Mar
27
Day Two in Haiti
Our second day in Haiti was filled with more surprises, more insights, and several further misadventures. Our night sleeping in tents at the GRU property proved to be more difficult than any of us imagined, between the high heat and humidity, the hard ground, and the mosquitoes who somehow got past the tent’s barriers to congregate as a swarm when we awoke. I was half-determined to move us to another location, though in the end we decided to return for a second night — this time with additional padding, and mosquito netting over the tents, which proved a wise choice — because we had booked our flights to Cap Haitien for early Saturday morning.
During the day we had two very productive sessions — the first with Chad Walsh, the Grassroots United director of operations; and the second with several senior staff at the US Embassy — as well as an extensive if unanticipated tour of Port-au-Prince from the back of a pickup, and something of a trip back in time with the coordinators of our later stay in the capital.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s report, the GRU compound is quite remarkable, a center of many comings and goings, the transient home of more than a thousand volunteers and staffers of dozens of small organizations, held together by the commitment and the ingenuity of some of the finest “practical idealists” the international disaster-recovery community has ever put together.
Chad, who is certainly one of these, told us that GRU started as merely an encampment by Sam Bloch at the end of a shattered runway at the airport immediately after the quake, and has since grown into nearly an acre of varied structures and projects, “united” by its willingness to serve the staffers and visions of other NGOs. The do not take well to those they regard as “disaster chasers,” but they are unstinting in their support of genuine relief organizations, no matter how unusual or seemingly improbable their plans might be. Over the past fourteen months they have hosted many groups and remarkable structures, from straw bales houses to Earthships to container buildings such as those sponsored by Patricia Arquette.
They have also witnessed many of both the triumphs and failures of the international relief effort, and have come to view many of the larger organizations as poorly coordinated and hobbled by misconceptions, while the smaller ones are nimble and inventive to make up for an almost total absence of resources. He told us many familiar stories — of the dismantling of Haiti’s once-thriving and mostly self-sufficient rice farmers by aid, dumping, and international trade agreements — and also many unfamiliar ones, such as how it took them three months to persuade their cook to buy Haitian rice because the imported product was so much cheaper.
Haiti, as he put it, is a failed state but also a successful people, enormously resilient, committed to family, community, and friendship before business, open and generous but also willing to grab at whatever is offered because the need is so great and the opportunity is unlikely to come around again. According to his account, there is no word in Kreyol for “maybe” or “possibly” or “perhaps.” If you say you “might want to build a shelter,” they expect to see it materialize right away — otherwise why even mention it? — and if you give one group food for thirty days it might be gone overnight, shared with the wider community that was keeping them alive before you got there.
Only a couple of his comments — such as that 400,000 temporary shelters had been thrown up by the international community but most stood empty because they were poorly located or ill-conceived — proved faulty, but this was only because he greatly overestimated what the governments and large organizations had actually accomplished. (A US State Department staffer thought we had perhaps misheard, and that what he likely meant us to understand was “400 to a thousand.”) For the most part his information was right on, and his insights penetrating. Originally a bit gruff, since he probably saw us as well-meaning but impractical academics (or worse, private-sector opportunists), he opened up as soon as it was apparent we were willing to listen.
After speaking with Chad we headed out with volunteer coordinator Sarah Fiskness to visit the US Embassy, where the Cultural Attachée, Régine René, had arranged a meeting for us with Gregory Groth, the State Department’s Economic and Trade Counsellor, as well as Haelee Lee, the USAID Stability & Economic Growth Officer in Haiti. Our driver this time, someone Sarah called, shared his deeply religious views — that Jesus requires us to treat others with love and respect — and told us about losing a child in the earthquake but feeling “lucky” that he, his wife, and two children survived.
Not knowing how long it would take we set out quite early, at leaving at noon for a meeting scheduled for 1:30 in the afternoon. To everyone’s surprise, we got there before 12:30, and on learning of our arrival Régine suggested we go over to the nearby Cane a Sucre Parc and have lunch at the outdoor restaurant there. We did so, rather astonished to see a brand new “strip mall” across from the US Embassy featuring a bank and a furniture store as large as any I’ve seen in the US, and with similar items. Parked out front in several locations were huge pieces of heavy construction equipment, evidently never used.
Lunch was a buffet under a gazebo of both familiar and unfamiliar items, including the staple beans and rice, pease and corn, fish and chunks of beef in a deep brown sauce, several salads, and some fried corn cakes and other vegetables, all tasty and clearly nourishing, served up with 7Up and Diet Coke in clearly recycled bottles. (So much of Haiti reminds me of my childhood growing up in Mexico more than fifty years ago, including these bottled soft drinks, the oases of lush vegetation amidst the swirl of choking dust and diesel fumes, the open expressions of religiosity, the high walls topped with broken glass, the conditions of roads and sewers, the crowded markets, the heat and human smells of the coast and the clear cool air of the mountains, even much of the architecture is familiar thougfh the legacy is French rather than Spanish. All of these smells, sights, and tastes taking me back to things I have not experienced or thought about since my childhood.) Lunch for four, which concluded with some delicious apple fritters and the classical heavily-sweetened black espresso, came to about $70 US.
Then back to the Embassy. After going through security, the meeting with both State Department and USAID staffers was frank, cordial, and surprisingly sensitive and informative. They were most generous with their insights, their contacts, and their experiences.
Groth, who had previously served in several parts of Africa, having started his career in the Peace Corps, was especially eloquent and forthright, expressing his view that the State Department’s “travel warning” for Haiti was excessively cautious, and could be easily replaced with a less alarming and more nuanced “travel advisory,” which would have the effect of deterring fewer tourists, allowing universities to send groups of students, and so on, developments that would greatly benefit Haiti’s economy and Americans’ awareness of it.
Of course, given America’s own budgetary woes, and the fact that world attention has now been diverted from Haiti to other crises and natural disasters, the budgets they have access to are limited or nonexistent; they joked that of the three of them only Régine even had a budget to take visitors out to lunch. The USAID has some small amounts, that they are spreading around to some of the more community-oriented NGOs; and they are looking at ways of encouraging partnering with Haitian companies. But relative to the billions that were promised by the US and other donor nations following the earthquake they are as frustrated as the rest of us in trying to figure out whether any of this money has been contributed and what it has been spent on, if anything. The IHRC has budgeted some amounts for improving medical facilities (but then there are reports of several modern hospitals sitting completely unused because of lack of available medical professionals) and some other infrastructural elements, but these remain largely if not completely invisible anywhere that we’ve looked for them.
What was perhaps most remarkable was the similarity of our views, the complentarity of our experiences, and even the commonality of our frustrations in trying to make a difference, and kind of difference, in the lives of ordinary people. It was clear to us that all three of them are dedicated public servants, committed to improving the living conditions of the Haitian people, and a credit to our country — I only wish more Americans could know of the work that they and many others do, could experience firsthand the realities of life here and in other developing nations around the world, and could appreciate how little we really invest in foreign assistance and how it is used.
It’s important understand how a little can go a long way, and how the work of many thousands of Americans and others is aimed addressing humanity’s problems, the resolution of which is ultimately a benefit to us all. When most Americans are asked how much of the US federal budget goes to foreign aid, many answer “around 25%,” when in reality we know that it is less than one per cent; when asked what they think it should be, a common answer is around 10%, the allocation of which would do more the world’s conditions, and America’s favorability ratings, than almost any other conceivable action. Even simply doubling our commitment, to the UN objective of 2%, would transform many regions of the globe.
After the meeting we called for our previously-arranged driver and let Sarah go back to the compound via “tap-tap,” consisting usually of a modified pick-up truck or small van, with a seemingly impossible number of people crowding in or hanging on anywhere they can get a foothold or even sometimes riding in a small cabin added on top. This is by the far the cheapest and most common form of public transportation, if you know where you’re going, though it may only take you to the general vicinity. This proved to be mistake, as we waited for nearly two hours, with the driver telling us each time we called that he was only ten minutes away. Finally a man arrived by motorcycle to tell us that he was from the group which had offered the driver, and as best we could make out the driver had had a breakdown, or had been stopped by the police, or something, so we needed another option. Eventually he found us another taxi, and we set off for the place in Petionville where we hoped to stay later in our trip.
What we failed to understand was how far away it was, and that the traffic at 6 o’clock on a Friday afternoon was so intense that it would take us an other two hours to get there; and that our guide had assumed we intended to stay overnight at the house there. By the time we had clarified this we were nearly there and it was already dark, so we pressed on the visit the family and associates of one of our
Coalition partners seeking to build a processed food import-export business. To get there we traversed endless miles of rutted roads, many of them seemingly almost straight up, through what in any other country would have been considered desperate slums, but which were certainly not the poorest places in Haiti, or the most affected by the earthquake. Finally we arrived at the house, well after dark, and were ushered through an elaborate series of multi-level rooms, many with interior courtyards or overlooking views of the city, into the presence of Mme. Suzelle Apollon (our member’s mother) and served a refreshing white pulp fruit drink which proved to be made from “cherimoyer,” a fruit I instantly recognized from my childhood as “chirimoya” or custard apple. We spoke further into the night, me beginning to retrieve my command of French and occasionally translating for my companions, thinking we were waiting for the driver to pick us up and take us back to the compound. Eventually we asked, only to discover that, again, some intentions had fallen through the cracks. Re-engaging the process, we eventually ended with two (competing) vehicles and drivers; we had to choose one, which we did, picking the newer and more comfortable vehicle only to discover, an hour later, that they had no idea where they were taking us; and spent another half hour searching in the vicinity of the airport — there are no street signs, and no one who was asked recognized “rue Pelican,” so until we called Sarah back, and she put someone on to give the driver directions based on landmarks, were they able to find it. Long after the compound’s curfew, we made it back for a brief, only slightly less mosquito-ridden sleep (after putting our bed nets over our tents) before getting up to catch a 7:45 a.m. flight to Cap Haitien. No time for breakfast, of course; but this time we were at least met at the airport and transported back to the house that Nouvelle Vie had rented, and then to the school for the graduation: Day Three.