6/25/10

There has been a pregnant wind blowing through the streets for the past few days. It builds up during the days, slapping the tents and stirring dust. Last night it was vicious. Makes me feel like a hurricane is coming. I've never been in a hurricane before. What would happen to all those tents? Two night ago I was invited to play poker with my friend at the Associate Press and his buddies, a sunburned group of UN employees, diplomats, US military personal, and reporters. Since I lost all my money almost immediately, I profited to drink beer and pick the brains of the people around me. It's refreshing to speak English, to use nuance and make jokes. Ah...language. I inquired about the subject of my last post: what Haitians with ideas can do to get international support for their own projects. One person responded that the big dilemma for the NGO world was whether they wanted to include Haitians in the rebuilding process or whether they actually wanted to get things done. Incorporating Haitians is hard, he said, because Haitians will say they are qualified to do just about anything if there is the potential to get a job. Another contributed more helpfully that the practices of letter-writing, soliciting, project planning that are necessary to attract attention and money to a certain project just aren't that well known. Crashed on the couch, took advantage of running water and microwaves. The next morning one of the AP reporters drove me home, but on the way we stopped around so he could get footage for a piece he is putting together on the reconstruction effort. Trying to find signs of reconstruction was hard. A few places here and there we saw work teams shoveling rubble or building scaffolding. But really, nothing. There was a group of French police officers who had set up some kind of blockade in the street, maybe a check point. Can you imagine what would happen if French police officers showed up in New York City uninvited and started setting up check points? That would be a serious international crisis. But here in Haiti... But it's not like people don't notice that their national sovereignty is in crisis. There is graffiti everywhere crying for the end of the "occupation". There is the idea circulating here that the reason the international community is so interested in taking control of the reconstruction effort is because Haiti is rich in unexploited deposits of oil and minerals. The US is trying to make sure they control the Caribbean basin so that when oil in the Middle East is used up, they can move into their own "backyard". Might explain the occupation of Puerto Rico, the anxiety about Cuba. This idea was put out, if I'm not mistaken, by Hugo Chavez shortly after the quake (he also proposed that the US had an earthquake machine and caused the thing in the first place) A lot of people are talking about this, especially in light of the recent discoveries in Afghanistan. Pretty suspicious, that was. But when I mentioned this to the AP dudes, they just burst out laughing. Haiti is nothing but a rock. The only thing the international communtity wants from this place is to contain the problem. Oh yeah, I also met a Haitian dude with skin as white as mine. Not all Haitians are black, did you know? There's a fairly large Lebanese and Syrian population here. They control a lot of the economy but don't really integrate into culture or politics. Also, all those international community folks come here and make babies! This guy in particular seemed to be unhappy about the situation, other Haitians considered him a 'blan' even though he's lived here his whole life, and people abroad refuse to accept him as Haitian because he doesn't fit into their idea of what a Haitian is. Since independence, the Haitian constitution has legally defined all Haitians, regardless of color, as "noir". So at least in theory, to be black is a kind of nationality rather than skin color. Although many Haitians themselves conflate the catagories. The word "neg" (black) is used like we would use "dude". In the culture the generic person is black even if that doesn't reflect the real make-up of the population.