Less than three weeks after the 14th August (date of the most recent significant earthquake that shattered the Southern peninsula of the country, and how the Haitians refer to the tragic event that took place on that date), I landed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I didn’t really know what to expect, this being my first time in the Caribbean and first time in a post natural disaster setting of this scale. I had heard a lot about the life Haitian-lifestyle though, from many of my humanitarian friends who had spent time on several occasions in Haiti – post 2011, post Matthew and some of them in between. I even spoke to my Haitian friend whom I met in Cameroon who told me how much I was going to love it. Of course, I also expected the sheer destruction, disarray and suffering of people who have lost everything in one second. In some ways, I was able to acknowledge both these aspects of a description that can be made of this country, but the most overwhelming feeling for me was how powerless I felt, how irrelevant my presence was and how much of a waste it all was.
Haiti gave me a weird feeling of familiarity mixed with strong foreign-influenced incoherence. Indeed, there is so much that looks, smells, feels like several African countries where I have lived in or traveled to; same images on the streets, same messiness combined with ingenuity, same vibrant energy. However, sometimes I would feel the American influence in ways I have never experienced before. Disproportionately huge billboards on the roads advertising for tires whilst they get burned at roadblocks on strike days, the infamous pepsico products everywhere, and everyone you meet who has family members living in Florida. One of our drivers proudly showed me a photo of his daughter wearing her US Army uniform.
Kreyol was a surprise for me. If spoken slowly by an educated person and if I focused hard enough, I could understand at least half of it, or when I read it out loud, it would make sense to me as somehow phonetically similar to French. But most of the time, it was simply a foreign language I didn’t speak nor understand punctuated with the odd French word – incredibly frustrating.
Security issues are constant, not like in a war zone, but in a sneaky and deceitful manner. Between gang violence on the rise and the assassination of the country’s President, last year has seen a clear deterioration of the security situation. On the surface, it all seems fine, life is following its course in a complicated context. But one day, you hear that new areas of Port-au-Prince are now no-go zones due to gun fights on the street during daytime, or that 17 North American (christian missionaries) have been kidnapped. One day you enjoy the drive to work into the nearby town and admire the beautiful landscape along the way, the next day, there is a general strike and roadblocks with barricades are blocking that same road, tires are set on fire everywhere in town – all movement is stopped. When we are allowed to move again, and when fuel is available in between national-wide shortages, one can see the vestiges of the popular uprising on the street while all activities have resumed.
Haiti is also one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. The landscapes are breathtakingly beautiful. Beaches qualify for the perfect Caribbean turquoise-water-and-white-sand-combo contest, the inner land is far from boring with incredible mountainous relief, wildlife and nature are lush everywhere you go. Viewed from a Western perspective, the country has so much unexploited potential for tourism.
Haiti has the highest per-capita rate of NGOs, higher than any other nation in the world. Aid is enshrined in the country’s culture it seems.
It was the first time I came across non-professional religious NGOs when meeting at the hotel I was staying at in Port-au-Prince various groups of Americans from Texas with the thickest accent, not speaking a word of French or Creole, who had arrived after the earthquake to “help Haiti”. Most of them didn’t have the structure in place to even be able to get to the affected area due to the security and logistical constraints. An out-of-this-world experience that makes one wonder whether there aren’t other ways in which this money could be better used to actually reach people in need.
What is a real shocker though for anyone new to the country like I was, it is the continuum between chronic poverty and the consequences of successive disasters over the years. You can actually see, touch and feel these disasters that added a huge amount of suffering to a pre-existing challenging context. When hiking in remote hilly villages to register households to receive our emergency kits, the inexperienced eye could notice the difference between the houses, schools, churches destroyed in the recent earthquake, and those shattered by Matthew in 2016. What might have been harder to pick up on was the difference between houses that could have been quickly re-built by the handy DIYers that people living in such conditions have to become, and those that hadn’t been quickly built after the earthquake but that simply are people’s long term shelter. And that was heartbreaking. Due to our so called “selection criteria” we could register one household because their house had been destroyed but not register their neighbours who lived in the exact same conditions because their house hadn’t been destroyed. Despite our attempts at explaining the rationale behind this, people didn’t get it most of the time, and honestly who could blame them – it made very little sense. On the other hand, aid money is limited and yes in an ideal world everyone would get some sort of support regardless of how the earthquake affected them but merely based on needs. However in this reality, NGOs will need to report to their donors how they used the “earthquake funding” to assist the most vulnerable amongst affected people. What is infuriating is to witness the chronic poverty, the lack of access to water, the absence of decent infrastructure or income generating opportunities, the deteriorating health system and the corrupt governance and put it into perspective with the fact that organisations such as mine at the time, would only come in when a sudden-onset disaster occurs. In Haiti disasters will occur on a regular basis, this can now be known for sure. They only add to the other challenges that the people of Haiti face, they don’t dramatically transform the country. And yet, an earthquake/hurricane hits and suddenly millions of emergency funding are released. Prior to it and despite all global commitments on preparedness/resilience, the sustainable development goals or the humanitarian-development nexus, money wasn’t available or at least not nearly close to the same scale to increase people’s resilience and access to economic independence.
These reflections combined with the inefficiency of our whole operation – in two months on the ground, I am unsure of what I managed to achieve that actually made a difference – made me realise how irrelevant it all was. The humanitarian sector isn’t only a drop in the ocean, it is also a contaminated drop that increases the ocean’s pollution all at once. Our sector uses so much resources that I am convinced could be better used some other way. Perhaps there are things that we do well, some organisations actually provide emergency relief post-disaster in an efficient manner when they had a pre-existing presence and knowledge of the context through solid collaborations with dedicated local partners. Some lives are saved, some livelihoods are rebuilt – it is not all in vain. But the sheer amount of money could go much further. However it would required a complete revamp of our sector and being part of it myself, I couldn’t really advise how best to do that. Nothing new here for seasoned humanitarians, change remains a burning topic in the sector and no solution has been found to date to make the changing aid sector fit into our faster-changing world. Nevertheless, “Swadhyaya” or self-study (one of the Niyamas of the yoga philosophy) and in this instance self-criticism, is the first step towards positive change.
I won’t pretend to have grasped a good understanding of this country as I only spent about two months there, but I definitely felt its suffering and pain, and above all its exceptionalism. People love it or hate it. There is no mild feelings for when it comes to Haiti and how I feel about my experience there is definitely no exception to this rule. To sum it up reusing the words I started all my debriefings with upon return “It was intense”.
Humanitarian but not only 