by Paul Farmer
For us creative types, especially those who have spent most of our lives outside Haiti, yet still consider ourselves bound to it as the umbilical cords that joined us to our mothers, another Haiti occasionally sparks our imagination. Whenever I am asked to lay out my own personal “vision” for Haiti’s future, I think of that place. It is a place where every child (both boys and girls) goes to school, where every person eats everyday and has a roof over his or her head. It is a place where women and girls are fully protected, where there is no rape, no kidnapping. In that place, there is no peyi andeyò, no unsurmountable rural-urban divide.
It would be great, however, to see a society emerge out of the rubble that comes closest to the ideal vision that the majority of Haitians, who are mostly poor and marginalized, have for Haiti’s future. All of Haiti’s children, including my two daughters and all of those who have crossed both earthly and cosmic barriers to lòt bò dlo, will be counting on it.
SIM PA RELEa (IF I DON’T SHOUT)
MICHÈLE MONTAS - DOMINIQUE
The voices of the voiceless
When my friend Paul Farmer asked me first to participate in, then to write about, the collective effort we undertook last February and March to give voice to the silent majority of Haiti, my answer was immediately yes.
Yes, because I owe this small contribution to so many friends forever silenced. I owe it also to the hundreds whose bodies I saw lying on the sidewalks of the Canapé Vert and Martissant roads, in Port-au-Prince the day after that fateful January 12. Each one was covered with a clean white sheet, in a sign of ultimate respect from an unknown survivor to an unknown victim. I owe this small contribution to the mother I saw carrying on her back at 5 o’clock that terrible morning of the 13th, a wounded son twice her size, rescued from the rubble. I don’t know her name. I don’t know if she ever found a hospital. We never spoke. But I know in my soul how much her voice should count.
In the midst of the mind-boggling devastation that was my city—the dead bodies and more than a million displaced people living in makeshift camps—I felt compelled once more to help echo the voices of those who are never heard, those who are never consulted, and those who never participate in the life of their own country except when they are asked to cast a ballot for one candidate or another, as was the case last November.
I worked for many years doing just that, before the quake shattered all our lives, as a radio journalist at Radio Haiti. Since the midseventies, we had lent our microphones to coffee growers and factory workers, peasant associations and newly formed labor unions, trying to break the wall of silence imposed by a dictatorship. We were there again in 1987, after six years of forced exile, recording and broadcasting the voices from the slums of Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves and from the villages of the Artibonite valley.
Back then, the words from peasants, artisans, and market women expressed the aspirations for change. Our mission was about participation, justice for all, and transparency in government. It was about chanje leta, changing the state, from a predatory one into one that provided services to its population. We would make sure, in our newsroom at Radio Haiti, that every day would have one major story from andeyò, the “outside country,” as every place besides the centralized Republic of Port-au-Prince is called.
In the last few years, however, the voices from below have become muted or irrelevant to the decision makers. The airwaves are filled mostly with politicians speaking about the government and about other politicians, with little reporting from andeyò. I wonder how much effect the voices we so often aired had in shaping our post-dictatorship Haiti. Has our oral society absorbed the calls for change so that we can produce real change? Was voicing our demands a good enough substitute for action?
Now that the dust has settled, the hidden realities of Haiti are emerging. “Beyond the mountain, there is another mountain,” says the Haitian Proverb. The quake that killed tens of thousands of the people we loved has brought together in the tent cities not only the victims of those thirty-five apocalyptic minutes but also those who have moved from the slums of La Saline, Cite Letènel, or Jalouzi to find, in the camps, the basic services they were denied for decades. The deep-rooted social injustices of the past have now caught up with us, no longer hidden, exposed now on every public square and every vacant lot in this broken city.
Another reason why I said yes to Paul is because I felt that I was in a privileged position to better echo these voices. I had been working at the United Nations, before returning to Haiti in early January for what was supposed to be a carefree retirement. Then the earthquake struck. I was asked to join the UN again, this time in Haiti, as Special Adviser to the Secretary-General’s Special Representative there, Ambassador Edmond Mulet. I did not hesitate. After what had happened, could I be anywhere else?
So I was back to fourteen-hour days filled with grueling visits to relocation camps and destroyed schools. I drove to work through bumpy streets twisted by bagay la, “the thing.” We refuse to name it “the earthquake,” an absurd semantic shield against a possible return of the beast. I am now painfully aware that as a privileged survivor, I have the chance to play a role—even a modest one—in the ambitious national and international agenda to rebuild Haiti better. As a Haitian, I am part of that wounded land and can inject a different perspective in the decision-making process. As a long-time international civil servant, I have learned to cut through the paralyzing bureaucratic red tape that is too often part of working for the UN. The cataclysmic event I have lived through has forced so many of us to think “outside the tent.”
At the International Donors’ Conference “Towards a New Future for Haiti” held in New York on March 31, 2010, I was asked to be the spokesperson for “the voiceless” and to present the conclusions of a series of focus group discussions held with the displaced in the camps as well as with small farmers, market women, and tradespeople in the Haitian countryside. This appointment had an ironic aspect because I had spent the preceding thirty-four months as the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and for the United Nations. Now for a privileged if short moment, I would be the spokesperson for the ordinary citizens of the country I call mine.
I was profoundly moved to be asked to lend a voice to those who had been isolated from the planning process and could not share their vision for rebuilding a more just and democratic Haiti. I felt privileged to relay their views on the priorities of decentralization and a sustainable agriculture as well as their demands for dignity, respect, and work beyond the handouts of emergency aid.
Two very personal reasons also motivated me to help transmit and amplify the voices of those most affected by the earthquake. The first reason had to do with one man: Jean Dominique, my companion of twenty-eight years. A radio journalist, he was called by many “the voice of the voiceless,” the advocate of the peyi andeyò. In the early 1970s, he was the first to introduce Creole, the language of the majority, as the main language for news in a formerly Frenchspeaking Haitian media. Above all, he was the one who dared, over and over, until he was assassinated in April 2000, to demand the participation of the poorest in the affairs of the state. Jean Dominique has remained such a beacon of our collective consciousness that, on January 13 on a Champs de Mars Square filled with survivors, I was not surprised when a desperate man, his hands raised to the skies, yelled to me, “Jando would know what to do.” When I said, meekly, “Even Jean could not contain tectonic plates and the earth’s movements!” I received a stern reply: “You don’t know that, do you?” He was right; I don’t.
The second personal reason to say yes to this project is my deep respect for Dr. Paul Farmer, Polo, our ti doc, who, beyond his role in public health policies and before that terrible January 12, has been a steady part of the twenty-year effort to listen, to hear and, in so many ways, to empower. It is said he has a Haitian soul. I know he does.
Listening to the voices
The task seemed at first impossible: to reach out, in the five weeks before
the March 31st International Donors’ Conference on Haiti, beyond the silence of thousands of unmarked mass graves to the survivors, not only asking them for their own stories but also consulting them on the changes they wanted and their priorities for reconstruction.
Six partner organizations were involved in this exercise: the students of the Haitian Education Leadership Project (HELP); KOZEPEP, an umbrella group for several peasant associations throughout the country; Zanmi Lasante/Partners In Health, an organization that has been providing health care to rural Haiti for decades; ATD Quart Monde, an NGO that for the last twenty-five years has focused its work on the poorest in the slums of Port-au-Prince; the Office of the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti; and the national officers of MINUSTAH (UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti). Working together and with the support of the United Nations development program, we conducted a series of focus groups in Haiti’s ten departments (regions).
The objective was to capture the opinions and aspirations of Haitian citizens who are not members of organized civil society groups and, as such, would not be included in any consultation mechanisms conducted for the March 31 International Donors’ Conference. This countrywide exercise did not purport to be a comprehensive opinion poll or a needs assessment.The time constraints did not allow for an exhaustive survey. But the responses we received from a fishing village in the Grande Anse or from the Jean Marie Vincent camp for the displaced in Port-au-Prince were amazingly similar in terms of the priorities expressed. Those consulted were sufficiently numerous and from sectors diverse enough to properly reflect the major concerns and needs shared by the Haitian people at large.
We were expecting reluctance, jaded responses, or even cynicism from the communities and individuals we were contacting. After all, although the freedom to express one’s view had become a daily staple of our lives since the fall of the dictatorship in 1986, little had changed in the life of the majority of Haitians in the last twenty-five years. The decentralization featured in the Constitution adopted in 1987 had remained but a word. What had changed since the quake, however, as evident in so many of the focus groups, was the realization of the extent of the crisis. The roots of forty years of endemic problems were increasingly apparent not only to the intellectual or the economist or the social worker, but to the peasant in Papaye or Terrier Rouge and to the tent dweller in Port-au-Prince. Moreover, a new sense of urgency was felt, the need to use the terrible opportunity of that quake to finally make the changes we had dreamed of collectively thirty years ago: chanje leta.
What our more than four hundred facilitators recorded was the eagerness of those we contacted, in almost every community, to speak out and be heard, not only about what they had lived through and the daily difficulties they had been confronting since the quake, but above all about their views on the priorities for reconstructing the country, their country. Three weeks after the quake, no one could speak out. The few radio stations that relayed the voices of grassroots organizations were silent, except for some reporting on the conditions in the camps or the distribution of food aid. Many said that this was the first time since the quake that anyone was seeking their opinions. Some focus groups, originally limited to ten people, swelled to fifteen or eighteen participants. Gatherings in schools or cockfight arenas were at times difficult to harness because so many had so much to say.
The focus groups
During the month of March 2010, 156 focus groups comprised of 1750 Haitians—peasants, fishermen, market women, the jobless, traditional healers, teachers, camp dwellers, and students—living in all regions of the country, from Torbeck in the south to Terrier Rouge in the northeast, were brought together by two women at the UN, Nancy Dorsinville and Lizbeth Cullity. The groups were varied in composition and, given the purpose of the project—giving a voice to the voiceless—people in positions of authority or influence in the public sphere, such as senior civil servants and politicians, were not invited. They had other platforms from which to express their views. Although men were the majority, a few focus groups in Les Cayes and Aquin were exclusively women, which enabled them to feel that they could speak more freely.
Fok sa change/It has to change
Most people referred to the January 12 earthquake as a life-shattering experience, materially and emotionally. The discussions revealed a high degree of stress and anxiety among the Haitians across the country, regardless of their gender, age, social status, or location at the time of the disaster. The effects of the trauma—even among those not directly affected by the earthquake—were evident as survivors eagerly relayed their stories. One told the harrowing tale of being buried alive in the rubble then extracted four days later; another remembered having to hold the hand of a sister being amputated of a crushed leg. Even a year later, excruciating memories linger. It was as if the quake happened yesterday.
Beyond the personal stories, one evident conclusion of the discussions was that Haiti needs to change profoundly and rapidly. With regard to reconstruction priorities, the answers in the focus groups were remarkably homogeneous. Many viewed the earthquake as a watershed and the beginning of a period of (re)construction in which all Haitians, rich and poor, could participate in their country’s development. With this crisis came a deep sense of hope that such profound change is possible.
On an individual level, people wanted to be in control of their own future; they did not want to be dependent. They called for an end to discrimination, exclusion, and inequality. Another key finding, throughout the regions, was a crisis of confidence in the Haitian state, with perceptions of historical corruption, inaction, and official neglect.
During our focus group discussions, strong expectations were expressed that the international community would provide adequate support. Many wanted the reconstruction process to support Haiti by tackling preexisting structural problems such as an overpopulated capital, social inequalities, and an atrophied agricultural sector.
To the question, “Do you think Haiti can change for the better?” the answer was overwhelmingly “Yes. Haiti can and will change, and we want to be the actors of that change.”
A key word: participation
Throughout the different regions, the focus groups demanded an end to exclusion and for the participation of all, rich or poor, in the decision-making process. The exercise was an opportunity for people to express themselves, often for the first time, on issues of concern to their communities and to themselves as individual citizens.
Worried about being sidelined in the reconstruction process and also eager for jobs, citizens wanted to participate in setting priorities, on selecting projects adapted to the realities of each community, or on assessing tangible and measurable results. One group in Roseaux, a small town in the Grande Anse, insisted on the necessity that each community be consulted on its own priorities before a program is even conceived.
One priority: decentralization
Most Haitians in the focus groups insisted on the decentralization and deconcentration of public services. Most people want job opportunities closer to home, no matter how remote their communities, and demanded a say in the development of their regions. The earthquake has shattered the image of Port-au-Prince as a place of opportunity, pointing to the need for a balanced and coherent development of the country, easier access to public services, and more job and educational opportunities outside the capital.
A very large majority of the Haitians we spoke to wanted to be able to live near their places of origin without having to relocate to the capital to study, make a living, or access public services. Many died or were maimed at the time of the quake because they came to the capital to study or simply apply for a passport. The point was painfully made by a mother who participated in a focus group discussion in Dame Marie. Her two children were attending schools in Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck. They both came back to her with a limb amputated. Decentralization was widely seen as the remedy to the country’s ills and to the unsustainable drift to urban areas.
“Envestisman nan moun”/Investment in people
A clear majority of focus group participants, from both rural and urban areas, strongly believed in the critical need to “invest in people” —envestisman nan moun. They highlighted five key immediate priorities: education, the delivery of basic services to all, housing, support for agricultural production, and the building of communication infrastructures.
There seemed to be unanimity about the need to invest in human capital through education (including higher education) and training, at the local and regional levels. Haitians want more and better trained teachers, increased equality of access to education, and an efficient educational system. They want quality and standardized education for all children, with academic and vocational education available to all in both rural and urban areas. A focus group in Grande Anse, in Tozia, noted that they had no choice but to send their children to the city because their commune (district) has no secondary schools. A fisherwoman in Baudin, near Port-de-Paix, showed her calloused hands and said that the earthquake had taken away the hope she had pinned on her son’s schooling. She had invested everything she had in his education, and now he was back from the capital, alive but with no prospects for the future.
As one of the participants in Grande Ravine, a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, put it, Yon timoun ki pa gen konesans, li pa gen anyen nan men li, li pas konsidere nan sosyete a. “A child who is not educated has no tools for the future, and is not important in the society.”