Two of the recurring issues in Haiti is figuring out a way to make humanitarian aid more efficient and to improve media images of Haiti.  As most Haitians know, the two are linked because aide workers from abroad often have to present Haiti in as dire straits as possible in order to get the funding they need for their projects.  In so doing, they divert attention from the more attractive areas/aspects of Haiti thereby decreasing tourist interest, not to mention prospective investment by businesses.  There’s no easy solution for this problem, but one possible place to start is possibly enlisting foundations to provide media training for aide organizations, and also for their own program officers so that they can get a better handle of how to do good work without necessarily making communities look so bad. 

Take this youtube video for the Clean Haiti Project by Clean The World

Clean The World is a project that distributes unused hotel soaps to countries in need of soap.  It’s an interesting concept and one that I imagine will flourish for a period of time.  However, the video is unrelenting in its portrayal of Haitian agony, and overly skewed to turn an obvious thought, soap is useful, to a grand project.  The narrator relishes in Harriet Beecher Stowesque sentimentality to convince the viewer that he’s doing a worthwhile task.  Rather than paint a broader picture of Cap Haitien and show how Clean The World may, for example, play a part in Haitians getting what they really want and need, i.e. jobs, he’s unrelenting in producing a stream of images about Haitian pathology that he brings himself to tears.  It’s unclear whether the tears are to symbolize how impassioned he is about his work, or that the images are so repetitive they’ve brought him to tears. 

What I would suggest to Mr Mowry is to recreate this video into one that is a more holistic portrait of what he saw in Cap Haitien, the warm greetings he received from his hosts, the delicious meals, the breathtaking views one encounters–present the disparities that exist within Haiti and let them speak for themselves rather than trying to drown American audiences in a vision of a world worst than their own. 

Great article in Next American City magazine comparing impact of storms on Haiti and New Orleans respectively:

On a humid afternoon in October, a five-piece jazz band marches down a mud-caked street, wafting sonorous funeral hymns above piles of trash and the broken roofs of flooded houses. The scene is totally New Orleans — except this is Haiti. Read More

Ned Sublette:

In trying to understand the music of Haiti, I find myself taking a transnational approach, because, as I keep arguing, the Haitian revolution was a generative explosion for the popular music of the hemisphere. It sent populations up and down the Atlantic coast and the Antilles—and ultimately to New Orleans, where many families from Saint-Domingue were reunited. There are places today where you can connect the dots by listening. Let me, then, make some connections.

To Elizabeth’s evocation of the trumpet and snare drum of the colonial military bands (which ultimately became the basis of the jazz instrumentation in New Orleans), I would add the vocal legacy of the military drill, which evolved into the gruff vocal style of dancehall reggae. The adoption of this vocal style throughout the Antilles echoes the universality of the quadrille in the same territories two centuries ago, when a commandeur barked out the dance steps. Jump Here

Credit: Ghetto BiennaleThe ‘Ghetto Biennale’ will take place at the beginning of December, artists can arrive from 28th November and the final exhibition will take place on the 15/16th December, and a closing conference involving all the artists will be held on the 18th December. Artists will pass one or two weeks in Haiti before presenting their work at the ‘Ghetto Biennale’ to an audience of local people, Port au Prince neighbourhood communities, arts collectives and arts organisations. The extended deadline for proposal applications will be July 15. The proposals will be primarily assessed by criteria of practical production viability in the locality. Please outline your project in no more than 500 words, covering methodology, conceptual background and a production and exhibition strategy for the proposed new work. Please give as much detail as possible on the areas of presentation and production of work. The proposals can be in either French or English and should be emailed to both Leahgordon@aol.com and performbrazil@gmail.com

The idea for this roundtable started with Madison Smartt Bell, and a post he wrote about Haitian music for the New York Times’s Paper Cuts blog.

I knew Wyclef’s music and a few other names on Bell’s list, but I found myself feeling woefully short on context. I wanted to know what’s going on now in Haiti. What are the big struggles within and behind Haitian music? What should people be listening to? To answer these questions, and others, I enlisted the help of music scholar Garnette Cadogan and brought together Bell with:

Laurent Dubois, who is the author of “Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution,” and is working on a history of the banjo.

Elizabeth McAlister, who writes about Haitian music and religious culture. She is the author of “Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora,” and produced the Smithsonian Folkways CD “Rhythms of Rapture: Sacred Musics of Haitian Vodou.”

Ned Sublette, the author of “The World That Made New Orleans,” “Cuba and Its Music,” and the forthcoming “The Year Before the Flood.”

Edwidge Danticat, a novelist and author of the memoir “Brother, I’m Dying.”

Garnette Cadogan himself, who is at work on a book about rock-reggae superstar Bob Marley.

The conversation is theirs. I’m here only as student and moderator.

Recently named TED Fellow Peter Hass, Founder and CEO of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) announced the winner of AIDG’s Haiti business plan competition.

“We are excited to invest in COOPEN, a new business enterprise in Cap Haitien that will sell biodigesters to the 1,500 members of COOPEN’s agricultural co-op. Families will benefit from this low cost fuel for heating, cooking, and waste management. COOPEN will then buy back the effluent – the by-product of biogas production, and vermicompost the effluent to produce a higher quality product that they can sell on the agricultural market.”Jump Here

Haiti and the environment by Susan L Smith

The first thing that anyone learns about Haiti and the environment is that Haiti is the most deforested country in the world, having shifted from 60% forest cover to less than 2% forest cover. And the immediate image in one’s mind is that of desert.

Well, that’s not exactly true. At least not in a lot of the country. Here are a few of my Haiti picutres:

Jump Here

I went to Haiti in December 2008 because it was the 20th anniversary of my father’s first trip to Haiti since leaving in 1975. Riddled by debt, betrayed by friends, and having recently bottomed out on a series of business ideas, my father went to Haiti in June 1988 for two weeks and ended up not returning until January 1989. That was a pivotal trip in my family and one that as I grow older means different things to me. At twelve it was a six-month vacation from my father’s strict rules, at 32 it was one man’s response to a world and problems that had gotten the best of him. During that trip to Haiti in 1988 my father was able to convince my grandparents to turn over some of their land to him, which he in turn sold to pay off his debts in the states. This cash infusion opened up parts of my grandparents’ homestead to “outsiders” and initiated the first wave of new construction in their area. Twenty years later, an area previously anchored by my paternal grandparents one-story house now features a number of three-four story homes with balconies and all-sorts of other accoutrements.

Twenty years later, my father (and therefore my parents) wants to go back to Haiti. He realizes that retirement is fast approaching, but he and my mother cannot figure out how they’re going to do it. The success of one of their friends who moved back to Haiti in 2004-05 makes my parents optimistic about moving back–but they’re still on the fence.

Thinking about my parents’ predicament it occurred to me that they’re the one’s whom their country has been waiting for: the generation of boomers who made their fortunes and misfortunes abroad, and who have something to offer their country. I’ve recently begun thinking about what a concerted effort to organize Haitians living abroad in anticipation of their returns to Haiti look like? What if instead of looking toward those younger than us to repair our parents’ mistakes, my generation of young Haitians looked toward our elders and gave them a chance that so many of them did not get–to make a difference in their country?

via kiskeacity

A Report for the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Paul Collier
Department of Economics
Oxford University
December 27th, 2008

N.B. We publish in its entirety the findings and recommendations of Professor Paul Collier, following a brief visit to Haiti in December 2008 to assess prospects for economic development. The author of “The Bottom Billion,” visited Haiti at the request of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. For over a year, President René Préval had repeatedly said that Haiti needed plows, tractors and civil engineers, not more guns, armored vehicles and troops. Who better than a renowned economist — a former World Bank official — who has quantified relations between democracy and military might amongst other things to spell out the challenge of reaping the benefits of peacekeeping? “If the international community cannot succeed in Haiti,” says Collier, “then it is hard to see it succeeding elsewhere.” Will Collier’s plan be the winning plan for a 21st century Haiti? You be the judge. And let us know what you think of the proposals. Perhaps they will be taken into consideration at the international donors meeting on Haiti set for April 13 and 14 in Washington, DC. — JM

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