Monthly Archives: April 2010

In Haiti, Deep Skepticism About a U.N. Rescue Plan

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By Jessica Desvarieux / Port-au-Prince Saturday, Apr. 03, 2010

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Earthquake survivors walk in a street with debris in downtown Port-au-Prince.

A simple turn of the radio dial, and news of the reconstruction plan dominates Haiti’s airwaves. At the U.N. donor conference on Wednesday, the international community pledged more than $5 billion dollars to support Haiti for the next 18 months and almost $10 billion for the next five years. These are enormous figures aimed at transforming the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, which has become even more dire after the catacylsmic Jan. 12 earthquake. But as crucial as the donor news was, many Haitians made homeless by the temblor, like Patrick Nordeuse, 43, have simply tuned out. “I used to listen to the radio after the earthquake, but it would just depress me when I saw nothing was being done,” says Nordeuse.

It’s been more than two and a half months since the earthquake shook every fiber of Haitian society. I was here on a trip from the U.S. to visit my family when it hit and have stayed for most of the aftermath. But when I look at the streets of Port-au -Prince, the catastrophe still seems so much closer in time, as if it has just happened. Monstrous piles of rubble still hold the remains of thousands of earthquake victims. Haitians drift with no purpose during the day, returning to insecure shelters at night. (See the end of the search for Haiti’s last lost American.)

Haitians have waited patiently during the planning phase for reconstructing this Caribbean nation. And now plans reveal that a joint commission between Haitian authorities and the international community, co-chaired by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former U.S. President Bill Clinton, will manage the funds. When I revealed the news to a family member, she jokingly said, “They’re giving the money to the state! Good, I work for the state.” It is a very serious joke. Haitians are concerned that aid money will not trickle down to the people but instead be used by the government to take care of its own. (See pictures of the destruction wrought by the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti.)

“If it’s Haitian people taking care of the money, they will only take care of their clan,” says Osnel Smythe, 37, a security guard who earns a decent wage of about $200 a month. “The international community could put $8 billion into Haiti and nothing will work correctly.” This was exemplified with reports after the earthquake of government-affiliated community leaders selling coupons for food aid intended to be free. Haiti is one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International’s world index of corruption. The government has yet to earn the trust of the people. It cannot simply be placed at the helm, expecting citizens to believe in it.

“We Haitians live in the belly of the beast,” says another man made homeless by the quake who wanted to remain anonymous. “You have to be in the belly to understand the system. The people outside don’t understand.” Despite this record, the international community has decided to switch gears. Instead of funneling aid through non-governmental organizations, they say they will not bypass the bureaucracy of Port-au-Prince, hoping to strengthen it. Clinton recently called on all NGOs to “work ourselves out of a job” and make the Haitian government more self-sufficient. (See the top 10 deadliest earthquakes.)

Plans for self-sufficiency include boosting the economy, by focusing on agriculture and tourism development. There are plans to expand roadways and increase transportation capabilities with the addition of two more international airports. Clinton also says Haiti should be transformed into a wireless country with Internet access throughout. But the feeling at large in Port-au-Prince itself is that, with the Haitian government in charge, all the talk of development is a distant dream, hardly a possible reality for citizens living in makeshift tents awaiting the rainy season. (See how to help the Haiti earthquake victims.)

To be fair, the Haitian government has committed itself to transparency and Prime Minster Jean-Max Bellerive has agreed to the idea of posting financial documents online. But as Nordeuse sees it, the Haitian government is in a lose-lose situation. If the government succeeds, the international community will get the glory and if it fails the Haitian government will be blamed for corruption. Says Nordeuse, “Clinton has placed Bellerive in front to follow him, but Bellerive is the one who is going to take the fall when it goes wrong.”

Haitians’ Faith Unshaken By Earthquake

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April 4, 2010

Haitians pray as they walk past the ruins of the National Cathedral.

Enlarge Gerald Herbert/AP

April 4, 2010

For the Western hemisphere’s poorest country, the earthquake that hit Haiti in January was an especially cruel blow. Despite this, it’s hard to find a Haitian who doesn’t profess a belief in a loving God.

Haitians are “religious about religion,” as one man put it. On Sundays, they dress up and pick their way through the rubble on their way to church.

And these days church is outdoors.

On a recent Sunday, worshipers gathered for morning Mass in front of the ruins of the Port-au-Prince Cathedral. The great stained glass window over the entrance is still mostly intact, but now, with the building just a shell, the sunlight streams from the inside out.

Juliette Tassy has gone to Mass at the cathedral all her life.

“It’s really a catastrophe when I’m seeing the cathedral in this state,” she says. “But if you look at the cross, it didn’t fall, it stands up. Almost all the Catholic churches that collapsed, the cross in front is still standing. It means something. It means that we need to keep our faith.”

Divine Retribution?

After the Mass, Tassy and her Bible study group meet under a tree. Lately, they have wrestled with a timeless theological problem: Is God responsible for natural disasters? The Jan. 12 quake killed at least 220,000 people, the government estimates, and left about 1.3 million people homeless.

Junior Miracle — his real name — recalls the gospel story of Jesus commanding a storm to be silent. He thinks God could silence an earthquake, too. But God let it happen, in Miracle’s words, “because he wanted to test our faith.”

The priest of the cathedral, the Rev. Edwino St. Louis, tells the faithful not to interpret the quake as divine retribution.

“If we say our sin caused the earthquake, does that mean there’s more sin in Chile, since their quake was bigger?”

The priest answers his own question, saying Catholics should not “mix the spiritual with the natural.” But even he, a few minutes later, says it was God’s grace that the earthquake happened in the afternoon, when fewer people were indoors.

The significance of the earthquake raises questions in other religious settings, too.

‘God Is In Nature’

Max Beauvoir, probably Haiti’s most prominent voodoo priest, says voodooists believe in God, but they don’t think he causes earthquakes.

“God has never pretended to be able to manage the Earth,” he says. “Only Christians believe that — that God manage the Earth.”

Instead, Beauvoir says, God created the laws of nature and set the world in motion — and “accidents” like this earthquake are out of his control. Beauvoir says the dead will be reincarnated, and nature should not be blamed for killing them.

“Everything in nature is excellent,” he says. “We feel that God is in nature, like nature is in God!”

Questioning God

Wilnande Monpremier was on the third floor of a Lutheran church school when it collapsed in the quake. Finding herself trapped under rubble with a broken leg, the devout woman says thoughts of Jesus’ suffering on Calvary made her own pain easier to bear.

Ten weeks later, Monpremier’s leg is healed, though she walks with a limp. Does she ask God why this happened to her?

“I can’t ask myself that question,” she says, “because if I’m doing so, I’m offending God.”

But her confidence gives way to a more searching answer from an older woman named Jeanne Louis. “I questioned God when my husband die, I said, ‘God, why? Why did you do that?’”

Louis’ husband was a Lutheran pastor. Over 30 years, the couple built the now-ruined school, as well as churches and an orphanage that was also damaged.

But her husband didn’t die in the quake. He survived — only to be shot by thieves just two weeks ago. At the time of his death, the pastor was still trying to help his congregation understand the earthquake, says Guy Francisque.

“Lot of questions, lot of questions. Why did it happen? Why am I still alive while my father or my brother or my wife has died? People have many, so many questions about the earthquake,” Francisque says.

So the pastor prepared a sermon — one of his last — to try to answer some of those questions. The message, Francisque recalls, was simple.

“If you still are alive, it is because you have something to do on this Earth, now.”

It was a message of hope, but also a burden, in a country where the living have much to do.

Rebuilding in Haiti: View from the ground

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A UN donor conference on Wednesday received pledges of $9.9bn (£6.5bn) in immediate and long-term aid for Haiti. The money is badly needed to help the country after the devastation of January’s earthquake. But what is happening on the ground now as Haitians and aid groups try to rebuild lives and buidlings?

REBUILDING HOUSES

A worker puts the finishing touches to the Dorcy family’s rebuilt home

A builder working on house in HaitiImmaculee Dorcy and her family were living in a mud hut when the earthquake hit.

The building was virtually destroyed and they moved temporarily into a tent while three skilled workers and seven neighbours, employed by The Haitian Project, a US-based charity, built them a simple but comfortable home out of cinderblocks within six weeks.

The Haitian Project runs a school, Louverture Cleary, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince which educates around 350 boys, all picked from the poorest parts of the city.

The school escaped largely unscathed in the quake but The Haitian Project’s supporters raised thousands of dollars after hearing of the earthquake. The project’s president, Patrick Moynihan, said they decided the most pressing need was clearly permanent housing.

Mr Moynihan said: “The Dorcy house was completed on time and on budget ($7,000). The house is a simple one, safe and secure, but without electricity or water, which are not available at this location.”

The school also sent a team of volunteers to the city’s main cathedral to help clear some of the debris and restore some of the building’s dignity.

PUMPING CLEAN WATER

People collect water from a solar-powered pump in Bon Repos

People collect water from a solar-powered pump in Bon Repos

In the aftermath of the earthquake one of the biggest problems was a shortage of clean, drinkable water.

Fortunately an American company, WorldWater & Solar Technologies, was on hand with a number of solar-powered water pumps and purifiers.

“It was pure serendipity that one of these machines happened to be in Haiti when the earthquake hit,” said Micky Ingles, the firm’s vice president of operations.

As Haiti also faced a shortage of diesel fuel to power generators and pumps, solar-powered equipment came into its own.

Mr Ingles said: “They are capable of producing 30,000 gallons of drinking water a day, which is the equivalent of three truckloads.”

There are now four of the units operating in Haiti and Mr Ingles pointed out another benefit of the pumps: “Unlike the bottled water provided by the big aid operations, they do not generate any trash.”

REHABILITATING SPINAL INJURIES

Stephanie with a nurse

Stephanie (left) was treated at the hospital in Milot

Haiti Hospital Appeal has funded Haiti’s first spinal rehabilitation unit, at Milot, which is dealing with 20 paraplegic patients, all victims of the earthquake.

Carwyn Hill, from the appeal, said: “The large numbers of people who have been left disabled through this earthquake is harrowing. There is a vast numbers of amputees, and also large numbers of victims with severe spinal injuries.

“Our unit is now just one of two operating in the country, providing long term care and rehab to these victims.”

He said: “We’ve watched patients who were unable to talk due to their trauma and depression, who were ready to give up on life because of their spinal injuries and poor outlook. Such patients have now been transformed, with gleaming smiles at times, and a renewed sense of hope and dignity.”

Stephanie was an paraplegic victim of the earthquake, who received surgery at the hospital before being transferred home by helicopter.

CASH DISTRIBUTION

Cash distribution helped this woman buy ingredients to make hot meals for local people

Cash distribution in Carrefour FeuillesChristian Aid and its local affiliated charities have been handing out cash to deserving cases in parts of Haiti, including Port-au-Prince, Petit Goave and Les Cayes.

Christian Aid worker Nigel Timmins explains: “Historically there is a lot of emphasis on food and aid distribution but not everybody needs the same thing. Handing out cash means some people might buy food, others might need clothes or blankets they need, while others can start rebuilding their businesses.”

He said a lot of people from the devastated cities of Port-au-Prince and Jacmel had gone back to their home villages: “There is an awful lot of ‘hosting’ going on now with people staying with their extended families. In one house a household of five had increased to 13, which means a lot more mouths to feed.”

Mr Timmins said: “There has been tremendous solidarity and support shown across the country.”

One woman, Doubline Bilam, had gone with her husband and children to live with her family in the village of Torbeck.

“Her husband has been unable to find a job but she is a tailor by profession. We gave her some gourdes (local currency) and it enabled her to buy materials and she made a 50% profit on the clothes she made. It has given her back her dignity and made her an agent of her own recovery,” he said.

Other handouts have enabled food sellers in the Carrefour Feuilles area of Port-au-Prince to buy ingredients for hot meals.

STARTING A BUSINESS IN A REFUGEE CAMP

Francoise Luc and her sons

Francoise Luc has set up a business selling crocheted items

Before the earthquake Françoise Luc, 38, was a teacher of maths and social sciences. In the afternoon she would teach students to crochet hats, belts and skirts.

Her home in Port-au-Prince was badly damaged on 12 January and she has taken refuge with her sons, Laurence and Rogers, in a camp for internally displaced people on a football pitch in Parc Sainte Claire.

“Of course I want to go home, but I can’t…it is unstable,” she said.

Mrs Luc said: “I am trying to busy myself to take my mind off things. So I spend my time crocheting and selling the skirts, hats and belts I create. I also sell soap and washing powder to other people in the camp, so that they can clean themselves and their clothes.”

Many people ask Francoise to teach them to crochet, but she has not been able to get hold of any crochet hooks since the quake.

“I would like to be able to open a centre to teach our children to crochet. That way they would also be able to sell them to make money,” she says.

Francoise, lives in one of two camps set up by Islamic Relief to cater for the needs of 1,000 families, has a message to the international community: “Please do not forget us. Take care of us and never forget about us.”

FIELD TRAUMA HOSPITAL

Andre Berto in Haiti

Boxer Andre Berto, whose family come from Haiti, volunteered to help

Within hours of the earthquake Project Medishare, a Florida-based charity, had set up a field trauma hospital in Haiti.

Initially working out of the United Nations compound, it later moved to a tented village at the Port-au-Prince airport.

But the charity’s communications director, Jennifer Browning, said: “We are looking to move to a permanent fixed facility so that we will be out of the tents by the end of May at the latest. The rainy season is very close and the hurricane season starts in June so we need to be out of those tents.”

The hospital has treated thousands of Haitians, mainly those with crush injuries suffered in the earthquake.

Ms Browning said they were working closely with the Haitian Ministry of Health.

“American doctors are working side by side with Haitian doctors and in the process both are learning new techniques,” she said.

Project Medishare has benefited from celebrity endorsements and donations from among others pop star Lady Gaga and they also had a special volunteer in the form of WBC world welterweight champion Andre Berto.

Berto, who lost eight relatives in the earthquake, withdrew from a lucrative fight with Shane Mosley in January because he was unable to concentrate on it in the wake of the devastation of his parents’ homeland.

He came to Haiti with his brother Cleveland to work as a volunteer stretcher-bearer and porter for Project Medishare and will be donating part of his earnings from his next fight, on 10 April, to the Berto Dynasty Foundation which benefits Project Medishare.

Haiti’s Founding Document Found in London

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By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: March 31, 2010

There is no prouder moment in Haiti’s history than Jan. 1, 1804, when a band of statesmen-warriors declared independence from France, casting off colonialism and slavery to become the world’s first black republic.

Haiti’s Declaration of Independence, discovered in the British National Archives.

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They proclaimed their freedom boldly — “we must live independent or die,” they wrote — but for decades, Haiti lacked its own official copy of those words. Its Declaration of Independence existed only in handwritten duplicate or in newspapers. Until now.

A Canadian graduate student at Duke University, Julia Gaffield, has unearthed from the British National Archives the first known, government-issued version of Haiti’s founding document. The eight-page pamphlet, now visible online, gives scholars new insights into a period with few primary sources. But for Haitian intellectuals, the discovery has taken on even broader significance.

That the document would be found in February, just weeks after the earthquake that killed so many; that its authenticity would be confirmed in time for the donor conference that could define Haiti’s future — some see providence at work.

“It’s a strange thing in the period of the earthquake we find the first document that made the state,” said Patrick Tardieu, an archivist at the Library of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit in Port-au-Prince. “People were searching for this for a very long time.”

Indeed, decades ago, Haiti’s leaders went hunting for a declaration they could call their own for the country’s 150th anniversary. Researchers combed Haiti’s libraries. Newspapers in the United States, which printed full versions of the declaration when it was made, were also considered a possible source.

But the originals seemed to have been thrown out or destroyed. In December 1952, the Haitian intellectual Edmond Mangonès wrote to his country’s Commission of Social Sciences to report that “the mystery of the original of our national Declaration of Independence” had not been solved. “All searches to date have been in vain,” he said.

Enter Ms. Gaffield, 26. She said she fell in love with Haiti while at the University of Toronto. It was 2004, Jean-Bertrand Aristide had just been ousted, and after a trip to Haiti, where she worked with street children, she decided to study its origins as a nation.

That eventually took her to Duke University, and last year, to the National Archives of Jamaica in Kingston. There, she found a letter from a British official who had just returned from Haiti around the time of its revolution.

“He wrote a letter to the governor saying, ‘Here is this interesting document that I received when I was in Haiti,’ ” she said. “And he said the declaration ‘had not been but one hour from the press.’ ”

The document he mentioned, though, was missing. She headed for London. On Feb. 2, she found herself poring through the leather-bound binders of Britain’s National Archives. About 100 pages into the book of Jamaican records from 1804, she came across a delicate, yellowed set of pages.

“What I first noticed was across the top it said, ‘Liberté ou La Mort,’ ” she said. There were a few differences from the accepted text of Thomas Madiou, the 19th-century historian who wrote a definitive, multivolume history of the country. Haiti was spelled Hayti in the pamphlet, for example, and in one sentence, Mr. Madiou seemed to have seen “idéux” (ideals) when the print shows it to be “fléaux” (ills).

The bottom of the last page read “De l’Imprimerie du Gouvernement.” That made it the official declaration historians had been looking for. In the hushed London library — even cameras snapping photos of important documents must be on silent mode — Ms. Gaffield could only smirk.

“Being very excited in a document reading room is a bit of a challenge,” she said. “You have to keep it all inside.”

Later that day, she e-mailed her Ph.D. advisers at Duke. They were thrilled. “It is a lost treasure,” said Deborah Jenson, a professor of French who has been overseeing Ms. Gaffield’s research. “This is really the first copy that is directly tied to the Haitian government.”

Professor Jenson said no manuscript version of the declaration with signatures — along the lines of the United States’ document — seemed to have existed. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti’s revolutionary leader, delivered the declaration as a speech on Jan. 1, 1804, and then had it printed over the next few months. Historians believe that he and others overlooked documentary preservation because they were too worried about another French invasion.

“They were building forts,” said Prof. Laurent M. Dubois, a historian of Haiti at Duke. “It’s part of the larger story: that Haiti knew it was going to be isolated, it knew it was attacking this broader social order.”

He said the pamphlet showed that Haiti was intent on sending out the declaration to get the world to understand its position. “This was a gesture of reaching out, of saying, ‘We have these grievances, and we have decided we have to be independent, to refuse and resist this social order we have lived under,’ ” Professor Dubois said. “They wanted recognition.”

That is exactly what some Haitians hope Ms. Gaffield’s find will bring to Haiti today. Mr. Tardieu said he dreamed of seeing the document returned to its home — “it would be the greatest gift,” he said — while others are praying that its discovery alone will reawaken the world to Haiti’s strong sense of self-determination.

“In the context of the Haitian tragedy, it is important for Haitians and the rest of the world to remember the independence of Haiti,” said Leslie Manigat, a historian who briefly served as Haiti’s president in 1988.

“We must recover,” he said, shouting in order to be heard through a phone in Port-au-Prince that cut out repeatedly. “We must find an alternative to the traditional meaning of independence, now, in the new world.”