Manman Doudou

Warning: this song will get stuck in your head.

This is KPL (Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal/Support Local Production)'s latest TV promotional:

The Ministry of Agriculture provided production support and posted the spot on their youtube channel in December. Two months later and the French and Creole versions have a combined total of 16,511 viewers.

And this is what energizes me to do what I do. In a country where 2/3s of the population struggles to make a living in the agricultural sector while 70% of the nation's food is imported, and where traditional local staples like sorghum and tubers are denigrated in the cities as "peasant food" while imported American rice is consumed by the boatload... it's exciting that when this song comes on the radio, people start singing along. It suddenly justifies the long hours I spend in front of my computer working on funding proposals and evaluating monitoring data and all of the time I and others have spent working with KPL on quote unquote capacity building. [As an aside, I dislike using the phrase "capacity building," because it implies that all of the learning flows in one direction, and seriously, check out this video. I just have the boring job of taking the vision and fitting it into the boxes that make Western organizations interested in providing funding. BTW, among many of the things I've learned from KPL -- how to slaughter a chicken Haitian-style.]

Lyrics translation:

Mama darling
Papa dear
Give us local food to eat
Mama darling
Papa dear
We want to eat local food

Monday, what we want : Corn and beans, vegetables
Tuesday, what we want : Manioc, sweet potatoes, breadfruit, yams and sauce
Wednesay, what we want : Sorghum, beans, meat sauce and fresh juice
Thursday, what we want : Tonm tonm [a dish made with okra], uncle tonm tonm…
Friday, what we want : White corn, fish and avocado
Saturday, what we want : Soup with goat meat, black beans, dumplings and crab
And Sunday? Local rice, local chicken, plantains… yes!

Elders agree? Yes!
Even children agree? Yes!
Farmers agree? Yes!
The government agrees? Yes!
Haiti, stand up! Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!