"A Different View of Haiti" Article

InFlight USA

The above link is to an article I wrote for InFlight USA magazine about my journey to Haiti that will appear in the May issue.

That journey is continuing as I try and determine the best way to write to help Haiti and the Haitian people. I have been offered the gift of many stories I could tell, but I'm realizing I want to tell the uplifting and positive ones. The media does an adequate job of presenting the negative. I would like to try and focus on the best of human nature being brought out in the midst of this tragedy.

There are rays of light to be found in even the darkest places in Haiti. The beautiful school in Cite` Soleil and the children there are a classic example. If you read the papers, there is talk about supposed impending violence in Cite` Soleil; how horrible conditions are there. There is however, another side to that story and to Cite` Soleil, and all you might read in the media is not grounded in reality.

I do not mean to minimize the conditions, for they are indeed still horrendeous for too many in the aftermath of the quake. Absolutely the government and International community needs to continue to do all it can to rebuild and bring Haiti to a place of integrity for its people. I use that description "bring Haiti to a place of integrity" intentionally, for integrity has not always been a part of the equation in how its own government or the world as a whole has treated Haiti and its people.

But I want to focus on the good, and envision that good growing exponentially and Haiti being restored from this tragedy into the place of beauty it once was and can be again. I want to write about the positives; the light and hope.
Those things are to be found in the people and stories involved with the organizations I've already mentioned here: Project Medishare - Aviation for Humanity - Art Creation Foundation for Children Within each are tales of the best in human nature coming forth in giving and generous ways.

A positive attitude and light can be found too in the faces of these children at the school in Cite` Soleil. A school that was built by community leaders who chose not to dwell on violence or the past, but instead on creating a productive and peaceful future for these children.

$9.9 Billion

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says donors went "far beyond expectations" and pledged $9.9 billion over more than three years to rebuild earthquake-ravaged Haiti.


Haiti had appealed for $3.8 billion for the next two years. The U.N. chief said the $9.9 billion includes pledges of $5.3 billion from governments and international partners for the first 24 months of reconstruction, far-exceeding Haiti's request.


Ban told a news conference at the end of a daylong donor conference on Wednesday that the international community had come together "dramatically and in solidarity with the Haitian people" to help them recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

A piece from one of many news reports on yesterday's donor conference in N.Y.

Let us hope this money will not be lost in words and good intentions yet again not manifested into concrete actions leading to real change and hope for the Haitian people.

If they are skeptical and weary of promises not kept and of a government that does not fulfill its obligations to its people ... I understand why after having been there and talking with/looking into the eyes of those who suffer as a consequence; after having learned more of Haiti's long and tragic history.

On the "person to person" scale, the best of human nature has - and continues - to shine through in Haiti since the quake, in the Haitian people themselves as well as in the incredible human beings from all over the world who have offered support in person and through contributions. It remains to be seen if that will be the case on the larger scale of country to country - government to government. History shows it's not always the case.


There is no harm in thinking positive and envisioning this will be the beginning of hope for a sustainable, positive future for the people of Haiti and their country ... a new start where much that was so very wrong, can be righted.

There is harm in letting this country and these people down yet again.

The 8th Wonder of the World?

This is the Citadel. I'm told the Haitians refer to as yes - the "8th wonder of the world." Rightly:

From Wikipedia:

"The massive stone structure was built by up to 20,000 workers between 1805 and 1820 as part of a system of fortifications designed to keep the newly-independent nation of Haiti safe from French incursions. The Citadel was built several miles inland, and atop the 3,000 ft (910 m) Bonnet a L’Eveque mountain, to deter attacks and to provide a lookout into the nearby valleys. Cap-Haïtien and the adjoining Atlantic Ocean are visible from the roof of the fortress. Anecdotally, it is possible to sight the eastern coast of Cuba, some 90 miles (140 km) to the west, on clear days."

I was privileged to see it from a perspective most do not, from above in a Cessna 172. You look at that one road that is the only access - you contemplate what it took to build something of that magnitude there - and it's easy indeed to make comparisons with say, the Pyramids.

It is a tragedy to me that something this magnificent ~ is basically hidden from the world.

Looking at my pictures from the flight that day - which ranged from the photograph above to a view of the destruction after take-off:

To this beautiful shot of Port au Prince I shared in a previous post as we came in to land:

I realize these could serve as a testimony to what the quake represents in the lives of the Haitian people and in the history of the country itself. The Citadel is a testimony to their strength and determination; the damaged landscape a testimony to their courage and resilience; the end-of-day sunlight shining down a testimony to their faith.

Misconceptions and Stereotypes ...

So many of those to choose from when it comes to Haiti and her people I'm not sure where to begin. But let's go with the old adage that a picture "speaks a thousand words" and start with the above photograph I took in Port au Prince.

It depicts a white female who - driving alone - got stuck on a curb. When we drove up on this scene, the woman was smiling and talking to the group of men who had gathered around to try and help her. You can't see it from the picture, but there were two men at the upper right corner of the vehicle trying to dislodge it.

I told friends and family via e-mail while I was still in Haiti - in an attempt to ease their concerns - that I honestly have felt more uncomfortable walking/driving the more impoverished, seedier parts of San Francisco than I ever did in Haiti. Why is that? I've thought about it a great deal since I've been back. Had I come across this same scene and situation in any of the more unsavory and impoverished sections of any large American city, I doubt I'd have wrtten what I did above to describe it. To the contrary I probably would have been inclined to pull over and "rescue" her. If you live in the states, if you've ever driven through some of the areas I'm referring to - I know you know what I mean.

I suppose it has something to do with drugs not being an issue in Haiti as they are in much of the U.S.  But more than that I keep coming back to it being something intrinsic about the Haitian people themselves. There is an inherent grace, dignity and good-natured spirit about them; honed I can probably rightly conjecture, from a long history of oppression ... combined with a dogged and sustained through generations determination to hold on to their deep faith, wherever that may come from (I will not venture down the path of religious discussion here - ever) as well as what seems to be enormous wells of courage and the ability to make the best of what life hands them to deal with.

Given that, it makes their situation - before and after the quake - that much more heartwrenching.

I was told by a native Haitian their greatest strengths, seem to often be their greatest weaknesses. As I come home from this trip and continue my journey by continuing to educate myself about the history of Haiti, both of the country and of the people themselves, as well as how they have been treated by the world at large ... I get what he's saying. It's hard not to just sum up an extremely complicated and involved subject by saying simply - over time this country and its people have been horribly oppressed and used due in part to their having been too complacent because of circumstance and their basic nature. And it is difficult to assert yourself when looking down the barrel of a gun - the history of Haiti has also included far too much violence directed at those who tried.......

I deeply hope - as do many Haitians I spoke with - that this earthquake will open a window of insight for the world and for Haitians themselves. I hope the Haitian people will find the continued strength, needed determination, combined with that intrinsic courage, to stand up after this tragedy and demand a place at the table as it is set for recovery largely by outside interests. I hope the world because of this earthquake and a chance for a new start for the country, will take a look at what has been done over many years in Haiti and see larger lessons for us all - help Haiti and her people become more self-sufficient and less dependent on aid. They want that for themselves. They are not ignorant of their own internal issues, nor are they lacking the desire for something better for the future.

But they are poster children for how oppressive the world can be - both from outside and within, for there are indeed also internal forces at work against them - when money, power and control take precedent long term, over basic human rights. We need to give them a chance for meaningful, long-term, empowering change. Now.

Why does it have to be another tragedy before it gets attention?

The following is a quote from an article on the Huffington Post site by investigative journalist Georgianne Nienaber that I mentioned here in a previous post:  Haiti: Diarrhea Threatens Infants and "We Are in Reaction Mode Instead of Planning Mode."    I'm coming back to it because I actually spoke with Georgianne - and the more I know, the more I seriously cannot understand why the media is so quiet on this:

"What should the mainstream media do when the guy who identified the H1N1 outbreak in Mexico and was a key player and founder of ARGUS, a global detection and tracking system for the early detection of biological events, says Haiti is facing a serious gap in preparedness, early warning, and rapid response regarding pediatric diarrheal disease? If they are doing their homework, they talk to him and other epidemiologists and doctors in the field who say that the big NGOs and the United Nations are fudging the facts about their accomplishments.

While in Haiti, we met Dr. Jim Wilson, who among other things, has tracked and identified SARS outbreaks, H1NI, Marburg hemorrhagic fever, and issued the first warning of H1N1 resurgence in the United States in the summer of 2009. Remember the melamine contaminated baby food scandal in China? Well, he was the one who first detected it through via reporting of unusual renal disease in babies there. He has offered testimony to Congress on the Argus Program and to Homeland Security. In the late 1990's, Wilson worked with the World Health Organization and NASA to examine environmental and climatic activities in Africa potentially associated with the emergence of the Ebola virus ....
As Wilson reports on his website, and contrary to what the United Nations and Care International have reported , about safe drinking water and sanitation in the IDP camps, the opposite is true."

It's a sad testimony to what's happened to journalism in this country when something like this just sits ignored - tucked into nooks and crannies of Blogs on the internet - until ... it blows up into a horrible disaster that will boost ratings, draws advertisers and only then suddenly has news organizations and  "professional journalists" fighting to cover it.

I shall date myself and say as a child it was Huntley and Brinkley and Walter Cronkite on the television every night so I'll grant you I grew up with an entirely different standard for news, but one I think we should go back to. I don't watch the news anymore; I gather my information from trusted sources on the internet.

Seriously ... can this predicted potentially deadly outbreak be prevented or at least the consequences substantially minimized with pro-active steps now please? We're talking kids being the most vulnerable. Do they really have to die first to get attention?

I know this is all overwhelming and more than a little depressing. The world is full of problems and we all certainly have our own personal things to deal with. Pick a disaster Susan, they're everywhere in the world.

Sigh, yes, yes they are ....

But ever notice when really horrendeous things happen like the Haitian earthquake and we all get inundated with it on the news and it starts to take over conversations in the course of the day because it's such a big deal and we get concerned and care because for that little while it all has our attention we relate and we realize "there but for the grace of ... go I" and the celebrities come out and sing to us about it and we all get a little bit of that fuzzy "gee, maybe we really ARE all one" feeling listening to/watching them and so we're motivated to help and we do which is wonderful, and we send in our donation and we feel a bit better and then our own lives start to take priority again and disaster fatigue sets in and we really would rather kind of move on and not think about it much anymore because it's depressing, and the news media knows that so they move on too and find something else to grab our attention with so their ratings stay up there and the advertisers stay put and therefore the poor place and people who had that horrendeous disaster and are still living/dying/coping with that horrendeous disaster start having to deal with the consequences of not being the headline news of the day anymore and getting the help that always brings until ... because of the fact that the help starts to dissipate and things aren't dealt with and so another huge disaster on the human scale comes as a result of lack of attention and help which inevitably results in the loss of even more lives and the creation of yet more dramatic photo ops at which the media goes "gee, look, more horrible things are happening here" that are dramatic and interest-holding and will make our ratings go up ... and the cycle starts all over again? Know how that is?

Well ... how about we try not to let that be the case this time.

I'm sorry this sounds so jaded and negative. But actually it isn't. Why?

Because I believe we're better than that ~ it's why I wrote this.

(A project Medishare medical relief worker offers a chocolate bar to a child outside the airport based Medishare Hospital in Port au Prince 3/6/10)

Children ....

I was looking through my notebook and photos this morning from the trip. I'd written notes about the afternoon we went to the school in Cite`Soleil, and how the children swarmed around me. They wanted to touch my clothes, my camera, to make eye contact. They giggled and pointed and smiled in glee as I snapped photos of them and instantly shared them - how often did they ever see themselves? Seems mirrors aren't too prevalent in a tent city. They were "sweetly respectful" I had written in my notes, "curious but never intrusive. It was like they were in awe of me; that I represented something to them. I'm not sure I deserved that ..."

That is not an unusual reaction to a white person in a country like Haiti, I'm well aware of that. But my mature older self had a flashback to my 13 year old self in the Philippine's. I remember the same reaction there, walking the streets of Angeles City outside of Clark AFB. What a sad and depressive environment that was; such a stark contrast to where I came from. They were a bit more jaded there however and oddly I have rememberances of feeling unsettled and a bit threatened. That could have been related to my age at the time and the fact that it was my first exposure to that kind of poverty - that world. But I still come back also to the fact that there is something about ... the Haitian people.

A white ("blan" as they say in Haiti) person obviously represents to them - as it also did to those children in the Philippines - something to be in awe of.

I do indeed have to question whether I'm worthy of that.

This trip has me coming home acutely aware of the excess in my world; uncomfortable somewhat because if one is lucky enough to live relatively without want in the U.S., life doesn't ask us to dwell on that excess - it asks us to revel in it. Advertising implores us to acquire more this more that; speaks to our egos and salves our conscious with rationals that aren't really valid in the end, but echo sufficiently in the beginning to walk us easily down the material path of life fullfillment. It's like that from childhood on. And that all works fairly fine ... until you get exposed to the other extreme and you have any sense of empathy at all. Then you kind of start to squirm a little like I am.

I'm not advocating give it all up and living a life of austerity and service - that's for saints and I'm far from one. But I am saying - seems there has to be a better balance. Is it just luck of the draw that I live the life I do? Certainly there have been life choices, hard work, discipline that have all played over the years into my circumstances now. But I can't avoid the fact that I was born into a comfortably off middle class family in the United States. And these kids swarming me in Cite` Soleil certainly were not.

I can't change their world for them. Ultimately only they as the future generation of Haiti can make the kind of meaningful, at the core of their country changes that can shape the world their children will grow up in.

But they - like impoverished children the world over - need to somehow be empowered; given some hope.

And I - we - can do little things to maybe help toward that end at least for the children of Haiti.

I can tell you I think I need to be in awe of the spirit I saw in the Haitian people on this trip, in awe of their dignity I mention often because it was so apparent; in awe of their graciousness and humor and strength in the face of such incredible sorrow and adversity. I can read their history and gain respect for it and how it has shaped the world they live in now - how it is going to continue to shape their desire for a better future.

Lets all see the connection with doing small things that might help some children in Haiti. And like the butterfly effect, perhaps those small things could have a larger overall impact. Especially if offered by enough people ... in the right way for the right reasons.

I think it will be a good thing as I continue to process this trip for me to be in awe of those kids, as opposed to letting it be the other way around.

(These were children at the fresh water spring at Souce Zabete; an uplifting image after seeing all the dirty water in Port au Prince ...)

Where did it all go?

So what do you think I'll address here with that subject title? Money? Hmmm.....I could. But I won't - for now anyway. It's a balance to address the genuine good that's been done/can be done with monetary donations ... and addressing the harm that also can be done without souring people on wanting to help. It is SO important that you do. But do your homework. As I do mine - I realize more and more how naive I've been in ways. The need is too great in Haiti to be naive.

Again like a broken record I'll say - want to help? Support the groups I suggest on this Blog. I promise your money will go where it's intended.

No ... that said, I want the question to apply to: where did the media coverage all go?

Hey Anderson Cooper - get yourself and your camera crew back to Port au Prince - you're not done yet.

On to other things is where they've gone of course. It's always that way with big disasters. The media's short-attention-span theater side kicks in and when the headline grabbing, mostly horrendeous and heart-wrenching immediacy of a disaster is over ... off they go to something more current.

Here's the sad thing though with Haiti: the horrendeous and heart-wrenching sadly isn't over. With the rains coming? I hate to type this wanting to be the eternal optimist I am, but the reality is the tragedy that has already been this earthquake is going to jump to another level of horrendeous soon. People need to still pay attention and to care ... and to act. Now.

Here's a piece by journalist Georgianne Nienaber that imho should have been front page news in major newspapers, with the subject front and center on evening television news reports. I found it tucked into a Haiti page on the Huffington Post online:

 Haiti: Diarrhea Threatens Infants and "We Are in Reaction Mode Instead of Planning Mode"

Don't let it all get deadly again before it's worth wide-spread media coverage. Can't we set a new standard ... please?

Don't let this ~ be mis-placed.......................