Haiti and the seven deadly sins

By Jean H Charles:


With the installation of a new government, Haiti needs to set itself into a mode where the culture of growth, development and hospitality can flourish without impediments. First and foremost, security for life and for limb must be high on the agenda.

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) tag price of some $865 million per year to provide and enhance a blanket of security on the national territory is not only an international scandal but it represents the perfect model of how things should not be.

Kidnapping, the absence of night life, the complete disregard for the rule of law have been the staple of life in Haiti, sometimes supported and entertained by the very Haitian governments. The many nations that comprise the MINUSTAH family excel in faking the duty of care and support to the stabilization of the country.

With one tenth of that amount, Haiti can set up its own national army that will protect the population, serve as a first defense system in case of environmental disaster and repel and control the drug reshipment invasion. The tourism industry, the commerce, the resilience and the creativity of the Haitian people need a true national security blanket to flourish.

Haiti needs in the second place to uproot the culture of the deadly sins so pervasive in the country. With bad governance implanted into the soul of the nation for the past sixty years, virtue has not occupied a place of choice in the intercourse of people living in the same land.

Haiti of today is comparable to France under the Regency regime in 1715, where the Duke of Orleans promoted a culture of greed, lust and debauchery, where adventurers mixed with do-gooders were seeking fast money followed by spectacular bankruptcy, poisoning the atmosphere for everybody.

The deadly sins you remember, immortalized by Dante, include pride, avarice, envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth and lust. Those vices have found a fertile land in Haiti to germinate and propagate amongst the poor as well as the rich citizens.

Michel Martelly, a former bad boy, might seem the wrong messenger to inject the culture of virtue into the country. Yet God himself did use sinners like Saul who become Paul to spread his religion of love charity, and humility. The Samaritan as well as Mary of Magdalene, both former sinners, were efficient missionaries of the new doctrine that humility, generosity, love, self control, faith, zeal, and prudence should rule the interactions between citizens of the same country and those of different nations.

Gandhi, the father of revolution with non violence, devised the concept of seven social sins. Politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice and commerce without morality.

I am witnessing in all aspects of life in Haiti the pervasive influence of the seven social sins. The legislative, the electoral board, the presidency, even the international organizations whose mission was to heal the wounds of a devastated population have been competing amongst themselves to serve mostly their own venal needs while professing compassion to the fate of the people.

The new government, with its prime minister designate, Daniel Rouzier, will have bread on the table. Before it embarks on any aspect of development those first two pillars – national security and moral sustenance -- must be firmly entrenched into the ethos of the new Haiti.

The people of Haiti, who fought all through to impose their own transition, have a high expectation from the new government. It is ready to uproot the old culture of the seven deadly sins. Martelly will have not only to set an example in his administration but he will have to call on the moral suasion of the Church and the civil society to preach and practice the new doctrine. The Archbishop Louis Kebreau in the homily at the inauguration has set the tone. His call for a culture of virtue was well received by the population who elevated him to a stature of a pop star.

The Haitian government must stop sustaining the lower instincts of the population. No nation has ever survived with the love of lust, greed, and wrath. Development, peace, growth and prosperity demands first and foremost good citizenship!

May 30, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Traumatised Haitians struggle to comprehend grim fate

By Dave Clark:


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) -- It's not immediately clear where the crowd gathered in prayer ends and where the refugee encampment begins, as one group of listless, traumatised people bleeds into another.

With a symbol of state strength, Haiti's once magnificent National Palace, lying in ruins behind them, thousands left homeless by the devastating quake pin their hopes of salvation on God rather than on the works of man.

The reading is Psalm 102, and the reader has a high, clear voice, sometimes distorted by feedback through the massive rock concert-size speakers.

"Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry come unto thee," she declares. "Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily."

Worshippers in the crowd follow the text with their fingers in battered copies of the Bible salvaged from their demolished homes. In a break in the text their wavering voices sing along with a Misericordia prayer.

"For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth," the Psalm continues. "My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread."

"For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping," runs the reading. "Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down."

Many Haitians were cast down on January 12, when a 7.0-magnitude quake tore into the capital and surrounding region, burying at least 112,000 people in the ruins of their shops and homes and leaving a million homeless.

Now the survivors are looking for sense among the senseless waste. A queue of them waits by the side of the stage as the reading continues.

One by one they take the microphone and loudly confess their sins and those of their people, begging the forgiveness of a God they can only suppose to have been so angered by Haitians that his wrath felled them in their thousands.

"My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass," the reader continues, her voice tireless. "But thou, O Lord, shall endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations."

"He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be created shall praise the Lord."

Not everyone in the crowd has come to pray, some are just bored by life in the tents and makeshift bivouacs carpeting the surrounding ceremonial square. others are here to do what business they can to survive.

A haggard-looking woman hawks a neat pile of freshly cleaned and pressed face towels. One optimist has erected a stall selling souvenir key rings with the Haitian flags and arm bands celebrating US President Barack Obama.

Elsewhere, family life continues. One woman huddles in a tiny patch of shade, breast-feeding an infant. Small boys wash in a bucket of soapy water while nearby their playmates fly kites made of wire and plastic waste.

Stands sell short sticks of sugar cane and small oily pastries.

Two young men unload French-language textbooks from a sack to sell on the kerbside. The cover boasts that readers will become fluent after a few easy lessons, but the salesmen themselves struggle to express themselves.

"What do I think of what happened? I don't think anything about it."

Across the road, marshalled by police with pump-action shotguns, a large but orderly and calm crowd presses around the door of a newly reopened bank, hoping to access cash, hoping that relatives abroad have sent donations.

"The cause of the quake was natural, but in what other country would it have had such an effect?" asks 33-year-old security guard Mercelus Luckner, fearful that he is unemployed after finding his firm's offices in ruins.

"Haitians have made many mistakes. They offended God. God is punishing us," he reasons, holding on to a vague hope that one of the foreign aid workers arriving in the city will pluck him from the crowd and offer him a job.

The Psalm ends: "Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure:"

January 25, 2010

caribbeannetnews

Bahamas Caribbean Blog International