ferrier fotos.

one of the funnest (that should be a word) things to do here is show someone a photo of themselves. there are photo studios here (think haitian glamour shots), but going to one is usually not a high priority and mostly done in necessity (for a name badge, id card, etc.).  the reactions at seeing one's photo on the camera usually come in the form of a shriek, hoot, or a mouth dropped open. before i left ferrier, some of my closest friends let me steel their photos. 

okay, she's not really one of my closest friends, but she looks like a fun one. caught her just after she saw her photo on the camera...

some of my 2 favorite timoun yo (kids). rose's sons. 

rose. rose. rose. she took SUCH phenomenal care of us. oh, and if you could only hear her laugh.

the sweetest girl friends. we ran together, laughed at my creole together, and sat around talking for more days than we didn't. boy, i miss them.

the facial expressions range pretty dramatically. love it.

stephen and our homeboys. there's too much to say about them. i have NO idea what we'd have done without them. our haiti time would have been lackluster for sure.

we had to say good-bye to ferrier and our most incredible friends saturday morning. until we get to see them again in person, these photos, phonecalls, and mail (by way of other ferrier travelers) will have to do. i still can't believe they let us be their friends. i feel so lucky.

today in history.

this morning i woke up early, not because i tried to or because i have the will of an olympic hopeful, but because the sunlight streaming through the window was holding my feet to the fire of another new day.  so i gave in and ventured outside. we're back in Leogone, where an inescapable relative silence filled the air. it was an eerie sort of calm that filled the streets with only the sound of an early morning church service faintly floating through the air. 


today is election day.


supposedly.


in recent weeks leading up to today, a handful of presidential candidates have made a stop in Ferrier as part of their campaigns. i've been both impressed and disgusted by this. 


i want to think this is brings power to the people, but it has also functioned in an opposite way for some of the candidates. for example, ont of the 'frontrunners' in the election, Jude Celestin, has led an elaborate campaign and made a showy display of himself. not forgein to any campaigh anywhere, right? but he's been taking advantage of the economic postion of many haitiens by paying them to wear t-shirts with his face plastered on them, paying for local bands to play in the streets to generate excitement right before he makes his arrival, and paying people to cover the streets with his campaign materials. i'm not sure that this sort of thing is the rule, but it sure makes the international community think he's got the honest support of the populus in a way that might make it less critical of the vote count if he 'wins'. 

campaign budget beneficiary. 

(also one of my favorite kids in ferrier. i miss him already.)

when i've asked friends in ferrier who they'd like to become their next president, most to all of them have answered with, 'none of them'.  i've come to better understand this with the help of more conversations with those friends and some revealing books about hait's history (this, this, and this one, inparticular). it's almost frightening to realize the strength with which the US has excercised its power in favor of its own geopolitical interests rather than in favor of 90-99% of the Haitian population.


this article sheds a some light on why today's elections are anything but 'free and fair'. some excerpts:


First, Haitian elections are supposed to choose their new President, the entire House of Deputies and one-third of the country's Senate. But election authorities have illegally excluded all the candidates from the country's most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas -- and other progressive candidates. Lavalas, the party of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has won many elections in Haiti -- probably the reason it was excluded. If this were the US, this would be like holding elections just between the Tea Party and the GOP -- and excluding all others. Few Haitians will respect the outcome of these elections.


...Fifth, the United States has pushed and paid for these swift elections hoping to secure a stable government to preserve its investment in earthquake reconstruction. But, as Dan Beeton wrote in the LA Times, "If the Obama administration wants to stand on the side of democracy and human rights in Haiti, as it did in Burma, it should support the call to postpone the elections until all parties are allowed to run and all eligible voters are guaranteed a vote." By supporting elections that exclude legitimate political parties that are critical of the current government the international community is only assuring the very social and political unrest it hopes to avoid.


Haitians are saying that no matter which candidates win on November 28, the political system that has failed them will not change unless there is an election that is fair and inclusive. They are also asking that the country undergo a reconciliation process that includes the voices of more than just the Haitian elite and international community.


is there hope for these elections? only, time and responsible reporting may tell. until then, let us find a way to be a part of what Dr. King called 'the arc of the moral universe's bend toward justice.' 

riots.

*FYI: i meant to post this last week, but time got away from me. i pulled it out of the trash and tweeked it a bit. it's a little soggy, but mostly still edible.
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the streets last week were abuzz with the news of the protests in Cap Haitian. you have probably seen or read the news stories yourselves about the riots. or maybe you haven't. interestingly as the events unfolded last week, we watched the mainstream news' version of them unfold as well, and after doing so i might just never trust the media machine again.  

from the start of the protests in Cap Haitian, the motivations were clear and consistent among the people we asked here, all of whom were Haitian. coincidentally, by and large, the press's coverage has not coincided with the answers our friends have given us. strange.

we've watched as the media has quoted twitter feeds and blog posts again and again. even if these sources are from the 'front lines,' which makes sense, 140 characters is a difficult, if not impossible way to extend full and robust coverage to the masses. we've watched as the same news story gets shuffled through all the big sources, oft with the same narrative i've mentioned before.

another twitter fumble occurred this week, mis-locating another outbreak of cholera and causing quite a ruckus. is this the kind of reporting upon which we're basing our perceptions of the rest the world?

as for the protests, or manifestations, it was really no surprise that they finally erupted. UN bases seem to be all over the place. the closest base to us is only about 5 miles away and it seems like we live in the middle of nowhere. since we've been here, we've seen the UN's MINISTUH in action only after the flood hit. they were seen hovering briefly over the delivery of aid to the displaced peoples at the school in town and shuttling groups of people to dry land by motor boat for an afternoon.  far more often than that we've seen tanks driving down peaceful, unpaved, torn-to-pieces roads, at other times driving through town in huge trucks filled with 20-something armed soldiers, and without fail guarding their compounds with armed villigance everytime we pass one.

How would the public feel toward MINISTUH had things have been different? if there had not been an alleged murder within the gates of a UN compound in Cap recently? if they had spent even half of their time building roads or hospitals, water distribution systems, or public schools? or what if they hadn't brought along cholera and then refused to acknowledge this even after having been proven? 

who is telling those stories? who is honoring those tragedies? who is holding MINISTUH accountable?

if you're interested in what's really going on here, watch this  Democracy Now piece. of course, it's not perfect, but it's one of only pieces that seems to align with the explanations our friends have shared with us here. 

it's also no surprise that many people are also upset at the exorbitant amount of money being drained into the campaign trails rather than addressing the cholera outbreak that has affected at least 23,377 lives (with the possibility of an additional 400% having never been officially reported). But the UN wants to pin this all on the count that the 'ungrateful hatian population they are so dutifully serving' is simply 'taking out their election frustrations on the innocent, benevolent, peace-keeping MINISTUH forces'. Come on.

as for the homefront, we're safe and sound. somehow. the technicians have been tirelessly giving cholera prevention sessions in all the schools and churches. we've been accompanying them and we're all hoping cholera will stay at bay.  

over and out. for now.

losing insulation.

this photo has nothing to do with this post. just wanted to post it of us with about half of the techs in the North.

might as well post 2 photos with no relevance. 

what the heck. here's a 3rd. i LOVE this plant. anyone know what it is?

somehow time got away from me. the last thing i remember was waking up last saturday. and somehow its been another week?

needless to say days this week left me feeling spent.

(which is what i'd like to say when i die one day. so, anytime i get to say that before that point, isn't a bad thing.)

ever since the rains last week, a group of displaced people have been living at the state school in town. we're talking 200 hundred people living in a very close-quartered, unsanitary, and uncomfortable place. living in a rural town is very different than the city; there aren't tent cities like you see on the news and i feel mostly insulated from a lot of the things that might come to mind when you think of a place like Haiti. or maybe i'm just so entrenched in them, i don't notice anymore. i'm not sure.

but this week everything seemed different. the thing with working with DSI, is that it's vision is very long-term, structural, and doesn't lean on short-term aid. in doing so its vision is to eventually prevent the vulnerability of Haiti to something like this cholora outbreak. so, reacting seems pretty foreign to me at this point. but we are.

with estimates that the outbreak has been underreported to the tune of 400%, and with more families being effected everyday, people in Ferrier at least, are taking every precaution and are hopeful that doing so will be enough. i'm trying to glean some of their hopefullness, but i also know that there's no way to guard the city gates, that produce, merchandise, and people are traveling through here everyday, coming from places where there have been many reported cases.

in the meantime, the water technicians here have been ballers. they've given short spiels in 3 schools in ferrier, at the camp in town, and are planning a much larger training on sunday for the community-at-large. we've accompanied them in all of this but i'm a little worried about how sunday will go over. hallettsville h.s. track used to have a shirt that said 'we're faster than small town gossip', but you'd have to be michael green to wear a shirt like that here. word traaaaaaavels. so, there could easily be hundreds of people in attendence. i hope there are, but i have no idea what that might look like.

other than that, we're fine and in mostly good spirits. it's not cholera that kills, but the dehydration and in extreme situations, lack of antibotics, so its still pretty unbelievable to me how this outbreak has taken hold.

on a completely other note, what's even more unbelievable is that we wrap up with DSI in about 10 days! (which means i've skimped on this blog, because i haven't written nearly as much as i've experienced/thought/felt/wanted. grrr.)

bon, yon lot jou. (well, another day)

p.s. as for the source of the outbreak, read this.

the things you see.

in the wake of the unpredictable storm that was Tomas, the river that runs through Ferrier is spilling over and creating islands between towns.

it's funny how much happens here that we have no clue about, and this would have been just another one of those things on a long invisible laundry list of such events, had i not been dared to go see 'dlo la anba nan grand rivye' (the water down in the Grand River area).

my thought process at first sight of the situation: whoa. no way. is that the UN? what are they doing? there's more? i'm not going in that. in these shoes? - 5 minute interlude - yeah, okay. let's go.

(besides thinking of course: man i hope everyone's alright... okay, maybe i was more worried about waterborne disease seeping through my shoes than other people. maybe.)

when we got through about 5 more minutes of walking through knee-deep water, we mounted the top of a little hill in what is on any other day, the market (see the market stalls on either side of the street), to get a better look at the situation. i didn't even realize that there had been a large road where there was now a large river until it disappeared. apparently, it cut off people who were stranded on the other side and the UN was boating people across. 

we heard that an elderly person got caught in the river and somehow didn't make it out alive. i'm not sure who it was or if anything else similair also happened.

in other news, this week was Ferrier's Fet, a week-long celebration of the town's Patron Saint, St. Charles. it was cray.zay. and beautiful. and crazy. i don't have any pictures, but perhaps i'll make a better attempt at describing it some other time.

today i went with friends to a food, soap, and chlorine distribution at the State School in town. the spread of cholora seems to be picking up again with fears of the post-Tomas conditions contributing to the spread. today, Haiti's Ministry of Public Health was driving through the streets airing all the standard health precautions to anyone within ear's reach.

in short, my eyes have seen more than i ever thought i would in only a week in a seemingly tucked-away town in the middle of an island in the middle of a great big sea. and i'm pretty sure i haven't seen any of the good stuff yet.