Feed aggregator
Culture: Ayiti
Based on gestures alone, Paige wins the 'most assimilated' award, she uses most of these. The palmslap gesture for "I don't know-don't ask me-I cannot do anything" is probably the most useful and most frequently communicated. (The more you know, the less you understand ... therefore that palm slap comes in pretty handy.)
Categories: Haitian blogs
pending ...
Categories: Haitian blogs
U.N. Rejects Claim for Direct Compensation to Victims of Cholera Epidemic in Haiti
The organization’s lawyers cited diplomatic immunity against the claim, which is based on a theory that peacekeeping troops set off the disease.
Categories: Haitian blogs
A Chance to Right a Wrong in Haiti
Evidence shows that the United Nations inadvertently started a cholera outbreak that has since killed 8,000 people. It has a moral obligation to help end the crisis.
Categories: Haitian blogs
in (haiti) bummer news this week ...
Categories: Haitian blogs
shopping & guesthouse info
Two easy and even enjoyable ways to support Heartline Ministries:
1. Shop at www.haitiancreations.com the newest stuff they are creating is unique and SO lovely! (share this with others too)
2. Doing work in Haiti? Consider staying a night or two at Heartline GuestHouse (share this with others too) located near airport
-these two sources of revenue are incredibly important to the women in the sewing and literacy schools as well as the maternity and earlychildhood development classes, please spread the word.
Categories: Haitian blogs
ISAACUMEN (vol.3)
"I'll be back in a jibbey."
"Dad. Tell me about the word deluge." (Troy does) "Oh my goodness, I like that word."
"What does it mean that God can be the beginning and the end?"
"Isn't it amazing that God made crocodiles able to stand on their tails? I wish I could be a crocodile so I could see what it is like to stand on my tail. I would be the master of the water."
"And dog tails are amazing. Do you think they can wag at any speed to keep the same beat as any song? It is almost like their tails are a metronome."
"If I smacked the water with my crocodile tail I could create a DELUGE!"
(Oldie but a goodie) "Don't be rude to God's nature."
(a regular part of Livesay vernacular ever since)
vol. 1
vol. 2
Categories: Haitian blogs
in search of fullness
One of the joys of spacing our children 17 years apart (as if that was some master plan executed with precision) has been the variety of issues and stages we get the privilege of juggling in the course of any given evening.
For example, the other night in the period of an hour I: texted the adult child a quick hello making sure she knows I am thinking of her, talked down an over-tired five year old from her ledge of insanity, worked on a craft with the eleven year old ... All while looking at college entrance requirements with an eighteen year old and planning her departure from Haiti and the start of her new life.
Something about the juxtaposition of the irrational and crying child that will be staying another dozen years - while sitting with the calm and pleasant child that is soon planning to leave forever - well, it just burns a little bit.
I am a confessed early griever and a shameless one at that. Recently Troy and I sat on the upper patio of our home in the pitch dark discussing our children and their current needs. When he talked about the three middles and wondered aloud if they might one day be ready to head out all at the same time, I burst into involuntary tears. Eight short years from now three more will be leaving. Waaaaah. A few nights removed from that ridiculous outburst I believe it was transference of Paige grief and not actually a world-record-setting early grief session.
The process of choosing and applying to and waiting on replies from colleges has been eye-opening. Maybe it isn't actually as troubling as it seems to us, maybe it is just us and our grouchy annoyance with the systems we're observing from our safe distance.
When we visited a bunch of institutions of higher learning last April, I wrote this:
I am reflecting on the three "official" tours we have had so far. It seems like the point is to sell a "college experience" more than a "college EDUCATION". If I were to come in as a foreigner that knew nothing about the American higher education system I would leave the tour thinking that the four most important things about choosing a school are:
1. The food 2. The comforts and accommodations of the housing/dorms 3. The recreational facilities and options (HELLO - HOW can I possibly go to a school with no rock climbing wall?) 4. Sports and sporting events
The tours have literally been 90% about food, housing, and entertainment. I keep waiting for someone to tell me about the academics -about the quality education - about the depth of character that will be built - the integrity .... the amazing professors ... something.
The tour guides keep saying things are "free" ... I am fighting my tongue and forcing myself not to be 'that guy'. (Am I the only one that thinks the large student fees and large college tuition plus room and board is real money that is really being paid and therefore things aren't so much free as they are "covered in your fees and tuition"?) They say: 'tickets to sporting events are free'. I think: 'tickets to sporting events are included in your $20,000 - $35,000+ a year cost'.
I'm not attempting to be offensive, it is more of a head-scratching moment for me right now. Do American parents care that much about how nice the stinkin dorm room is and how many options their kid will have for dinner? Is a wide variety of food choices and a large bedroom what our 18 year olds need the most? Am I the only cynical curmudgeonly jerk that doesn't get it - or is that weird?
We came home somewhat disenchanted after those tours. A few months later we began the application process. "Let's try to gain acceptance at one of those places we mocked", we said.
As we settled into waiting on a reply, we had multiple discussions about our inherent value and the truth that fitting into the box of academia doesn't a success story make. We talked about the cost of higher education and how the cost needs to be weighed against the outcome. We reiterated that being accepted or rejected by some admissions department at some university has nothing to do with how smart, capable, lovable, or valuable any one of us are. It has a lot more to do with fitting in their box. We talked about the gift of how uniquely individual we are. We talked about the self-congratulatory self-perpetuating systems that we are entrenched in and beholden to in some ways.
American culture (knowingly or unknowingly) teaches that big name schools and big deal degrees make us important. We even created a Christian category of "prestigious" schools; prestige as unto the Lord. Hallelujah. Upon graduation, the quality of one's character is important, but not nearly as important as the name of the university engraved on the diploma.
This probably sounds like a whole lot of generalizing on my part, and maybe it is, but the proof of the underlying tension I felt throughout the whole process became evident when we received a copy of a letter written on Paige's behalf.
The letter was written as a favor out of kindness. A person that loves and knows Paige very well knows a person with pull at a certain christian university. The person with pull writes a letter about Paige to a person with even more pull. That is the system. We scoff at it, all the while we actively participate in it. (No wonder I always feel dirty. All this time I was blaming the Port au Prince dust.)
The information presented about Paige to the letter writer shared a few basic key facts: a good student, solid grades, SAT score, hard working, flexible. It also went deeper: has lived cross culturally, has cared for desperately ill and malnourished children, has acted as a doula for teenage mothers in labor, has served others repeatedly. Somewhere down the resume there was a list of translating jobs Paige has had over the last three years. Included in the list was the translating job she did one day for Miley Cyrus.
When a copy of the letter recommending Paige was sent to her after the fact, we read it with surprise and slight embarrassment. It said a few accurate things about living in Haiti - listed the timeline of her months spent in the community where the university is located and then added, "She even translated for Oprah Winfrey." We laughed our heads off at that and wondered how in the world Miley turned into Oprah. A bit more disconcerting than that though, we noted that the value was not placed on Paige's history of serving the hurting in Haiti. Instead of highlighting difficult work with an unknown little boy, it made mention of her single day gig turning English into Kreyol, for a famous person.
<Sigh.>
Jesus walked the earth totally disinterested in power and fame. He hung out with the hungry, the dirty, the undesired. He showed us that we are to concern ourselves more with the unnamed orphan than the famously named Oprah.
The truth is, we aren't as much like Jesus as we hope to be. I'm painfully aware of this in myself. We seek approval from the wrong places, for the wrong things. We want worldly validation. Even though a lot of us grew up hearing wording such as- " We are made in His image", "fearfully and wonderfully made", "God's own possession", "We have an inheritance", "He died for us, we have infinite worth" - we also heard equally clear and even louder messages about what it takes to be successful and important in this world. Rich, powerful, educated at big-deal places, and famous is where it's at - if you cannot be that then strive to mimic it as best you can. It is taught overtly and it is taught subtly. I hear it taught to children when a woman says "I'm just a mom" or a friend says, "I only went to community college." I see it taught when we idolize certain people, elevating them to a higher plane.
Most of us don't live in the fullness of the value God's love and sacrifice alone gives us. We don't need embossed papers from big-deal universities or lofty titles to be God's workmanship and pride.
If nothing else, this process these last many months has been a reminder to me to actively live the truth of my worth and inheritance, and in concrete ways, with carefully chosen words and actions, exhibit that truth to my children.
For example, the other night in the period of an hour I: texted the adult child a quick hello making sure she knows I am thinking of her, talked down an over-tired five year old from her ledge of insanity, worked on a craft with the eleven year old ... All while looking at college entrance requirements with an eighteen year old and planning her departure from Haiti and the start of her new life.
Something about the juxtaposition of the irrational and crying child that will be staying another dozen years - while sitting with the calm and pleasant child that is soon planning to leave forever - well, it just burns a little bit.
I am a confessed early griever and a shameless one at that. Recently Troy and I sat on the upper patio of our home in the pitch dark discussing our children and their current needs. When he talked about the three middles and wondered aloud if they might one day be ready to head out all at the same time, I burst into involuntary tears. Eight short years from now three more will be leaving. Waaaaah. A few nights removed from that ridiculous outburst I believe it was transference of Paige grief and not actually a world-record-setting early grief session.
The process of choosing and applying to and waiting on replies from colleges has been eye-opening. Maybe it isn't actually as troubling as it seems to us, maybe it is just us and our grouchy annoyance with the systems we're observing from our safe distance.
When we visited a bunch of institutions of higher learning last April, I wrote this:
I am reflecting on the three "official" tours we have had so far. It seems like the point is to sell a "college experience" more than a "college EDUCATION". If I were to come in as a foreigner that knew nothing about the American higher education system I would leave the tour thinking that the four most important things about choosing a school are:
1. The food 2. The comforts and accommodations of the housing/dorms 3. The recreational facilities and options (HELLO - HOW can I possibly go to a school with no rock climbing wall?) 4. Sports and sporting events
The tours have literally been 90% about food, housing, and entertainment. I keep waiting for someone to tell me about the academics -about the quality education - about the depth of character that will be built - the integrity .... the amazing professors ... something.
The tour guides keep saying things are "free" ... I am fighting my tongue and forcing myself not to be 'that guy'. (Am I the only one that thinks the large student fees and large college tuition plus room and board is real money that is really being paid and therefore things aren't so much free as they are "covered in your fees and tuition"?) They say: 'tickets to sporting events are free'. I think: 'tickets to sporting events are included in your $20,000 - $35,000+ a year cost'.
I'm not attempting to be offensive, it is more of a head-scratching moment for me right now. Do American parents care that much about how nice the stinkin dorm room is and how many options their kid will have for dinner? Is a wide variety of food choices and a large bedroom what our 18 year olds need the most? Am I the only cynical curmudgeonly jerk that doesn't get it - or is that weird?
We came home somewhat disenchanted after those tours. A few months later we began the application process. "Let's try to gain acceptance at one of those places we mocked", we said.
As we settled into waiting on a reply, we had multiple discussions about our inherent value and the truth that fitting into the box of academia doesn't a success story make. We talked about the cost of higher education and how the cost needs to be weighed against the outcome. We reiterated that being accepted or rejected by some admissions department at some university has nothing to do with how smart, capable, lovable, or valuable any one of us are. It has a lot more to do with fitting in their box. We talked about the gift of how uniquely individual we are. We talked about the self-congratulatory self-perpetuating systems that we are entrenched in and beholden to in some ways.
American culture (knowingly or unknowingly) teaches that big name schools and big deal degrees make us important. We even created a Christian category of "prestigious" schools; prestige as unto the Lord. Hallelujah. Upon graduation, the quality of one's character is important, but not nearly as important as the name of the university engraved on the diploma.
This probably sounds like a whole lot of generalizing on my part, and maybe it is, but the proof of the underlying tension I felt throughout the whole process became evident when we received a copy of a letter written on Paige's behalf.
The letter was written as a favor out of kindness. A person that loves and knows Paige very well knows a person with pull at a certain christian university. The person with pull writes a letter about Paige to a person with even more pull. That is the system. We scoff at it, all the while we actively participate in it. (No wonder I always feel dirty. All this time I was blaming the Port au Prince dust.)
The information presented about Paige to the letter writer shared a few basic key facts: a good student, solid grades, SAT score, hard working, flexible. It also went deeper: has lived cross culturally, has cared for desperately ill and malnourished children, has acted as a doula for teenage mothers in labor, has served others repeatedly. Somewhere down the resume there was a list of translating jobs Paige has had over the last three years. Included in the list was the translating job she did one day for Miley Cyrus.
When a copy of the letter recommending Paige was sent to her after the fact, we read it with surprise and slight embarrassment. It said a few accurate things about living in Haiti - listed the timeline of her months spent in the community where the university is located and then added, "She even translated for Oprah Winfrey." We laughed our heads off at that and wondered how in the world Miley turned into Oprah. A bit more disconcerting than that though, we noted that the value was not placed on Paige's history of serving the hurting in Haiti. Instead of highlighting difficult work with an unknown little boy, it made mention of her single day gig turning English into Kreyol, for a famous person.
<Sigh.>
Jesus walked the earth totally disinterested in power and fame. He hung out with the hungry, the dirty, the undesired. He showed us that we are to concern ourselves more with the unnamed orphan than the famously named Oprah.
The truth is, we aren't as much like Jesus as we hope to be. I'm painfully aware of this in myself. We seek approval from the wrong places, for the wrong things. We want worldly validation. Even though a lot of us grew up hearing wording such as- " We are made in His image", "fearfully and wonderfully made", "God's own possession", "We have an inheritance", "He died for us, we have infinite worth" - we also heard equally clear and even louder messages about what it takes to be successful and important in this world. Rich, powerful, educated at big-deal places, and famous is where it's at - if you cannot be that then strive to mimic it as best you can. It is taught overtly and it is taught subtly. I hear it taught to children when a woman says "I'm just a mom" or a friend says, "I only went to community college." I see it taught when we idolize certain people, elevating them to a higher plane.
Most of us don't live in the fullness of the value God's love and sacrifice alone gives us. We don't need embossed papers from big-deal universities or lofty titles to be God's workmanship and pride.
If nothing else, this process these last many months has been a reminder to me to actively live the truth of my worth and inheritance, and in concrete ways, with carefully chosen words and actions, exhibit that truth to my children.
Categories: Haitian blogs
bullet point update
- Just updated the summer-school teacher request, we added a few details - see here.
- The young woman here has begun to accept the news of her virus. Thanks for praying, please keep praying for her.
- Beth is in the USA taking important midwifery exams. We're all excited for her and praying she crushes those tests. The kids sang a little song (video above) we penned in less than two minutes (evident??) to encourage her as she left - nothing better than having your son ask "So, what is prolonged rupture of membranes anyway mom?" - Don't ask questions, son, - just.sing.
- Words:
placenta pelvis preeclampsia previa pregnancy palpate posterior pitocin pregnancy prenatal progesterone prolonged rupture of membranes presentation prolapsed cord these things begin with P - a lot of things in midwifery being with P - and we are PRAYING for you to have PEACE! - Melissa (one of our preceptors - another P!) is making time to go over things I am studying and I must confess I never ever imagined the discussing of cervical dilation would be a hot topic in my life, but as it turns out, I was wrong. Melissa is a great teacher. We're currently waiting on Marie Fusenie and Yvette to deliver. Both are due late Feb/early March.
- If you are a midwife (CNM, LM, CPM) with experience in a developing country (cannot take a student at this time) and have interest in serving a month or so in Haiti this year, please write to me (Tara) at livesayfamily@gmail.com - thanks!
- The Ed'H peeps (electric company) dropped by a bill so large I could have flown all the kids to Florida for a nice lunch and spent less. I wish that was hyperbole. Then, they also cut our house from the access to the city power at the exact moment they brought the bill. Not really sure how that works. I guess we are supposed to know we owe them before they tell us. This guarantees that Troy will spend most of Tuesday trying to get them paid and over here to reconnect. When the batteries die the kids wake up - there is not anything we can do to give them their fans/bug protection (and the white noise to drown out rooster farm) back. Family time at 3am, not a parental favorite. If Dr. Jen were here I'd be requesting doctor approved sleeping enhancements stat. (Yes, "needing" fans is a bit of a first world demand, and yes we are the privileged to even have the ability to miss them.)
Categories: Haitian blogs
six weeks of mercy: help wanted
EDIT - See bottom (in red) for further information.
Every spring, same thing, then, more same thing. Broken record.
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, we think it has been proven we are suffering from a severe case of insanity.
This June there are eleven babies due and a lot more going on at Heartline Ministries. This will mean irritable parents on the very best of days. It is bound to be a perfect storm of sorts.We realize these five lards need a little direction and structure. (Their regular school year ends mid-May.)
Hear this now.
For summer 2013 we are trying something different. PLEASE share with your favorite brilliant and adventurous teacher-friends!
Help Wanted:
- Summer school teacher position available in Haiti (school and lots of play/fun)
- June 1 to July 15 - five days a week - 6ish to 7ish hours a day (as close to these dates as possible)
- Five kids - ages 11, 11, 9, 6, 5 ... no Paige :(
- Requirements: some sort of teaching experience, energetic, flexible, creative, and fun
- Serious inquiries with references only, please.
- Small salary plus free housing
- Prefer 22 years of age and older - open to married couple or singles - no*kids please
- (*yes, yes, we see the hypocrisy and irony of that)
If interested please email: livesayfamily@gmail.com by March 15 - will contact all applicants by March 20, 2013.
The more we have thought about this the more we think a young married couple is ideal. Our concern for singles is that the job is only 5 days a week for 7 hours a day. There will be a lot of down time meaning it could be lonely or boring or both. We're thinking two people will enjoy the free time to get involved elsewhere and be adventurous together.
If you are interested in hearing more, please email us and we'll send the details.
The ideal candidates have: experienced life with faulty infrastructure - LOVE heat ... like really, really love it - enjoy sweating and damp or soaking undergarments - like talkative kids with multiple interests and unique personalities - and are self-starters.
Categories: Haitian blogs
calling for climate change
(if you love people. this is worth your time. please watch and listen.)
The current climate in my soul is that of dead winter.
I am walking around frustrated and discouraged with things far beyond my direct control. I am tired of my role as a bystander. Systems of abuse and people that refuse to see and do anything about them are crushing my hope of late. Deep and systematic social, cultural problems seem to be calling from multiple directions. I'm doing a cruddy job of giving them to God in prayer.
(Yes, I know this is all ambigious and that being vauge like this is annoying.)
So many things are troubling me right now. In the "barf format" I give you these snippets of some of my frustration of late ...
Christian is a label people use to cover them from questions. It frequently means nothing. I don't acutally want to be called that anymore, myself. Untold numbers of people raise funds and have 'programs' they are running that are bs and at times even abusive but if you call it that you are seen as a cynical jerk. So, instead we all sit politely with our hands in our lap biting the inside of our cheeks to keep from gossiping or calling it what it is in order to handle it lovingly - you know, like Jesus. I openly admit that right now I am pretty tired of being loving to expats that come oppress Haiti. I'm not entirely sure that some of my past choices to remain quiet will be very pleasing to my Maker. I may have to explain my politeness someday.
Martin Luther King said, "In the end what will hurt the most is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends" ... That quote is screaming truth to me lately. This Christian Jesus lover and follower does not want to join the oppressors with my silence.
Dear God, please bring Spring.
It isn't that they cannot see the solution. It is that they cannot see the problem. -G.K. Chesterton
Categories: Haitian blogs
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Is Martelly’s “Free School” Program Really Working?
(for Haiti Liberte)
Port-au-Prince, Feb. 13, 2013 – “PSUGO – A victory for students!” banners and posters all over the capital and provincial cities proclaim. Photos show smiling, handsome students in clean uniforms.
The Program for Universal Free and Obligatory Education (Programme de scolarisation universelle gratuite et obligatoire - PSUGO) seeks to educate “more than a million” students per year for five years, according to the Ministry of National Education and Professional Training (Ministère de l’éducation nationale et de formation professionnelle – MENFP). But is the US$43 million-a-year program a “victory” for students?
A two-month investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in Port-au-Prince and Léogâne discovered problems and a great deal of dissatisfaction. In addition to suspicions of corruption, the amount paid to the schools is clearly inadequate, the payments don’t arrive on time, and the professors are underpaid. Also, most of the schools visited by journalists had not received the promised manuals and school supplies, items crucial for assuring a minimally acceptable standard of education.
“In my opinion, the PSUGO is a failure!” exclaimed Jean Clauvin Joly, director of the Centre Culturel du Divin Roi, a private school in Croix-des-Bouquets about 15 km east of the capital. “Last year, we suffered under that program. One of the many terrible things was that we were paid late. Thanks to the delay, a lot of our teachers quit.”
At Joly’s school, the first and second grades share the same room and the same teacher: Francie Déogène. A thin sheet of plywood that also serves as a “blackboard” separates her classroom from others. Dérogène doesn’t have a desk. She piles everything on a plastic chair. Facing her, on four benches, 10 students repeat together “a pineapple, a melon…” This is a writing course.
“The state guarantees the right to education”
During the most recent presidential elections, “lekòl gratis” or “free school” was one of the refrains of the singer-candidate Joseph Michel Martelly, who was sworn in as president on May 14, 2011.
But in Haiti, the guarantee of free education is not just a politician’s promise; it is above all an obligation according to Haiti’s 1987 Constitution. Article 32 says: “the state guarantees the right to education” and “education is the responsibility of the state and its territorial divisions. They must make schooling available to all, free of charge, and assure that public and private sector teaches are properly trained.”
According to the MENFP, the PSUGO program aims to pay all school fees for the first and second cycles of schooling, roughly equivalent to primary school. The amounts allocated are 250 gourdes (about US$6) for public school students and 3,600 gourdes (about US$90) for those at private school. (In Haiti, most schools – a little over 80% – are private.) In addition to paying the school fees, PSUGO promised to open new schools, and to make sure students had the necessary school supplies and books.
All over the capital and across the country, on giant posters, and on the television and radio, on Facebook and in newspapers, PSUGO proclaims that 1,021,144, or more, are now in school, thanks to the Martelly government. In fact, HGW was not able to confirm the figure and has reason to doubt it, first and foremost because it is only one of many. In an interview with Le Nouvelliste in December 2012, a ministry official said that 1,287,814 students had been sent to school for the current academic year. Where did the extra 250,000 students come from? Also, for the previous year, the MENFP publicly claimed that 837,489 students had been sent to school, but in a document filed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the figure was only 165,000. Another reason to have doubts is the fact that PSUGO seems to be without any kind of internal or external supervision.
The origin of the money financing the program also raises questions. According to the government, PSUGO is financed mostly by “the public coffers, taxes imposed on international telephone calls and on money transfers coming from the diaspora to Haiti,” tariffs that many consider illegal. Because the fund created to receive the revenues – the National Fund for Education (Fonds National pour l’Education – FNE) – has not yet been approved by the parliament, the money collected remains blocked, according to many reports.
Even if the legality of the tariffs is not considered, mystery surrounds the question of how much money has been collected and spent to date. In May 2012, one official claimed the government had spent 900 million gourdes or about US$22 million. However, in another interview, a ministry official also mentioned that 490,000 of the 837,489 PSUGO students had gone to public school, meaning that 347,489 attended private institutions. If the amount paid was US$90 (or 3,600 gourdes) for each student, then the government spent US$31,274,010 or about 1,314 million gourdes, for the private school students alone – a figure much higher than 900,000 gourdes. [See also Haïti Liberté, Jan. 23, 2013]
HGW did not have access to the PSUGO budget, nor could it visit all of the 10,000 schools allegedly inscribed in the program. However, the inquiry discovered many reasons that government officials, as well as the Haitian people, might want to hesitate before crying “victory.”
PSUGO has not kept its promises
Jean Marie Monfils, a teacher and also the director of a school in Léogâne, about 30 kms west of Port-au-Prince, is furious about PSUGO’s false promises: “They talked about a uniform, about hot lunches, and other things. But from where I am sitting, I can say we gotten hardly anything. We are the ‘forgotten’ of Léogâne.”
Monfils’ experience is not unique. Hercule André, a man in his 50s who directs a public school in Darbonne, outside Léogâne, lauds the initiative, but he adds: “The only benefit that the students get is that they don’t pay anything. Apart from that, there’s nothing. The students come to school, but they don’t have the books that were promised so that they can follow courses.”
In January, a number of teachers under PSUGO contract in Anse-à-Pitre in southeast Haiti said they had not been paid since October.
“For four months we have worked for free,” professor Jean-Rony Gabriel told AlterPresse. “I am responsible for my family. I have to travel many kilometers to get to my workplace.”
HGW’s investigation in the capital and around Léogâne confirmed the claims. Only two of the 20 schools visited reported having received school supplies and books. Also, as of late November 2012 – 10 weeks after classes had started – only one of the 20 schools reported having been paid for the current school year, and 16 out of 20 said the school still had not received the final payment for the previous school year.
“I can’t even tell you if we are part of the program or not,” Monfils admitted, with an air of desperation. “At the moment I am speaking to you, we haven’t gotten anything from the authorities. It’s a really huge problem, because many of the schools that signed up with PSUGO haven’t even gotten what was due them for the 2011-2012 school year. My school has really suffered.”
The National Confederation of Haitian Teachers (Confédération nationale des éducateurs et éducatrices haïtiens – CNEH), one of the country’s national teachers’ unions, confirmed the clam.
“The fact that the government hasn’t disbursed the money on time has been a big problem for school directors, who haven’t been able to pay their teachers,” reported Edith Délourdes Delouis, teacher and CNEH General Secretary.
“Turn towards quality?”
The quality of education is another challenge for PSUGO. For this reason, the ministry announced that the current school year would see a “turn towards quality” with more supervision.
“The ministry is very clearly putting the accent on quality,” MENFP spokesman Miloody Vincent told HGW. “Access, yes, but also better quality, because education only makes sense if it’s a good education… Our new start includes training better professors, assuring children get school books, and supervising the teaching that students are getting.”
“We are really going to focus on supervision,” PSUGO coordinator Elicel Paul added in a separate interview. President Martelly also stressed “quality” when he distributed 100 motorcycles for regional MENFP offices last.
“We have to assure the quality of the education and supervise the services offered to students,” he said on Mar. 15, 2012.
However, HGW’s inquiry revealed that the schools participating in PSUGO operate almost entirely without supervision. Of 20 schools visited, 25% had never received a single visit, and another 24% had received only one.
Guillaume Jean, director of the Collège Chrétien in Léogâne confirmed, embarrassed: “We haven’t gotten many visits. They just call to get information. We meet with them at the local high school.”
Errors and Fraud?
Perhaps because of its large size and even larger budget, the PSUGO program appears to have attracted cheaters.
In July 2012, a regional MENFP official in Port-de-Paix allegedly stole over five million gourdes (over US$119,000). According to media reports, he used a group of young men as fake “school directors,” and wrote them checks of 200,000 and 300,000 gourdes. The official implicated fled to the Dominican Republic.
HGW does not have the means to investigate potential PSUGO fraud at the national level, or even in the capital. By chance, however, journalists discovered a school name recorded on the MENFP list as having received payments, even though it had never functioned.
“Soon – the Justin Lhérisson College!” a small dusty sign announces on the Darbonne road near Léogâne.
“That was a project one of the local mayors set up when he was a candidate,” a neighbor claimed. “Once he got elected, he dropped it.”
The Civil Society Initiative (Initiative Société Civile – ISC) last year did a study of PSUGO, concluding that the program had created number of phantom schools.
“In our study, we discovered that a third or a quarter of the schools being paid by the government hadn’t even been officially approved,” ISC Director Rosny Desroches, a former Education Minister, told HGW.
What kind of education, for what kind of children?
The 1987 Haitian Constitution guarantees the right to free, quality education. In spite of the problems of fraud, late salaries, and the non-delivery of school supplies and books, the Martelly government does appear to send some children to school, even if the exact number is unknown. But what kind of schools, for what kind of education, and for which children?
A public school in the PSUGO program receives 250 gourdes for a year per student, and a private school, 3,600 gourdes. These figures – per day, per student – amount to less than one gourde (2 US cents) at public schools and 22.5 gourdes (50 US cents) at private schools. By comparison, one year of primary school at the Lycée Alexandre Dumas (one of the best French system schools in the country) costs over 100,000 gourdes (US$2,389) for a year or about 625 gourdes (US$14.70) per day, over 600 times the PSUGO public school price per day, and almost 30 times the PSUGO private school price. (This figure does not include health insurance, book rental fees, and school supplies.) A medium-level school, like the Collège Le Normalien, costs about 20,000 gourdes (US$475) a year for first grade, about 125 gourdes (US$2.95) per day.
“In the private sector, there are many categories of schools,” CNEH’s professor Delouis explained. “There is the category for the rich people (there are few of these but they are the best), one for the poor, one for those who are extremely poor, and one for those who are just coping. This means that children, citizens, do not meet one another, when in fact a school should be a place where all levels of society mix.”
Professor Haram Joseph, director of a school in Darbonne, is despondent.
“Take the money! Whether it’s a legal tax or an illegal tax!” he said. “We have to invest billions of gourdes in education. And in five years, we need to see a result… In my opinion, if the government continues the way it has started, we will have a lot of school directors with full pockets, but children who don’t know anything.”
At another school with both PSUGO money and foreign assistance, it’s almost noon. Under a blazing sun, scores of students focus on their work. The Charlotin Marcadieu national school was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake and today functions in 14 tents arranged in three rows. Gravel crunches under students’ feet. Before heading into his “classroom,” one of the teachers says, bitterly: “After 10 in the morning, these tent-rooms are like furnaces.”
Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti. A teacher chants out words to students who have no books, papers, or pencils in a Darbonne public school. Photo by: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint Val
A Tweet from Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe with questionable figures.
(for Haiti Liberte)
Port-au-Prince, Feb. 13, 2013 – “PSUGO – A victory for students!” banners and posters all over the capital and provincial cities proclaim. Photos show smiling, handsome students in clean uniforms.
The Program for Universal Free and Obligatory Education (Programme de scolarisation universelle gratuite et obligatoire - PSUGO) seeks to educate “more than a million” students per year for five years, according to the Ministry of National Education and Professional Training (Ministère de l’éducation nationale et de formation professionnelle – MENFP). But is the US$43 million-a-year program a “victory” for students?
A two-month investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW) in Port-au-Prince and Léogâne discovered problems and a great deal of dissatisfaction. In addition to suspicions of corruption, the amount paid to the schools is clearly inadequate, the payments don’t arrive on time, and the professors are underpaid. Also, most of the schools visited by journalists had not received the promised manuals and school supplies, items crucial for assuring a minimally acceptable standard of education.
“In my opinion, the PSUGO is a failure!” exclaimed Jean Clauvin Joly, director of the Centre Culturel du Divin Roi, a private school in Croix-des-Bouquets about 15 km east of the capital. “Last year, we suffered under that program. One of the many terrible things was that we were paid late. Thanks to the delay, a lot of our teachers quit.”
At Joly’s school, the first and second grades share the same room and the same teacher: Francie Déogène. A thin sheet of plywood that also serves as a “blackboard” separates her classroom from others. Dérogène doesn’t have a desk. She piles everything on a plastic chair. Facing her, on four benches, 10 students repeat together “a pineapple, a melon…” This is a writing course.
“The state guarantees the right to education”
During the most recent presidential elections, “lekòl gratis” or “free school” was one of the refrains of the singer-candidate Joseph Michel Martelly, who was sworn in as president on May 14, 2011.
But in Haiti, the guarantee of free education is not just a politician’s promise; it is above all an obligation according to Haiti’s 1987 Constitution. Article 32 says: “the state guarantees the right to education” and “education is the responsibility of the state and its territorial divisions. They must make schooling available to all, free of charge, and assure that public and private sector teaches are properly trained.”
According to the MENFP, the PSUGO program aims to pay all school fees for the first and second cycles of schooling, roughly equivalent to primary school. The amounts allocated are 250 gourdes (about US$6) for public school students and 3,600 gourdes (about US$90) for those at private school. (In Haiti, most schools – a little over 80% – are private.) In addition to paying the school fees, PSUGO promised to open new schools, and to make sure students had the necessary school supplies and books.
All over the capital and across the country, on giant posters, and on the television and radio, on Facebook and in newspapers, PSUGO proclaims that 1,021,144, or more, are now in school, thanks to the Martelly government. In fact, HGW was not able to confirm the figure and has reason to doubt it, first and foremost because it is only one of many. In an interview with Le Nouvelliste in December 2012, a ministry official said that 1,287,814 students had been sent to school for the current academic year. Where did the extra 250,000 students come from? Also, for the previous year, the MENFP publicly claimed that 837,489 students had been sent to school, but in a document filed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the figure was only 165,000. Another reason to have doubts is the fact that PSUGO seems to be without any kind of internal or external supervision.
The origin of the money financing the program also raises questions. According to the government, PSUGO is financed mostly by “the public coffers, taxes imposed on international telephone calls and on money transfers coming from the diaspora to Haiti,” tariffs that many consider illegal. Because the fund created to receive the revenues – the National Fund for Education (Fonds National pour l’Education – FNE) – has not yet been approved by the parliament, the money collected remains blocked, according to many reports.
Even if the legality of the tariffs is not considered, mystery surrounds the question of how much money has been collected and spent to date. In May 2012, one official claimed the government had spent 900 million gourdes or about US$22 million. However, in another interview, a ministry official also mentioned that 490,000 of the 837,489 PSUGO students had gone to public school, meaning that 347,489 attended private institutions. If the amount paid was US$90 (or 3,600 gourdes) for each student, then the government spent US$31,274,010 or about 1,314 million gourdes, for the private school students alone – a figure much higher than 900,000 gourdes. [See also Haïti Liberté, Jan. 23, 2013]
HGW did not have access to the PSUGO budget, nor could it visit all of the 10,000 schools allegedly inscribed in the program. However, the inquiry discovered many reasons that government officials, as well as the Haitian people, might want to hesitate before crying “victory.”
PSUGO has not kept its promises
Jean Marie Monfils, a teacher and also the director of a school in Léogâne, about 30 kms west of Port-au-Prince, is furious about PSUGO’s false promises: “They talked about a uniform, about hot lunches, and other things. But from where I am sitting, I can say we gotten hardly anything. We are the ‘forgotten’ of Léogâne.”
Monfils’ experience is not unique. Hercule André, a man in his 50s who directs a public school in Darbonne, outside Léogâne, lauds the initiative, but he adds: “The only benefit that the students get is that they don’t pay anything. Apart from that, there’s nothing. The students come to school, but they don’t have the books that were promised so that they can follow courses.”
In January, a number of teachers under PSUGO contract in Anse-à-Pitre in southeast Haiti said they had not been paid since October.
“For four months we have worked for free,” professor Jean-Rony Gabriel told AlterPresse. “I am responsible for my family. I have to travel many kilometers to get to my workplace.”
HGW’s investigation in the capital and around Léogâne confirmed the claims. Only two of the 20 schools visited reported having received school supplies and books. Also, as of late November 2012 – 10 weeks after classes had started – only one of the 20 schools reported having been paid for the current school year, and 16 out of 20 said the school still had not received the final payment for the previous school year.
“I can’t even tell you if we are part of the program or not,” Monfils admitted, with an air of desperation. “At the moment I am speaking to you, we haven’t gotten anything from the authorities. It’s a really huge problem, because many of the schools that signed up with PSUGO haven’t even gotten what was due them for the 2011-2012 school year. My school has really suffered.”
The National Confederation of Haitian Teachers (Confédération nationale des éducateurs et éducatrices haïtiens – CNEH), one of the country’s national teachers’ unions, confirmed the clam.
“The fact that the government hasn’t disbursed the money on time has been a big problem for school directors, who haven’t been able to pay their teachers,” reported Edith Délourdes Delouis, teacher and CNEH General Secretary.
“Turn towards quality?”
The quality of education is another challenge for PSUGO. For this reason, the ministry announced that the current school year would see a “turn towards quality” with more supervision.
“The ministry is very clearly putting the accent on quality,” MENFP spokesman Miloody Vincent told HGW. “Access, yes, but also better quality, because education only makes sense if it’s a good education… Our new start includes training better professors, assuring children get school books, and supervising the teaching that students are getting.”
“We are really going to focus on supervision,” PSUGO coordinator Elicel Paul added in a separate interview. President Martelly also stressed “quality” when he distributed 100 motorcycles for regional MENFP offices last.
“We have to assure the quality of the education and supervise the services offered to students,” he said on Mar. 15, 2012.
However, HGW’s inquiry revealed that the schools participating in PSUGO operate almost entirely without supervision. Of 20 schools visited, 25% had never received a single visit, and another 24% had received only one.
Guillaume Jean, director of the Collège Chrétien in Léogâne confirmed, embarrassed: “We haven’t gotten many visits. They just call to get information. We meet with them at the local high school.”
Errors and Fraud?
Perhaps because of its large size and even larger budget, the PSUGO program appears to have attracted cheaters.
In July 2012, a regional MENFP official in Port-de-Paix allegedly stole over five million gourdes (over US$119,000). According to media reports, he used a group of young men as fake “school directors,” and wrote them checks of 200,000 and 300,000 gourdes. The official implicated fled to the Dominican Republic.
HGW does not have the means to investigate potential PSUGO fraud at the national level, or even in the capital. By chance, however, journalists discovered a school name recorded on the MENFP list as having received payments, even though it had never functioned.
“Soon – the Justin Lhérisson College!” a small dusty sign announces on the Darbonne road near Léogâne.
“That was a project one of the local mayors set up when he was a candidate,” a neighbor claimed. “Once he got elected, he dropped it.”
The Civil Society Initiative (Initiative Société Civile – ISC) last year did a study of PSUGO, concluding that the program had created number of phantom schools.
“In our study, we discovered that a third or a quarter of the schools being paid by the government hadn’t even been officially approved,” ISC Director Rosny Desroches, a former Education Minister, told HGW.
What kind of education, for what kind of children?
The 1987 Haitian Constitution guarantees the right to free, quality education. In spite of the problems of fraud, late salaries, and the non-delivery of school supplies and books, the Martelly government does appear to send some children to school, even if the exact number is unknown. But what kind of schools, for what kind of education, and for which children?
A public school in the PSUGO program receives 250 gourdes for a year per student, and a private school, 3,600 gourdes. These figures – per day, per student – amount to less than one gourde (2 US cents) at public schools and 22.5 gourdes (50 US cents) at private schools. By comparison, one year of primary school at the Lycée Alexandre Dumas (one of the best French system schools in the country) costs over 100,000 gourdes (US$2,389) for a year or about 625 gourdes (US$14.70) per day, over 600 times the PSUGO public school price per day, and almost 30 times the PSUGO private school price. (This figure does not include health insurance, book rental fees, and school supplies.) A medium-level school, like the Collège Le Normalien, costs about 20,000 gourdes (US$475) a year for first grade, about 125 gourdes (US$2.95) per day.
“In the private sector, there are many categories of schools,” CNEH’s professor Delouis explained. “There is the category for the rich people (there are few of these but they are the best), one for the poor, one for those who are extremely poor, and one for those who are just coping. This means that children, citizens, do not meet one another, when in fact a school should be a place where all levels of society mix.”
Professor Haram Joseph, director of a school in Darbonne, is despondent.
“Take the money! Whether it’s a legal tax or an illegal tax!” he said. “We have to invest billions of gourdes in education. And in five years, we need to see a result… In my opinion, if the government continues the way it has started, we will have a lot of school directors with full pockets, but children who don’t know anything.”
At another school with both PSUGO money and foreign assistance, it’s almost noon. Under a blazing sun, scores of students focus on their work. The Charlotin Marcadieu national school was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake and today functions in 14 tents arranged in three rows. Gravel crunches under students’ feet. Before heading into his “classroom,” one of the teachers says, bitterly: “After 10 in the morning, these tent-rooms are like furnaces.”
Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti. A teacher chants out words to students who have no books, papers, or pencils in a Darbonne public school. Photo by: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint Val
A Tweet from Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe with questionable figures.
Categories: Haitian blogs
when positive is negative and denial is powerful
"I don't live in Cite anymore. Now where I live everyone is negative. I don't go out at night."
Okay. We understand that. But, the test we did was positive. The follow up test at the Doctor's office was too.
"No. Pa gen viris sa (don't have that virus) I feel good. I am not sick. I can eat. People that have the virus cannot eat."
Okay. We understand you don't believe. We want to explain this.
"I don't believe."
"Maybe from getting my nails done downtown. I do that sometimes."
"No. I don't think it is true."
You can feel fine and still be HIV positive. It is important to make decisions and to know the truth before your baby is born.
"My daughter she is not sick - it cannot be true."
Maybe you can go for another test to check and see if this is right.
"If I have it I want to tell my mother myself. I'll go for another test, but I don't have it."
Let's start with another test at a specialty program on Thursday.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So much of the difficulty is not related to dealing with the actual disease. There are programs that offer the medicine free of charge. The greatest difficulty lies in cultural misconceptions, lack of truth, and fear of condemnation. Acceptance takes time. We hope that truth and love will prevail.
Categories: Haitian blogs
Madi gra ~ lage ko'w
This is the full application of lage-ing our ko (letting yourself go) la (here) epi(and) the total extent of the revelry practiced here at Kay Livesay. Happy Fat Tuesday.
Holla!
photo credit: Paige N. Porter 2013
Categories: Haitian blogs
WikiLeaked Cables Raise Question: Did the U.S. Green-Light Duvalier’s Return in 2011?
By Kim Ives (Haiti Liberte)
Feb. 7, 2013 promises to be a hot day in Haiti. Thousands of Haitians are planning to march through Port-au-Prince to protest President Michel Martelly’s patent corruption and drift toward a repressive neo-Duvalierist dictatorship. At the same time, former President-for-Life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier will be personally appearing in the capital’s Appeals Court to answer a challenge by his regime’s victims. One year ago, Investigating Judge Carves Jean ruled that Duvalier should not be prosecuted for the many crimes against humanity committed under his 15-year rule from 1971 to 1986, including extrajudicial executions and jailings. Human rights groups like Amnesty International and its Haitian counterparts cried foul, as did over a dozen of people who had filed human rights complaints against Duvalier following his return to Haiti in January 2011. They appealed. Ironically, Judge Jean Joseph Lebrun, the head of the Appeals Court, set the hearing for final arguments against Judge Carves Jean’s ruling for the 27th anniversary of the Duvalier regime’s fall.
Feb. 7, 1986 was the day when, after a three-month nationwide uprising against his regime, the playboy dictator and his haughty bourgeois wife, Michelle, drove their Mercedes-Benz through a cordon of journalists at the airport to board a U.S.-provided C-130 that flew them, with her furs and his cars, into a golden exile in France.
The Duvaliers divorced but lived the good life off the some $800 million (according to best estimates) that they and their cronies embezzled from the Haitian treasury. In fact, Carves Jean did charge Duvalier for his “economic crimes,” but the maximum sentence if he were ever found guilty (an unlikely event under Martelly’s regime) would be only five years.
Duvalier returned to Haiti on Jan. 16, 2011 thanks to a Haitian diplomatic passport furnished to him five years earlier by one of his former Haitian Army generals, Hérard Abraham. The former general, who was fired by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, had been resurrected in late 2005 as the Foreign Affairs Minister under the de facto regime of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, installed by Washington following the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état against Aristide.
U.S. State Department cables provided to Haïti Liberté by the media organization WikiLeaks in 2011 reveal that the U.S. Embassy was very “concerned” about Duvalier’s return to Haiti in early 2006, when the de facto regime was about to hold presidential elections on Feb. 7, 2006.
In Santiago, Chile, for example, U.S. Ambassador Craig Kelly “expressed [U.S.] concerns about the Interim Government of Haiti's (IGOH) decision to approve the issuance of a diplomatic passport for former president and dictator Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier,” Kelly wrote in a Jan. 11, 2006 Confidential cable. He asked the Chilean government “to approach the IGOH to make clear that Duvalier's return would undermine efforts to assist Haiti in its transition to a stable, democratic society.”
The U.S. also talked to France, which “understood and shared our ‘political’ concern that Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier might use a diplomatic passport to return to Haiti,” reported a Jan. 12, 2006 cablefrom Paris.
In a meeting with then Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, the U.S. Ambassador “urged Fernandez not to allow Duvalier to obtain a visa for the Dominican Republic so as to pass through en route to Haiti,” a Jan. 17, 2006 cable marked “Secret” reports.
Meanwhile, the cables detail several meetings that U.S. Embassy officials held with Latortue and his officials about Duvalier. What becomes clear in the diplomatic record is that the U.S. Embassy was primarily concerned about appearances, and the bad press Duvalier’s return would generate. “The visuals are bad,” argued U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Timothy Carney in a Jan. 17, 2006 cable from Port-au-Prince, and “Baby Doc is a risky, potentially divisive, presence.” Carney was reporting on a meeting he’d had the day before with Abraham, who “concluded by refusing to revoke the passport already issued to Duvalier, but confirming that he would do everything in his power to transmit the message to Duvalier that he should not to return to Haiti at this time.”
The most telling bit of the cable is where Carney quotes Abraham as saying that Duvalier "lacks appropriate guarantees, security and otherwise, to secure his reentry into the country."
Fast forward exactly five years to Jan. 16, 2011. When Duvalier arrived in Haiti on that day, the U.S. acted as surprised as everybody else and divulged nothing about its opposition to the diplomatic passport provided to Duvalier five years earlier by the very coup regime it had installed in power.
The Haiti cables that WikiLeaks obtained only covered a period from April 2003 to February 2010, so we don’t know what the Embassy was saying in the days just before Duvalier’s “surprise” return, which it surely knew was in the offing. But, judging from the 2006 cables, one can reasonably assume that Duvalier would only have returned to Haiti if he’d received the "appropriate guarantees, security and otherwise, to secure his reentry into the country."
Those “guarantees” could only have come from Washington. Then President René Préval, a former anti-Duvalierist militant, surely didn’t give them. He launched a “serious effort to put together a case against Duvalier” during the four months that he remained in office, according to human rights lawyer Mario Joseph, whose International Lawyers’ Bureau (BAI) helped build the prosecution’s dossier. But Préval was replaced on May 14, 2011 by Martelly, and at that point the prosecution against Duvalier “ground to a halt,” Joseph said.
The new neo-Duvalierist president was installed through an illegal election in which the U.S. brazenly intervened to bump out the candidate of Préval’s party, Jude Celestin, who came in second-place in the first round, and replace him with Martelly, who came in third.
Did the U.S. (and France) feel that the time was right for Duvalier to come back to Haiti, as they were engineering the election of Martelly? Did they offer Duvalier “guarantees” ?
One thing is for sure: the U.S. and its allies did not fight to block Duvalier’s return from France in 2011 the way they fought like hell to block Aristide’s return from South Africa two months later, as Haïti Liberté revealed when dissecting WikiLeaked cables in 2011.
“The cables show how Washington actively colluded with the United Nations leadership, France, and Canada to discourage or physically prevent Aristide's return to Haiti,” we wrote in our Jul. 28, 2011 edition. “The Vatican was a reliable partner, blessing the coup and assisting in prolonging Aristide’s exile.”
The history of the U.S. Embassy showing Duvalier the door in 1986 and then likely opening it for him in 2011 makes one wonder what the U.S. will be doing behind the scenes on Feb. 7, 2013. Whatever it is, the Embassy will be trying to avoid one outcome: that “the visuals are bad.”
President Michel Martelly shaking hands with former “President-for-Life” Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Did the U.S. offer Duvalier “guarantees” on his return?
Feb. 7, 2013 promises to be a hot day in Haiti. Thousands of Haitians are planning to march through Port-au-Prince to protest President Michel Martelly’s patent corruption and drift toward a repressive neo-Duvalierist dictatorship. At the same time, former President-for-Life Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier will be personally appearing in the capital’s Appeals Court to answer a challenge by his regime’s victims. One year ago, Investigating Judge Carves Jean ruled that Duvalier should not be prosecuted for the many crimes against humanity committed under his 15-year rule from 1971 to 1986, including extrajudicial executions and jailings. Human rights groups like Amnesty International and its Haitian counterparts cried foul, as did over a dozen of people who had filed human rights complaints against Duvalier following his return to Haiti in January 2011. They appealed. Ironically, Judge Jean Joseph Lebrun, the head of the Appeals Court, set the hearing for final arguments against Judge Carves Jean’s ruling for the 27th anniversary of the Duvalier regime’s fall.
Feb. 7, 1986 was the day when, after a three-month nationwide uprising against his regime, the playboy dictator and his haughty bourgeois wife, Michelle, drove their Mercedes-Benz through a cordon of journalists at the airport to board a U.S.-provided C-130 that flew them, with her furs and his cars, into a golden exile in France.
The Duvaliers divorced but lived the good life off the some $800 million (according to best estimates) that they and their cronies embezzled from the Haitian treasury. In fact, Carves Jean did charge Duvalier for his “economic crimes,” but the maximum sentence if he were ever found guilty (an unlikely event under Martelly’s regime) would be only five years.
Duvalier returned to Haiti on Jan. 16, 2011 thanks to a Haitian diplomatic passport furnished to him five years earlier by one of his former Haitian Army generals, Hérard Abraham. The former general, who was fired by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, had been resurrected in late 2005 as the Foreign Affairs Minister under the de facto regime of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, installed by Washington following the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’état against Aristide.
U.S. State Department cables provided to Haïti Liberté by the media organization WikiLeaks in 2011 reveal that the U.S. Embassy was very “concerned” about Duvalier’s return to Haiti in early 2006, when the de facto regime was about to hold presidential elections on Feb. 7, 2006.
In Santiago, Chile, for example, U.S. Ambassador Craig Kelly “expressed [U.S.] concerns about the Interim Government of Haiti's (IGOH) decision to approve the issuance of a diplomatic passport for former president and dictator Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier,” Kelly wrote in a Jan. 11, 2006 Confidential cable. He asked the Chilean government “to approach the IGOH to make clear that Duvalier's return would undermine efforts to assist Haiti in its transition to a stable, democratic society.”
The U.S. also talked to France, which “understood and shared our ‘political’ concern that Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier might use a diplomatic passport to return to Haiti,” reported a Jan. 12, 2006 cablefrom Paris.
In a meeting with then Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, the U.S. Ambassador “urged Fernandez not to allow Duvalier to obtain a visa for the Dominican Republic so as to pass through en route to Haiti,” a Jan. 17, 2006 cable marked “Secret” reports.
Meanwhile, the cables detail several meetings that U.S. Embassy officials held with Latortue and his officials about Duvalier. What becomes clear in the diplomatic record is that the U.S. Embassy was primarily concerned about appearances, and the bad press Duvalier’s return would generate. “The visuals are bad,” argued U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Timothy Carney in a Jan. 17, 2006 cable from Port-au-Prince, and “Baby Doc is a risky, potentially divisive, presence.” Carney was reporting on a meeting he’d had the day before with Abraham, who “concluded by refusing to revoke the passport already issued to Duvalier, but confirming that he would do everything in his power to transmit the message to Duvalier that he should not to return to Haiti at this time.”
The most telling bit of the cable is where Carney quotes Abraham as saying that Duvalier "lacks appropriate guarantees, security and otherwise, to secure his reentry into the country."
Fast forward exactly five years to Jan. 16, 2011. When Duvalier arrived in Haiti on that day, the U.S. acted as surprised as everybody else and divulged nothing about its opposition to the diplomatic passport provided to Duvalier five years earlier by the very coup regime it had installed in power.
The Haiti cables that WikiLeaks obtained only covered a period from April 2003 to February 2010, so we don’t know what the Embassy was saying in the days just before Duvalier’s “surprise” return, which it surely knew was in the offing. But, judging from the 2006 cables, one can reasonably assume that Duvalier would only have returned to Haiti if he’d received the "appropriate guarantees, security and otherwise, to secure his reentry into the country."
Those “guarantees” could only have come from Washington. Then President René Préval, a former anti-Duvalierist militant, surely didn’t give them. He launched a “serious effort to put together a case against Duvalier” during the four months that he remained in office, according to human rights lawyer Mario Joseph, whose International Lawyers’ Bureau (BAI) helped build the prosecution’s dossier. But Préval was replaced on May 14, 2011 by Martelly, and at that point the prosecution against Duvalier “ground to a halt,” Joseph said.
The new neo-Duvalierist president was installed through an illegal election in which the U.S. brazenly intervened to bump out the candidate of Préval’s party, Jude Celestin, who came in second-place in the first round, and replace him with Martelly, who came in third.
Did the U.S. (and France) feel that the time was right for Duvalier to come back to Haiti, as they were engineering the election of Martelly? Did they offer Duvalier “guarantees” ?
One thing is for sure: the U.S. and its allies did not fight to block Duvalier’s return from France in 2011 the way they fought like hell to block Aristide’s return from South Africa two months later, as Haïti Liberté revealed when dissecting WikiLeaked cables in 2011.
“The cables show how Washington actively colluded with the United Nations leadership, France, and Canada to discourage or physically prevent Aristide's return to Haiti,” we wrote in our Jul. 28, 2011 edition. “The Vatican was a reliable partner, blessing the coup and assisting in prolonging Aristide’s exile.”
The history of the U.S. Embassy showing Duvalier the door in 1986 and then likely opening it for him in 2011 makes one wonder what the U.S. will be doing behind the scenes on Feb. 7, 2013. Whatever it is, the Embassy will be trying to avoid one outcome: that “the visuals are bad.”
President Michel Martelly shaking hands with former “President-for-Life” Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Did the U.S. offer Duvalier “guarantees” on his return?
Categories: Haitian blogs
Fierce Quake Devastates Haitian Capital
Officials warned that casualties could be substantial from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake, which left the Haitian capital in a shambles.
Categories: Haitian blogs
linking you
Short term missions advice from the author of Toxic Charity: Read it HERE.
Word.
Word.
Categories: Haitian blogs
ISAACUMEN (vol. 2)
This photo captures the essence of Isaac ... Our people-loving, smiley peacekeeper.
- "I am thinking about studying the history of cathedrals. But only after I study the ten most predatory animals."
- (to Paige) "I cannot believe you were THAT young when Monsters Inc. came out. You sure are becoming more ancient."
- "Wart.Waaarrt." (long pause) "That is a weird word."
- "I don't ever want blocked tear ducts - I wonder how you prevent that?"
- (to Troy) "Did they have lots of new words when you were learning spelling - or words that were combinations of words like smoke and fog - so like was smog a word when you were a kid?"Troy - "Yes, smog was a word when I was a kid - I am not that old.""Oh, I thought maybe that one started on 9/11"
Categories: Haitian blogs
you say you care about the poor ...
My friend D.L. is hosting a series of posts called "War Photographers" on her website. She is asking hard questions (of herself especially) about how we share the stories of others, and how we do that with respect. In the last year writing stories about others has become more difficult because of the hard questions. These questions are important to ask, important to wrestle with and examine. I loved this post on her blog today, you can read it in its entierty HERE. (Below are powerful excerpts.)
"My supposedly prophetic photography, which I dreamed could one day change the world, was doing nothing but showing the ugly surface and ignoring everything underneath. I was taking the assumptions and fears of everyone who I hoped would see the truth, and showed them only what they expected:Look how poor our community is.Look how dirty and run-down our buildings are.Look how hopeless and dangerous our youth are.Look how rough a place the city is."~ ~ ~"So how do we do all this? I still don’t really know yet. I’m still trying to learn how to do it well. But I do know what I’m striving for:
Where the world sees poverty, we want it to see a different sort of richness.Where the world sees violence, we want it to see people longing for peace.Where the world sees crime, we want it to see neighbors looking out for each other.Where the world sees brokenness, we want it to see stories of hope and strength.Where the world sees destruction, we want it to see signs of God’s redemption.Amidst the darkness, we want the world to see the Kingdom."
~ ~ ~ ~ (reposting, originally posted here in 2011)
"You say you care about the poor.Then tell me, what are their names?"Gustavo Gutierrez
There are so many topics that are touchy and difficult to write about. I usually avoid speaking/writing with force about them in order to dodge any conflict that may arise as a result. I hate internet word wars .... But more than that I hate when people misunderstand and jump to conclusions. Discussion is great, but it seems that things tend to deteriorate quickly.
The fights people have on line would never happen if they were standing face to face because we're all way more polite, gracious, and non-confrontational in real life. In face to face interaction it rarely happens that if you disagree with someone you jump them with the boldness that happens on line.
All that to say - Bringing up the book, "When Helping Hurts" and writing about Short Term Missions caused a little ruffling of feathers. It wasn't meant to put anyone on the defensive; but it did anyway. C'est la vie. In this case, I think it needs to be said and it was worth the conflict. That post was meant to make us think. It is not actually all about us and what makes us feel good.
Lately I find myself frustrated with some of the problems we create when we come to "help the poor" and that post was born of that frustration. I dislike a lot of what happens between the poor and the people that come to help. I get squirmy and uncomfortable with the 'great white hope' attitude and the Santa Claus stuff that goes on. I don't think there is anything wrong with examining our own motives and asking hard questions about the things we do.
I'm struggling a bit with what I perceive as exploitation of people. I recognize in some of the things we've done over the years (especially very early on) a bit of an air of superiority. I'd go so far as to say that in the past Troy and I have done things that I would now say robbed people of their dignity in that moment. I wish I could go back and undo a few of the things I've done, said, and thought.
I also feel a resentment growing toward others who don't seem to consider the feelings and position of those they come to "help" - nor do they ever allow their approach to be questioned without great offense. Truthfully, I desire to be far more gracious toward the people doing these things and I don't want to resent anyone.
No matter what you've done in the past when on a short or longer term trip abroad - try to be open to this question. I ask that you honestly (without defensiveness) consider this and how you would react to it ...
You are with a friend of yours and a couple of your kids (or if you don't have kids you are watching someone's kids) and you've gone to run a few errands one morning. At Target you notice a woman taking photos of the kids from about 15 yards away. Later, you've stopped at the grocery store and you turn around to see five or six people taking photos of your friend and the kids. That afternoon as you return home you look down your driveway to see someone else standing there taking a photo of your house. You go to bed, the next morning you walk out of your house looking ragged in sweats and an old shirt. As you are walking your dog a truck full of people you've never seen before ride by and they all start snapping your photo.
Yesterday on facebook, out of totally curiosity, I asked this question - I ask it of you now:
Would you be okay with strangers taking your picture(or of your kids or family) while you were out and about minding your business, doing life?Here are a few of the replies I got in response:- I really don't know. I think they'd need to ask for permission first, but then they'd need a good reason. If they wanted a picture of clothing I'm wearing, a purse I'm carrying, shoes, etc so they can go home and find the same, then ok. If they have a valid reason maybe. I'm not a mom yet, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever be ok with someone just randomly taking pictures of my children, for any reason.
- That's tough. Normally I would say no, but I'm fine with people who are obviously traveling or when the new refugee families come to our city they want tons of pictures of everyday life stuff (often involving our family) and that doesn't bother me cuz I know it's new and exciting. I definitely wouldn't want to if I wasn't asked though or if it was someone I didn't know at all.
- Do you mean obviously focusing on my family or me? I frequently get people in my photographs that I don't necessarily mean to, but they are there when I snap the pic. But deliberately focusing? I would not really like that. However, what are they planning on doing with it? I would not like to be used in a media sense.
- No! We've had that happen before & I was shocked. I will not let it happen anymore.
- Absolutely NOT, my children are not exhibits and I would not hesitate one bit to let whoever know that taking their pictures without consent is not appreciated.my son s daycare have a very strict policy on that, parents are not allowed to videotape,take pictures on school grounds.
- NO! If you have the responsability of having a camera and want to take shots. You NEED to approach and ask, can I take a picture of your child on the swing for an article. OR for a art show. Otherwise NO!!
- That's a tough one. We are constantly approached here for a "photo" Sometimes I agree sometimes not. I can't even tell you why I make the choice that I do...When we first came I "obliged" now after having our photos taken a gillion times, ...I mostly say no. However, what I do not like is when we are walking and ppl take out their phones and "steal" our photo. Then again, I "steal" photos of random ppl here...so, what to do?
- Well, it is the paparazzi that drives me nuts. I just wish they would stop following me. lol. No, I wouldn't like it. But I did it in Haiti the first time I went and never thought once about my actions. Rude! I was an ignorant tourist the first time for sure!
- definitely not okay...we have the cell phone picture taking issue here too. way too much of a security risk in the country we live. Maybe more of us should think about it before we take pictures of others???
~~~~~~~~
I'm not debating the ability for photos to tell a story and to draw people in. I know that the world saw Haiti after the earthquake and that the images moved people to respond. There are most certainly times where photos tell a story. We ourselves have shared many stories with photos. We are not claiming we know where the line is - we are simply aware that there IS a line.
Obviously within relationships and with permission it is a entirely different ballgame.
I only know that I am uncomfortable with a lot of what happens here and embarrassed that visitors with fancy cameras often disrespect the Haitian people, sticking the camera in their face without greeting them, without any thought. There seems to be a real attitude of entitlement. (When large groups all have their cameras out, I hide. I cannot watch it.)
Before these were my friends, before these were people I knew, people I loved, people I respected, I took photographs without much thought. I shared photographs without much thought. Now that these are not just "poor people" but REAL PEOPLE, I take and share fewer photographs.
Remember, when you come here for a week you are one of many MANY snapping photos. (The number of groups in and out of Haiti is mind-boggling. Being 700 miles from FL ... 200,000 one+week visitors a year is the number being tossed around.) I'm thinking if we all stopped and put ourselves on the other side of the camera for a moment, we might take very different photographs.
~ ~ ~
Does a post like this hit you wrong? Does it cause defensiveness or examination? I would love to hear your thoughts if you're willing to share.
"My supposedly prophetic photography, which I dreamed could one day change the world, was doing nothing but showing the ugly surface and ignoring everything underneath. I was taking the assumptions and fears of everyone who I hoped would see the truth, and showed them only what they expected:Look how poor our community is.Look how dirty and run-down our buildings are.Look how hopeless and dangerous our youth are.Look how rough a place the city is."~ ~ ~"So how do we do all this? I still don’t really know yet. I’m still trying to learn how to do it well. But I do know what I’m striving for:
Where the world sees poverty, we want it to see a different sort of richness.Where the world sees violence, we want it to see people longing for peace.Where the world sees crime, we want it to see neighbors looking out for each other.Where the world sees brokenness, we want it to see stories of hope and strength.Where the world sees destruction, we want it to see signs of God’s redemption.Amidst the darkness, we want the world to see the Kingdom."
~ ~ ~ ~ (reposting, originally posted here in 2011)
"You say you care about the poor.Then tell me, what are their names?"Gustavo Gutierrez
There are so many topics that are touchy and difficult to write about. I usually avoid speaking/writing with force about them in order to dodge any conflict that may arise as a result. I hate internet word wars .... But more than that I hate when people misunderstand and jump to conclusions. Discussion is great, but it seems that things tend to deteriorate quickly.
The fights people have on line would never happen if they were standing face to face because we're all way more polite, gracious, and non-confrontational in real life. In face to face interaction it rarely happens that if you disagree with someone you jump them with the boldness that happens on line.
All that to say - Bringing up the book, "When Helping Hurts" and writing about Short Term Missions caused a little ruffling of feathers. It wasn't meant to put anyone on the defensive; but it did anyway. C'est la vie. In this case, I think it needs to be said and it was worth the conflict. That post was meant to make us think. It is not actually all about us and what makes us feel good.
Lately I find myself frustrated with some of the problems we create when we come to "help the poor" and that post was born of that frustration. I dislike a lot of what happens between the poor and the people that come to help. I get squirmy and uncomfortable with the 'great white hope' attitude and the Santa Claus stuff that goes on. I don't think there is anything wrong with examining our own motives and asking hard questions about the things we do.
I'm struggling a bit with what I perceive as exploitation of people. I recognize in some of the things we've done over the years (especially very early on) a bit of an air of superiority. I'd go so far as to say that in the past Troy and I have done things that I would now say robbed people of their dignity in that moment. I wish I could go back and undo a few of the things I've done, said, and thought.
I also feel a resentment growing toward others who don't seem to consider the feelings and position of those they come to "help" - nor do they ever allow their approach to be questioned without great offense. Truthfully, I desire to be far more gracious toward the people doing these things and I don't want to resent anyone.
No matter what you've done in the past when on a short or longer term trip abroad - try to be open to this question. I ask that you honestly (without defensiveness) consider this and how you would react to it ...
You are with a friend of yours and a couple of your kids (or if you don't have kids you are watching someone's kids) and you've gone to run a few errands one morning. At Target you notice a woman taking photos of the kids from about 15 yards away. Later, you've stopped at the grocery store and you turn around to see five or six people taking photos of your friend and the kids. That afternoon as you return home you look down your driveway to see someone else standing there taking a photo of your house. You go to bed, the next morning you walk out of your house looking ragged in sweats and an old shirt. As you are walking your dog a truck full of people you've never seen before ride by and they all start snapping your photo.
Yesterday on facebook, out of totally curiosity, I asked this question - I ask it of you now:
Would you be okay with strangers taking your picture(or of your kids or family) while you were out and about minding your business, doing life?Here are a few of the replies I got in response:- I really don't know. I think they'd need to ask for permission first, but then they'd need a good reason. If they wanted a picture of clothing I'm wearing, a purse I'm carrying, shoes, etc so they can go home and find the same, then ok. If they have a valid reason maybe. I'm not a mom yet, but I'm pretty sure I won't ever be ok with someone just randomly taking pictures of my children, for any reason.
- That's tough. Normally I would say no, but I'm fine with people who are obviously traveling or when the new refugee families come to our city they want tons of pictures of everyday life stuff (often involving our family) and that doesn't bother me cuz I know it's new and exciting. I definitely wouldn't want to if I wasn't asked though or if it was someone I didn't know at all.
- Do you mean obviously focusing on my family or me? I frequently get people in my photographs that I don't necessarily mean to, but they are there when I snap the pic. But deliberately focusing? I would not really like that. However, what are they planning on doing with it? I would not like to be used in a media sense.
- No! We've had that happen before & I was shocked. I will not let it happen anymore.
- Absolutely NOT, my children are not exhibits and I would not hesitate one bit to let whoever know that taking their pictures without consent is not appreciated.my son s daycare have a very strict policy on that, parents are not allowed to videotape,take pictures on school grounds.
- NO! If you have the responsability of having a camera and want to take shots. You NEED to approach and ask, can I take a picture of your child on the swing for an article. OR for a art show. Otherwise NO!!
- That's a tough one. We are constantly approached here for a "photo" Sometimes I agree sometimes not. I can't even tell you why I make the choice that I do...When we first came I "obliged" now after having our photos taken a gillion times, ...I mostly say no. However, what I do not like is when we are walking and ppl take out their phones and "steal" our photo. Then again, I "steal" photos of random ppl here...so, what to do?
- Well, it is the paparazzi that drives me nuts. I just wish they would stop following me. lol. No, I wouldn't like it. But I did it in Haiti the first time I went and never thought once about my actions. Rude! I was an ignorant tourist the first time for sure!
- definitely not okay...we have the cell phone picture taking issue here too. way too much of a security risk in the country we live. Maybe more of us should think about it before we take pictures of others???
~~~~~~~~
I'm not debating the ability for photos to tell a story and to draw people in. I know that the world saw Haiti after the earthquake and that the images moved people to respond. There are most certainly times where photos tell a story. We ourselves have shared many stories with photos. We are not claiming we know where the line is - we are simply aware that there IS a line.
Obviously within relationships and with permission it is a entirely different ballgame.
I only know that I am uncomfortable with a lot of what happens here and embarrassed that visitors with fancy cameras often disrespect the Haitian people, sticking the camera in their face without greeting them, without any thought. There seems to be a real attitude of entitlement. (When large groups all have their cameras out, I hide. I cannot watch it.)
Before these were my friends, before these were people I knew, people I loved, people I respected, I took photographs without much thought. I shared photographs without much thought. Now that these are not just "poor people" but REAL PEOPLE, I take and share fewer photographs.
Remember, when you come here for a week you are one of many MANY snapping photos. (The number of groups in and out of Haiti is mind-boggling. Being 700 miles from FL ... 200,000 one+week visitors a year is the number being tossed around.) I'm thinking if we all stopped and put ourselves on the other side of the camera for a moment, we might take very different photographs.
~ ~ ~
Does a post like this hit you wrong? Does it cause defensiveness or examination? I would love to hear your thoughts if you're willing to share.
Categories: Haitian blogs
(Missed) Appointment With a Dictator
According to a Haitian judge, Baby Doc Duvalier should face trial for misappropriating public funds, but not for abusing human rights.
Categories: Haitian blogs