Haiti and the issue of education

By Jean H Charles



The month of October used to be the cruelest month of the year in Haiti. It is the month when parents must find the full tuition payment for their children’s education. The previous Haitian governments have been so delinquent in their mission of educating the children that 80 percent of the education system is the hands of the private sector.

Joseph Michel Martelly, the president of Haiti, akin to Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, has made education and the acquisition thereof, the cornerstone of his administration. He was not afraid of the ire of some members of the Diaspora in resting on their back the bulk of the education funds by taxing $1.50 for each transfer to and from Haiti and by exacting 5 cents on each call to and from Haiti. He plans to raise as such $300 million per year to send all the children in age of education to school, free of charge to their parents.

The business of providing an excellent education to the children of a nation is not the business of the parents. It is the business of the state. The business of the parents is to provide the enrichment and the nurturing to support the education received in school.

According to Emil Vlajki often cited in this column, the wealth of a nation depends not on its natural resources but on the degree of education and the extent of creativity and resilience of its people.

Singapore in Asia, with limited natural resources but with a highly educated population, is a world giant in economic development, while Niger or the Sudan, with ample natural resources but with a poorly educated population, is a basket case in Africa.

As such it is in the interest of the state to take the necessary measures to establish a critical mass of citizens, well educated, creative and resilient, to build the sustaining wealth of the country.

President Joseph Michel Martelly is breaking the circle of treating the children of the Haitian masses as second class citizens in pushing forward a policy of universal free education. The program started this year with some 772,000 students, those who have never been to or left school because their parents were too poor to help them to remain in a program of study.

The education funds that started in May 2011 have already collected $28 million. PAM and UNICEF are putting their resources into the fray in adding a hot meal a day and a school kit with bags and books and notebooks for the children. In addition, President Martelly has also taken the initiative to insure that the children have free transportation to and from school, with a police officer in each bus to provide security.

Haiti has come a long way in pushing forward education as a priority in its public policy expenditure. In the Caribbean area, Haiti occupies the last place in education indices. This practice is as old as the history of the Republic. At the eve of the revolution leading to independence, the topic amongst those freed from servitude was: what measure should be adopted to create a distinction between those who were free before independence and those who became free after.

The choice was that education should be as restricted as possible for the former slaves; as such the privilege of an upper class would be preserved for ever.

If Haiti’s founding father Jean Jacques Dessalines wanted to create a Haiti hospitable for all in the new Republic, at its birth in 1804, it was not the vision of his comrades in arms. In fact, he was assassinated two years after independence on October 17, 1806. Henry Christophe, who became king of the north of Haiti after being denied the presidency of the whole Republic, introduced the British system of education, as well as civic formation for all. (Who said the men of the north of Haiti are better!). It lasted only twenty years.

Alexander Petion, who controlled the rest of the Republic, stamped the nation with the culture of discrimination against the majority of the population. (It is true the Alexander Petion Lyceum was his creation!) That culture, extended by his successor, Jean Pierre Boyer, became the law of the land until today when Joseph Michel Martelly took the decision to put education at the center of his social revolution.

His ambitious program may have a few holes at the beginning; they will be corrected as the program goes along. The extreme joy was in the face of Senatus Antoine, a father of two, whom I met on the public bus recently. The fee that he was struggling to find “has been paid by the government” he was told by the principal.

Speaking of principal, I met with the principal of Marie Jeanne Lyceum, a no-nonsense woman, who led her school with an iron hand. Parents travel from close and a far to enroll their children in this public school for girls. The public school system in Haiti needs many more principals as the one at the Marie Jeanne Lyceum; the competition will drive more children to the public school system, leaving the meager income of the parents for other options such as food and shelter.

In the end, education as a priority is essential but as New York City indicates, Mayor Bloomberg, after more than eight years in command of the city, needs much more than education as a priority to keep New York City afloat.

Michel Joseph Martelly will have to prepare and implement a complete vision for Haiti that includes complete security in the territory, decent infrastructure and sane institutions to root the population in their localities with economic incubation to put value in each citizen; as such the nation of Haiti will be rebuilt after it has been ravaged by 60 years of national governments that were at best predatory and at worst criminal.

God’s hand was also in the fray, the Republic of Port au Prince that gobbles 80 percent of the national economy was almost destroyed by an earthquake that occurred on January 12, 2010!

Haiti will have to use, as said Michaelle Jean (the former Governor General of Canada), a new paradigm to (re)build a nation filled with promises but that went astray because education for all was not at the center and at the end of all the transactions conceived and elaborated by the government.

October 15, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International

The Culture of United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)

Brazil, Haiti and the MINUSTAH

By Jean H Charles:




I visited Brazil twenty years ago, as a globe trotter who cherished the joy of travelling, despite my trip to Brazil. I told my travel companion Eddy Harper at the end of our journey, one should not visit a country just because a plane can bring you there. I was warned before my departure that one should be very careful of your belongings, including your own ears or eyes.

They could be taken for sale as fresh organs. My bracelet that I held tightly in my hand to prevent its theft, was stolen anyway. The carnival in Rio, with a public relations machine well oiled all over the world, was for me a deception. It was a fine orchestrated exercise for the tourists (contrary to Trinidad and Tobago) with no personal participation.

I flew to Salvador de Bahia to taste the remnants of the black culture; I was not deceived. Yet my conclusion that one should not travel to a country just because a scheduled airline made the journey there was confirmed in Salvador. In the middle of the night walking around the colonial streets of the city, I was surprised to found the bustling business of the hour was the sale of coffins. An epidemic in the area was killing the citizens by the thousand.

Back in Rio, amidst the splendor of the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana, the squalor of the hills surrounding the city was threatening and menacing. The hypocrisy of the slogan: one nation, one people was mining the ethos of the society. A part of Pele, known all over the world for his skills in the sport of football/soccer, amidst the large black population one cannot find a single emerging black star in politics, the arts, science and education in Brazil.

The larger society was not in better shape, I remember my conversation with a young white teacher on the beach of Ipanema, doubling her life as a school teacher with one of a part time prostitute because her salary was not sufficient to provide a decent living.

Things have improved since in Brazil, with the advent of Ignacio Lula, who recognized social integration and upward mobility as a government policy.

Brazil was in an enviable position to help usher into Haiti a climate of hospitality for all, with the big brother holding the hands of the junior one. Passionate about soccer, the Haitian people have adopted Brazil as their idol nation. There were deaths of passion in Haiti following a football match between Argentina and Brazil. (That passion has been transmuted today onto Messi of Barcelona in Spain, revered as a demi-god.)

Brazil, with its size and its limitless resources, had hemispheric hegemonic ambition. Lula planned to use its leadership of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in Haiti, to help his country obtain a seat on the Security Council. That goal has been a complete failure and disappointment. After the questioning suicide of the Brazilian general in Haiti, Brazil could not find another national to succeed at the helm of the mission. The Guatemalan, Edmund Mulet, whose arrogance equals only his excellent command of French, is decried on the walls of Port au Prince with the same intensity as Rene Preval, the despised Haitian president.

The MINUSTAH culture is one of make believe in most of the operations concerning its mission of stabilization of the country. A mammoth military operation in a nation at peace with itself is as out of place as an elephant moving around in a small living room.

Small countries like Nepal are competing and bidding against big ones like China to get the prime risk funding just for parading on the street of Port au Prince, forcing children to wake up at 5.00 am to reach their school destination on time amongst the crowded streets of Port au Prince.

The police as well as the military unit operates a vast cottage industry designed to provide employment to expatriates from forty nations, while providing absolutely no service or at least limited service that impacts the Haitian population in security, police, training and education and development.

The talk around the water cooler at the headquarters in Geneva or in New York is that a tour of duty in Haiti is a plum placement. You will find sun, sand, docile and attractive women, tasty food, strong and exotic culture during combat and prime risk duty while feigning to stabilize the country with words instead of action. An astute anthropologist or sociologist would have a field day studying Haiti at the age of its colonization by the United Nations.

As a detached or interested observer, I am watching the complete disintegration of Haitian society under the watch of the UN Mission of Stabilization. Starting with the women and the young people that represent the fragile segment of the nation, they exhibit coping mechanisms with pathological manifestations that will compromise the foreseeable future of the nation.

The aftermath of the earthquake and the cholera epidemic (brought by the UN into Haiti) should have been an incentive to rebuild a new Haiti hospitable to all, where the security of the environment, public health and public security would be the hallmark of the government.

Haiti is being instead quickly Africanized at its worst, with refugee camps in public places as well as on the golf courses. The indecency in public policy is being plotted, implemented, and applauded by most international institutions.

One hundred fifty years ago (1864) the Vatican stood up as the only entity to support a nation ostracized by the entire world for daring to stand up against the world order of slavery. Haiti needs today one friendly country in the world that would stand up to support with strategies, finance and technical assistance its growing opposition, thirsty for a complete break with the culture of squalor imposed upon the country during the last sixty years.

I have not seen nor heard one nation in the whole world that raises a finger to say that I am ready for the challenge!

February 19, 2011

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Bahamas Blog International