This is a well-investigated report by Al Jazeera on gold mining in Colombia.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Greg's Haitian adventure part 6: Markets and Mass
One of my routines during my time in Haiti was going to the market every Saturday with my coworker, Eyleen. We would stock up on the week's produce for our collective living quarters. I enjoyed seeing all the great fruits and vegetables at the market--it reminded me of the fresh market back home in Colombia.
As with the market in Port-au-Prince, Cap Haitien's market is housed in a large structure of red iron grillwork, I-beam columns, and red zinc roofs.
Also like the PAP market, Cap Haitien's market spills out from the central building and occupies the surrounding streets. There are whole sections of streets dedicated to dry goods, salt fish, fruits, root vegetables, roasted cashews, etc.
As in my hometown in Colombia, fresh goods are sold by lot, as opposed to weight. The vendors have their goods grouped into fours or fives, and they give you a price for the lot.
For things like pineapples, you buy by the individual fruit, after looking it over (the yellow passionfruit in the background is grouped by lot).
Usually the price for foreigners starts too high, so my colleague always had to haggle it down. Finally you hand over the money, and the transaction is done (the basket in the photo is filled with raw cashews).
We would always leave the market bearing multiple sacks loaded with fruits and veggies.
We'd also go to the nearby grocery store afterwards to get imported packaged stuff.
One Saturday early in my stay we also went to the tourist market. It was very different from Port-au-Prince's tourist market, which is based in the same building as the produce market, and specializes mainly in intricate authentic Vodou stuff. Okap's tourist market is in a separate location from the main market, on the waterfront. My colleagues had said it was depressingly abandoned, and vendors were overbearing, but I didn't find that to be the case. Apparently, until the fall of Duvalier in 1986, large cruise ships stopped weekly at the tourist market to buy crafts and souvenirs. No more. Anyway, I got a bunch of stuff there.
A dress for my wife, which I later realized was sort of big and formless. Maybe with a ribbon at the waist it'll look nice.
This is a map of Haiti and a globe of the world. My friend actually got it later in PAP, but I'll include it here.
The following is perhaps the most interesting gift I found. I asked the vendor if it was Legba, the spirit of the crossroads. He said yes, which doesn't actually mean much, since Haitians trying to sell things will say yes to just about anything a foreigner asks.
What's under that barrel?
Is that... Let's see the profile.
Boing!
We also got some dolls of women dressed in ceremonial regalia.
Hand-embroidered napkins.
A few rattles.
A wooden duck for my mother.
Haitian honey.
And a cream liquor drink, like a hazelnut Bailey's.
Later on, my friend gave me a jar of home-grown coffee, roasted at his family's farm.
As you can see, Haiti has a lot to offer in terms of artisanry and crafts.
So Saturdays were usually spent at the market. Sundays I went to 7am Mass. It was always a beautiful, stirring service, clocking in at the two hours or so typical of Haitian Masses. A friend of mine marveled that anywhere you go in the world, regardless of language or culture, Mass is always from 30 minutes to an hour. But in Haiti (and in Benin), the service lasts about double that. It's mainly due to the heavy dose of singing. Most of the major prayers (the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, etc.) are sung, not just spoken. This adds five to ten minutes for each prayer, so it's easy to see how the Mass gets stretched out. These songs are not just any songs, either. In the church I went to, which was linked to a Salesian mission, there was a full band, with African drum, modern drum battery, trumpet, keyboard, electric guitar, and bass guitar, in addition to a well-trained choir. The one time I went that they didn't have a full band, they still had an expert drummer on the big traditional drum, who was able to coax out sounds from that drum that ranged from sharp pops to deep thumps to a whistling sound, like when you blow on a bottle.
I got the impression that the congregation of that church was more or less middle class. Some families drove to Mass, and people seemed literate, bilingual, and nonplussed at seeing a foreigner. In fact, one time the priest was a white guy, Italian judging by his accent. The congregation did a few typical things I've seen at other Haitian Catholic churches. Many people brought their own Bibles, and before the readings the reader would give a little mini-homily and make a big point of announcing the chapters of the reading so everyone could follow along in their Bibles. In fact, one time the priest finished Mass with an exhortation to respect the core content of the Catholic rite, to refrain from too many innovations. I assume this refers to the mini-homilies delivered by laypeople before Mass and before each reading, and probably other tendencies I didn't even pick up on. I bet this reminder from the priest was meant to maintain the distinction between Haiti's native Catholicism and the Protestant denominations that have been expanding over the past few decades.
I want to talk a bit more about this influx of Protestantism to Haiti (and much of what I have to say applies to the rest of Latin America). It distresses me, because it implies drastic changes in (and loss of) local culture, which has a strong Catholic basis. Furthermore, Protestant evangelizing in Catholic countries represents to me a profound lack of respect. If Catholic missionaries arrived en masse to Alabama or eastern Texas to try to turn Evangelicals from the errors of their ways, local people would rightly tell them to buzz off. If the point of evangelizing is to bring people to Christ, then that means you don't need to go to places that are already Christian! To do otherwise is to imply that some denominations of Christianity aren't really Christian, which is especially incoherent if the denomination in question has been pondering and purifying the concept of Christianity for fifteen hundred more years than the evangelizing newcomers.
But beyond theological disputes, which are ultimately fruitless and acrimonious, I am distressed that the Protestant influx in places like Haiti and Colombia often bring ugly cultural traits along with it, traits that theoretically have nothing to do with one faith or another, and that should in fact be purged from the lives of any Christian. I'm talking about materialism, consumerism, shallowness of thought. To me it seems that the way many new denominations have "marketed" themselves to Latin Americans is by associating themselves with economic progress, modernity, Western-style suburban consumer culture. The new churches aren't just importing Baptist ideas, or Pentecostal practice, or Adventist interpretations--they're importing 20th-century postmodern US culture. It's as if converts are buying a new consumer product, whose shiny novelty will supplant the boring old cultural and faith traditions that have sustained local people for generations. A number of people even asked me during my stay in Haiti if I'd been "converted yet", as if it were the new thing to do, like upgrading your Kindle. Everybody's doing it! Well as my mother says in the face of frustration with the Catholic Church, "I'm leaving the dance with the same date I came with". Furthermore, from at least the time of St. Augustine, the great thinkers have understood that conversion isn't a one-time, fickle change. It's a lifelong process of growth and contemplation, regardless of what faith you practice.
Granted, I can't take blame away from the Catholic Church in Haiti for not working more to maintain the faithful. Many villages in Haiti have a Catholic church, an Adventist one, a Baptist one, and a number of other innovative denominations. That is to say that the Catholicism that supposedly represents 70% of the populace is no more present on the ground than other churches. It wouldn't of course make sense for the Catholics to put more than one church in a given parish, but still, I'm sure they could provide more services, providing for both spiritual and material needs. Maybe the Church just took for granted that all Haitians were de facto Catholics, and so it didn't take measures to hold onto them.
At the same time, the Catholic Church is indeed very present in terms of major infrastructure in Haiti. More of the big clinics, orphanages, schools, and other projects associated with wellbeing and development are run by the Catholic Church than by other churches. The Adventists do have an admirable development agency that is a world leader in on-the-ground, effective development work, but most other denominations stick to preaching and making noise. For instance, there is a church just above where I was living that blasted out wailing and hollering and growling and singing and crying over a speaker system, for most of every day. I always asked myself if those people didn't have to make a living, and more importantly, if all their racket was about Christ, or more about themselves.
Sometimes I think that the problem is precisely that the Catholic Church in Haiti has focused more on providing for the poor and helping the needy, as opposed to hollering and drawing attention and cache. Aside from the Catholic church in the plaza of every town, the most visible presence of the Church is in the clinics and schools it runs. If that's the case, I guess I'd rather the Church stick to what it's doing, helping the least among us instead of just trying to "grow the organization".
As with the market in Port-au-Prince, Cap Haitien's market is housed in a large structure of red iron grillwork, I-beam columns, and red zinc roofs.
Also like the PAP market, Cap Haitien's market spills out from the central building and occupies the surrounding streets. There are whole sections of streets dedicated to dry goods, salt fish, fruits, root vegetables, roasted cashews, etc.
As in my hometown in Colombia, fresh goods are sold by lot, as opposed to weight. The vendors have their goods grouped into fours or fives, and they give you a price for the lot.
For things like pineapples, you buy by the individual fruit, after looking it over (the yellow passionfruit in the background is grouped by lot).
Usually the price for foreigners starts too high, so my colleague always had to haggle it down. Finally you hand over the money, and the transaction is done (the basket in the photo is filled with raw cashews).
We would always leave the market bearing multiple sacks loaded with fruits and veggies.
We'd also go to the nearby grocery store afterwards to get imported packaged stuff.
One Saturday early in my stay we also went to the tourist market. It was very different from Port-au-Prince's tourist market, which is based in the same building as the produce market, and specializes mainly in intricate authentic Vodou stuff. Okap's tourist market is in a separate location from the main market, on the waterfront. My colleagues had said it was depressingly abandoned, and vendors were overbearing, but I didn't find that to be the case. Apparently, until the fall of Duvalier in 1986, large cruise ships stopped weekly at the tourist market to buy crafts and souvenirs. No more. Anyway, I got a bunch of stuff there.
A dress for my wife, which I later realized was sort of big and formless. Maybe with a ribbon at the waist it'll look nice.
This is a map of Haiti and a globe of the world. My friend actually got it later in PAP, but I'll include it here.
The following is perhaps the most interesting gift I found. I asked the vendor if it was Legba, the spirit of the crossroads. He said yes, which doesn't actually mean much, since Haitians trying to sell things will say yes to just about anything a foreigner asks.
What's under that barrel?
Is that... Let's see the profile.
Boing!
We also got some dolls of women dressed in ceremonial regalia.
Hand-embroidered napkins.
A few rattles.
A wooden duck for my mother.
Haitian honey.
And a cream liquor drink, like a hazelnut Bailey's.
Later on, my friend gave me a jar of home-grown coffee, roasted at his family's farm.
As you can see, Haiti has a lot to offer in terms of artisanry and crafts.
So Saturdays were usually spent at the market. Sundays I went to 7am Mass. It was always a beautiful, stirring service, clocking in at the two hours or so typical of Haitian Masses. A friend of mine marveled that anywhere you go in the world, regardless of language or culture, Mass is always from 30 minutes to an hour. But in Haiti (and in Benin), the service lasts about double that. It's mainly due to the heavy dose of singing. Most of the major prayers (the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus, etc.) are sung, not just spoken. This adds five to ten minutes for each prayer, so it's easy to see how the Mass gets stretched out. These songs are not just any songs, either. In the church I went to, which was linked to a Salesian mission, there was a full band, with African drum, modern drum battery, trumpet, keyboard, electric guitar, and bass guitar, in addition to a well-trained choir. The one time I went that they didn't have a full band, they still had an expert drummer on the big traditional drum, who was able to coax out sounds from that drum that ranged from sharp pops to deep thumps to a whistling sound, like when you blow on a bottle.
I got the impression that the congregation of that church was more or less middle class. Some families drove to Mass, and people seemed literate, bilingual, and nonplussed at seeing a foreigner. In fact, one time the priest was a white guy, Italian judging by his accent. The congregation did a few typical things I've seen at other Haitian Catholic churches. Many people brought their own Bibles, and before the readings the reader would give a little mini-homily and make a big point of announcing the chapters of the reading so everyone could follow along in their Bibles. In fact, one time the priest finished Mass with an exhortation to respect the core content of the Catholic rite, to refrain from too many innovations. I assume this refers to the mini-homilies delivered by laypeople before Mass and before each reading, and probably other tendencies I didn't even pick up on. I bet this reminder from the priest was meant to maintain the distinction between Haiti's native Catholicism and the Protestant denominations that have been expanding over the past few decades.
I want to talk a bit more about this influx of Protestantism to Haiti (and much of what I have to say applies to the rest of Latin America). It distresses me, because it implies drastic changes in (and loss of) local culture, which has a strong Catholic basis. Furthermore, Protestant evangelizing in Catholic countries represents to me a profound lack of respect. If Catholic missionaries arrived en masse to Alabama or eastern Texas to try to turn Evangelicals from the errors of their ways, local people would rightly tell them to buzz off. If the point of evangelizing is to bring people to Christ, then that means you don't need to go to places that are already Christian! To do otherwise is to imply that some denominations of Christianity aren't really Christian, which is especially incoherent if the denomination in question has been pondering and purifying the concept of Christianity for fifteen hundred more years than the evangelizing newcomers.
But beyond theological disputes, which are ultimately fruitless and acrimonious, I am distressed that the Protestant influx in places like Haiti and Colombia often bring ugly cultural traits along with it, traits that theoretically have nothing to do with one faith or another, and that should in fact be purged from the lives of any Christian. I'm talking about materialism, consumerism, shallowness of thought. To me it seems that the way many new denominations have "marketed" themselves to Latin Americans is by associating themselves with economic progress, modernity, Western-style suburban consumer culture. The new churches aren't just importing Baptist ideas, or Pentecostal practice, or Adventist interpretations--they're importing 20th-century postmodern US culture. It's as if converts are buying a new consumer product, whose shiny novelty will supplant the boring old cultural and faith traditions that have sustained local people for generations. A number of people even asked me during my stay in Haiti if I'd been "converted yet", as if it were the new thing to do, like upgrading your Kindle. Everybody's doing it! Well as my mother says in the face of frustration with the Catholic Church, "I'm leaving the dance with the same date I came with". Furthermore, from at least the time of St. Augustine, the great thinkers have understood that conversion isn't a one-time, fickle change. It's a lifelong process of growth and contemplation, regardless of what faith you practice.
Granted, I can't take blame away from the Catholic Church in Haiti for not working more to maintain the faithful. Many villages in Haiti have a Catholic church, an Adventist one, a Baptist one, and a number of other innovative denominations. That is to say that the Catholicism that supposedly represents 70% of the populace is no more present on the ground than other churches. It wouldn't of course make sense for the Catholics to put more than one church in a given parish, but still, I'm sure they could provide more services, providing for both spiritual and material needs. Maybe the Church just took for granted that all Haitians were de facto Catholics, and so it didn't take measures to hold onto them.
At the same time, the Catholic Church is indeed very present in terms of major infrastructure in Haiti. More of the big clinics, orphanages, schools, and other projects associated with wellbeing and development are run by the Catholic Church than by other churches. The Adventists do have an admirable development agency that is a world leader in on-the-ground, effective development work, but most other denominations stick to preaching and making noise. For instance, there is a church just above where I was living that blasted out wailing and hollering and growling and singing and crying over a speaker system, for most of every day. I always asked myself if those people didn't have to make a living, and more importantly, if all their racket was about Christ, or more about themselves.
Sometimes I think that the problem is precisely that the Catholic Church in Haiti has focused more on providing for the poor and helping the needy, as opposed to hollering and drawing attention and cache. Aside from the Catholic church in the plaza of every town, the most visible presence of the Church is in the clinics and schools it runs. If that's the case, I guess I'd rather the Church stick to what it's doing, helping the least among us instead of just trying to "grow the organization".
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Plastic bottle construction
My cousin recently sent me this page on constructing with soil-filled plastic bottles. I had seen similar things before based on stuffing plastic bottles with plastic garbage, but it seemed excessively labor-intensive to me. This soil-filling idea could solve that if one had an organized system for funneling sand or dirt into bottles, but if you're doing that and mortaring them together, why not just form adobe blocks or cob walls, which save you the effort of filling bottles? Either way, it's an interesting aesthetic, and a good way to divert some flow of plastic to our landfills, incinerators, and oceans.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
The middle class in different countries
This is a fascinating series of three articles from the World Policy Journal, looking at middle-class life in Liberia, Indonesia, and the Netherlands. The dynamic economic and social changes going on in the developing world really interest me, especially since my wife and I now form part of the broadly-defined group of middle-class people in developing countries, muddling forward between bourgeois consumption patterns and a humble, subsistence lifestyle, between prestigious international jobs and self-started cottage industries. That said, it distresses me that the conception of the middle class found in these articles, and in the general perception of the public writ large, has an exclusively urban, professional slant. Obviously a good deal of the growth in the middle class can and will come from urban professionals, but there's more to the story than that.
I have met rural farmers and entrepreneurs in places like Colombia, Benin, and Haiti who are employing successful strategies to improve their family's economic security and comfort, which in turn allows them to send their children to school, buy more consumer goods, employ more people, etc. As is the case in the World Policy Journal's Liberia profile, these farmers in mud houses without electricity may not hew to our conception of the middle class. But it is precisely such farmers that have been the vanguard in the increased prosperity of every nation that we consider developed today. In the US, France, Japan, and now China, the rural majority begins to innovate and generally increase productivity, and it is this that allows for a diversification of the economy into industry and services, as well as providing a raised rural standard of living that conforms to our Western conceptions of middle classdom. In the majority-rural countries that still comprise most of our world's population, we ignore this ascendant rural bourgeoisie at our own peril, as it is upon them that the general development of these countries will depend. Furthermore, in a future of widespread resource scarcity, we will no longer have the abundant petroleum that enables the current extent of megacities and huge professional service sectors. Even more than is already the case, the world's collective economic fate will hinge on the state of agriculture and our rural masses.
I have met rural farmers and entrepreneurs in places like Colombia, Benin, and Haiti who are employing successful strategies to improve their family's economic security and comfort, which in turn allows them to send their children to school, buy more consumer goods, employ more people, etc. As is the case in the World Policy Journal's Liberia profile, these farmers in mud houses without electricity may not hew to our conception of the middle class. But it is precisely such farmers that have been the vanguard in the increased prosperity of every nation that we consider developed today. In the US, France, Japan, and now China, the rural majority begins to innovate and generally increase productivity, and it is this that allows for a diversification of the economy into industry and services, as well as providing a raised rural standard of living that conforms to our Western conceptions of middle classdom. In the majority-rural countries that still comprise most of our world's population, we ignore this ascendant rural bourgeoisie at our own peril, as it is upon them that the general development of these countries will depend. Furthermore, in a future of widespread resource scarcity, we will no longer have the abundant petroleum that enables the current extent of megacities and huge professional service sectors. Even more than is already the case, the world's collective economic fate will hinge on the state of agriculture and our rural masses.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Greg's Haitian adventure part 5: Haiti and development aid, plus a request for financial help
Haiti is not a place for foreigners to feel comfortable. If you don't look like a Haitian, then any time you go out on the street people will gawk at you, impudent children (and some truly idiotic adults) will call out at you as if beckoning an exotic animal, and basically most people refuse to treat you as a normal human being. I don't think it's because many people have never seen a foreigner before—with the ubiquitous presence of foreign NGOs and even UN troops, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Haitian, especially an urban Haitian, who doesn't see foreigners on a semi-regular basis. This means that the stupid, inconsiderate treatment of foreigners isn't then a result of absolute ignorance, but rather of an objectification and dehumanization of foreigners in the minds of the people who scream out to them (which is a type of partial ignorance whereby the ubiquity of foreigners doesn't provide a real knowledge of them or a real human exchange with locals). This goes both ways, with foreigners constantly making negative generalizations about Haitians, and generally distrusting them. In any case, it's an unpleasant aspect of life in a place I otherwise enjoy. Once you've broken the ice and established a more personal relationship with someone in Haiti, the interaction tends to become much more humanized, more natural. But the day-to-day anonymity of the city streets is often ugly, dehumanizing, and even hostile. Case in point a recent interaction when a local hood started yelling at me about a trash-strewn municipally-owned vacant lot in front of the factory I work for. It was trash-strewn because some dumbo had built his house right in the middle of a public drainage canal, which then diverted all the trash-laden water over the field. However, in the eyes of this aggressive young man, the factory had somehow messed up the field, an offense for which he emptily threatened to come and burn down the factory.
I've become inured to people yelling at me in the street, and I simply ignore them now, but one thing that continues to bug me is the occasional person who asks me for money. I'm not talking about destitute beggars, but about normal people standing on the street, working, or otherwise engaged, that spontaneously call out in Kreyol or bad English asking for a dollar. It's sort of a joke, but not that much. When little kids do this it especially bugs me—it speaks of an early conditioning (by parents, schools, media, foreigners?) to teach them that foreigners have money that they are for some reason wont to give to strangers, and implicitly that Haitians are universally poor and stingy. Again, I usually don't bother too much when an idiot asks me for money, or sometimes I'll offer him a dollar if he gives me 60 gourdes (the exchange rate is 40 gourdes to the dollar). But when a younger kid corners me and asks for money, or a soccer ball, or some other whimsy, I have a little pedagogic spiel I try to give him. I ask why he doesn't ask his neighbor or his parents for money. They usually respond that Haitians have no money. I ask who pays for their housing, their school, their food, their clothes—their (Haitian) family or a foreigner? Has a foreigner ever given them anything?
What I'm trying to get at is that I worry about a learned attitude that dismisses Haitian strength and production, and looks to the foreigner as a Messiah (which ultimately dehumanizes not just the begging, scraping Haitian, but also the foreigner, who becomes no longer a normal human). Of course Haiti is a poor country, and of course not many people are earning lots of excess cash. But even in a poor country like Haiti that receives a lot of external aid and remittances from abroad, the overwhelming majority of economic activity exclusively involves work by Haitians, transport by Haitians, marketing by Haitians, and purchase by Haitians. Whoever doesn't realize this devalues the role of Haitians in the survival and development of their society, and idealizes and exaggerates the role of foreigners, whose contribution is frankly paltry. For a Haitian to say that his friends, family, and neighbors have “no money” is not only untrue, it's also insulting to the hard work and integrity of those people to amass whatever money and resources they do have. Take this attitude to an extreme, and you might get something like the problematic situation Haiti's economy finds itself in today, whereby local production capacity is severely compromised, and everyone looks to bring goods in from abroad instead of making them locally. Apparently even Haiti's leaders believe that Haiti “has no money”, despite the work and commerce bustling around them.
This attitude of scorn for the hard work of everyday Haitians also ties into a trend of lazy youth searching for easy money. The other week we visited an amazing fish farm run since 1979 by a cooperative of old-timers, guys now in their 50s. They have weathered dictatorships, liberalization, and coups, to create a profitable, self-sufficient agribusiness venture (that incidentally relies little on purchased inputs and a lot on natural ecological processes).
They say visitors always ask worriedly why there are no younger members of the coop, but the problem is that many young men in their town don't want to work hard and get dirty to earn a decent wage. They would rather do nothing, look cool and nonchalant and be broke, hoping all the while for a big break to come along and make them a rap star or a drug kingpin or an emigrant to the US. It's similar to our all-or-nothing, easy money culture in the States, whereby many in our jobless masses refuse to do hard, low-wage work like farm labor, waiting around instead for American Idol to call and turn them into overnight stars.
This characterization of Haiti's youth is of course oversimplified; in the case of the fish farm, the more important part of the problem is that most youngsters can't afford to work free for the probationary period of four months or so before the coop allows them to partake in earnings from fish sales.
A contrasting example of the motivation and hard work ethic of Haitian youth comes from my professional experience here. I have spent the last month working with a group of young people in an agricultural training pilot project.
During the next five months they will implement a productive project (chicken-raising, compost production, etc.) based on the business plan and budget we've spent this month drafting together. By the end of the program each project group will have successfully carried out an economically viable agriculture-related project, and we will work with them to finance and accompany the implementation of a larger-scale project from which they can earn a sustainable living. We are searching for long-term funding to scale up the training program after this initial 6-month pilot phase, and it looks like we may have some promising leads for that.
But right now we need about $5000US to set up a rotating credit fund for students to buy the materials and inputs necessary for their projects (which they will hopefully reimburse at project's end), as well as $2500 for me to make two more visits to Haiti over the next few months as we continue to set up and solidify the program. If we get enough short-term funding we will even be able to incorporate around October a group of AIDS-affected youth (either infected themselves or living with infected family members) that is interested in participating in the pilot program.
Anyone interested in helping out with this project can contact me directly at my email address, which is [DELETED SINCE ORIGINAL POSTING]. I don't believe I've ever asked for money via this blog, but this is a cause that I really believe in.
Getting back to my rant about the Haitian work ethic, one theory of mine is that a long history of widespread abuse of Haiti by foreign powers, coupled with seemingly inexplicable largesse towards Haiti in the form of development aid, has totally screwed up the normal functions of work and earnings when it comes to interactions between Haitians and foreigners. In the first category, we have foreign entities compromising Haiti's economic sovereignty by imposing market liberalization, privatization of services, and the like. On a level that more directly touches normal Haitians, we have abusive foreign factory owners that don't pay the agreed wages, or find other ways of cheating workers, as well as presumably well-meaning development projects that either fall down halfway through, or are unclear on payment arrangements with the people that work in them. Many NGOs think of their work as a service or a gift to Haitians writ large, and so think nothing of demanding free work from individual Haitians. They are either explicit about this from the beginning, or sort of vague whenever Haitians ask about payment, or are so wary that Haitians are out to screw them that they renege on promised payment for services from Haitian workers. On the other hand, there are many examples of seeming generosity from foreigners, which are again inexplicable in light of the normal quid pro quo framework that operates in the rest of the world. Individual missionaries and aid workers sometimes give out money or candy or pencils to surprised passers-by. Often NGOs or big international projects come into a community and do a bunch of stuff for the people there, from digging wells to giving out medicine, and it's perhaps not clear to the beneficiaries why these foreigners are doing something for people they don't even know. NGOs are rarely clear as to whether it's the NGO that has all this money to give, or if they've gotten a grant from other organizations, or even if the Haitian government is funding the intervention.
All this means that the relationship between Haitians and foreigners is usually a drastic departure from the normal quid pro quo that operates in business or even friendship. Both groups find themselves out of the element of their other human interactions. One side offers something to the other, and it's unclear what the other owes in return. Likewise, sometimes one party takes from another, and you don't know if you just got stolen from or you did a favor or they'll pay you your quid shortly. I've focused on foreign-origin causes for this odd state of affairs, but by this point it's not clear to me who is creating this dynamic, and who is merely reacting to it (which ultimately further strengthens and expands the dynamic). Only in such a climate can terms like “cash for work” be thrown around without drawing a snicker. Cash for work is the novel idea that you hire people to do a job and then you pay them for it. To a normal human being anywhere else in the world, this is just called “work”, but in an aid-infused country like Haiti, where sometimes people get paid for doing nothing, and sometimes they work like a dog without pay, this is a new concept.
Recently I was talking with the peanut procurement staff at the factory that has hired me for this month, about our potential development impact. We are an odd mix between a productive company in Haiti that gets non-profit support from the US (at least while we're getting on our feet with capital expenditures etc.), and our ultimate goal is a similarly odd mix between an economically sound business model and positive effects on farmer livelihoods. Last night I arrived with a coworker at the conclusion that our development impact should be limited to whatever flows directly from our core business activities. We make a product that demands large amounts of high-quality peanuts. To get these peanuts from Haitian farmers (which is ultimately more stable and profitable than importing them), we work closely with farmer groups to implement new growing methods and to employ new ways of organizing their quality control and marketing. These farmer groups will benefit enormously from our work with them, which we have to do to get what we need. Hence there is a big development impact, without our creating specific side-projects to help Haiti's general development. No one is doing charity for anyone else, but both the factory and the farmers get something out of their interaction. I am not an absolute believer that the pursuit of individual self-interest will be enough to make life better for the collective, but in a country like Haiti where the concept of economic self-interest has been so adulterated by the odd culture of development aid, I think our factory's model can play a really interesting role.
The sentiments of frustration and misunderstanding with which I began this post bring me to a book I read recently, “Eyes of the Heart” by ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It is a sincere look at globalization from a Third World perspective, taking into account how the poor can survive in a globalizing world, as well as how their insights might shape globalization to make it more human and positive. It is a well-written book, with Aristide's typical language that sways between village simplicity and revolutionary theology. A cynic might snicker at Aristide's approach, or doubt the sincerity of a man that has been so extensively besmirched by (apparently unfounded) allegations of corruption and evil. But I have enjoyed the book, and even learned from it how it came to pass that Aristide and his successor allowed strong neoliberal influences on Haitian economic policy. More importantly, I read it at a moment when I was quickly tiring of seeming incongruities in daily Haitian life, and no longer seeking to understand the people around me. Aristide reminded me that sometimes we don't understand something not because it's stupid or irrational, but because our particular logic prevents us from learning about and comprehending the rational terms of another logic.
“Eyes of the Heart” contrasts strongly with another book I read this week, called “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs”, by Chuck Klosterman. This is a book of essays on US pop culture. It is well-written, and actually does arrive at some transcendental reflections gleaned from the silly ephemera of consumerist mass culture. Among them are his assertion that the pervasiveness of pop media has fundamentally altered how we live life, as now we use media references to gauge the authenticity of our own experiences (first kiss, getting drunk, heartbreak, road trips, etc.) instead of the other way around. As I bemoaned in a post a while ago, “The Breakfast Club” for me wasn't an idiosyncratic director's commentary to reflect on given my own real experience of high school. Instead, I saw the movie before high school, and subsequently gauged if I was really doing appropriate high-school-type stuff by how closely my real life followed the framework of that and other similar movies. Klosterman also analyzes how tribute bands and reality TV are more extreme manifestations of this postmodern mixup.
However, something that distressed me throughout was Klosterman's apparent remove from life. His attitude is totally opposed to that of Aristide, who seems to believe that life matters, that poverty is more than just another amusing cultural trope, that we must struggle to survive and improve the world. Klosterman comments on trends that I too have noticed, but instead of trying to change his life in reaction to his positive or negative perceptions of things, or even trying to change those things around him to hew more to what he believes in and values, he sits idly by as a snarky voice in the corner. It's as if his observation of life prevents his participation in it. He comments on positives and negatives of religion, but makes no adjustment in his life accordingly. He observes the flattening and stereotyping effect of mass media, but he almost revels in his participation in this nihilistic trend, as opposed to fighting against it. He seems bemusedly resigned to his never participating in a real love relationship. The only thing he seems sincere about and committed to is journalism, which he explains and defends in a strong essay. But otherwise his is a stance of cowardly apathy and non-participation in life. This attitude is something that used to drive me crazy about culture in the US, and is probably part of why I don't live there right now. I couldn't stand or understand how people could spend inordinate amounts of time doing things (watching bad TV, working a shitty job, engaging in casual, unfulfilling sex) that they themselves thought were stupid. People even seemed to take delight or at least entertainment at how vapid their lives were. From my post abroad I can long for a United States of summer barbecues, robust industry, political engagement, noble activism, progressive religiosity, and Christmas cheer, without having to listen to people talk about The View or what's-her-name Perry that fell on that cake or what's-his-name Weiner or that chick who killed her baby in Florida. In the words of System of a Down, all that is like violent pornography to me. I don't know about it, and I don't want to.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Visions of what the US should be
Here's a Nicholas Kristof article from a few months ago, describing the problems inherent in countries with high income disparity and weak governments. He is worried that Republicans are so bent on increasing the US's income disparity and weakening its government, lest we end up like Pakistan or the Congo. As if to underline his worrisome prognosis for the US, Mother Jones recently ran a story on the rising income equality and dire job outlook for most of the people in the US. Mother Jones worries that there is such high demand even for non-union, low-paying jobs like McDonald's offers. Business Week takes a different view, heralding the bright new future of super-efficient fast food chains, even hinting that these bastions of streamlined processes are a decent replacement for the US's lost industrial capacity.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Saint Peter
Before I left for Haiti, I finished reading the Gospel of John to my son Sam. Though it was ostensibly written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, I feel like Peter is the apostle we get the best picture of in this and the other Gospels. I started thinking a lot about Peter one day; here are my reflections.
In most of the Gospel stories, the disciples in general are always sort of dumb, like comic relief interspersed with Christ's heavy messages, or at least the vehicle by which Christ spells things out. Christ always starts by talking in symbols, parables, abstract concepts. But whoever is listening always misses the point, and makes a comment of the form, "So do you mean XXXX?" which is almost invariably not what Jesus means at all. So Christ always ends up having to get very specific and explicit, to explain and expound on the poetic, abstract language he'd used initially.
Peter is the best example of this theme. Most of the time he's totally clueless. When Christ symbolically humbles himself to wash the feet of his companions, Peter is shocked and doesn't want to partake. When Christ explains the importance of his washing the apostles' feet, Peter then enthusiastically requests, "Then wash my hands and head too!" He completely misses the point both times. In general Peter has lots of enthusiasm, but he is weak, dumb, cowardly. He makes a big show of defending Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, cutting off the ear of someone sent with the lynch mob. As ever, Jesus has to fix Peter's messup, patiently healing the other guy's ear and scolding his eager disciple. Then immediately afterward, Peter denies even knowing Christ, and abandons him on the cross.
None of what I'm writing is a diss to Peter. Christ lays out time and again that Peter is his chosen envoy to lead the young Church, even as Peter shows himself feeble and impetuous. To a merely human eye, Peter in no way merits his title of "rock". But Christ sees differently than we do, he sees better and more truly, so if he designates Peter to lead the Church, if he calls him his solid rock, it is for a reason. Perhaps we'd do well to model our faith on Peter's, and realize that we aren't going to be anywhere near perfect or coherent in our faith, but that that doesn't exclude us from Christ's love or from our responsibilities to follow him. Maybe Jesus chose the most fallible person to lead his Church, in order to remind us to be humble in our aspirations to sanctity, and to remind us that God's evaluation of us is different from human judgment.
Indeed, the Popes and even pastors of other denominations would do well to remember that their forefather is bumbling, earnest, imperfect Peter, and not grave, self-sure, sanctimonious Paul.
In most of the Gospel stories, the disciples in general are always sort of dumb, like comic relief interspersed with Christ's heavy messages, or at least the vehicle by which Christ spells things out. Christ always starts by talking in symbols, parables, abstract concepts. But whoever is listening always misses the point, and makes a comment of the form, "So do you mean XXXX?" which is almost invariably not what Jesus means at all. So Christ always ends up having to get very specific and explicit, to explain and expound on the poetic, abstract language he'd used initially.
Peter is the best example of this theme. Most of the time he's totally clueless. When Christ symbolically humbles himself to wash the feet of his companions, Peter is shocked and doesn't want to partake. When Christ explains the importance of his washing the apostles' feet, Peter then enthusiastically requests, "Then wash my hands and head too!" He completely misses the point both times. In general Peter has lots of enthusiasm, but he is weak, dumb, cowardly. He makes a big show of defending Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, cutting off the ear of someone sent with the lynch mob. As ever, Jesus has to fix Peter's messup, patiently healing the other guy's ear and scolding his eager disciple. Then immediately afterward, Peter denies even knowing Christ, and abandons him on the cross.
None of what I'm writing is a diss to Peter. Christ lays out time and again that Peter is his chosen envoy to lead the young Church, even as Peter shows himself feeble and impetuous. To a merely human eye, Peter in no way merits his title of "rock". But Christ sees differently than we do, he sees better and more truly, so if he designates Peter to lead the Church, if he calls him his solid rock, it is for a reason. Perhaps we'd do well to model our faith on Peter's, and realize that we aren't going to be anywhere near perfect or coherent in our faith, but that that doesn't exclude us from Christ's love or from our responsibilities to follow him. Maybe Jesus chose the most fallible person to lead his Church, in order to remind us to be humble in our aspirations to sanctity, and to remind us that God's evaluation of us is different from human judgment.
Indeed, the Popes and even pastors of other denominations would do well to remember that their forefather is bumbling, earnest, imperfect Peter, and not grave, self-sure, sanctimonious Paul.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Another critique of Paul Collier
This is an academic article from an anthropologist who analyzes Paul Collier's rhetorical style and his line of reasoning when he makes bombastic policy recommendations for poor countries. The author, Mike McGovern, is more even-handed and charitable with Collier than I normally am. Even so, he essentially rips apart the methodological and epistemological basis of much of Collier's popular work.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Greg's Haitian adventure part 4: Hispaniolan reading material
I'm about halfway through my time here in Haiti, which is a good thing because I'm missing my family intensely. Amid my varied workload, I've been reading a fair amount. I hadn't anticipated this, but once I got to the shared house my coworkers all live in (I'm in another individual room elsewhere in the complex), the collection of fascinating, erudite reading called back memories of my first trip to Haiti, almost ten years ago. Then I'd been staying at a visitor center run by a peasant group in southern Haiti, and there as here various worldly, left-leaning visitors had left an impressive collection of literature and nonfiction.
Actually, until today I hadn't read much for leisure. The only non-work book I'd gotten to was "Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world" by Mark Kurlansky. It is a fascinating treatment of an animal and a food that I've scarcely ever eaten, and whose worldwide significance I'd certainly never considered. Kurlansky jumps between history, personal narratives, and recipes. The mix sometimes feels awkward and contrived, and the book peters out with an inconclusive ending followed by forty pages or so of historical recipes. But I learned a lot, and it stoked my desire to cook with salt cod in the future.
Today I had a mammoth reading day. I probably should have gotten to a number of small, non-urgent, but important tasks I'd laid out in a list, but after an early-morning market run, I got sucked into "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, finishing the few hundred pages that remained after I'd messed with it a few days ago. The narrative is fascinating, the ambiance of different times and places so well-evoked that I felt like I'd been in and gotten to know a number of situations I've never actually experienced. The protagonists' lives are a far cry from my own, but thanks to a fortuitous collage of my own experience (my growing up in a 1980s inner city, my surrogate extended family's being roleplaying freaks, my grasp of the Spanish language, my U of Illinois attendance, and my familiarity with Latino and Caribbean culture and history), I think I got most of Diaz's odd mix of references to ghetto lingo and realities, state university life, science-fiction and roleplaying games, and Caribbean culture. But Diaz casually throws out so many allusions, from such a wide range of cultural spheres, that I wonder how many readers are equipped to appreciate many of them. I guess a fair amount, since the book was popular among readers and critics. Though my (non-Hispanophone) coworker here did say that many of the extended passages in Spanish went over her head. Conversely, some of the footnotes or drawn-out explanations of Dominican or Latin American culture or history seemed overly expository, an awkward interruption to the fast narrative pacing and allusions thrown out as if everyone should know them. I also felt like Diaz's unique narrative voice, that mix of uneducated slang and flexible grammar with hyper-cultural literacy, sometimes feels contrived, too self-consciously idiosyncratic.
One other book I started today (and might finish tonight!) is Jon Krakauer's "Into the wild". It pieces together the true story of a young man, Alex, who left his family to tramp about in the West and the wilderness in order to find himself, to suck the marrow from life, and who ends up dying from starvation in the Alaskan bush. The protagonist's asceticism and quest for moral purity reminds me of myself around his age. His seeming aversion to deeper human relationships is misled. Alex espouses that the majesty of nature and self and constant new experiences can bring more fulfillment than mere human relationships. But ultimately this self-centered focus on the new, on sensory experience, isn't a far cry from the seeking of happiness in new electronic goods or the latest fashions; a sort of natural consumerism, with all the problems of shallowness and emptiness associated with any consumerism. Such an attitude misses out not only on the majesty of the human, but also of the mundane. Following a daily routine, appreciating the small details of one's quotidian surroundings, is also a way to transcendence and self-knowledge. Even the details of one's routine are never the same twice; new experiences abound on your walk to work as in a trip to the Grand Canyon. That said, I don't begrudge Alex the value he ascribes to solitude and nature over humanity. Like all of us he was an evolving, changing individual, and the intellectual moment he happened to be in when he died is only his final thinking due to happenstance. According to what the author is able to surmise, had Alex survived his foray into the wild, he was thinking of moving onto other things, perhaps love and a family. His reflections on what is good in life should not be seen as a negation of our own reflections, but as an enrichment of them.
Aside from reading (and working a lot), in these past days I've discovered two new dreams for when I'm older and richer. One is to ride someday in the Singapore Airlines Suites class. This is a feature built into the airlines's long-haul routes from places like Sydney and Los Angeles to Singapore. They are essentially little private rooms on the plane, complete with bed, armchair, and private TV. You can even join two together if you're a couple. Apparently a round-trip ticket costs some $15000! I've never been one for luxury in air travel. I figure travel is inherently uncomfortable, so why try to doll it up and pay more in the process? But this Suites thing has really captured my imagination. It would be cool to try it once.
My other fantastic aspiration is someday to follow the St. John's College masters programs in Liberal Arts and in Eastern Classics. The school centers its undergrad and graduate courses around the Great Books of the Western canon (or the Eastern, in the case of its other masters program). You study science with Pasteur and Darwin, philosophy with the ancient Greeks and Aquinas and Kant, mathematics with Euclid onward, etc. A coworker here did her undergrad at their Santa Fe campus, and it sounds like a really cool experience. A chance to reflect on the larger questions of life, after so much effort dedicated to agronomy and eminently practical issues. Maybe when my wife and I are retired, or simply have a few calm years, we could attend together. Maybe we could push our son to go there for undergrad, and sponge off of him for reading materials!
Those are my cerebral musings for now. Not much to do with Haiti, but if I weren't here, I wouldn't be exposed to all these other cultural influences. I'll be writing more soon about more explicitly Haitian topics.
Actually, until today I hadn't read much for leisure. The only non-work book I'd gotten to was "Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world" by Mark Kurlansky. It is a fascinating treatment of an animal and a food that I've scarcely ever eaten, and whose worldwide significance I'd certainly never considered. Kurlansky jumps between history, personal narratives, and recipes. The mix sometimes feels awkward and contrived, and the book peters out with an inconclusive ending followed by forty pages or so of historical recipes. But I learned a lot, and it stoked my desire to cook with salt cod in the future.
Today I had a mammoth reading day. I probably should have gotten to a number of small, non-urgent, but important tasks I'd laid out in a list, but after an early-morning market run, I got sucked into "The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, finishing the few hundred pages that remained after I'd messed with it a few days ago. The narrative is fascinating, the ambiance of different times and places so well-evoked that I felt like I'd been in and gotten to know a number of situations I've never actually experienced. The protagonists' lives are a far cry from my own, but thanks to a fortuitous collage of my own experience (my growing up in a 1980s inner city, my surrogate extended family's being roleplaying freaks, my grasp of the Spanish language, my U of Illinois attendance, and my familiarity with Latino and Caribbean culture and history), I think I got most of Diaz's odd mix of references to ghetto lingo and realities, state university life, science-fiction and roleplaying games, and Caribbean culture. But Diaz casually throws out so many allusions, from such a wide range of cultural spheres, that I wonder how many readers are equipped to appreciate many of them. I guess a fair amount, since the book was popular among readers and critics. Though my (non-Hispanophone) coworker here did say that many of the extended passages in Spanish went over her head. Conversely, some of the footnotes or drawn-out explanations of Dominican or Latin American culture or history seemed overly expository, an awkward interruption to the fast narrative pacing and allusions thrown out as if everyone should know them. I also felt like Diaz's unique narrative voice, that mix of uneducated slang and flexible grammar with hyper-cultural literacy, sometimes feels contrived, too self-consciously idiosyncratic.
One other book I started today (and might finish tonight!) is Jon Krakauer's "Into the wild". It pieces together the true story of a young man, Alex, who left his family to tramp about in the West and the wilderness in order to find himself, to suck the marrow from life, and who ends up dying from starvation in the Alaskan bush. The protagonist's asceticism and quest for moral purity reminds me of myself around his age. His seeming aversion to deeper human relationships is misled. Alex espouses that the majesty of nature and self and constant new experiences can bring more fulfillment than mere human relationships. But ultimately this self-centered focus on the new, on sensory experience, isn't a far cry from the seeking of happiness in new electronic goods or the latest fashions; a sort of natural consumerism, with all the problems of shallowness and emptiness associated with any consumerism. Such an attitude misses out not only on the majesty of the human, but also of the mundane. Following a daily routine, appreciating the small details of one's quotidian surroundings, is also a way to transcendence and self-knowledge. Even the details of one's routine are never the same twice; new experiences abound on your walk to work as in a trip to the Grand Canyon. That said, I don't begrudge Alex the value he ascribes to solitude and nature over humanity. Like all of us he was an evolving, changing individual, and the intellectual moment he happened to be in when he died is only his final thinking due to happenstance. According to what the author is able to surmise, had Alex survived his foray into the wild, he was thinking of moving onto other things, perhaps love and a family. His reflections on what is good in life should not be seen as a negation of our own reflections, but as an enrichment of them.
Aside from reading (and working a lot), in these past days I've discovered two new dreams for when I'm older and richer. One is to ride someday in the Singapore Airlines Suites class. This is a feature built into the airlines's long-haul routes from places like Sydney and Los Angeles to Singapore. They are essentially little private rooms on the plane, complete with bed, armchair, and private TV. You can even join two together if you're a couple. Apparently a round-trip ticket costs some $15000! I've never been one for luxury in air travel. I figure travel is inherently uncomfortable, so why try to doll it up and pay more in the process? But this Suites thing has really captured my imagination. It would be cool to try it once.
My other fantastic aspiration is someday to follow the St. John's College masters programs in Liberal Arts and in Eastern Classics. The school centers its undergrad and graduate courses around the Great Books of the Western canon (or the Eastern, in the case of its other masters program). You study science with Pasteur and Darwin, philosophy with the ancient Greeks and Aquinas and Kant, mathematics with Euclid onward, etc. A coworker here did her undergrad at their Santa Fe campus, and it sounds like a really cool experience. A chance to reflect on the larger questions of life, after so much effort dedicated to agronomy and eminently practical issues. Maybe when my wife and I are retired, or simply have a few calm years, we could attend together. Maybe we could push our son to go there for undergrad, and sponge off of him for reading materials!
Those are my cerebral musings for now. Not much to do with Haiti, but if I weren't here, I wouldn't be exposed to all these other cultural influences. I'll be writing more soon about more explicitly Haitian topics.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Greg's Haitian adventure part 3: Haitian musings
I've been in Haiti a week and a half now, sufficient to have a fair number of reflections to share.
I got into Port-au-Prince just fine after my pleasant experience with Copa airlines, and I was met in PAP by an old friend. The airport and environs seem in good shape, about how they were two years ago when I visited. This area was never densely populated, and I imagine the airport has gotten priority treatment in post-earthquake reconstruction. Lots of outsiders have been flying in, so the State and its masters surely want to make the airport area as nice as possible. I didn't go anywhere else in Port-au-Prince this time, so I didn't see the status of the rest of the city; I imagine it's a lot more depressing. Of course the area around the airport has always been pretty depressing too, but in the same bland, suburban-industrial-warehouse way airport zones are depressing in any country. Not a destroyed rubble-and-corpses kind of depressing.
My friend accompanied me from the international airport to the national airport. The two use the same runways, but to get from one to the other as a passenger you have to walk quite a ways. Aside from my surprise at how intact all the buildings seemed, I was amazed that the weather wasn't hotter. It had been about a year and a half since I'd experienced temperatures over 90 degrees, since in my Colombian highland home it never gets above about 70, so I was dreading the heat shock once I got off the plane. But even walking under the sun in long sleeves with a heavy backpack, I wasn't sweating profusely. Another pleasant surprise.
The company I'm working for had in theory reserved me a flight to Cap Haitien, or Okap as Haitians say, but when I went to the ticket counter of the airlines I thought I'd be flying with, they said they had no flights that day! I went to another airlines counter, where they had apparently transferred my ticket to, so everything worked out fine, but I had a few minutes of nervous laughing. I was happy to be in Haiti, with its unexpected problems and joys.
I had enough time before my plane left to talk with my friend. A few years ago he and I had invested together in a taptap, a pickup truck converted to a public bus, but it had gotten beaten up in the earthquake. He'd spent close to a year trying to make it work, but any profits he made got immediately sunken back into repairs and little problems. Eventually he traded in his big pickup that didn't work for a smaller collective taxi that did, and he's making a decent living with the taxi. He told me he was a bit ashamed about the truck's not working out, but I think he did the smart thing by finding a profitable alternative to something that wasn't going well.
After he left, I had about an hour more of waiting in the airport, and I got to talking with some sort of a missionary. He gave me the typical earful of how difficult it is to work with Haitians because of their cultural shortcomings. I've never much bought into this type of discourse. Maybe I've just been lucky, but across all the different cultures of people I've worked with, I've found that it's not hard to collaborate successfully if both sides respect and consider one another's concerns. Apparently that had not been this missionary's experience, and he'd been working in Haiti longer than I had (albeit without speaking the language), so I wasn't interested in arguing with him.
My plane to Okap was a 10-passenger propeller plane, with a stiflingly hot cabin. It reminded me of my only other plane trip within Haiti, seven and a half years ago. I'd gone with some friends on the thirteen hour road trip from the capital to Jeremie, at the far end of the southern peninsula. After the last 30 mile stretch that took about six hours in a rickety old school bus (six hours of my holding in violent diarrhea!), I had decided I didn't want to return by road. So my two companions and I had taken a Soviet-era propeller plane, with Russian warning signs everywhere. It was their first and only flight ever.
Once in Okap I had to wait about an hour for my ride to come get me. Because of the flight company mixup, my employers thought I'd be arriving later than I did, and even when I'd pieced this together, I didn't have cellphone minutes to call them. Eventually some nice taxi drivers let me call on their phones, and my ride finally came.
My first few days were spent settling in, though they certainly didn't have the air of calm and relaxation one normally associates with "settling in". I visited the factory of the company I'm helping, I visited other factories and farms, I went to a number of parties and barbecues for a soon-to-depart company employee. We even went to a lovely beach in Chouchou Bay, about two hours from Cap Haitien over a horrid, bumpy road. Between the stressful ride in the back of a pickup truck, and a nascent stomach virus infection that seemed to be going around the whole work team, I didn't actually relax much. In fact, in the first week or so I wasn't able to make up for my 2:30am wakeup the day of my flight. But the beach was really beautiful, almost paradisiacal. I've never been much of a beach person. The sun and saltwater somehow give me a headache. But this time I put on lots of sunblock, floated aimlessly in the water, and got some work done in the shade. The only things missing were my wife and kid. It would have been his first beach trip.
I am staying at a residential compound near Okap called Breda, in Vertieres town. The names rang a bell for me, though I couldn't tell why. After a few days, my host explained to me that Breda was the plantation home of Toussaint L'Ouverture when he was still a slave. L'Ouverture would go on to lead the Haitian slave rebels against the French, British, Spanish, and eventually Napoleon's army (though Toussaint would die imprisoned in Europe after a false truce ploy). Vertieres, in turn, was the site of the last major battle of this 12-year-long struggle for freedom and independence. When I realized all this, I was thrilled to be in such an important historical area. This is the cradle not only of Haiti's independence, but of that of much of Latin America; Bolivar found inspiration for his struggle and (even physical refuge at one point) in the new Haitian republic.
My main work thus far has been on two fronts. One main duty is to help set up a sort of practical farming school. Haiti has plenty of technical ag schools, but often they teach a lot of theory, and perhaps some capital-intensive temperate zone farming technologies that aren't necessarily appropriate for Haiti's context. Our vision is to create a practice farm where students can implement hands-on, economically viable farming projects, which will prepare them to make a decent living at farming once they graduate.
My other main job is to help the company I'm working for to obtain high-quality peanuts for a peanut butter-like product they make. Often Haitian peanuts give low yields, and have high levels of aflatoxin, a contaminant caused by a fungus that gets into the peanuts in the field and develops during growth and even in storage after harvest. So my job consists in finding ways of helping farmers to increase their yields and decrease their aflatoxin through things like using aflatoxin-resistant seed varieties, and spraying appropriate fungicides when needed.
As part of this quest for better peanuts, we've been planting a lot in different contexts.
Above is my handful of peanuts, and the notched stick we lay in the row to control planting distance between seeds.
The other day we were planting out a bunch of peanuts on an organic pepper farm run by a guy from Georgia.
It's a really cool place, though it's out in the middle of an unpopulated, arid zone.
Most of the surrounding land belongs to the Haitian State, and they have big plans for it. Among other things, it is to be the site of a big industrial park, where Korean corporations will get tax breaks to produce clothes and ship them through Okap or the Dominican Republic, which lay at opposite ends of the region's main road.
I normally don't like semi-arid climates. They depress me, and the endless, uniform mesquite-forested plains of northeastern Haiti are no exception. But that zone really has a lot of agricultural potential. The soils are fertile, there's plentiful irrigation water, there are vast flat expanses you could work with a tractor. A US-style farmer could really get his head around setting up a homestead there. So as we were planting and the entire day thereafter, I entertained fantasies of rotating sunflowers, sorghum, beans, corn, cassava, cattle, and goats through that mesquite forest, and even producing sustainable charcoal for Haiti's voracious cooking fuel market.
On a farm adjacent to the hot pepper place, they have a jatropha plantation.
Jatropha is a dryland shrub native to the Caribbean basin that is used for biodiesel production. There are ways of interplanting food crops with jatropha, which is a nice way of reconciling food and fuel production, and there are even varieties of jatropha without its typical toxic chemical load, such that the leftover meal from its oil-pressed seeds can be used as human or animal food. This plantation was using neither innovation, which means it's not a very efficient or ethical use of land. However, since it's out in unpopulated bush, it's not taking away land or food from people, at least not right now.
As we were planting under the hot sun, we were piped with a constant stream of Arab music. It turns out that the Jordanian contingent of the UN peacekeeping troops are stationed about half a mile from the pepper farm. It was a Friday, so we were eventually treated to the call to prayer. I thought it was lovely and solemn, but a Haitian worker said the singer's intonation sounded like a cat meowing and screeching. This struck me as an ugly and intolerant commentary, especially considering that he and other workers had been humming nasal Protestant hymns the whole time we'd been planting. And the Muslim chanting was certainly no worse than the incessant Evangelico-pagan screaming, hooting, whooping, panting, and singing that issues forth from the loudspeaker of a Pentecostal church located at the top of a hill above our residential complex. But on the other hand, I guess it's fair to be intolerant and disrespectful of people who are occupying your country indefinitely with a questionable mandate.
So that's my life for now in Haiti. Lots of exciting work and new ideas, lots of enthusiasm about the constant upward trajectory Haiti's development seems to be taking (sometimes thanks to, and often in spite of outside interventions!). In general I'm impressed and surprised that life in Haiti isn't as harsh and difficult as I'd remembered it or expected. Maybe I'm just less sensitive to certain manifestations of poverty nowadays, or more accustomed to the languid rhythms of a poor tropical country, but I think that in the ten years I've been coming here there has been a real change, a real gradual improvement in Haitian infrastructure (and hopefully in life for the mass of Haitians). Living here is actually really pleasant for me right now. I of course wish my family could be with me, and I'm often eager to get back to Colombia to my other professional and personal duties. But in general I'm thankful to have this opportunity to offer my services and be of use, and enjoy one of the countries I love in this world.
I got into Port-au-Prince just fine after my pleasant experience with Copa airlines, and I was met in PAP by an old friend. The airport and environs seem in good shape, about how they were two years ago when I visited. This area was never densely populated, and I imagine the airport has gotten priority treatment in post-earthquake reconstruction. Lots of outsiders have been flying in, so the State and its masters surely want to make the airport area as nice as possible. I didn't go anywhere else in Port-au-Prince this time, so I didn't see the status of the rest of the city; I imagine it's a lot more depressing. Of course the area around the airport has always been pretty depressing too, but in the same bland, suburban-industrial-warehouse way airport zones are depressing in any country. Not a destroyed rubble-and-corpses kind of depressing.
My friend accompanied me from the international airport to the national airport. The two use the same runways, but to get from one to the other as a passenger you have to walk quite a ways. Aside from my surprise at how intact all the buildings seemed, I was amazed that the weather wasn't hotter. It had been about a year and a half since I'd experienced temperatures over 90 degrees, since in my Colombian highland home it never gets above about 70, so I was dreading the heat shock once I got off the plane. But even walking under the sun in long sleeves with a heavy backpack, I wasn't sweating profusely. Another pleasant surprise.
The company I'm working for had in theory reserved me a flight to Cap Haitien, or Okap as Haitians say, but when I went to the ticket counter of the airlines I thought I'd be flying with, they said they had no flights that day! I went to another airlines counter, where they had apparently transferred my ticket to, so everything worked out fine, but I had a few minutes of nervous laughing. I was happy to be in Haiti, with its unexpected problems and joys.
I had enough time before my plane left to talk with my friend. A few years ago he and I had invested together in a taptap, a pickup truck converted to a public bus, but it had gotten beaten up in the earthquake. He'd spent close to a year trying to make it work, but any profits he made got immediately sunken back into repairs and little problems. Eventually he traded in his big pickup that didn't work for a smaller collective taxi that did, and he's making a decent living with the taxi. He told me he was a bit ashamed about the truck's not working out, but I think he did the smart thing by finding a profitable alternative to something that wasn't going well.
After he left, I had about an hour more of waiting in the airport, and I got to talking with some sort of a missionary. He gave me the typical earful of how difficult it is to work with Haitians because of their cultural shortcomings. I've never much bought into this type of discourse. Maybe I've just been lucky, but across all the different cultures of people I've worked with, I've found that it's not hard to collaborate successfully if both sides respect and consider one another's concerns. Apparently that had not been this missionary's experience, and he'd been working in Haiti longer than I had (albeit without speaking the language), so I wasn't interested in arguing with him.
My plane to Okap was a 10-passenger propeller plane, with a stiflingly hot cabin. It reminded me of my only other plane trip within Haiti, seven and a half years ago. I'd gone with some friends on the thirteen hour road trip from the capital to Jeremie, at the far end of the southern peninsula. After the last 30 mile stretch that took about six hours in a rickety old school bus (six hours of my holding in violent diarrhea!), I had decided I didn't want to return by road. So my two companions and I had taken a Soviet-era propeller plane, with Russian warning signs everywhere. It was their first and only flight ever.
Once in Okap I had to wait about an hour for my ride to come get me. Because of the flight company mixup, my employers thought I'd be arriving later than I did, and even when I'd pieced this together, I didn't have cellphone minutes to call them. Eventually some nice taxi drivers let me call on their phones, and my ride finally came.
My first few days were spent settling in, though they certainly didn't have the air of calm and relaxation one normally associates with "settling in". I visited the factory of the company I'm helping, I visited other factories and farms, I went to a number of parties and barbecues for a soon-to-depart company employee. We even went to a lovely beach in Chouchou Bay, about two hours from Cap Haitien over a horrid, bumpy road. Between the stressful ride in the back of a pickup truck, and a nascent stomach virus infection that seemed to be going around the whole work team, I didn't actually relax much. In fact, in the first week or so I wasn't able to make up for my 2:30am wakeup the day of my flight. But the beach was really beautiful, almost paradisiacal. I've never been much of a beach person. The sun and saltwater somehow give me a headache. But this time I put on lots of sunblock, floated aimlessly in the water, and got some work done in the shade. The only things missing were my wife and kid. It would have been his first beach trip.
I am staying at a residential compound near Okap called Breda, in Vertieres town. The names rang a bell for me, though I couldn't tell why. After a few days, my host explained to me that Breda was the plantation home of Toussaint L'Ouverture when he was still a slave. L'Ouverture would go on to lead the Haitian slave rebels against the French, British, Spanish, and eventually Napoleon's army (though Toussaint would die imprisoned in Europe after a false truce ploy). Vertieres, in turn, was the site of the last major battle of this 12-year-long struggle for freedom and independence. When I realized all this, I was thrilled to be in such an important historical area. This is the cradle not only of Haiti's independence, but of that of much of Latin America; Bolivar found inspiration for his struggle and (even physical refuge at one point) in the new Haitian republic.
My main work thus far has been on two fronts. One main duty is to help set up a sort of practical farming school. Haiti has plenty of technical ag schools, but often they teach a lot of theory, and perhaps some capital-intensive temperate zone farming technologies that aren't necessarily appropriate for Haiti's context. Our vision is to create a practice farm where students can implement hands-on, economically viable farming projects, which will prepare them to make a decent living at farming once they graduate.
My other main job is to help the company I'm working for to obtain high-quality peanuts for a peanut butter-like product they make. Often Haitian peanuts give low yields, and have high levels of aflatoxin, a contaminant caused by a fungus that gets into the peanuts in the field and develops during growth and even in storage after harvest. So my job consists in finding ways of helping farmers to increase their yields and decrease their aflatoxin through things like using aflatoxin-resistant seed varieties, and spraying appropriate fungicides when needed.
As part of this quest for better peanuts, we've been planting a lot in different contexts.
Above is my handful of peanuts, and the notched stick we lay in the row to control planting distance between seeds.
The other day we were planting out a bunch of peanuts on an organic pepper farm run by a guy from Georgia.
It's a really cool place, though it's out in the middle of an unpopulated, arid zone.
Most of the surrounding land belongs to the Haitian State, and they have big plans for it. Among other things, it is to be the site of a big industrial park, where Korean corporations will get tax breaks to produce clothes and ship them through Okap or the Dominican Republic, which lay at opposite ends of the region's main road.
I normally don't like semi-arid climates. They depress me, and the endless, uniform mesquite-forested plains of northeastern Haiti are no exception. But that zone really has a lot of agricultural potential. The soils are fertile, there's plentiful irrigation water, there are vast flat expanses you could work with a tractor. A US-style farmer could really get his head around setting up a homestead there. So as we were planting and the entire day thereafter, I entertained fantasies of rotating sunflowers, sorghum, beans, corn, cassava, cattle, and goats through that mesquite forest, and even producing sustainable charcoal for Haiti's voracious cooking fuel market.
On a farm adjacent to the hot pepper place, they have a jatropha plantation.
Jatropha is a dryland shrub native to the Caribbean basin that is used for biodiesel production. There are ways of interplanting food crops with jatropha, which is a nice way of reconciling food and fuel production, and there are even varieties of jatropha without its typical toxic chemical load, such that the leftover meal from its oil-pressed seeds can be used as human or animal food. This plantation was using neither innovation, which means it's not a very efficient or ethical use of land. However, since it's out in unpopulated bush, it's not taking away land or food from people, at least not right now.
As we were planting under the hot sun, we were piped with a constant stream of Arab music. It turns out that the Jordanian contingent of the UN peacekeeping troops are stationed about half a mile from the pepper farm. It was a Friday, so we were eventually treated to the call to prayer. I thought it was lovely and solemn, but a Haitian worker said the singer's intonation sounded like a cat meowing and screeching. This struck me as an ugly and intolerant commentary, especially considering that he and other workers had been humming nasal Protestant hymns the whole time we'd been planting. And the Muslim chanting was certainly no worse than the incessant Evangelico-pagan screaming, hooting, whooping, panting, and singing that issues forth from the loudspeaker of a Pentecostal church located at the top of a hill above our residential complex. But on the other hand, I guess it's fair to be intolerant and disrespectful of people who are occupying your country indefinitely with a questionable mandate.
So that's my life for now in Haiti. Lots of exciting work and new ideas, lots of enthusiasm about the constant upward trajectory Haiti's development seems to be taking (sometimes thanks to, and often in spite of outside interventions!). In general I'm impressed and surprised that life in Haiti isn't as harsh and difficult as I'd remembered it or expected. Maybe I'm just less sensitive to certain manifestations of poverty nowadays, or more accustomed to the languid rhythms of a poor tropical country, but I think that in the ten years I've been coming here there has been a real change, a real gradual improvement in Haitian infrastructure (and hopefully in life for the mass of Haitians). Living here is actually really pleasant for me right now. I of course wish my family could be with me, and I'm often eager to get back to Colombia to my other professional and personal duties. But in general I'm thankful to have this opportunity to offer my services and be of use, and enjoy one of the countries I love in this world.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Greg's Haitian adventure part 2: En route to Haiti
In my last blog post I raved about Copa airlines' pan-American charm. The final leg of my flight to Haiti affirmed this further, as our pilot was a Brazilian woman speaking heavily-accented Spanish and English. However, Haitians seem not to figure in this pan-American vision (as is often the case!). No Copa staff spoke Kreyol or even French, and they continued to make announcements in Spanish and English. I asked myself how hard it would be for them to find just one or two people to work the Haiti route who could speak the country's languages, so as to be able to help passengers with customs forms etc.
The flight was filled with people of varying shades of brown. When I've flown to Haiti from the US, it's usually all black people, with the occasional white missionary or something thrown in. But on this flight there seemed to be folks from all over the Caribbean basin, many of them Hispanophones, and some seemingly of mixed Haitian-Latino ancestry. There was also an inexplicable elegant French couple in first class with a suit bag! I wonder what everyone is going to Haiti for. The obviously Haitian people aren't a mystery, but the Cuban doctors, the French couple, the mulata Latina women, they all must have interesting stories, interesting reasons for going. I wonder if relations between Haitians and Afro-descendant Latinos are more natural and amicable than the hierarchical, neocolonial relationships that prevail between Haitians and white foreigners. The experience on the plane appears to indicate so, but then I see the Panamanian flight attendant carrying around a young Haitian girl that she doesn't know, both victims of the "I'm going to pick up a random cute black kid from its mother" syndrome. Seeing this reminds me of a friend of my wife's and mine that seemed bent on posing in photos with my baby son as an example of a "standard-issue tragically lovely Third-World baby". And with that, I feel my first pangs of intense solitude, intense desire to hold my wonderful, furious baby son.
The hermetic environs of the plane, with its white plastic and fogged windows, contrasted with the landscape below us. As we pulled out of Panama city I looked at the houses stretching off into the distance, seemingly carved into the thick forest. As we flew over the sea, and eventually spot the Haitian coastline and the waves lapping it, I was filled with a joy of recognition, of belonging. This is my land! My America! From the moist oak-dotted forests and windswept prairies of my native Midwest, to Panama's city gashed into red tropical soil and verdant forest, to the craggy mountains of Haiti, to the folded green plains perched high atop Colombia, this land feels mine more than anywhere I've been. I have visited Europe, fallen in love with Africa, but America is where I belong.
The flight was filled with people of varying shades of brown. When I've flown to Haiti from the US, it's usually all black people, with the occasional white missionary or something thrown in. But on this flight there seemed to be folks from all over the Caribbean basin, many of them Hispanophones, and some seemingly of mixed Haitian-Latino ancestry. There was also an inexplicable elegant French couple in first class with a suit bag! I wonder what everyone is going to Haiti for. The obviously Haitian people aren't a mystery, but the Cuban doctors, the French couple, the mulata Latina women, they all must have interesting stories, interesting reasons for going. I wonder if relations between Haitians and Afro-descendant Latinos are more natural and amicable than the hierarchical, neocolonial relationships that prevail between Haitians and white foreigners. The experience on the plane appears to indicate so, but then I see the Panamanian flight attendant carrying around a young Haitian girl that she doesn't know, both victims of the "I'm going to pick up a random cute black kid from its mother" syndrome. Seeing this reminds me of a friend of my wife's and mine that seemed bent on posing in photos with my baby son as an example of a "standard-issue tragically lovely Third-World baby". And with that, I feel my first pangs of intense solitude, intense desire to hold my wonderful, furious baby son.
The hermetic environs of the plane, with its white plastic and fogged windows, contrasted with the landscape below us. As we pulled out of Panama city I looked at the houses stretching off into the distance, seemingly carved into the thick forest. As we flew over the sea, and eventually spot the Haitian coastline and the waves lapping it, I was filled with a joy of recognition, of belonging. This is my land! My America! From the moist oak-dotted forests and windswept prairies of my native Midwest, to Panama's city gashed into red tropical soil and verdant forest, to the craggy mountains of Haiti, to the folded green plains perched high atop Colombia, this land feels mine more than anywhere I've been. I have visited Europe, fallen in love with Africa, but America is where I belong.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Post-black Chicago, the sequel
A few months ago I wrote about the flight of blacks from Chicago and other northern cities. Here is another NYT article detailing the flight of blacks from Chicago proper to the awful suburbs in the middle of nowhere along I-57. As before, I lament the enthusiastic entry of these people into soulless, unsustainable, car-based living arrangements in shoddily constructed houses that cost way too much to heat. But the flight to the suburbs is not a black thing; it's an epidemic, color-blind manifestation of our short-thinking consumerist culture. And if the city isn't taking care of its black residents, who can blame them for moving away?
Demographics
This is an interesting article about how the preference for male offspring has skewed sex ratios in many countries, including China and India. I must admit that I was pretty happy when I found out my child would be a boy, but then again I was living in a household full of women, so I would always get a bit lonely! Anyway, the large-scale and long-term effects of having 119 men for every woman in China are certainly worrisome.
In other news, I recently read a National Geographic special about the face of 7 billion people. It looked at demographic traits and trends of our world's 7 billion-strong population. Apparently the largest age demographic in the world are 28-year-olds. I feel oddly honored and excited to be part of the world's largest age group. It seems like 1982 was a good year for procreation, and I'm a part of that. So from now on whenever I'm feeling isolated, or behind-the-curve, or a minority viewpoint, I can just remember that I'm in fact part of the largest age group across the world. The other aspects of National Geographic's analysis is that Han Chinese outnumber any other ethnic group, and males slightly outnumber females in the world.
In other news, I recently read a National Geographic special about the face of 7 billion people. It looked at demographic traits and trends of our world's 7 billion-strong population. Apparently the largest age demographic in the world are 28-year-olds. I feel oddly honored and excited to be part of the world's largest age group. It seems like 1982 was a good year for procreation, and I'm a part of that. So from now on whenever I'm feeling isolated, or behind-the-curve, or a minority viewpoint, I can just remember that I'm in fact part of the largest age group across the world. The other aspects of National Geographic's analysis is that Han Chinese outnumber any other ethnic group, and males slightly outnumber females in the world.
Greg's Haitian adventure part 1: Panama
I'm in Panama right now, waiting for a flight to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I will be spending the next month working in Haiti as a consultant for a food company that needs to obtain high-quality ingredients from farmers. I will of course be writing much about those experiences in the coming month, but I wanted to set down my impressions of my flight thus far and the ambience here in the Panama airport, because it's very trippy and a far cry from the reality I'll be living in Haiti.
I set out this morning at 5:30am from Bogota. Actually, I woke up at 2:30am and got out the door by 3am so as to be nice and early for my flight. I was to fly with Copa airlines, the national Panamanian airlines and an associate of Continental. I had engaged in a good number of credit card promotion plans/scams that had endowed me with lots of Continental frequent flier miles, so when I had the opportunity to work in Haiti, I redeemed them and ended up with an almost-free flight from Bogota to Port-au-Prince.
I had flown Copa Colombia before. Copa Colombia is a semi-independent subsidiary of Copa that flies throughout Colombia from its base in Bogota. It's often a lower-cost regional alternative to Colombia's national Avianca airline. But I'd never flown internationally on Copa.
I have been very pleased with the experience thus far. On the plane I read about Copa's strategy of being what they call the “Hub of America”. From Panama City Copa flies to destinations throughout the hemisphere, from Argentina to Canada and everywhere in between. A particularly valuable service Copa offers are flights to secondary cities, such that businessmen in Cordoba, Argentina or Cucuta, Colombia, can fly to places like Manaus, Brazil or Santiago, Dominican Republic. Incoming and outgoing flights are organized around 6 time “blocks” in Panama, such that transfers are quick and efficient.
Copa's business model seems based in part on the mix of low wages and good infrastructure offered by Latin America. Seats have ample legroom, and the hot sandwiches and packaged plantain chips are delicious and filling. The plantain chips are made by Frito-Lay, but their high content of fiber and vitamin A makes me feel like they're a better alternative to potato chips. These services and amenities are a far cry from Spirit, the ultra-low-cost, no-frills carrier I normally fly. I can only believe Copa can offer such great service at a relatively low cost because it's cheap to hire middle-class, educated people to work the plane staff.
I was really stoked by this pan-American vision, to the point that I even fantasized about working for Copa Airlines someday. A good deal of the planes are Boeings (the rest are Embraer, another entity from our hemisphere), which means that Copa Air is also supporting one of the few industries that still seem viable in the US (and thus benefitting my hometown of Chicago, Boeing's corporate headquarters, and my father's hometown of Wichita, a major plane manufacturing center).
I had to nuance, if not temper, my enthusiasm upon arrival in Panama. The short walk down the exit tunnel from the plane to the gate was humid, though still cool at 7am. This humid air was to be about the only taste I would get of Panama as a country, because the airport itself was another world, sort of like a limbo between countries. You don't go through customs or immigration unless you leave the airport and actually stay in Panama. Otherwise, all the flights in the airport come and go from foreign countries, with no connecting flights within Panama, so there's no need for customs or immigration. I guess this makes sense—once you're in Panama, why would you need to fly anywhere? Even by road I can't imagine anything is more than a few hours away.
As I marveled at the lack of customs or other symbols of national control and sovereignty, I wandered lost around the terminal, just to make sure I didn't need to register anywhere. The Tucumen airport of Panama is like a weird inter-national space, full of people talking in English and Spanish, and there even a fair number of Chinese wandering about. You see the same lurid, offensively decadent perfume ads as in airports in Colombia or the US. There's only one general store with things like Kleenex or Pringles chips, but there are tons of Duty-free purveyors of electronic goods, perfumes, clothes, and luggage. I took a look at the laptop selection, and found that they were actually pretty expensive.
From this limited introduction through Copa and the airport, I envision Panama as sort of a Latin American Singapore. A port to the world, where goods and people come together, sometimes to stay, often on their way elsewhere. An economy based on tourism and shipping, a meeting point of many cultures, though perhaps this dilutes its own local culture. I'd like to visit someday, get a sense of what such a place would be like. In a month, on my return flight, I'll have an overnight layover in Panama, so maybe I can walk the old city a bit.
Though it seemed like everyone in the terminal was from somewhere else, I got some idea of what Panamanians are like from the store employees. They look and talk like Colombians from the Caribbean coastal region, which is about the pre-existing image I'd had of Panama. I have to admit that I know very little about the country. It was once part of Colombia, it has the Canal, famous people include salsa singer Ruben Blades and narcodictator Manuel Noriega. I am sort of embarassed to be in a place I am so ignorant about. I had a vague idea that Panama uses the US dollar as its currency, but I was still a bit timid and unsure of what to expect when I used an ATM. Sure enough, out popped some good old greenbacks.
So hungry (or rather thirsty) for a bit of authentic Panama, I went to an airport bar and asked if they had any Panamanian liquors. The bartender recommended me the 7-year-aged version of the national Abuelo rum. I asked if he could serve me that so early in the morning, and he directed my attention to his bar's publicity poster, which said in English, “It's 5pm somewhere”. So at 7:46am I found myself drinking straight Panamanian rum, watching on the bar's TV set a rather sad video of a recent Rolling Stones concert. Keith Richards's mummylike face, Mick Jagger's emaciated body and pin-legs, the lack of coordination between instruments and vocals (I'm not sure if this was actually a mess-up at the concert, or if the DVD player was offbeat); it all seemed sad to me.
After a short phone call to my wife Caro, I headed to my gate to wait for the Haiti flight. The black-skinned Haitians chatting amongst themselves and looking like more or less normal people contrast with the generally palid, flaccid mass of consumers bustling about the rest of the airport. Seeing the Haitians also reminds me I should brace myself for my impending entry into Haiti, get ready for the crude and harsh existence sometimes manifested there. I've never partaken too much in the steady consumerist diet of modern bourgeois culture in the US or elsewhere, but I suppose that in my years I've become accustomed to the flash and gaudy brilliance of middle-class surroundings, so much so that I'm comforted or reassured by them even as I criticize them. Hence it's always a bit disconcerting for me to go to a poorer country without a bourgeois veneer that masks the hardness and vitality of raw life. I know I'll adjust, but it's a transition I have to force myself through, like quickly ripping off the band-aid of oblivious complacence from the hairy arm of reality underneath.