Will Haiti survive?

By Jean H Charles

This question seems presumptuous since Haiti, which lost some 300,000 people (more than the combined population of Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, BVI, Turks and Caicos, St Kitts, Cayman Islands and Antigua) in the earthquake of January 12, 2010, bounced back almost immediately in terms of daily survival.

I am talking instead of the survival of the moral fiber of the country. I am observing the minute by minute decline of the sense of morality of the citizens. Yet, it is no fault of the religious authorities. The Catholic Church through its priests on Sunday Mass does its best to preach the lesson of solidarity, love and redemption.

My parish church of St Louis king of France, destroyed by the earthquake accommodates three times its attendance prior to the goudougoudou in the parking lot transformed into a revered makeshift church.

Father Kennel, the priest in charge, is funny, deep and full of spirituality. The protestant churches, Baptist and Adventist, are very active and filled with devoted participants at almost every day of the week. Attending a voodoo experience at the French Institute gave me hope that voodoo can be converted from a religion into a Creole or black mythology, reverting to the domain of the heritage of humanity its song, its drums and its sensuality.

Haiti is in a situation where the fin de regime still has strong control of the wheels, fighting with the new government on who will lead the destiny of the country.

In the last two years since the earthquake four billion dollars donated by the international community has been spent without much output to show for the expenditure. Haiti is the theatre of activity of almost all the non- profit organizations in existence in the world. To the educated eye as well as to the common citizen they seem to go back and forth as chickens without heads, seeking a mission and a purpose.

As said by Amy Wilentz, the author of The Rainy Season Haiti Then and Now: “For Haitian political heads as well as some major international organizations the billions in international aid that have been promised to Haiti is an irritable prize. In a way misery is a natural resource as corrupting as any diamond or gold mine.”

The life of the ordinary man has not been improved since the advent of the new government. It may have reached a lower platform. In a country where unemployment is floating around 78%, the men and the women were surviving on a graft and patronage mode. This scheme has been dismantled by the new government without a ready new model to provide sustenance to a population that must survive every day.

I have in mind the story of two young men who told me that after nine months of no income coming into the house their alternative was either to engage into a paid subversive organization bent on destabilizing the government or unwelcome paid homosexual activities to bring the bacon home.

Most of the institutions of the nation are parading without shame or contrition on the mafia system of functioning. They are not there to serve the citizens but to request more toys for their use and abuse.

The police institution, darling of the international community, with more equipment and more policemen than the former Haitian army ever had, has no effective control of the territory.

The MINUSTHA, the giant UN agency introduced into the country to facilitate its stabilization, has brought anything but. Its Nepal contingent infected Haiti with the cholera germ, killing some 3,000 Haitians. Constant demonstrations demanding its withdrawal from the country are a regular staple of the Haitian landscape. Insecurity is on the rise, with all sides taking a ride on a fragile political situation.

The board of the national university, decried by the students for its inability to run an efficient and hospitable institution, unable to put together an effective management of a brand new campus donated by the Dominican Republic, has found a way to re-elect itself, perpetuating the squalid picture of indecency.

The management of the national soccer federation, the favorite sport of the Haitian people, is at war with its main funding agency, Digicel, for alleged malfeasance and self serving by the board with the funds provided for expansion and competition of the sport in the country and international matches. Yet the same management under the label of heritage has been able to perpetuate itself, defying the odds of the new blood that comes to clean up the field.

The legislature that used to cut dirty deals with a corrupt executive is playing roadblocks with the new government. The issue of alleged dual nationality of the president and some of his ministers takes precedence over the resolution of the national budget as well as the ratification of the new prime minister.

The executive, elected under the banner of the political platform, Repons Peyisan, is playing hide and seek with the party that represents its best white hope to obtain a majority in the Senate in the next legislative election as well as sabotage the subversive actions of the clan that swears to destabilize and strangle the new government in its infancy.

It has not rained since November in Haiti. The first rains arrived this week. Every night big and strong, it will continue as such until July. The relief for my garden, where I experiment with winter citrus (orange and grapefruit interlaced with poinsettia) spring corrosol and sapodilla, summer mangoes and fall avocados, is saddened with the curse of flooding on the streets because of lack of maintenance of the sewer system. Adding to that, the misery of the tent city people is suffocating.

April is around the corner, spring is not too far. I am reminded of the verses in Genesis 8 -20-21 where Noah, after the deluge, having built an altar to the Lord, took every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar and the Lord smelled a soothing aroma, then the Lord said in his heart: I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

Maybe Haiti after all will survive!

March 17, 2012

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Haiti a nation beset by catastrophe inflicted by man, God and nature!

By Jean Herve Charles



It is November, the hurricane season should be on its death bed, yet Tomas, the latest hurricane, strong as a young lad, has just created havoc in St Lucia, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines. It is on its way to Haiti where, month after month, a new catastrophe raises its inflicting and destructive head, causing death and material destruction all over the country.

On January 12, 2010, on a sunny afternoon, a major earthquake took place around the capital; it was baptized goudougoudou by the locals as they try to mimic the sound of the hurricane as the destruction took place. It caused 300,000 deaths and 1.5 million internal refugees are still under tents or makeshift tenements, where the natural elements -- rain, wind and flood -- visit them without an invitation.

Last October an outbreak of cholera in three of the ten states of the island nation has caused the death of some 500 people and the hospitalization of 7,000 Haitian residents. The scientific analysis by the CDC (Centers for Disease control) in Atlanta has concluded that the origin of the virus can be attributed to the strain found in South Asia.

The people of Haiti blame the Nepal contingent of the UN force dispatched in the region of Mirebalais, where the epicenter of the disease has been established. The Haitian government as well as the UN management for political and diplomatic reason refused to point the finger at the root cause of the public health outbreak.

Paul Farmer, the expert in epidemiology, reminded the authorities that “good public health dictates that knowing the point source of the disease is good for everyone and good for public health”. John Mekalanos the chairman of the School of Public Health at Harvard University clarified that the virulent strain of cholera found in Haiti is unknown in the Western Hemisphere. The evidence points the finger at the Nepalese soldiers who arrived to Haiti this October.

After my essay on the gift of education by the Royal Caribbean cruise line to Haiti, it was my intention to dwell on the splendor of the nation instead of the squalor of the country. The successive wave as well as the most recent catastrophe inflicted by men, God and nature has upset my original plan.

On the splendor side, I still have in mind the full display of culture in the town of Grand River as the people were celebrating the Day of the Dead on November 1. Eat your heart out New York, Roseau or Osaka, the dancing in the cemetery as well as the grand ball with the Tropicana orchestra has excited all the senses of my American travel companion, P. Scott Drahos, who promised to become the ambassador for the next year event bringing lot of visitors to the city.

Traveling from Cape Haitian (my outpost for the winter) to Port au Prince, I have contemplated the lush vegetation on the northern side of Haiti, where the grapefruit and the oranges trees filled with succulent oranges and grapefruits provide a backdrop for the giant poinsettia trees with their red flowers in full display and on time for the Christmas season celebration.

The capital city is cleaner; the government wants its candidate to continue its policy of ill governance with the forthcoming election as such, a best effort has being made to clean up the city so as to avoid the ire of the electorate.

With Tomas on its way, the cholera disease not dampened, the destructive remnants of the earthquake still visible, one would thought that a full scale election should be the least of the expectations. In fact, the majority of the Haitian people are neutral at best or at worst inimical to the exercise that has not and will not change their condition of life one iota.

The political tragedy that adds to the recurrent natural disasters has been in the Haitian national theater for a long time. For the first 150 years of the life of the nation, Mulatto rule brought little benefit to the people. In the last 50 years, the dark skin rule has been as – if not more – repugnant. They have instituted the clan politics that kills all sentiment of civics, solidarity and patriotism, including the sense of noblesse oblige, one of the staples of the Haitian safety net.

Adding insult to injury, the international community has been a steady and loyal patron of the tenets of the clan politic doctrine. Duvalier, Aristide and Preval have cultivated a following in the United States, Europe and Asia (Taiwan).

The international institutions are also in bed with the principals of the clan politics. The United Nations, under different acronyms, have occupied the Haitian space during the last twenty years with no significant impact – in disaster preparedness, security, good governance or economic growth.

Colin Granderson, the CARICOM representative, was recently at the extraordinary meeting of the OAS pushing for the masquerade election, knowing full well that the country and the people are not ready for the exercise. Some fifteen years ago, the same Colin Granderson was the proconsul in Haiti, demanding that the embargo that destroyed the Haitian flora and economy should not only be maintained but extended.

Indeed, man, God and nature have not been friendly to Haiti. As Job of the Bible, the people of Haiti have remained faithful to their God, who is urging them to stand up against the forces that suppress and kill their civic pride. Will hurricane Tomas be the last straw that will galvanize the resilient Haitian people to stand up and take charge of their beautiful country against the forces that pretend to lead their destiny for the best while in the end bring only disaster after disaster, with only the promise of redemption?

November 6, 2010

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