the bleached-out gray T-shirt and gray shorts of poverty, with a fishing net slung over his shoulder and a machete in his hand, the tip of the knife touching the sand. From under the brim of his gray baseball cap, he watches the fiery sunset.

It's a trademark of Haitian tourism that you are never far from the Haitian people, whether they are sad and quiet, like this fisherman, or squawking and riotous, like a gaggle of market ladies, or simple and dignified, like the pedestrians up near Le Montcel. You're on a beautiful beach near Cap-Haïtien, say, stretching out, recovering from the potholed trip north, imagining yourself to be on just any old beach in touristland, when out of the trees wanders a bunch of stick-thin kids to surround you and comment on your bikini while asking for a buck or two.

"Haiti has been a problematic destination since 1791," says Tourism Minister Patrick Delatour, referring to the revolution. "You know: 500,000 Negroes running naked in the woods and claiming to be free." He cackles. "Oh, man, how could they? And speaking French!" He's sitting in his office on Port-au-Prince's main governmental square, at a round table strewn with tourism brochures, maps, and blueprints; the tourist magazine Logo Plus (motto: "un concept, une aventure, une découverte"); and documents of all kinds. Outside, in the park below, is the statue of the Unknown Rebel Slave (like the Unknown Soldier in the Western world), who is blowing on a conch shell to summon his comrades to revolution. There is nothing wild or revolutionary about Minister Delatour, however. He is affable, businesslike, a tall, athletic man in a suit.

In the late 1990s, Delatour tells me, he developed a master plan for tourism in Haiti. (He's been minister of tourism before, and is an architect by trade.) He likens the Haitian situation after the ouster of Aristide to that of Jamaica after another popular leftist president, Michael Manley, lost power.

"After Manley, no one came to Jamaica anymore," Delatour says. "So the travel business there began to develop local destinations, and when those became somewhat known, they attracted an international clientele. And then it got bigger and better known, and then they could say: 'Come back to Jamaica!'" This, he says, was how the Jamaicans began to cultivate well-known spots like Negril—places far from Kingston, Jamaica's famously tough and fractious capital. First bring in local traffic and islanders living abroad, and then, voilà!

"This is what we want to do," he says. After the locals, Delatour hopes to attract Haitians living abroad, of whom there are about four million, and add to that what Delatour calls "ethnic tourism," the larger African diaspora. But with each of these steps, Delatour acknowledges, tourism infrastructure, attractions, and accommodations must also advance several notches.

Right now, Delatour is working with Royal Caribbean on a project in the north that is to include dredging a harbor and building a port and new roads—one of them a highway to be made in part from locally available shells, another example of Haitians making do with what they have. By December of this year, Royal Caribbean will be bringing in some six thousand visitors at a time on the Oasis of the Seas, which Delatour describes as "the biggest boat ever built as a cruise ship." That's more than twice as many as currently come into Labadee®. The Haitian government is investing fifty million dollars to ready a port at Baie d'Acul, near Cap-Haïtien, to receive the larger vessel. Royal Caribbean is lending half the money to Haiti, and the government intends to pay it back with revenue from tourism taxes. This way, Delatour says, Royal Caribbean gets paid, Haiti gets tourists, and the Haitian people get jobs and money and development.

The new ship will mean a different kind of tourism for Royal Caribbean and for Haiti. "Labadee® is basically a beach concept," Delatour says, "and a beach concept cannot receive six thousand people at a time and reasonably expect to make them happy. We have to diversify the tourist product. . . . We want to make it possible for people to visit the Citadelle, Sans Souci, and Cap-Haïtien, the second-largest French-designed city in the Americas, with the biggest collection of gingerbread houses. . . .

"Sure," he concedes, "Cap-Haïtien is something of a wreck. It could use some paint. But on the other hand, you can sell 'wreck' as a tourist product," Delatour says, ever honest, ever the optimist. "How many people in Sweden have ever seen a city in wreck?"

This may be a kind of "poorism," but Haitians will always make do with what they have, always make the most of what's available.

Wyclef, au contraire, is having none of it. He is not selling "wreck."

"Sure there's poverty in Haiti," he says, "in Port-au-Prince. But the best white sand beaches in the Caribbean are in Haiti. When people see them, they think they're on another island—but they're in Haiti. This is where Wyclef Jean comes in, who's proud of being Haitian." Wyclef has plans to involve himself directly in Haitian tourism. His investment company, the Jean Group, is developing business models for tourism in Haiti.

"We want to build a great resort in Haiti," he says. "The country needs good branding. It needs to be branded with its culture, its art, its music, and its history." Haiti has waterfalls that are reputed to cure all maladies, he points out. It has beaches from which the buccaneers set sail in the 1600s.

"What could sell better than that?" Wyclef asks. "The original pirates of the Caribbean. . . ."

It's true that Haiti's beaches are very attractive. And Wyclef's emphasis on art and music is not surprising to anyone who's looked at the patterns of Haitian tourism. Every time Haiti has experienced a tourism uptick, it has been art, music, and traditional culture that have led the way—those attributes of the country, plus a moment of political stability. Thus, from the 1930s through the 1950s, when the economy was expanding, Haiti began to fascinate the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, and dealers and collectors began to purchase its naive art. Then the dictator François Duvalier came to power, and many of these successes fell apart. When Duvalier died in the early 1970s, people began to come to Haiti again, even though he left the country's rule to his son, Jean-Claude, another dictator but with a less bloody reputation.

Today, Delatour and others are clearly counting on another period of stability to warm the tender shoots of tourism that are showing in Haiti's rocky soil. Perhaps now, with Obama in the White House and Clinton as the UN's special envoy (an entirely new post), the American relationship with Haiti will be less toxic and good things may come of it, as opposed to the usual inebriating but poisonous brew of political repression, rebound revolt, and unrest in the streets. Certainly things have been relatively calm since Aristide was shoved out, but no one is sure whether it's an artificial calm created by minustah's presence or something more enduring.

Celebrities with deep pockets and big ambitions may be of some use in a country like Haiti at a moment such as this. A group headed by Wyclef, for example, is doing relief work in Gonaïves. The project should give about five hundred Haitians food in exchange for work removing mud from the hurricane-plagued town. With the mud, Wyclef's people plan to construct a huge concrete concert platform outside Gonaïves, where Wyclef, among others, can perform, and which would also, it is hoped, serve as higher ground during storms.

Minustah is playing volleyball on the beach. The peacekeepers like to party. It's sunset at Club Indigo, on the sandy western shores, just off the road between Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves. Formerly the Club Med in Haiti, the hotel is now privately owned by Haitians. It's a little down-at-heels, but the open-air construction, spacious walkways, and huge pool make it seem luxurious. So much space for so few people!

After an early dinner, I'm perched on a low wall between the pool and the beach. The beach is wide and pink in the setting sun. It sends up little sparkles; I can almost confuse it with the shimmering stretch of pale water that separates the mainland from the dark hills of La Gonâve, the island looming like a brooding behemoth between me and the horizon. There could be a famine unfolding on La Gonàve right now—there have been in the past—and I would never know it, sitting here. As usual, I can't keep the rest of Haiti off my mind in these situations. Relaxing on the beach, I think of disaster. I recall that Wyclef always mentions this big island when he talks about locations for future resorts. To my right, a man and a woman have pulled their beach chairs close together. They are drinking tall drinks and whispering, their heads bent toward each other as if contemplating conspiracy. She's in a bikini. He's smoking a cigarette.

The game unfolds enthusiastically before me in a mix of languages—English, French, Nepalese. . . . The volleyball players are wearing bathing suits and T-shirts and seem as clean-cut and cheerful as a bunch of surfside Californians. "Okay!" I hear one shout. The sun is sinking behind La Gonâve. A man approaches to sell me some cheap homemade jewelry dangling from his hand—a conch necklace, something made of coffee beans—but I wave him away with a shake of my head and a non, non motion with the right index finger that, I've learned from French friends, is very effective. It works!

I find myself wishing, suddenly, achingly, for a Labaduzee, whatever that may be.

A lesson from KPL

I hope our blog coverage of KPL isn't getting old. Their work is just so relevant to Haiti's economic situation (and I'll be working fairly closely with them in my new job). I wanted to share this article, written through a participant on an MCC Haiti learning tour on food security that took place in March. This article does an excellent job of connecting the work that KPL does here with the local food movements in the US and Canada and the global impact of our daily choices, while also acknowledging how much we can learn from countries like Haiti.

Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal is connecting all of the dots in Haiti
A commentary on behalf of the National Farmers Union Ontario
By Grant Robertson

There are a growing number of people in Canada that recognize the importance of local food – and that’s a good thing. However, sometimes those, including farmers, who support local food production often do not connect the dots to the wider economy. They support the buying of local food but then do not give any thought to the wider costs to themselves of buying clothing, for instance, made in some sweatshop half a world away.

Haiti is one of the most impoverished places on this planet. Haitians have endured several centuries of domination and exploitation by one nation or another – with its giant neighbour to the north, the USA only being the most recent. Haiti’s once lush forests now only represent some 2% of original. This loss of tree coverage has contributed to desertification destroying fertile farm land contributing to deadly mudslides in the aftermath of being hit by a number of hurricanes and tropical storms. In 2008 there was civil unrest caused by the high price of food (most of it imported).

You might think that Haitians have little to teach us about food production or economic recovery. And to be honest, I was probably in that camp until I was given the chance to see a documentary about Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal. This Buy Local Haiti organization has recognized that Haitians are best served as a people by buying the products of their nation’s farmers, but also clothing producers and others. Bev Slater, long time NFU and food security activist puts it this way- “Haitian farmers recognize that producing and buying local food and local goods protects the environment and improves their economy. KLP, the local production non-government agency has recognized that it is the urban people that need to hear the message that they must buy local produce and locally manufactured goods if they want to help Haiti recover from an environmental disaster.”

KLP produced a number of television commercials aimed at non-farming communities. You can view these creative ads online at http://www.youtube.com/user/korepwodiksyonlokal. They do a good job of linking personal well-being, economic health, and community strength as ways to combat the devastation caused by globalization, poverty and weather disasters.

Those of us in the developed world have a long and rather undistinguished record of presuming to tell those in the global south how they should think, act and determine what is important to them. Far too often we tell them what crops and products they should grow even though they may not meet local needs. What they do though is create massive profits for transnational corporations. Yet in countries like Haiti local farmers and others are working together because they recognize the long term answers are to be found at home. Haiti is not alone in this as many countries around the world are showing those of us in more ‘developed’ countries the way.

The truth is that many of the problems facing farmers in Haiti and around the world are the same as the ones facing Canadian farmers, and many of the answers can be found in the same place. We have much to learn from groups like KLP – it is time we started listening.

You can find out more about Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal at http://buylocalhaiti.blogspot.com

Grant Robertson is the senior elected official with the National Farmers Union-Ontario. As Ontario Coordinator Robertson is also a National Board Member of the NFU. Grant and his family farm near Paisley, Ontario. The author can be contacted at grant@bmts.com

-Lexi posting from Ben's account