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Hope for Haiti?

By The World ⋅ January 14, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment
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The horrific images coming out of Haiti since the earthquake aren’t altogether unfamiliar. The deeply impoverished country was nearly synonymous with tragedy for many years. But last year optimism was beginning to blossom for some Haiti watchers and it almost seemed as if the country wasn’t doomed to eternal misery. The World’s Amy Bracken has this reporter’s notebook.


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JEB SHARP: Unfortunately the images of devastation we’ve been seeing from Haiti aren’t all that unfamiliar. The country has been almost synonymous with calamity in recent years. But last year optimism for Haiti began to blossom. It suddenly seemed as if the country weren’t doomed to eternal misery. At least that’s what reporter Amy Bracken had been seeing.

AMY BRACKEN: I moved to Haiti in 2003, a 29-year-old reporter who had never heard an urban gunshot or seen a dead body outside a funeral parlor. I had no idea how much tragedy was in store for my new home. Over the next two years I reported on mounting political and gang violence, a coup d’etat, multiple landslides and floods that killed thousands of people and always the desperate poverty. The downward spiral continued after I left in 2005. There was a rise in kidnappings, back to back hurricanes, and food riots. The storms and riots were all in 2008. But then came this calm. Haiti’s pervasive hunger didn’t abate but the violent crime did. In 2009 Haiti was a quiet, stable democracy. UN peacekeepers held it up as an example of their good work and last fall President Obama signed into law new favorable trade status for the country. In speech after speech political figures said the same thing – now is the time for Haiti to begin to move forward. UN Chief Ban Ki Moon was one of the cheerleaders.

BAN KI MOON: 2008 was a difficult year for Haiti. There is however a growing optimism that Haiti has all the assets it needs to break the impasse.

BRACKEN: Speaking at the Haitian National Palace last March Ban said Haiti had been given what he called a window of opportunity.

MOON: Haiti can be made into a success story. Haiti has many friends and all the right ingredients for recovery. But speed is of the essence. We must start moving now to create jobs for the poor and give the people hope for a better future.

BRACKEN: Indeed the once shun nation did have friends. In April 28 countries and international organizations pledged to donate more than $300 million to Haiti’s economic recovery plan. The following month former president Bill Clinton became UN special envoy to Haiti and he spoke of hope at a Haitian Diaspora unity congress in August.

BILL CLINTON: It is my opinion that is by far the best chance that Haiti has had in the 35 years that I have been acquainted with it to slip the bonds of the past. By far the best chance.

BRACKEN: He made the same appeal to investors and last fall 500 of them gathered in Port-au-Prince to explore opportunities. The Soros Foundation invested in a mango export business and an industrial park that could create more than 20,000 jobs. The Inter American Development Bank provided grants instead of loans to the tune of more than $120 million in 2009. And Haiti’s adored champion of the poor, Dr. Paul Farmer, became Clinton’s deputy looking into aquaculture development and ways to build a tourism industry. In the past Farmer had blamed the international community for many of Haiti’s woes. But in a recent interview at his new UN office he said the show of outside support was reason for optimism.

PAUL FARMER: I think there’s you know … . I think it’s not unreasonable for people to find it hopeful. I mean I find it hopeful frankly.

BRACKEN: The Haitian government’s envoy to the UN, Lesly Voltair, was another optimist.

LESLY VOLTAIR: We think as President Clinton said that the stars are aligned. We have general governor of Canada with the Haitian. We have President Obama who is a friend of Haiti. We have President Clinton, Secretary of State Clinton who are friends of Haiti. We think that we are in a good position to advance the cause of Haiti.

BRACKEN: The stars are aligned and window of opportunity became mantras for Haiti. Today seeing the apocalyptic images of Port-au-Prince that window seems to have been slammed shut. Maybe 2009 was the year of false hope. But if there is still any reason for hope it’s that the constellation of nations and organizations supporting Haiti seems firmly in place and more visible than ever. I think about Paul Farmer said to me when I left his office after our interview.

“Remember the H of G.”

“The H of G?” I said.

He produced a copy of his book Aids and Accusation and circled references to the Hermeneutics of Generosity. An inclination to give. I hope the international community’s H of G for Haiti remains strong for many years. For The World I’m Amy Bracken.


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Discussion

One comment for “Hope for Haiti?”

  • Robert H. Haas

    When I saw photos last Friday of the destruction of Canapé Vert, I felt compelled to write the piece below:

    My neighborhood in Port au Prince is called Canapé Vert. It’s one of the few truly green places in the city. I call it my neighborhood because in the 14 times I visited Haiti from 1981 to 2003 I stayed there, I touched down there, I hung out there, and I felt the pulse of life all around me. It felt like home.

    Canapé Vert is a hill, lodged against a verdant chain of mountains. And the place where I stayed had a terrace with a panoramic vista of the whole city, the harbor, the airport, and mountains—the ones behind us that stretched along the southern peninsula and the ones beyond the city that ran up to the north. I remember stunning sunrises and sunsets, and thunderstorms when the clusters of lightning in the sky looked like giant crustaceans. I have fond memories of times spent on that terrace with groups of traveler-pilgrims, processing our daily experiences down below in the heart of Haiti’s suffering—in places like Mother Theresa’s House for the Dying and with the most desperate people in the shantytown of Cite Soleil.

    The place where I stayed was called Notre Dame de Bon Refuge, Our Lady of Good Refuge. It was a home where religious sisters took in young girls from the streets of the city. These were girls who had fled desperate poverty in Haiti’s rural hinterland, coming to Port au Prince at ages as young as 12 with the idea that they could somehow make a life or career that only turned out to be, more often than not, prostitution. When I visited, the girls in the house were our hosts. They prepared elaborate meals for us, to show off learned domestic skills they would later market in the homes of wealthier Haitians. I remember the joy they had, as they welcomed our groups with song, to their home and each day to their dining hall.

    There was song everywhere. I remember going on walks around Canapé Vert, on steep, narrow, twisted ribbons of pavement that could never pass a code inspection in the US. I remember overhearing song coming out of the little houses that surrounded the convent and its compound. I remember walking partway down the hill to the church of Ste. Marie, where the mass was an animated celebration of the whole assembly, in song and in motion, like a continuous dance. I remember that when I walked around, the sounds of animals, even the sounds of the pigs, were like music. And the roosters never quieted down, no matter how dark the night got. Their “song,” if you knew how to listen, was a message that all was well.

    That was then. Up until this morning I had a fantasy that maybe, somehow, this little area might have been spared by the earthquake. But the photos on the New York Times website show that most everything on Canapé Vert is flattened. The fault line runs right through the beautiful tree-covered mountain behind where we stayed. And the convent where the sisters made a home and school for the young girls, where they hosted hundreds of groups of traveler-pilgrims from Boston and all over the US, where all of us had such memorable times on the terrace, has collapsed. As far as we know, three of the girls perished and also one of the sisters.

    The Canapé Vert that I knew is gone for now. And short of sending money, most of us are powerless to do anything. But I want you to love this place and its people the way I do. Please, if you pray, if you know how to pray, if you want to pray, pray for Canapé Vert and all the people of Port-au-Prince.