Yves Laurent

After spending a year studying development in grad school and more time before that in undergrad, I’ve come to learn that it’s easy to lose sight of what you are trying to do and for whom you are working. The daily problems in the world are overwhelming and the maze of bureaucracy one must often sort through in order to try to enact change can bring you to your knees, making even the most zealous idealist question his or her ability to improve the lives of others. But at the lowest of low moments, it’s almost always the story of an individual that scoops me from the pits of discouragement and reinvigorates my determination. It’s the smile on a child’s face or the perseverance of 80-year old woman. It’s the personal stories of people who struggle, but who keep on going. These are the people for whom “development” is working. This is one story of one of my best friends I’ve made in Haiti. It’s nothing extraordinary, but it’s people like Yves that make me realize even when nothing seems to be going right, we must soldier on…

With a name like Yves Laurent, if I didn’t know better, I’d picture a man perched at a cafe on a boulevard in Paris, nibbling on a baguette, watching the world pass him by. The Yves I know strolls down the streets of Port-au-Prince instead, similarly nibbling on a baguette, watching the world pass him by too. The main difference between the two scenes, however, isn’t the location, but just how the world is passing him by. As a man in Paris has the luxury to soak up relaxation time on a plaza, the man sitting on the street in Haiti hasn’t necessarily made the choice to pass the day idly. Instead, for the man in Haiti, or in this case Yves, the world simply hasn’t given him the opportunity to do much else. Yves, like many Haitians, tries to find things to do to make money and to improve his life, but when you’re without as social safety net (as most are here), modest gains are so often followed by hard falls—the kind of falls which demand each individual to make a choice whether it’s worth it to get back up at all.

Yves just turned 31 last month, hard for me to tell because he’s usually got a boyish grin on his face while he imitates the sounds of a whoopy cushion. He used to come over every other day, but lately his visits to my house have been picking up. In fact, nowadays he quietly spends most nights downstairs in our house while we sleep up above. After getting married two years ago, he’s been hitting some rough patches in his marriage over the last few months. Yves sells cell phone minutes on the streets, but that barely brings in enough money to buy food. Business is slow as any given street is crowded with many people trying to sell minutes. Telecommunications is of the few sectors of the economy that even the poor participate in. But when you’re married here, your job is to provide for your wife, and he simply can’t always do it. She lets him know it, too. “The other men I could have married finished school.” “You aren’t a man if you can’t feed your family.” She’s partly right to be angry. That’s the way marriage works here. But to see the demoralized looks after a day spent selling on the streets and the subsequent rebuke from his wife, it’s a wonder how he evades serious depression.

If Yves’ responsibilities lied just with his wife, however, things might not be too bad. Unfortunately he bears the financial burdens of his entire family. While Yves works here near my house in central Port-au-Prince, he also is constantly thinking of his mother and two brothers who live about 20 minutes away in the Carrefour Feuilles section of town. There, in a one room shack nestled in the back alleyways of a mountainside, his other family members rely on him for income too. His father passed away from cancer in 2005, leaving Yves to take care of his mother.

At the time of his father’s death, Yves was spending two years as a missionary for the Mormon church, as many Mormons do during young adulthood. These were undoubtedly the best years of his life as rarely a week goes by without stories of his days living with American Mormons around Haiti. He got to travel the country during these years and inherit a wealth of experiences, something only very few Haitians are afforded the opportunity to do. When he began his mission at the age of 23, he put school on hold after completing the equivalent of sophomore year of high school with the intention of returning later. As he’d find out though, life here in Haiti sometimes sweeps blueprints to the winds.

Following his father’s death he was now supporting the entire family, but he had two other brothers, Gary and Junior, who were around his age were on track to help out as well.  Unfortunately, the next years would become marred by even greater tragedy. On December 22, 2006, Yves received a call in the evening from his youngest brother Toto who said he thought Junior was in trouble. Junior had friends in the neighborhood who were involved with gangs. And while he was never involved himself, a rival gang decided to get revenge by taking it out on Junior. After not hearing from Junior all night and as his family anxiously awaited news, Yves finally got a call that he had been dreading. His younger brother had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. His body was found in the street shot six times, finger cut off. The despair of Haitian poverty and violence had never touched this close before. But it was reality now.

Only weeks after this, Yves’ other brother Gary, who had received a college degree in architecture from the Dominican Republic, became blinded by dust only to lose his vision forever. Once again the plan he had in mind would have to take a detour. Now as the only breadwinner, Yves had to forgo school to provide for his mother, his brothers, and his new wife—a situation that lives on today. Now almost 3 years removed from the years of greatest tragedy, Yves continues on. He constantly is looking for a better, more-sustainable job. But even for those with a education, the Haitian job market is a barren wasteland. Yves relies on church as the driving force in his life. He’s not just there every Sunday, but he uses its message to support him through the rough times. He loves to cook and he’s just started taking some classes to finish his high school program, not that I have much hope a high school degree will truly be of much benefit—call me a pessimist.

As I sat down with him on his 31st birthday to have him tell me more details about his life, it was clear this annual milestone was a time for reflection. He explained the deaths in his family, the joyous years of his mission, and how still today there are days when his mother cannot find food to eat.  “Lavi a di an Ayiti”, he said, eyes welling a little. “Life is difficult in Haiti”. He batted a tear from his eye and stared at the ground for a moment, partly ashamed to look weak, partly just angry at his situation. Quiet for a minute, he lifted his head, he shrugged his shoulders, and he got back up. Not because he necessarily wanted to, but because he had to. Because here in Haiti, and elsewhere in developing countries, you are on your own. There’s no government waiting to get you back on your feet. There’s no life-savings sitting in a bank somewhere. There’s just hope… in it’s pure, unadulterated, and sometimes naive form. And that is what keeps him—and me—going.

African Horizons

First, my apologies to those who’ve been looking for updates recently. It seems the month of September got lost in the shuffle. I won’t go into too much detail, but a few highlights of the forgotten month include a solo weekend venture to the South (which included barfing on a tap-tap and having my sandals stolen while I was in the ocean), saying goodbye to another roommate and welcoming a new one, continuing my work on our CLM pilot loan program evaluation, and finding time to head home to the States to celebrate two weddings in one week.

Now a few weeks into October, I’m sure many of you have heard that my days here in Haiti are numbered. After thoughtful consideration, I’ve decided to accept an internship offer in Cape Town, South Africa that starts in January. It definitely wasn’t an easy decision—especially since I’ve come to enjoy Haiti and its culture so much. I love learning Kreyol, hanging out with friends on the streets of Port-au-Prince, and seeing the amazing work that Fonkoze is doing. It’s also been exciting with the recent high-level publicity Haiti has gotten thanks to the Bill Clinton’s UN Envoy, Matt Damon’s Water.org, as well as Fonkoze’s new $50 million dollar partnership with Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health. Things are looking up for many people here in Haiti and I just hope that these positive visions for the country can come to fruition.

The job offer in Cape Town, however, was just too good to pass up. Those that know me well know my heart has been pulling me back to Africa ever since I left Namibia 3 years ago. Couple this with the richness of South African culture, the freshness of a burgeoning apartheid-free state, the beauty of Cape Town’s mountains and oceans, and a job that will fit perfectly with my graduate school work, and it simply seemed like the right path for me to take.

I’ll be working for a small grassroots organization called Africa Unite which seeks to quell xenophobia (fear of different types of people). South Africa, much like the United States, has a wealth of immigrants seeking prosperity and protection within it’s borders. From Zimbabweans fleeing the oppressive policies of Mugabe to Somalis escaping the ravage of war, people see the country’s relative wealth and political freedom as a brighter future. All this comes, often times, at the disdain of many native South Africans who feel these foreigners are stealing their jobs and their government services (sound familiar?). Africa Unite thinks there is a way for these groups to live harmoniously, and so they employ a wide variety of programs that not only help unite people, but also alleviate poverty, crime, and human rights violations.

I’m going to be the acting manager of a division of Africa Unite called the Sisonke Savings Scheme. This program, still in the very formative stages, seeks to encourage a culture of savings and entrepreneurship amongst South African youth. It teaches life skills and financial skills, amongst much more. One of the things that drew me so much to this position was the ability I’ll have to greatly interact with the population I’m working with. I’ll be holding numerous community meetings with youth, allowing them the ability to shape the program as they desire. I’ll be networking with other non-profits and organizations to grow our program. I’ll get to employ program design and implementation skills that I studied at Rutgers as well as learn hands-on the skill of trying to find funding.

It all sounds very challenging, but I think it will be very rewarding in the end. I can’t wait to see what Africa has in store for me and I thank you for all following my blog during my 5 months in Haiti. I’ll be finishing up here at the end of October and returning to Philadelphia/Camden for 2 months to try to make some very important money to fund my internship. I head off to Cape Town around the first week of January and will be staying through the middle of July. (For those of you that follow soccer, that also means I’ll be there as South Africa hosts its first ever World Cup!!)

Anyways, stay tuned on here, I think I still have one or two more Haiti updates in me before I go.

Peace and Healthcare to all. 

What I’ve Been Working On

I’ve talked a decent amount about Haiti these last few blog entries, so this time I thought I’d switch it up and talk a little more specifically about my work at here at Fonkoze. As I mentioned in my first few posts, I originally had been working jointly between Fonkoze and Alternative Insurance Company (AIC) to try to find some solutions for covering Fonkoze’s loan clients when hurricane season comes around. Unfortunately, that position was not all it was cracked up to be. The insurance company was apparently misinformed about my capacity, as one of my first tasks was to predict the probabilities of hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, landslides, and other natural disasters hitting certain areas of Haiti. That’s right, I was supposed to tell them there is a 23% chance of a major hurricane hitting the southeastern tip of the country and it will cause $10 million dollars in damage! Yes, I did get my undergrad degree in Actuarial Science. No, I do not have the slightest idea how to begin calculating those numbers. Last time I checked that was reserved for senior level actuaries at the top US companies, and even they still have a hard time predicting these things. Needless to say, I sent out an email telling AIC I did not think I could perform the task. Not only did I not get a response to this email, but I got no response to another email that contained a large project I had worked on for three weeks. I currently don’t have the fondest feelings toward AIC since they basically ignored me until I went away, but thankfully I’ve picked myself up and I now find myself working on much more interesting things that are completely within Fonkoze.

Seeking to utilize some of the skills I learned last year during my graduate classes at Rutgers, I nuzzled my way into our Social Impact (Enpak Sosyal) division which is in charge of conducting evaluations on whether or not our clients are actually being lifted out of poverty and whether our programs are working as planned. This is exciting for three reasons: 1) The day-to-day job includes much more contact with clients across the country, or at least with data that shows how our clients are doing across the country. 2) I actually have a boss who is helpful, encouraging, and motivating 3) I’m on the frontlines of determining whether Fonkoze’s program are effective poverty-alleviators.

My biggest project with the department has been to compile all the data from a 24-month evaluation of our Chemen Lavi Miyo (CLM) clients. CLM is a pilot program of Fonkoze which seeks to aid the poorest of the poor. Many of our other microloan programs focus on those in moderate poverty, those who have some understanding of financial information and have some wherewithal to repay our loans. CLM, on the other hand, addresses much more dire women and families around the country. Fonkoze specifically goes into villages, uses a wealth ranking system, conducts interviews with town leaders, and seeks to find those who are at the bottom of the pile. These prospective CLM clients typically have no assets, no suitable housing, few money-generating skills, and no plan for the future. They beg to eat and they often find themselves and their children going hungry. These are the children with bloated bellies and skinny arms and legs so awkwardly painful to look at. They have no access to healthcare, meaning when they get sick, they die. It is this sort of client so many microfinance organizations around the world have been unable to help in the past simply because they did not know how to cater financial programs to such financially-insecure groups. Thus, Fonkoze, in many ways, is pioneering new ground in seeking to reach this crucial population.

CLM was launched 24-months ago and reviewed with client surveys and evaluations every 9 months. The CLM program infused clients with animal assets, encouraged them to foster gardens, and helped them devise a plan for another source of income (like selling things in the marketplace). Along with this, housing assistance was given to many to help change floors from dirt to concrete, walls from earth to wood, and roofs from palms branches to iron sheets. Case managers meet with clients regularly to assess their progress, give them health and sanitation advice, and help mediate program they encounter. This is only the tip of iceberg, but I can’t divulge every detail. After 18-months, CLM clients re then designated as eligible or ineligible to progress up the Fonkoze ladder into our Ti Kredi microloan program, which involves small loans starting at $25. Not all CLM clients were ready to graduate to the Ti Kredi program, but many have and many are planning on progressing even higher up the Fonkoze “ladder out of poverty”.

With the 24-month data collected, I’ve been doing data analysis in order to help a group of London researchers produce a more formal report of the entire CLM pilot program. We look at things like food security, animal ownership, child education, self image, housing conditions, etc to determine whether our programs our working. While the results aren’t all final, it’s been interesting to see what they say so far. Much progress has been made with CLM clients since the program began. For example, approximately 96% have improved their baseline score on one of our evaluation surveys. More people send their kids to school and more clients that they have improved their place in society. Furthermore, garden cultivation has increased, assets have grown, and fewer people are forced to skip meals or beg for food.

Results, however, are not all positive. Between the 18-month end of the program and our 24-month evaluation, many clients began to slip back toward the same despair they experienced at the beginning. Those who graduated into our Ti Kredi program are faring much better, but still some of these clients are also seeing declines in positive indicators. All this shows there is still much work to be done. We need to look at how we can sustain our results, how we can help more clients improve in the first place, and what needs to change to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our work. Just like in so many other areas, we’ve reaped the rewards of blazing new trails in poverty alleviation with our CLM program, but it’s not perfect yet. This is the future challenge for Fonkoze, but it’s an exciting one and I’m glad I get to be a part of it!

Waging a wage war

A few years ago when I worked as a server in a steakhouse, in between our banter about rude customers and weekend parties, all of the servers would at some point chastise the low hourly wage we were paid ($2.85) and remark on our heavy reliance on tips from customers. Even on slow nights, however, we usually came out of there with decent money that bumped us up to at least the regular minimum wage of around $6/hour. At the end of the day, I was never in the same situation as most of the other servers. I was just a college student looking for a little extra cash and a fun job after classes. Many of the other employees were single moms trying to raise young kids or Mexican immigrants struggling for a better life. They actually depended on those wages to make ends meet, to put food on the table. It’s amazing how little $6 an hour can get you in America. After food, transportation, rent, schooling, clothes, and our outlandishly over-priced healthcare system (especially for those whose work doesn’t provide insurance), most of those employees were left with a few nickels and dimes.

Now, switch to Haiti. By no means is the cost of living for the average Haitian as high as it is for the average American (unless the average Haitian tried to live the lifestyle of a typical American with imported cars, big houses, and material extras). Nevertheless, the cost of living here is still quite high. Being a small island nation, many of the consumable goods must be imported from places as diverse as the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Turkey. This adds transportation and tariff costs to the prices Haitians pay for food and other daily needs. Thus, many survive by eating non-imported goods like mangos, avocados, pineapple, plantains, bananas, etc. Yet still Haitian staples like rice, corn, etc. must flow in from international locations and often fluctuate greatly in price thanks to the world markets.

With this in mind, imagine trying to survive not on $6 an hour, not even on $6 a day—but on $1.75 per day. That’s right, $1.75 per day. Until last week, that was the Haitian minimum wage. If you study development or if you stay up late enough to watch the World Vision segments about starving Africans, you’ve no doubt heard that one of the international standards of poverty is the $2 per day line. Those who make less than $2 a day are considered impoverished. It’s hard for me to believe that a country could literally set its minimum wage below the international poverty standard—but Haiti managed to.

As I talked about in some of my earlier posts, the violent demonstrations that we see here in Port-au-Prince have been largely the result of this low wage. Progressive students from the State University of Port-au-Prince have marched through the streets demanding an increase to this insult of a daily wage. On May 5th, the Haitian Senate voted to up the wage from 70 gouds a day ($1.75) to 200 gouds a day ($5.00), but President Preval refused to sign the bill into law. Despite overwhelming support for the bill from the people of Haiti, the president was instead loyal to a small core group of textile businessmen that argued an increased wage would force them to pull out of Haiti. Many reports say it was a few as 8 key textile companies that were inhibiting the passage of the law.

The manifestations began the day after I arrived and still have continued occasionally up through last weekend when over 2,000 people gathered outside the Parliament to shout for change. Haitian police and UN troops regularly dispel the protests with teargas and rubber bullets, often just inflaming the Haitians’ hatred for the United Nation’s presence here. The protesters respond by throwing rocks and burning cars (like the UN truck flipped upside down and torched outside of Fonkoze a few months ago). People are fed up. They can’t survive. 80% of Haiti lives in poverty.

Finally, this last weekend the Senate reconvened and responded to the demands of the people, voting to raise the daily wage to $3.75. It’s hardly a livable income, but better than not having raised it all at all. We’ll see if it quiets the protestors in the streets. More importantly we’ll see if it quiets the rumbling bellies and cringing cries of poverty. My guess the answer to both of these questions is “no” because even after the good news of the Senate’s vote, a few issues still remain with wages…

1. The daily minimum wage law only affects about 250,000 out of the 10 million people living in Haiti. The overwhelming majority of people sell small items on the streets rather than work for more formal sectors which the government can regulate. These people undoubtedly make less than the government minimum wage. What can be done to either increase their profits or, more likely, to provide more formal, sustainable jobs for them?
2. The UN and Bill Clinton (Special Envoy of the UN to Haiti) recently released a report that said that Haiti’s comparative advantage was in clothing factories. They argued that low wages, along with no tariffs to export textiles to the US, were important to bringing jobs to Haiti. Thus, they effectively opposed the higher wage the people were demanding. Sounds to me like they are joining groups like the World Bank who impose structural adjustment policies on countries like Haiti which in effect can hurt the people and undermine democracy. Similarly, it raises the question of whether the policies like those of Clinton and the UN create a ‘race to the bottom’ where developing countries must continually lower their wages and labor laws in order to attract international business.
3. Along the same lines, will these key textile companies be true to their threats and pull out of Haiti? I saw it when I was in Namibia with a company called Ramatex. After a number of years of giving into the demands of the multinational company, the Namibian government finally refused to allow the company to continue polluting the local water, paying horrible wages, and prohibiting labor unions. Within less than 2 weeks, the company had moved their textile factories to a place with cheaper labor and lax regulations. It’s a tough question to answer: Do we encourage this type of foreign investment even though the companies are clearly taking advantage of impoverished people? Or do we tell these companies to get lost and risk losing a precious opportunity to at least put a few people to work?
4. Wages are just one gear to fix in the logjammed clockwork of poverty. Higher wages can do their part, but how effective can they be when you have a poor education system, little access to healthcare, poor infrastructure, etc.

These are a few of the questions that are playing out in my head now. It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the coming weeks here in Haiti. The unfortunate thing is that while I am merely pondering these questions, thousands of people are out there living the reality of it all. They are the ones who get thrown around between the latest government regulations, the handouts of international aid groups, the projects of thousands of NGOs, and the daily grind of life without a safety net. While the UN troops may be the ones with the tanks and guns, it’s the Haitians that are truly on the frontlines.

Dye Mon, Gen Mon

If you keep up with me on Facebook (which I visit about 10 times more frequently than this blog), you know that this past weekend I got to visit a place previously only familiar to me through the pages of one of my favorite books. Tracy Kidder’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains” was a book recommended to me by a friend from the University of North Carolina in 2006. It’s a huge bestseller and now even a required read for all freshman at Valpo. HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT! The book tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard trained doctor who started visiting Haiti as a young man. He eventually established a hospital in the remote village of Cange, saving thousands of lives and operating with a mindset of “Do Whatever It Takes”. People said it couldn’t be done and people said that he was naïve, but he and his organization Partners in Health have since opened branches around the world and become leaders in the fight against HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria.

This past Saturday I was lucky enough—thanks to my roommate James and our pull as Fonkoze employees—to get a private tour of the hospital in Cange where the whole story takes place. They specifically don’t give tours to the public because of their goal to operate a hospital rather than a tourist destination. But we graciously accepted our invitation and headed out from Port-au-Prince for the drive through the mountains to the small village.

After about a two hour drive in a rented SUV on Friday, we stopped for the night in the town of Mirebalais before it got dark. Similar to Jakmel, it’s always nice to get out of P-au-P and experience the tranquility of more isolated places. With James and his girlfriend Noel wanting to stay at a slightly nicer hotel, I found a cheaper place and spent the night by myself exploring the town a bit and making friends with the Haitians working as security at my complex. It was such a great night sitting on the town plaza, drinking a Prestige, watching people meander by, and trying my best to share some conversation in Kreyol. Clearly, however, the conversation was not quite as clear as I thought though after the guys went and found a Haitian prostitute for me as the night was ending. Confused for a minute, I quickly realized what was happening and I sent her away much to my relief. Nothing like being lost in translation for a minute! I laughed to myself for a good long time about that one.

The next morning we packed up early and hit the dusty trail toward Cange (literally, it was quite dusty and rocky). In Haiti, there aren’t too many roads so if you generally know which direction the town is, you can take the path headed that way and get at least somewhere close. Without any maps, we constantly rolled down our window and kept asking people on the streets if we were going in the right direction. As we got closer, we knew we were headed the right way as we came upon a massive dam and reservoir—a subject that was mentioned throughout the book as a foreign aid electricity project which had flooded many people out of their homes in the valley and forced them up in the rocky cliffs. (A good example of foreign aid gone totally bad!). As we drove along the narrow dirt roads, the houses seemed to teeter on the edge of the mountains—surely susceptible to falling rocks and mudslides. Finally pulling into Cange, we asked one last person where Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante in Kreyol) was located and found the complex nestled on the side of a hill.

I’m not sure what I expected it to look like, but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind. The complex was huge with numerous different buildings serving a variety purposes from an education center to community meeting spots. As we walked up the hill, we got into the heart of the medical complex which really didn’t resemble an American hospital at all. Our guide first took us to the pediatric in-patient ward where numerous children and babies were being treated for everything from premature birth to malnutrition. We then visited the operating rooms which were surprisingly and awkwardly accessible as we viewed two live surgeries taking place. Apparently, health privacy laws have not made their way to Haiti yet. We then saw the recovery room and the isolation ward for those patients who are co-infected with HIV and tuberculosis. Throughout the hallways connecting these different locations, there were people everywhere. Some waiting for loved ones, some carrying relatives into the hospitals, others sick themselves and sleeping on the floor while they waited for open hospital beds. From there we moved into the female health ward as well as visited a group therapy building. Overall it was great to see one of my favorite books come to life, but like many parts of the country, it was still depressing.

Zanmi Lasante is one of the best funded organizations in Haiti with millions of dollars from charitable foundations and private donors alike. Yet, still there was so much need. They had some state of the art equipment, but not enough. They had devoted doctors, but not enough. They had medicine, but supplies can run low. They can treat most diseases, but not all. Again with the mentality of “Do whatever it takes”, some kids even get flown to hospitals in Boston and around the US to treat more serious problems. When you think about how cost-prohibitive that policy is, it makes some people in the development realm question the organization’s priorities. Why spend so much money to save one child, when you that same amount could be spent to impact more people? But Paul Farmer and Zanmi Lasante don’t think that way. If a child comes needing help, they find a way to get it. It’s pretty impressive. Overall, they have clearly overcome some obstacles in the fight for healthcare in rural Haiti, but there are so many more obstacles ahead.

After the tour, we headed back to Mirebalais before continuing on to the village of Sodo. There, we expected to see a huge waterfall that’s steeped in voodoo tradition for its healing powers—and we weren’t disappointed. We eventually made it to the site and discovered it full of Haitians who had come to purify themselves. When life gets bad and your troubles become too much, many in the area come to the waterfall, light a candle, wash themselves, and then throw their clothes into the river, letting them wash away downstream. Along with their clothes, their intention is to allow their troubles to wash away as well. While I’ve had my fair share of modest difficulties in Haiti, I decided not to strip down and throw my clothes into the river—opting instead to enjoy the beauty of the waterfall from the sidelines, but maybe regretting it later on.

After one more night in Mirebalais, we headed back to Port-au-Prince on Sunday. Since we had a car for the first time in Haiti, we swung by the one Americanized supermarket which is about 30 minutes from our house. Along with the fact that we were visiting the store for the first time, we were also excited as our refrigerator had been broken for the past 4 weeks and was just fixed two days earlier. We stocked up on groceries and returned home only to find that our fridge had decided two days was enough. It was broken again! So thus, we ended up throwing out tons of spoiled food. In the next 24 hours, our backup power generator would break, our oven decided to no longer work, and my computer decided it no longer likes to operate certain programs. I’m not sure if this was the waterfall telling me I should have believed in its healing powers, but if I had to do it again, I think I’d be the naked white guy making a scene in the river!

Alas, though, when I finally stopped tonight to process the last 24 hours and its misfortunes, I think I gained some good perspective. I’m complaining about the power going out, but most people here don’t even have electricity to begin with. I whine because I had to throw away milk and cheese; some people survive by mixing cooking oil with flour and dirt to make small fried cakes. My connection to the world (my computer) stops for a few days, but many Haitians voices will never be heard.

Both of my two best Haitians friends here in Port-au-Prince have no formalized jobs. They try to sell cell phone minutes or get paid to play the drum. They hang out with us just like they were Americans and they dress remarkably nice, as do most Haitians. But then they sometimes ask me for small change and I scoff thinking about how I’m not getting paid to live here. How do they expect me to spot them $2.00 once a week? Does every Haitian literally think I am the source of cash? At the end of the day, however, I am the one who returns to a safe clean house (electricity or not). I am the one who never worries about eating dinner. I am the one who has bed. They, on the other hand, return to their shacks. They scrounge to send their brothers and sisters to school with the money they make. They sleep on floors with 8 people in a room. Just like Paul Farmer’s organization fights each day to aid Haitians, so too do Haitians struggle each day to simply live. They wake up. They work hard. They might succeed, but few ever fully escape the grasps of poverty. When my problems get too big, it just takes a moment of reflection to realize my problems are anthills compared to theirs.

“Dye mon, gen mon” … “Beyond the mountain, there are more mountains”

Such is the ancient proverb here; such is Haiti.

Chasing Waterfalls

Last year, when I was deciding where in the world I wanted to work, my thoughts initially drifted back to Africa where I had spent 4 months before and had the time of my life. After some time, though, I decided that was a little further away from the States than I wanted to be for a year. Haiti was naturally a good compromise for me. Closer to home, yet similar in many ways to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The added perk for Haiti, in my mind, was the lure of Caribbean beaches, palm trees, and the beautiful blue ocean. This weekend proved my reasoning right.

Finally able to escape the hustle and bustle of Port-au-Prince, I headed down to the seaside town of Jakmel on Haiti’s southern coast for 2 days. Along with two of my roommates and Godson, we headed out to search for a tap-tap to take us on the 2.5 hour ride through the mountains. Luckily, we found an old school bus that was headed to the city so we didn’t have to try to cram into a truck or van. Those types of tap-taps are horribly uncomfortable with people literally sitting, standing, and squeezing into every available ounce of space. (For example, two weeks ago we had roughly 40 people in the back of a big truck for an hour ride to a town called Kenskof. I literally sat on one hip, leaned forward, fell off my seat at nearly every turn, and had someone standing on my feet—all while a woman crouched over me with her armpit in my face. Needless to say, they’re not the most luxurious or safe rides). But I digress…

So we boarded a school bus that seats three per seat (or seven children in case of the seat next to us) and pulled into Jakmel around noon. Flanked by motorbikes hawking their taxi services, we climbed off the bus into the town of a few thousand. Although Jakmel would turn out to be MUCH more laidback and peaceful than P-au-P, the bus station was certainly not! We spent about 30 minutes trying to get away from the motorbikes who, despite our appeals, kept following us and surrounding us—they weren’t going to take no for an answer. Luckily, we stumbled upon Fonkoze’s Jakmel branch office so we ducked inside and met an employee who took us to a restaurant for lunch and finally convinced the taxi drivers to go away.

After scarfing down some chicken and rice, we headed out to look for a hotel. With the town easily maneuverable on foot, we took the advice of some locals and found a hotel a few blocks from the beach. We paid about 3000 goud (or $75 US dollars for 4 of us). That’s expensive here in Haiti, but Jakmel is their main tourist city so the prices are inflated. Ironically, despite seeing almost NO other tourists while we were there, we were not able to negotiate down to a lower price…and most of the other hotels were still more expensive. In the end, we were happy because our place had hot water and air conditioning which is nearly unheard of in this country.

We quickly changed clothes and headed down to the public beach. Even though we knew nicer beaches existed at expensive private hotels on the outskirts of town, we decided that the one in town would be fine and the water was great. Other than 2 or 3 children, we were the only ones in the ocean enjoying the warm water and waves for at least the first hour. We ended the day by walking around the beach and town before settling in to watch the USA/Haiti soccer game back at our hotel. With every eye in the country undoubtedly tuned in on TV sets across the country, Haiti almost pulled off a massive upset leading 2-1 with less than 5  minutes to go in the game. We were sure we were never going to hear the end of it if the US got upset by this tiny Caribbean nation. They were going crazy! Luckily, the US tied it up at 2-2 providing a much more peaceful conclusion to the match and allowing us to escape without the humiliation of football defeat.

The next day, we set out to search for the legendary Bassins Bleu waterfalls where the water was rumored to be a beautiful shade of blue. Not really knowing how to get there, some local man (who had been following us all weekend) took us out to this large riverbed area at the base of the mountains. It had a few moderate streams running through it, but it looked as if it probably fills up much more during big storms. The area was filled people bathing in the river, washing clothes, and searching through piles of trash. Many of these people had no clothes and appeared to be the poorest of the poor in Jakmel. It truly was a picture you see on those TV programs asking for donations. Our guide instructed us that we need to fjord the river on foot and hike up over the next two mountains. Knowing other people who had visited Bassins Bleu without wading through a rather sketchy body of water and hiking all day, we left our guide and ended up finding motorcycles to take us. In the end, it turns out we did have to drive thru the riverbed area before reaching a road on the other side. As the motorbikes had to be pushed through the water, we had to get off and wade through the water anyways.

After a nice ride 5 km through the mountains, we arrived at the tourist site, paid our drivers about $2 and started the short hike to the waterfalls. It was a pretty amazing sight. Lush green forests with sky blue waters careening over rocks. After repelling down a short rope a one point, we reached the main waterfall and swimming area. We spent the next hour jumping off rocks and floating around the waterfall, before hiking back to the starting point. Knowing that we didn’t have very much leverage, a crowd of drivers wanted to drive us back to town at much higher prices than we paid to get there. Luckily, my buddy James convinced a group of UN soldiers stationed in Haiti, who were visiting the falls as well, to take us in their big UN vehicles. They told us they’d do it as long as we climbed out before reaching the town limits as they weren’t allowed to drive non-UN personnel around. So thus we avoided a long motorcycle ride and a walk back through the dirty river because of a free ride with a Macedonian/New Zealander UN employee!

After a little lunch at our hotel, we headed out to the town center, hopped a free ride to the bus station, and finally caught a bumpy van back to Port-au-Prince. Although it’s never completely comfortable or relaxing to travel and live in this country, it was certainly a good weekend. Beautiful landscapes, great friends, and new experiences… Always an adventure here in Haiti!

 

A day in the life…

I’m back, and my apologies for the lag in blog postings… I guess I got sucked into actually living my life rather than writing it all down!

Life in Haiti carries on. The excitement from the first few weeks (manifestations, crazy weather, sickness, etc.) has all calmed down and I’ve settled into a bit of a regular pattern which is both good and bad. I awake most weekdays around 5:30 am thanks to the early Haitian sunrise and then quickly roll over and fall back asleep, reawakening about 6 more times before actually rolling out of bed around 7:30. A quick bucket bath and then it’s off to work at Fonkoze around 8:30. It’s a nice 10 minute stroll down the street from my house and I enjoy seeing the bustling street in the morning. It’s filled with everything from women selling freshly cut mango and pineapple to men shining shoes and hundreds of high school and college students heading to class. It seems like I must live in an education district because about every fifth building identifies itself as a school although I’ve yet to quite get a grasp on the Haitian education system. I usually get a few calls of “blan” (white person) as I walk by and a friendly head nod seems to satisfy most of them.

Work at Fonkoze has been both challenging and rewarding. Rewarding in the fact that I get to see the inner-working of one of the most impactful NGO’s in Haiti. Fonkoze currently has about 55,000 women microloan clients and 150,000 people use their savings services. Beyond that, there’s a plethora of other programs they offer from cheap money transfers (U.S. remittances from family members practically sustain Haiti) to literacy, business, and sexual health education. Fonkoze promises their clients that after being a responsible member for 5 years, the organization will guarantee they never go hungry, they never are homeless, their children receive an education, they will know how to read and write, they will have accumulating assets, and they will be able to face any obstacle that arises! WOW, THAT’S AS POWERFUL MISSION STATEMENT AS I’VE EVER SEEN! Fonkoze truly does so much and is so innovative in their operations. It’s exciting to see it happening all around me. It’s also challenging, however, as I’m working more with the microinsurance side of the organization. Right now, we are partnering with a local insurance company to develop catastrophic insurance coverage (hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc.) for the loan clients. We also have a life insurance policy, of sorts, for each loan client. I spend a majority of my time working with this company and many of the tasks they’ve given me are slightly beyond my level of expertise. While I do have an undergrad degree in Actuarial Science, I’ve never spent any time working in the field (which is heavily learned through job experience). Thus, when I’m told to calculate the probability of a hurricane hitting a certain region of Haiti in 2010, I’m sure my boss can see the glazed-over stare that says “WHERE DO I BEGIN?”. It’s a cross between frustration of not knowing the insurance business well enough and of fearfully producing a product that is insufficient to protect Fonkoze in the future. Luckily, though, I intersperse this work with other tasks that deal with improving Fonkoze’s operations from redesigning reporting systems to auditing some past Hurricane relief programs which I’ve really enjoyed. In the future, I hope to get to interact more with the clients around the country, as well as to work in diverse divisions of the organization that perform tasks from planning to implementation to evaluation.

Around 4:30 I usually head home, make a quick change of clothes, and then head to the market to grab some food. I’ve begun buying more from the street vendors as my Kreyol has improved, but I still get a lot of the basics at the little supermarket near my house. I’ve never been a very fruitful cook, so sustenance requires a lot of PB&J, Macaroni and Cheese, Spaghetti, and Scrambled Eggs. Thank God that Fonkoze feeds me a huge Haitian lunch at work. That way I get my nutrients and cultural food experience at least once a day before I can settle in for Americanized, easy cooking. We do have our friend Yves cook for us a few times a week to get some more Haitian tastes in. Though there are only 2-4 of us that live here, Yves always seems to cook for approximately 10—resulting in heaping plates and uncomfortable shoving of starchy vegetables and rice and beans down our throats. Last night's meal consisted of each person receiving one whole banana, one whole plantain, a yam, a potato, a sweet potato, some cooked melon-looking thing, and chicken. Cover it with sauce and supposedly you have a meal. I made it through about 1/3 before I gave up feeling like I had just hit the Chinese buffet line one too many times.

Nights are usually pretty low key. After it gets dark around 6:30pm, we can’t get around as easily. Streets tend to be without lights, so we generally stay inside or head to the local restaurant/bar across the street. They serve some mean fast food there which always reminds me of home. Top it off with a few Haitian beers—Prestige—and it makes for a great night with friends. Thanks to a friend, I’ve found the Haitian equivalent of Facebook online so at night I’ve been chatting with people on there. People seem to like to talk to an American and it gives me a no-pressure opportunity to practice my Kreyol and slang. We also watch a little Haitian TV, which has quite hilariously been usurped by Michael Jackson concerts in the last few days. Good lord, I think I’ve heard enough Billie Jean to last at least 10 years. It was pretty exciting getting to watch the live soccer matches last week when USA beat Spain and then unfortunately lost to Brazil in the finals. Soccer is a big sport here and I’m anticipating the upcoming Haiti-USA match on July 11 even though it’s in Massachusetts. I’m also taking drum lessons from a friend so he comes over a few times a week to hangout and play the drums (more about my new drum band in a future post!!!)Other than that, we occasionally go to concerts, drum circles, and small parties. The Haitian rap is pretty sweet, seemingly pulling a lot of style from American hip-hop, although who knows, it may be the other way around. I’ve also really enjoyed just hanging out with my roommates and Haitian friends here at home and around town. It’s nice to be living with people again after a year of a one-bedroom apartment in NJ.

The day wraps up between 10pm-midnight as I snuggle up with my computer under my mosquito-netted bed. The bloody little creatures are quite possibly the biggest annoyance of Haiti. They manage to buzz 24/7, and despite bug spray, you can’t avoid the bites. Thankfully, my net keeps most of them out at night. As I’m on my computer, I usually get to talk to a few friends from home on Skype or Facebook while I’m online. These conversations thankfully keep me going as I’m reminded of all the great people I get to come back to in a year. The day ends as I close my eyes, reflect on the time I’m spending here, and drift asleep to the buzz of the electric generators, the swaying of the palm trees, and the surprising calm of Port-au-Prince nights.

I’ll take Potpourri for $500, Alex

Rather than pick some theme or big event that happened lately, I thought I’d just relay a couple of short stories in today’s blog post…

When I’m working at Fonkoze, I have a cubicle that I share with two other older guys and there are about 20 or so people that work in my general open area. Usually there’s a radio playing music in the room with a wide variety of songs from Latin beats to soft rock straight from Delilah. I’ve found over the days that either these radio stations use a set playlist that repeats daily or they just happen to play Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” every single day! Anyways, yesterday as Shania Twain’s “From this moment” was playing in the office, I thought I noticed a different feel to the room. Perhaps a buzz. By verse two it was clear this song was a favorite as the 60 year old (approximately) man next to me was distinctly humming along. And then it gets to the climax of the song. The next thing I realize, the whole office is singing like they’re in the shower or something. “FROOOOOM. THIISSSSSSSSSS. MOOOOOMENT.” Not a care in the world. I was laughing hysterically (in my head of course) at the irony of country music popularity in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. They may not all speak English, but they sure know their 90’s hits.

I passed my first American restaurant today on the road today—Domino’s Pizza. I was out at a meeting up in the mountains where there are more wealthy foreigners living when the blue and red sign commanded my sight. Now I’m not a fan of Domino’s in the states thanks to its pizza’s precarious similarity to cardboard, but after rice and beans everyday, I might just have to splurge and have a slice down here in Haiti. We’ll see how long I can hold out.

On a similar note, the reason the meeting was up in the wealthy section of town is because all USAID and UN contractors are not allowed to come into Central Port-au-Prince (where I live and work) because it’s too “unsafe”. Meh, if you can’t handle a few protests and tear gas, then I’m not sure you’re meant to work in development.

And finally, last Friday I found myself getting rather sick as the day progressed. I mean I felt like crap. By 2pm my body ached, my stomach hurt, and after leaving work, I discovered I had a fever that was approaching 102 degrees. I don’t get fevers everyday. In fact, I can’t even think of the last time I had a fever. This coupled with the fact that I’m a serious hypochondriac meant in my head that I obviously had malaria :). It had been over 10 days since I got here which is the incubation period. I have tons of mosquito bites which is how you get malaria. And the high fever…I was convinced. Anyways, after making a few calls, I found a semi-English speaking doctor who told me to go to a hospital to get tested. I had no idea where this hospital was, how I was going to ask for a malaria test in Kreyol, or how much it would cost. I set off by myself thinking I could do it, and after one wrong turn, I found the hospital. It was miraculously nice (clean and new) and very close to my house. I walked in, laid out my situation in my best Kreyol, paid $12 USD, got a needle in my arm, and got my test results in 30 minutes. It was the easiest hospital experience of my life!! No insurance bills! No long lines! No doctor’s referral! Clean and courteous! And I didn’t have malaria! Within an hour, I was home and already starting to feel better—mainly I think because I managed to do it all by myself in a foreign language. Not gonna lie… I felt pretty accomplished and the sickness was gone in a day. Now the biggest problem is going to be resisting my hypochondriac temptation to get fast, cheap medical tests done all the time while I’m here :)

That’s all I got for today folks! Got any good ideas to write about in the future? Any questions you want answered? Send ‘em my way (via the comment link below) and be on the look out for my reply! 

P.S. As I was writing this post, I got asked to go to a pizza place right around the corner from my house. I gave in. It was way better than Domino’s!

Raging Rues and Clean Kids

The old adage “When It Rains, It Pours” certainly is true in Haiti. I could be talking metaphorically about how when something bad happens (like world food prices spiking), it is much worse in Haiti (people starve to death). But, in this case, I’m talking literally. Lately when Mother Nature has decided to open her skies, she doesn’t just pull the drain plug—she dumps the whole bathtub on us. The last few days have seen some amazing downpours which have been both welcome and interesting.

They are welcome mainly due to the fact that it cools the 95 degree heat down for a little while—plus I just like to watch and play in the rain (yes, I know I’m 23 years old). Sunday night I was with some friends across town at a Haitian rap concert (Barikad Crew, in case you want to check the band out) when the deluge decided to unleash itself. I learned two things from that night: 1) Haitians avoid rain like the plague—hiding in houses, under overhangs, and cramming into restaurants and stores. 2) The only thing more interesting than a white guy walking down the street is two white guys running across town in a torrential downpour. With more than enough stares to last the rest of my time here, we finally arrived home about 20 minutes after the rain started—soaked, yet sufficiently satisfied to get in some good puddle-jumping.

But the rain is also interesting because it’s such a contrasting force of good and evil here in Haiti. Today, I was lucky enough when the rain started to be at the Insurance Company’s office on the other side of Port-au-Prince from Fonkoze and my house. I was waiting for my driver to pick me up when I saw the black clouds billowing over the mountains to the southeast, a sure sign that we were about to get slammed. After about thirty minutes of heavy rain, Roland finally arrived with the car and we set off for the usual short drive back to Fonkoze. I’d never gotten to drive through the streets during the storms and I was amazed at what I saw.

First, the massive amounts of water were incredible. To give you some background, most of Port-au-Prince lies at the base of the interior mountain ranges. On the other side of the city is the ocean. With that in mind, you might be able to grasp how all the water flows downhill engulfing many of the streets of the city. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, the stree ts are already filled with natural hazards like potholes and, well, super potholes. Add rushing water to this and you simply have craziness. While not all streets were completely flooded, many of the smaller roads we crawled up were gushing with torrents of trash-filled water often times covering the sidewalks and seeping into houses and stores. More than a few times our car was up to the bottom of the doors in water and we slowly eased our way between wading pedestrians still carrying merchandise on their heads and unknown asphalt drop offs below the muddy streams. All of this after about half an hour of downpours.

Now imagine last year when four major hurricanes hit Haiti—UNBELIEVEABLE! I can’t even comprehend how crazy things were in Port-au-Prince. And from many of the accounts I’ve heard, it is the rural areas which experience much greater devastation during storms as their mountainside foliage is all but completely deforested, causing mudslides and inundating entire villages with floodwater. Many parts of Haiti are essentially comparable to parts of New Orleans post-Katrina—minus the large number of recovery workers and aid dollars.

That is the evil side of rain.

On the other side, rain highlights the vibrancy and uniqueness of Haitian life. Although I mentioned above that many Haitians avoid the rain by finding the nearest shelter, today I saw just how important rain is to the people. As quick as the buckets of water started pouring from the sky, buckets were literally being placed under water runoff pipes—collecting as much of the precious liquid as possible. I even saw one girl who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old with her bucket balancing on her head while standing under the gushing overflow of a rooftop gutter. This water is then used to drink, to cook, to wash, to bathe, to flush toilets—to survive, basically.

Besides allowing Haitians to harness as much free water as possible, a rain storm means shower time! From children to teenagers, people were crowding under gutter pipes getting all soaped up and clean for the next day of classes. Trust me, water pressure is a luxury here. I get sick of having to scoop Tupperware containers of water from a bucket over my head each day to get clean, but at least I have a semi-bathtub in which to do it. If it weren’t for rain—and the subsequent rooftop runoff—showers are probably a pain in the neck for many Haitians. With a rainstorm, it’s like the cumbersome task of bathing meets the excitement of a waterpark. I almost wanted to get out there and slather on some Zest Body Wash.

So, alas, you can see how rain is both precious and dangerous at the same time—not to mention somewhat frustrating when you get home and your second floor room is filled with water from a leaky balcony door (but that’s another story that you don’t need to hear). Hopefully the pictures I posted above illustrate a little of my tale, but I think they’re largely insufficient. I guess pictures usually are. Nevertheless, it should be both exciting and interesting as we move further into storm season. Hurricanes and tropical storms are surely on the not-too-distant horizon (as I’m sure my meteorology friends from Valpo can attest). While I’m kind of eagerly anticipating experiencing my first Caribbean storm, I just hope that this year the weather spares the destruction of years past and that the the Haitian people can continue their colorful culture uninterrupted.

Zanmi Ayisyen

When I first arrived in Haiti a few weeks ago, I had settled in my house for just a few hours before it overwhelmingly seemed that the rest of Haiti was settling into my house as well. I was tired from my flights that began at 6am and had just experienced the initial shock of driving through the streets of Port-au-Prince. All I wanted to do was unpack and relax for the night. As I shifted my stuff from suitcase to closet, however, I heard the beating of a drum and the chatter of unrecognizable conversation downstairs. Before I knew it there were about 5 or 6 Haitians hanging out in the living room with my roommate. To give some background, my roommate Ben had already been here for a month before I arrived, and having spent a year living in “Little Haiti” in Miami, he speaks fluent Kreyol. Not surprisingly this has given him the ability to get to know a lot of people down here and foster a lot of friendships with Haitians around our age. I was excited to meet new people and we spent the night trying to parse out sentences of mixed languages. It was the cultural interaction I had been yearning for since my months in Namibia—and it was so fun!

The thrill of fresh faces, however, wore off rather quickly after a few days or so as I failed to understand about 95% of the words coming out of their mouths. “I don’t speak Kreyol!”, I was thinking as they continued to talk to me despite my obvious blank stares in response, “Doesn’t anyone here speak English?”.  It was all too much. These Haitians (or at least 1 or 2 at a time) were over at our house every night. By some sixth sense, they magically appeared about 10 minutes after we got home from work—whether we arrived at 3:30 or 6:00pm. Could I just get some privacy in my own house? Could I just have a conversation completely in English without having to stutter over words and sentences lost in translation?  Could I at least understand the jokes that everyone else in the room was laughing at?

Many of you probably got an earful (or an email-ful) describing the overwhelming nature of my first few days here. I was frustrated with a lot of things, almost all of which had nothing to do with my new Haitian friends. It was the Kreyol…the heat…the safety…the job. But I also think I placed some blame on the visitors to my house. I wish I had seen in the first few days, like I do now, just how important these people would become! These locals have become my lifeline to survival in Haiti, my means of learning a new language, my understanding of a culture,  and what looks to be my great friends for the coming year.

These new Haitian friends, despite the conversational barrier, quickly took me under their wing. They showed me around the markets and helped me barter for food. They spent the time to speak slowly so that I could begin to learn the language. They explained the history and people of Haiti, growing a vital background knowledge required for my success here.  One of them, a musician named Godson, even calmed down would-be muggers, forming a human shield between me and two teens trying to get the cell phone out of my pocket. Yves, another friend, cooks us dinner every-so-often with his delicious Haitian recipes. The craziest part for me, though, is just how much I think we understand each other despite my shaky Kreyol and their piecemeal English.

All of this goes to show just how important relationships are in forming a better, more true understanding of the world around us. It’s easy to travel or live somewhere while separating ourselves from other people. We get comfortable in our bubble. But it’s amazing what you stand to gain (and to give) when we branch out and form relationships. Whether it be making friends in a foreign country or simply bonding with other cultures and races in the United States, it’s always a little awkward at first. Neither party quite grasps the intentions of the other. But with some time (or maybe more quickly than we think), we always find we have more in common than we thought. We destroy stereotypes. And more than anything, we simply enjoy each other’s company.

I look forward to the next year with my new Haitian friends. We’ve already begun to debate politics and religion and music and so many other topics that I similarly discuss with my American friends. Excitingly, Godson is teaching me drum lessons throughout the year, with the hope that I’ll eventually play in his band for a few shows. My Kreyol is improving quickly. And now when I walk downstairs in the afternoon to hear the chatter of the living room, I smile knowing that my struggling through the words is synonymous with progress and a greater connection with the country where I’m living.

Comfort in Uncomfortable Places

After a few road bumps during my first week here, I feel like I am finally beginning to settle in and get rather comfortable here. This weekend I had a little more free time to explore Port-au-Prince. After unsuccessfully trying to walk down to the ocean (thanks to private property on the waterfront and no roads), I walked around what looked like it was at one point the central business district of the city. Although I don’t think Port-au-Prince was ever a thriving developed city or a center of trade, you could tell that tourism did use to exist here. The dilapidated buildings near the waterfront still housed broken signs of airline companies who once flew people in and out of Haiti. The architecture was also notably different from the area where I live about a 20 minute walk away. At one corner, a building about seven stories tall shockingly still exists despite surely being battered by hurricanes throughout the years. It is rumored that one of only two banks with an ATM in Haiti was located there—unfortunately it was closed because it was Sunday. Streets were packed with cars on blocks for repairs and what seemed like a more bustling marketplace as compared to my street where people mainly just sell food on the street. Even more than usual, we were met with stares and hollers indicating just how few non-Haitians make their way down to that part of the city.

The current lack of tourism is, to me, again one of the sad externalities of both Haiti’s troubled history and the West’s quick judgment on safety. Cruise ships once landed on the shores of Haiti and hotels housed visitors seeking the beauty of the palm trees and mountains. Today, one cruise ship occasionally docks at a private beach on the north side of the country. Not only is this beach heavily guarded and completely separated from Haitian people or culture, but Royal Caribbean Cruise Line doesn’t even tell cruisers that the beach is in Haiti—simply identifying it as Labadee (the beach’s name).

Now I’m certainly not arguing that cruises or tourists are all good for a country. They bring with them some degree of exploitation of locals whether it be through low wages the tourist companies pay or the general Americanization of a great Caribbean culture. But at the same time, tourism can be a huge source of income—something of which Haiti has almost none. The economy here is largely driven by remittances from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States rather than any huge export or service industry. Tourism in Haiti, like many other Caribbean countries, can ultimately help increase the capacity of the government through tax revenue, thus allowing them to provide better services to the citizens.

As I mentioned above, a large explanation for this lack of visitors can be attributed to Haiti’s past. Grave instability of the government has led to a plethora of problems from dictatorships to coup d’états. Similarly natural disasters, deforestation, and poverty have spawned incidents like the food riots of 2008 which garner international media attention, rightly scaring away tourists. Outside of these incidents, however, seems to be a large rush to judgment on the part of Westerners—from the media to the US government to individuals—that Haiti is permeated by despair and danger.

Before deciding to travel here, I read the US State Department’s website which recommends avoiding all travel to Haiti thanks to kidnapping, torture, and murder of Americans. It cites that fact that 26 Americans were kidnapped in Haiti last year. What it fails to tell you is that a majority of these victims were released safely. It also fails to take into context the nature of cities in general. P-au-P is a city of nearly 3 million people, which naturally finds crime in its sprawling city limits. In comparison, in 2008, over 1,000 people were kidnapped in Phoenix, Arizona, but we don’t hear of travel warnings there. Always erring on the side of extreme caution, travel websites also scare visitors away from Haiti despite the numerous smaller, very safe beachside towns which I’m sure would be ready to house a few visitors in order to put food on the table.

Yes, as you can tell through my previous posts, Haiti is certainly a place of grave poverty and above-average danger. The risks, however, can be mitigated through smart travel practices, and as thousands of Americans have discovered, you CAN live a safe life here. When we let fear overtake us, it simply makes the problems worse. I saw nearly the exact same thing when I spent the whole last year in Camden, NJ. Ranked every year as one of America’s most dangerous cities, the city does have a higher than average crime rate. But as I discovered, it also has thousands of caring, productive, good people—much more good than bad. I came into Camden with a fear of safety, but I left a year later with it feeling like home. Camden is so stigmatized and stereotyped by suburban whites that it makes development and poverty reduction nearly impossible. How can you “pull yourselves up by the bootstraps” when so many people are pushing back down on you? How can you grow a city like Camden or a country like Haiti when everyone else just wants to avoid it?

Until we step outside our comfort zone, we can’t see these places aren’t as bad as they are portrayed. I encourage you all to step outside of your preconceived notions and see a situation from the other side. It can make a huge difference in how you view the world—and I truly believe new viewpoints can create new realities.

Thinking in the Dark

As a kid, I used to love when the power would go out during a thunderstorm. You get to bust out the candles, play games, maybe even build a fort and pretend like you live in a different place and time. Who knew that that place was Haiti and that time was 2009. As I type tonight, I’m sitting in a completely dark house. Our electricity has been off for a few hours and finally our backup power inverter has run out. Thus, years later I again find myself lighting up the candles and settling in for a cozy night—albeit in a slightly different context.

Electricity, like many things in Haiti, is unreliable at best. It goes out on a daily basis with only those lucky enough to have backup generators (like my apartment) able to keep a somewhat more continuous stream. In the rural areas, it’s even worse with little or no electricity being more the norm. Besides this, the water supply is unsteady and polluted throughout the country. It can be frustrating at times to Westerners like myself when we are unable to fill the buckets we use to shower and flush the toilet at the apartment or when we must drink bottled water instead of tap. But this pales in comparison to the millions of Haitians that must resort to bathing in sewage canals, rivers, and lakes everyday because they have no access to water whatsoever. They drink water filled with parasites, e-coli, and schistosomiasis that can many times lead to sickness. You might think it would be different in a city of 3 million like Port-au-Prince, but shockingly its hardly distinct from the more rural areas of the country. The infrastructure of this “developing” country hardly permits one to recognize the country as developing. Instead, it seems that as the days go on, the inadequate services are simply crumbling more. Roads throughout Port-au-Prince are in disrepair with sinkholes and cracks forcing cars and pedestrians to proceed precariously with numerous accidents. Though I’ve not verified it in person, online articles inform me that country even lacks a single sewage treatment facility creating horrible health sanitation problems. The country is desperately in need of improvement, but the government is incapable and the outlook is bleak.

All of this is not to sadden you about the condition of Haiti or to worry you of my living conditions—because honestly the worst I’ve dealt with is walking through dirty roads and sitting in the heat without a fan. What I really hope you readers in the United States gain is an idea of the gross disparities of the world in which we live. While we (myself included) drive fancy cars, install swimming pools, and take 30 minute long showers, others around the world are struggling to walk hours to work for pennies on the dollar, bathing in rivers, and stealing simply to stay alive. It’s one thing though to say “we have it so good” or “we are so blessed”; it’s another thing to try to do something about it. Throwing money at charities does little more than make us feel good about ourselves, Similarly, volunteering for organizations in the short-term like I am doing in Haiti does little more than trying to put a band-aid over a gaping wound.

I truly believe it takes a change in the way our world works. It means rejecting gaudy materialism and pleasures that rape the developing world of its natural resources like forests, diamonds, and oil. It means divesting from companies that financially reinforce dictatorships and genocidal leaders like those in Sudan. It means reinventing American innovation rather than complaining that jobs are being shipped overseas. It means paying a little more for food that isn’t subsidized by wealthy nations which crowd out developing economies from the world market. It means pushing the government to give foreign aid that doesn’t come with political stipulations. It means recreating our ideas on crime and poverty to see that its not caused by laziness, or race, or backward societies. It means recognizing that many US corporations exploit developing nations, their resources, and their people for the gain of US citizens. It means not paying a CEO or a sports star $50 million when they aren’t worth half of it. It means fighting drug companies that keep prices of AIDS drugs high even though it only costs a few pennies to produce it. It means the United States giving more aid to the developing world (WE CURRENTLY GIVE LESS THAN 0.2% OF OUR GROSS NATIONAL INCOME!)

But alas, both you and I know that this is highly unlikely to change. I’m willing to do some work in developing countries—but am I ready to stop shopping at Wal-Mart because it sells products that are made in sweatshops? Am I willing to not buy gas at any of the major gas stations because they use oil which was improperly drilled thus destroying villages in Nigeria? Am I willing to reject capitalism even though it is partly responsible for such disparity? Probably not. I am too comfortable.

I was one of the lucky to be born into a gender, a race, and a country that is advantaged from the start. I can claim “hard work” for my achievements, but my efforts are dwarfed by peasants in Haiti who wake at daylight to try to find their next meal for their children. It’s hard to stomach this subject. The idea of change is radical. The whole thing sucks…but it’s real. I’m so grateful for the free time to contemplate such tough ideas while I’m here. I try to fight off the thoughts of the reality that I could jet out of this country on the next plane in order to experience the comforts of home again. I try to convince myself that my work here is impactful and sustainable. It’s a daily struggle in my mind trying to balance my life with a life that seeks to make a real difference. At the end of the day, though, I ultimately have a feeling I’ll end up like most people, abandoning the full sacrifice needed for true change. Because no matter how fun it seems for a short time, we all eventually want to blow out the candle and simply turn our lights back on.

Work @ Fonkoze

Work at Fonkoze is both interesting and very confusing. When I was hired for the job, I was very informally told that I would be working to help Fonkoze develop some sort of catastrophic insurance plan for hurricanes through coordination with a Haitian insurance company called AIC. I was also supposed to be working on Fonkoze’s life insurance program for its loan clients. In reality, I had very little idea what my role would be before I got here. Since I’ve been here, however, it doesn’t seem like my role has gotten any clearer.

Fonkoze, like many non-profits in the developing world, moves at a snail’s pace in terms of communication and getting things done. I spent practically the whole first day trying to determine who my boss is (which is still not fully clear) and where I should sit in the three-story office building. After three days, I still don’t have internet access at the office and the cell phone they gave me does not work. I’ve come to the conclusion that most likely I will be my own boss and just have to build off the very vague ideas the organization gave me before I came. I’m basically going to do a lot of independent research via the internet to try to gather data on catastrophic insurance and develop some sort of model for Fonkoze. We’ll see if they like the end product! I’ve always been someone who enjoys structure, especially in jobs, but I’m sure this newfound independence will be hugely beneficial to my future work.

In my last blog post, I promised some interesting stories about tear gas—and I’ve received quite a few messages from people concerned. It probably was a bad idea of me to not give all the details right off the bat. Anyways, as many of you might know, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and is very politically unstable. There have been a number of coups over the last decades and their first democratically elected President is currently in exile (sadly thanks in part to the powerful interests of the United States). Needless to say, politics is a hot issue down here and protests arise in the streets daily. Unfortunately the last two days have seen these protests move right in front of Fonkoze. Yesterday, I believe college students were protesting the Haitian minimum wage and the occupation of UN troops here in Port-au-Prince. The students began throwing rocks at UN troops who then fired tear gas into the crowd. It sounds bad, but don’t worry!!! Fonkoze is very secure with walls about 20 feet high around the entire complex and armed guards at the gates. We were not at risk from the protests, but the tear gas did waft into the offices so we just had to shut all doors and windows until it passed. It’s certainly unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and it can be a little uneasy if you think too much about it, but I’m cautious when I go outside and I have not felt threatened at all since I’ve been here. Moral of the story (especially to Mom): DON’T WORRY!

I’ll leave the stories of my Haitian friends (and how they practically live in my house) for another day. I’m learning more and more Kreyol everyday and I’m enjoying the new experiences here. The mountains and ocean are beautiful. I’ve been healthy since I’ve gotten here and the food is delicious! Couldn’t ask for much more! Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Bonswa!

Hello from Haiti. I’ve now only been here for a little over 24 hours, but there’s definitely been a lot of experiences packed into my first day.

After getting in a few hours late from Miami, I was met at the airport in Potoprens (Port-Au-Prince in English) by a man holding a sign. He spoke no English, but he was definitely a welcomed sight after wading through a crowd of aggressive hawkers trying to help me with my bags and force my stuff into their taxis. We quickly took off into the crowded streets headed for downtown where I’m living for the next year. I thought the streets of New York were crazy, but Port-Au-Prince definitely has them topped—no lanes, thousands of people walking amidst traffic, potholes the size of kiddie pools, and gaps of about 3 inches between humans on the sidewalk and vehicles (while driving at 50 mph).  Nevertheless, the drivers are obviously used to it and I made it to my house which is luckily very close to the center of city. The Presidential Palace (Haiti’s White House equivalent) is about 3 blocks away along with a semi-nice plaza. It’s also about a 5 minute walk down the road to my office at Fonkoze. Despite being in the core of the city, Port-Au-Prince has nothing like any downtown I’ve ever been to before. There are no big buildings. The streets are filled with poor people selling small items and the cleanliness is at a level of 1 on a scale of 1-10. Massive piles of exposed garbage create roadblocks along sidewalks and businesses are rarely more than a shack. Unlike other developing countries I’ve been to (Namibia, Zambia, etc), there are almost no formal commercial business (no fast food, no banks, very few grocery stores). It seems everything is run by individuals struggling to make a dollar (or Haitian Gourde).

In terms of my housing, its relatively nice compared to the area in which it’s located. By nice, I mean it has electricity (and a backup generator) and running water. I’m sharing it with two other roommates (Ben and James) who are also interning with Fonkoze and are college students from BYU and Villanova. They’re great and luckily Ben speaks fluent Kreyol which is so necessary here. Almost no one speaks English and without his help and some Haitian friends I would have never been able to negotiate for bread or open up a bank account. Overall the house I’m staying in is good for what I need and can afford.

It seems like there will be a lot of daily challenges here in Haiti—more than I’ve ever experienced when traveling before. The biggest is obviously the language barrier. I sure wish I knew Kreyol, or at least some French to get by. Fonkoze has also not provided a lot of support in terms of adjusting, but what can I expect….I AM an adult! :) The heat is also quite, well, hot. Temperatures are around 95 degrees during the day with nighttime lows around 80, which ensures I always will have a sweaty glow here. Luckily I have an AC unit in my room which should be good until the first electric bill comes. ATM’s do not exist in Haiti making the money situation quite annoying and mosquitoes are everywhere (you cannot avoid the bites). The poverty is also just so extreme. I’ve never seen anything like it—and can’t really find the words to describe it. But as I’ve learned throughout life, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And I certainly think I’ll get more adjusted to some of these challenges as the days go on.

I’ll write more about my work at Fonkoze in a few days when I have a better grasp on it. Stay tuned for stories in later posts about how my office got tear gassed on my first day and how I realistically live with about 5 other Haitians in my house. On that anticipatory note, I’ll leave you for tonight. I’m definitely enjoying my time overall. Thanks for all your messages and support. It means a lot to me!

Tyler

Headed to Haiti

Friends, family, and foreign folks. I’m shipping off June 2 for Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, my new home for a year!

Doing my Rutgers grad school fieldwork with Fonkoze, an awesome microfinance organization in Haiti. They do a ton of cool stuff, but mainly focus on giving small loans to poor women to help them jumpstart their businesses. Combine this with education programs and their understanding of solidarity, and you’ve got yourself a pretty cool gig. I’ll specifically be working on a micro-health insurance program that they are trying to start, along with making sure clients’ loans are safe when hurricanes hit.

To keep you up to date on my happenings, I’ll be using this blog along with my Facebook page and, to a lesser extent, my Twitter account. I’ll throw some pics up here, but most will probably be in some facebook albums (which I'll post links for).

If you want on to be notified when this blog is updated or if you want to get on my email list, fill out the form on the right side.

I’ll miss you all, but I gotta go have the time of my life…I’m sure you’ll understand.

Tyler