“This time around, let the Yankees stay!”

Dutch journalist and documentary filmmaker Ton Vriens witnessed the catastrophe, traveling from North to South. Back in the States he wonders if the international community has the will to build up this country — so behind in development and corrupt from top to bottom.

(a translation of a piece for Dutch weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, February 10, 2010)

On that Tuesday I was waiting in the outskirts of Port-au-Prince for transportation to the North. The promise of a beautiful evening was in the air – not too hot and the sun is sinking. It is always such a pleasure to return to Port-au-Prince, with its fast-paced, colorful street life, the beautiful friendly people…

I am walking down rue Gerard Théodat when the pavement starts to move as if a giant mole is boring through the earth. A tap-tap bus stops in front of me. The passengers jump out in panic. Some women break down and start crying for God. Then, a three-story building on the corner comes down in jolting spurts. A group of people come running out of its gate. Among them is a young man and woman, barefoot, each carrying a lifeless, bloodied child. They scream for a moto-taxi and jump on the nearest one. No one knows if there are other people in the building. Apparently there had been a large prayer meeting that ended shortly beforehand. The building has not completely collapsed but the cement roof is dangerously leaning forward. Through openings in the rubble, I start calling, hello, hello? A muffled woman’s voice answers but I can’t hear what she says. There is no entrance. Splintered furniture is sticking out from the rubble. Two young guys manage to get inside through the cracks. An eternity later they come back, grey with dust, their arms chafed. A group of men starts to move cement blocks to find a way to enter the building. The sun sinks down further and it becomes dark. The woman does not answer anymore.

Later that night I leave town with a bus of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital. On this exit road some damage to houses and walls can be seen but there is no panic in the streets. We pass St. Marc, a large port, where all is still; nothing seems to have happened here. Upon arrival in Verrettes in the Artibonite Valley, a few ladies of the women’s group our Turtle Tree foundation works with since 2007, are waiting for me. Their town seems to be unscathed, they tell me. They have not heard of any damage and no one got hurt. I wonder if the earthquake will make the news abroad – not knowing that my family in New York had already listed me as missing and would stay up all night with worry.

Only the next morning do we hear on the radio about the scope of the catastrophe. The next few days the women all wait in suspense. Phones don’t work any more and most have relatives in Port-au-Prince. Some wait for hours at the bus stop, waiting for husbands, sons, cousins, and uncles to come back – often after a long separation. The women are glad they are alive but it also puts an extra burden on them. Even worse, the usual remittances that so many receive from family in the US can no longer get through now that the banks are closed.

The schools are closed as well. The women take the children to work – although we don’t really work. We talk and wait and eat a lot. A recurring theme is that this was God’s will and we should thank him for saving us. No one talks openly about that other set of religious beliefs – voodoo – except ten-year-old Love. She whispers in my ear: “The Zombies are very angry at us and it ain’t over yet.”

On Thursday morning at 4 AM, everyone runs out into the street. News of a new quake has reached us. We just stand there singing and talking in the dark. The earth keeps on moving in spurts over the following days and nights. We sleep very lightly.

Tom Braak, an American missionary calls for a meeting with all the authorities in Verrettes. Only a few pastors show up. Braak poses the question: should we start bringing water and food to homeless in the capital or help evacuate them? He wants to set up a refugee camp on the local soccer field, but the idea is turned down. “Already enough strangers in Verrettes.” Acting on my own, I try to buy Betadine and gauze to bring to Port-au-Prince, but the local pharmacist refuses to let me. “We may need it here for ourselves in the near future.”

The next day, I drive with pastor Elvilus Merlorme to the capital with a load of drinking water. The pastor can’t find the church he wants to bring it to and decides to enter a refugee camp. In less than a minute some strong fellows grab the bags of water bottles out of the back of the pickup truck and run away. The people in the camp get very angry, screaming at us: “How can you be so stupid?”

I hear that Hospice St. Joseph, a guesthouse and medical center in the neighborhood Nazon has collapsed. All the people of the neighborhood are camping out on the property – several are wounded. There is no more food or medical supplies in what is left of St. Joseph. I take PharraSolia Hyppolite, who runs St. Joseph, to the UN-compound next to the airport. In a matter of days, a new city has risen here, with air-conditioned trailers for the dozens of UN-subsidiaries and other NGOs. The director of UNDP, UN’s development branch, directs me to Nigel Snoad, a colleague at OCHA, the UN branch that coordinates development aid. But Snoad pleasantly informs us that the UN’s World Health Organization is coordinating medical supplies. “They are working on a distribution list. Unfortunately, for the time being, the medical supplies will stay at the airport.” I argue that a neighborhood medical center like St. Joseph needs first-aid kits right now. Snoad understands, “We are waiting ourselves for the list.” And how does one get on their list? He gives us an email address. St. Joseph does not have power or internet, like almost all institutions in Port-au-Prince. Can Snoad put us on the list? Unfortunately, Snoad is not authorized to do so.

We roam around the labyrinth of the international aid-organizations and are being referred from trailer to trailer. Pharra is getting more and more angry. She thinks the international organizations are blaming the Haitian authorities for the lack of action. “In Nazon at least we had a water truck from the city come by and the garbage trucks have been removing the bodies. The international emergency aid? These guys shit in their pants to come and see us Haitians.”

Finally we find a large tent that is a makeshift hospital. In the corner, they perform surgeries. The Global Institute, a group of doctors affiliated with the University of Miami, set up the hospital the day after the quake. When you see the speed and efficiency of the young medical staff – all volunteers – you understand how they saved thousands of lives. The Global Institute quickly provides us with boxes of medical supplies. They agree to take in one of Pharra’s wounded neighbors who desperately needs medical care.

When the doctors have inspected Madame Lanite’s wounds, Pharra translates the diagnosis to her. Her foot will be amputated but she will live. “Mesi,” mumbles Lanite and tries to smile through her tears. A press photographer jumps in and shoots a few pictures. Madame Lanite is not dressed decently and a nurse berates the photographer. “Imagine that this was your mother. Would you want her like this in the newspaper?” In this disaster, the media don’t have scruples. The victims, death or alive, lost their status as individuals.

Back in Verrettes, I stop by La Plaza for a cold beer – it’s the only place in the village that has a refrigerator. Jean, the owner, a reserved young man, joins me. He listened to President Preval’s first radio speech today, he tells me. Jean is trying to talk about it but he starts to cry. “Not a word, not one word of compassion! My God, what kind of people are they?”

A week later I have to go to Vallee de Jacmel in the South to visit another project of Turtle Tree. On the way we pass the town of Léogâne that was heavily hit. The homeless inhabitants have put up tents on the shoulder of the road. In a field US Marines are standing heavily armed around helicopters and Humvees, ready for the war to come. A passenger in the bus: “The Yankees are back again. Let them stay this time.” But fellow passengers angrily disagree with him. Many homeless shelters have signs up with “Welcome Marines” and “Come and Visit Us – We are Hungry!” The radio reports that so far twelve thousand American troops have landed and several thousands of foreign troops are on their way to strengthen the UN-force of nine thousand blue helmets. But medical help is still sporadic and the distribution of food and water is still minimal. As many commentators on the Haitian radio stations conclude: the aid-machine is scared of the Haitians and the anger and frustration they may encounter.

I leave Haiti with the small plane of a drug dealer that has a drop to make in the DR. Drugs remain the one enterprise that Haitian authorities seem to have a knack for. Back in the US I find in my inbox several outcries about a piece by David Brooks in the NYT. Brooks had the audacity to write: “Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. …We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.”

And Brooks concludes: “In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.”

Brooks omits our painful record of intrusive paternalism in Haiti. The US Marines’ occupation from 1915 to 1934 not only protected the corporate robbery of Haiti’s last resources like tropical wood but also brought into existence a Haitian army that could be used against its population, laying the foundation for decades of brutal dictatorship. Tocqueville’s overquoted cliché, “people get the government they deserve,” might have been valid for Haiti – the first independent black state that came out of the only successful slave rebellion in colonial history – if the US had not consistently manipulated each and every social and political movement. I was there in 2004 when American secret agents hosted a ragtag army of former officers in Montana with women and champagne and provided them with the means to raise a rebellion against then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Under the pretense of a civil war, Aristide was unceremoniously escorted out of the country. The international community did not protest. After all, Haiti is considered to be part of America’s backyard. And it must be said, the leftist ex-president had not lived up to his promise of developing the poor country.

President René Préval – once Aristide’s right hand – is in much better standing in Washington. The praise for the stability of his regime – not the greatest art with a UN army at his side – has enabled Préval to become as much of an autocrat as his predecessors. The opposition, about fourteen political parties, has been excluded from participating in the coming elections. He had his prime minister, Michèle Pierre-Louis, removed – one of the few in Haiti’s politics with a clean reputation. And he appointed so many of his shady party members to powerful positions that the government of Haiti, from top to bottom, has become more than ever a mafia. The population is distrustful of a political process so blatantly skewed and did not show up for the last elections. Those who travel in the country see very few results from the billions in aid that Haiti received over the last five years.

The catastrophe caused by the earthquake poses a huge demand on the international community. But, how do they build a country that competes with Iraq and Afghanistan in corruption? How to collaborate with an administration that has no authority or respect among its own population? No American or UN official is willing to talk openly about the unreliability of the Haitian government.

In the public discussion in the United States two opposite camps can be discerned. David Brooks belongs to the group of skeptics who believe the US should pass over the Haitian authorities, even if this will irk European partners. More moderate voices hope for a diplomatic solution, that – albeit formally – respects Haitian’s sovereignty, but at the same time allows plenty of control to remain outside on how the aid money is going to be spent.

Tatiana Wah, an American-trained economist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute on loan as a policy advisor to the Haitian government, has formulated a plan for reconstruction. Wah says the Haitian government is behind this plan and that Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has signed off on it. The proposal emphasizes the need for an overarching National Reconstruction and Development Council (NRDC) and asks the international community urgently to direct all donations, also those of NGOs and private donors, to a Multi-Donor Trust Fund, that will be made available to the NRDC. When asked who will be in control of the funds, Wah believes the Trust Fund could be housed at the Inter-American Development Bank and could be supervised by all donors. “But the (Haitian) government will have to be in the lead of course.”

She knows my doubts about the Préval administration and argues that the international community should learn to accept that this is a democratically elected leadership and that, as in any third world country, you have to work with what is available. Wah sees the emergency aid machine failing because they are not willing to work with the institutions of civil society – neighborhood committees, unions, professional organizations and local governments. “What are they thinking? That this is some kind of jungle and that you can’t work together with any Haitian?”

So far the population of Port-au-Prince has shown remarkable restraint and patience in their day-to-day suffering. But the growing frustration with the aid-machine’s slow and minimal distribution of supplies, the mounting anger with a president and a cabinet that is invisible, the mistrust against the UN and American troops, all this forms an incendiary mix. Many Haitians see themselves badly served by an elitist government that so obviously is protected by the almighty US.

Tatian Wah, reached in Port-au-Prince, hopes that the population will be offered, as soon as possible, a realistic perspective on what is in store for them. An international conference about Haiti is planned for March at the UN in New York. A consensus about plans for reconstruction should be reached by then.

In a panel discussion about Haiti’s future at Columbia University, the disparity in opinion is becoming clear. The US ambassador to the UN and some UN managers are all talking about a Marshall Plan that will not just rebuild but modernize Haiti’s society entirely. This grand plan will of course be under the auspices of the UN. But the UN big wigs offer very few ideas on how to go about this and what the priorities are. How will the Haitian people find work? How will they be able to make a living? The magic word is, of course: foreign investors.

The idea that American and other companies will jumpstart Haiti’s economy reflects the vision of Paul Collier, an Oxford economist who was commissioned by the UN before the earthquake to develop a megaplan on how to pull Haiti out of its state of permanent poverty. When reading Collier’s study, one becomes excited by his broad and optimistic vision for Haiti. But the Achilles’ heel of the plan is the expectation that foreign investors will once again build maquilladores, factories that assemble garments and other products. In other words, sweatshops with low wages – Haiti as a small China in the Western hemisphere. But will Haitian workers accept to work a full day for approximately $2.70? Last year fierce demonstrations were held demanding at least $5 a day – and even that is not enough to feed a family in the capital. Collier estimates that the sweatshops would generate 250,000 jobs and he believes other economic ventures, tourism for example, could turn the tide in Haiti. But tourism is hard to imagine in a country were the sight of heartbreaking poverty even before the catastrophe made one nauseous.

The Clintons – Bill in his role as UN envoy – have both been enthusiastic promoters of the Collier vision for Haiti. Corporations were invited to well-visited business seminars in posh hotels in Miami and Port-au-Prince. Who wouldn’t want to have lunch with charismatic Bill? And the Clinton-friend George Soros, the idealistic tycoon, offered 25 million dollars for an industrial park in the capital. But, at the end of the day, businesses are not ready to invest in a country they pulled out of in the eighties when it became too unstable. As one visitor to a seminar overheard a company representative say: “And so where can my people go for a jog?”

The economist Jeffrey Sachs offers a different perspective. His proposal for Haiti is radical, expensive and credible. The idea that private companies will come to Haiti’s rescue is unrealistic in his opinion. “The rebuilding of Haiti is a public matter that should be directed under public directorship. If we do our job, and are able to construct new infrastructure, private companies will come to Haiti. But keep in mind that it could take ten years.” Sachs believes that modernization of Haiti’s archaic agriculture should be the real jump starter of the economy. The agricultural sector has been consistently neglected, by Haiti’s urban elite as well as by the development agencies. But a majority of Haitians are subsistence farmers and agriculture is the only economic sector that has some viability. The planting season starts in March. Sachs wants containers filled with fertilizer and improved seeds to be sent now. Large biotechnology companies like Monsanto should be pressured to deliver seeds to Haiti.

Building and developing Haiti, including a school system, a basic health care, humanitarian help and a modern infrastructure, will cost about 3.5 billion dollars per year for the next five years. A back-of-the-envelope break-down shows 1.5 billion for humanitarian aid, official development aid and the UN-troops (about 600 million a year) and seven to 12 billion to rebuild Haiti.

Is this politically feasible in view of the general skeptism about development aid and nation building in general? Sachs thinks Obama should ask Congress for an appropriation bill of one billion dollars before all news cameras have left Haiti. But to the disappointment of many – specifically the estimated one million Haitians that live in the US – the US president did not make any financial commitments, not in the State of the Union and not as of yet. And even if the president could get this appropriation bill signed, it would still leave two-thirds of the budget to be paid by the rest of the international community. Sachs knows Obama – that is to say, he is often invited to the White House to give his opinion on economic policy matters. But his plea to set aside a large amount of money for Haiti comes, as we all know, at a difficult time. As disappointing as it is to many in Haiti, who believe strongly that brother Obama has them in mind all the time, there may be other pressing matters on the presidential agenda, even though his wife is raising funds to help Haiti and half of American households gave generously. Professor Tatiana Wah who works closely with Sachs is holding her breath. “We wait and wait because what has been committed is so insufficient.”

I call Evelyne Margron, a friend in Port-au-Prince who was severely wounded and is in a hospital in Santa Domingo. Margron used to work at the Haitian Ministry of Education. She considers the antiquated educational system the largest impediment to any development of the country. Only half of all Haitian children are able to attend school and there are hardly any public schools. Margron has witnessed that each and every NGO and foreign church group wants to come and build schools in Haiti. But who is focusing on modernizing the curriculum? Not the foreigners. And not the Haitian elite – who have always looked the other way when the subject of public education came up. Evelyne Margron: “It seems almost a conspiracy to keep the masses uncritical and deprived of any education.”