June 2012
1 post
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Eight years of U.N. peacekeeping in Haiti
Today makes eight years since U.N. peacekeeping force MINUSTAH came to Haiti, on June 1, 2004, in the wake of the second coup of President Aristide. In April, The Economist noted that “[t]here has been no serious armed conflict in Haiti since 2006—which can be taken as evidence either of Minustah’s effectiveness or of its irrelevance.” Similarly, there have been no so-called red...
May 2012
18 posts
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Haitian Government announces cash transfer school...
Cross-posted at Haiti Rewired
The Government of Haiti recently announced the launch of a program that will give cash to mothers for keeping their children to school. Venezuela’s Petrocaribe fund will provide $15 million in funding for the first phase of the project. The AP reports:
The program is called “Ti Manman Cheri,” or Creole for “Dear Little Mother.” It aims to reach 100,000...
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Haitian sea cucumbers, the Chinese New Year, and...
My latest piece for GOOD is up on their website: “What A Box of Sea Cucumbers Teaches Us About Foreign Aid.” It’s a feature that tries to weave together a story about a Haitian sea cucumber exporter, an NGO that’s working to get more aid money spent locally in places like Haiti instead of in places like Washington D.C., and USAID’s reform agenda that’s...
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Maggie Steber's 25 years of photographing Haiti:...
Maggie Steber first came to Haiti in 1980 to photograph Baby Doc’s wedding. She returned in 1986 to cover food riots and the heat that preceded the deposing of Duvalier. Over the next few decades, she visited the island nation 80 times, trying to capture slices of Haiti that went beyond breaking news and wire stories, as she explained to the The New York Times Lens blog:
“Some years...
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Haiti links: New water treatment plant in...
1. “Haiti, With Help from Spain, Opens New Water Treatment Plant in Titanyen”
The plant was completed with the help of the Spanish Agency for International Development. President Martelly inaugurated it today.
“The cholera epidemic is forcing us to understand how important and meaningful the implementation of a purification unit is,” Martelly said.
The government said 1.5...
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Haitians want your old t-shirt
Today Reason posted a video that Jon Bougher and I produced: “Haiti’s Pepe Trade: How Secondhand American Clothes Became a First-Rate Business”.
There’s been no dearth of recent criticisms of donations to the developing world—they can undercut local producers and vendors and also usually do a pretty good job of perpetuating white-savior complex stereotypes. Charles...
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Haiti links: Paramilitary drama on Chan Mas;...
1. The news of the weekend was the march through town by paramilitaries last Friday, which was Jour du Drapeau (Flag Day). In recent weeks, the rogue forces had demanded that President Martelly officially recognize them by Jour du Drapeau, or they would “take to the streets,” as one paramilitary told me on Chan Mas last week. In recent months, the Haitian Government has repeatedly...
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Soccer stadium planned for Cité soleil
For Haiti Rewired, I wrote a post about an effort led by Boby Duval to build a soccer stadium in Cité Soleil:
“You know, the kids don’t come for training soccer,” says Boby Duval, who has trained more than 6,000 players at soccer training academy
L’Athletique D’Haiti since 1994. “They come for the meal you give them.”
The former professional soccer player has no illusions about the...
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Haiti links: Mining law being drafted; Haitian...
1. Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe says that the government is drafting legislation for Haiti’s emerging mining industry. The AP recently reported that the country’s gold, silver, and copper reserves could be worth up to $20 billion:
“The most important thing is to have the correct mining law,” [Lamothe] said. “It ensures that the right portion comes to the state....
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Boukannen Dlo Episode 8: "How's Haiti?"
This week’s pod, which, for now, will be the last in our Boukannen Dlo series since life is taking Jacob away from Hispaniola, is about aswering the question, “How’s Haiti?” The post description:
On the final installment of Boukannen Dlo, we discuss the question we inevitably get when we return home to visit with friends and family: “How’s Haiti?” We’ve used the...
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Haiti links: Martelly year 1 recaps; gold in them...
1. In a President Martelly year-1-in-office overview, the AP says that “Modest Gains Mark Haitian Leader’s 1st Year”. It notes that even though the president was without a prime minister for much of his first year and spent much of year one butting heads with legislators, “six of the most visible displaced-persons camps that sprang up after the 2010 earthquake have been...
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In defense of expats playing polo while riding on...
The New York Times ran a piece the other day about moto polo, a polo-like game expats play in Kigali in which they substitute horses with motos driven by locals:
Instead of horses, of which there are few in Rwanda, players drive and ride motorcycles, of which there are many. Along the slick roads here, in Rwanda’s capital, they are commonly used as taxis, and a growing number of young Rwandan...
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Haiti links: Martelly, again, tells rogue armies...
1. WSJ: “In Haiti, Ex-Troops’ Bid for New Army Threatens Stability”
President Martelly has repeatedly told the rogue militias that have assembled in recent months to disband and leave the camps and barracks where they’ve gathered around the country. Le Nouvelliste interviews Martelly about it (fr). He says, in part:
If it was [actually] the army, they would obey,...
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The unremarkable sour taste for an aid worker in...
Yesterday, NPR interviewed Quinn Zimmerman, an “aid worker leav[ing] Haiti with a sour taste,” as the radio outlet put it. Zimmerman had recently written a blog post in which he outlined many of the frustrations—locals seeing his white skin as little more than dollar signs, locals giving him shit merely for being a foreigner in Haiti, locals expecting him to dole out cadeux all the...
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Why is it taking so long to rebuild Haiti?
Today a sort of big-picture Haiti reconstruction piece I wrote for The American Interest ran online. The headline it ran under is, “Rebuilding Haiti: Why is it taking so long?” Two years-plus isn’t so long in the context of the enormous task of rebuilding much of Port-au-Prince and its environs. But there are systemic reasons that progress has been hard to come by. Here’s...
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Haiti links: MPs accuse colleagues of taking...
1. Several MPs denounce colleagues, accuse them of taking bribes to approve the nomination of Laurent Lamothe as Prime Minister, whose appointment was ratified last Friday
2. “Haiti police, UN crack down on would-be soldiers”
3. Le Nouvelliste profiles Ivorian aquaculture expert and owner of the Caribbean Harvest fish hatchery Valentin Abe, who was the 2011 Digicel Entrepreneur...
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Boukannen Dlo Episode 7: The Great Haitian Pastime
This week’s pod features us discussing how, whether attending local matches or religiously watching Messi and Ronaldo, Haitians are crazy about soccer: The post description:
Thanks to Haitians’ love for soccer and the late rounds of the Champions League featuring top European clubs like Barcelona, Chelsea, and Bayern Munich, life in Port-au-Prince seems to stop and start with the...
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Haiti links: SEC sues 11 in illegal stock-selling...
Three stories from The Miami Herald:
1. Securities and Exchange Commission files civil suits against 11 people in illegal stock-selling schemes, “one that took advantage of the dire situation in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake.”
According to the SEC, the Recycle Tech scheme was a “pump and dump” scenario — using a promotional campaign to pump up the price and volume of the...
April 2012
15 posts
5 tags
U.S. advisors still helping Ugandan troops look...
A Jeffrey Gettleman New York Times piece posted online yesterday updates the effort by Ugandan military forces and American advisors to track down the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and their leader, Joseph Kony, who featured in the insanely popular “KONY 2012” YouTube video released in March.
For Reason, I wrote about the interventionist propaganda that permeated the video...
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Boukannen Dlo Episode 6: A Most Unusual Visit
This week’s pod features a troupe of mostly Norwegian circus performers who are sailing the world and stopped in Haiti for a visit. The post description:
People visit Haiti for plenty of reasons—doctors on medical missions, volunteers on week-long trips, and friends of expats like us who come just to get a sense of life here. But when we heard a troupe of Norwegian circus performers...
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Haiti links: Hotel, motel, Marriott Inn; Martelly...
1. “New hotels arise amid ruins in Haitian capital.” Seven hotels are being planned or are already under construction in Port-au-Prince, including a Marriott, Best Western, and “Royal Oasis.” The projects add up to more than $100 million in investment and will bring construction work to the city, but not everyone thinks that making it easier for aid workers and journalists...
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There's no dearth of interesting shit going on in...
The Economist has a backgrounder on the U.N. in Haiti titled, “First, do no harm”, that puts the eight-year peacekeeping mission in context and summarizes recent developments about cholera and sexual abuse charges against soldiers:
Today’s foreign do-gooders in Haiti are the 9,000 members of Minustah, the UN’s peacekeeping force. … Its troops have been blamed for starting a...
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Haiti links: Martelly recovering in Miami;...
1. President Martelly still recovering in Miami, says he came close to death. He flew to Miami earlier this month for shoulder surgery and returned nine days ago for pain treatment. It turned out he had a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in his lungs.
Martelly did a radio interview yesterday “aimed at quelling rumors that had [him] either in a coma, dead, or not sick at all.”
This...
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Haiti links: Demonstrations in Port-au-Prince as...
1. A few demonstrations were held in Port-au-Prince streets yesterday as various units of the Haitian National Police went on strike protesting the recent murder of policeman Walky Calixte. The manifestations, which included burning tires and makeshift barricades that blocked traffic in some areas, were reportedly concentrated in Carrefour and Delmas. Rumors abound about more demonstrations...
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Boukannen Dlo Episode 5: On filming in Haiti
This week’s pod features filmmaker Jon Bougher, who I’ve worked with some recently, talking about his experience filming in Haiti. The post description:
One obstacle that prevents foreigners from understanding what’s going on in Haiti is how difficult it is to visualize everyday Haitian life. Joining us today is Jon Bougher, a documentary filmmaker in Port-au-Prince and...
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Haiti links: The deification of Sean Penn...
The lead of the AP’s story on Sean Penn:
Sean Penn no longer lives in a tent, surrounded by some 40,000 desperate people camped on a muddy golf course. And he no longer rushes about the capital with a Glock pistol tucked in his waistband, hefting bags of donated rice and warning darkly of a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Martelly flew to Miami on Monday to be treated for a blood clot...
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Commodity speculation, Eleni Gabre-Madhin, and on...
Today Duke University agricultural economist and professor of public policy Marc Bellemare blogged my recent GOOD magazine piece about the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange. I interviewed Marc for the story, and he was gracious enough to let me Skype with him about farming and commodity prices in Ethiopia for about half an hour, even though the quotes I used from him were whittled down to a few short...
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Why you needn't freak out about an African...
The New York Times ran a scare mongering story yesterday about population growth in Nigeria specifically and sub-Saharan Africa generally. I countered their Chicken Little narrative in a piece for GOOD:
The front page of yesterday’s New York Times informed readers that “in a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people—a population about as big as that of the...
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Better market information combined with simple...
My latest piece for GOOD is about African farming, the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, and the power of market information. An excerpt:
Before the ECX, if the price of coffee shot up on New York markets, the price of coffee in Ethiopia would rise—unbeknownst to farmers isolated in rural markets. Traders aware of the price spike could buy low from farmers and sell high on national markets.
...
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On differences between video journalism and...
I’ve recently been filming around Port-au-Prince working on a video story with a colleague. Or I should say that, since he’s a filmmaker, he’s been filming, and I’ve been asking interview questions or playing defense or running interference as necessary.
Reporting for written work now seems easy, at least compared to doing video journalism. You go talk to people, take...
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On why Haiti is so poor
Why Nations Fail, a new book by MIT economist Darren Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James Robinson, has garnered a lot of attention since its release. Francis Fukuyama, Paul Collier, and Bill Easterly have each reviewed it.
Acemoglu and Robinson focus on the importance of political and economic institutions to a given nation’s development, or lack thereof. In their words,...
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Boukannen Dlo Episode 3: Haiti Positive
Episode 3 of our podcast is out today. Here’s the description:
On this week’s podcast we talk to two Haitian friends from our neighborhood, Jonas Pierre-Louis and Jean-Marc Vassa Joseph, about Haiti Positive, a book they’re working on that presents positive aspects of Haiti. We ask them about the book, their impressions of Americans and Europeans working to help Haitians,...
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Boukannen Dlo Episode 2: The Haiti Memory Project
Episode 2 of Boukannen Dlo is out today and features an interview with Claire Payton, a PhD candidate in history and French studies at NYU. Claire discusses her Haiti Memory Project, a series of about 100 oral history interviews she conducted following the earthquake of January 12, 2010. Here’s the episode description:
Claude Adolphe is a middle class man who lived through the goudou...
March 2012
14 posts
3 tags
Podcasting from Haiti: Boukannen Dlo
Today Jacob Kushner and I published the first episode of our new weekly podcast we’ll be doing from Port-au-Prince, Boukannen Dlo. We decided to start the podcast as a platform to tell Haitian stories from our perspective but also as a way, we hope, to give our families and friends a little bit more insight into what daily life is like for us here.
In Haitian Creole, Boukannen Dlo...
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Modern-day slavery and the Black Moors of...
Over the weekend, CNN published “Slavery’s Last Stronghold”, an incredible special report about modern-day slavery in Mauritania.
Mauritania lies on the western fringe of the Sahara and is a melange of Arabic, French, and African cultures. Two main ethnic groups dominate the population: light-skinned White Moors, who resemble Arabs, and dark-skinned Black Moors, whose ancestors...
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Overtaken by George Erdel
“Islamaphobic is not a valid, it’s not a real word,” says George Erdel. “A phobia is an unreasonable fear of any particular thing, and therefore, Islamaphobia cannot be a valid word, because when you look back through 1400-plus years of Islamic history and deeds, any fear that one would derive from studying about that is very justified and reasonable.”
A friend...
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Mike Daisey's unrequited agitation
In a blog post today, Mike Daisey bristles at critiques of his fabricated story that aired on This American Life in January. Daisey performs the story—about appalling labor conditions at a Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China, that he visited in 2010 where Apple manufactures some of its products—on stage as a theatrical monologue.
But many of the details simply aren’t true or rely on...
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Nicholas Kristof is not impressed by your "KONY...
Invisible Children’s P.R. campaign for it’s intervention-mongering, propaganda-ridden “KONY 2012” video really has been amazing. In addition to the roughly 100 million views the video has garnered, the group was able to “goad” Nicholas Kristof into dedicating his New York Times column today to Joseph Kony.
“If I were a Congolese villager,” Kristof...
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The hollow bipartisanship and interventionist...
I have a piece up at Reason about the intervention-mongering of “KONY 2012” and its false narrative of bipartisanship. Just because “one thing we can all agree on” is that Kony is a scourge of humanity hardly means that everyone agrees on what the U.S. government or military should do about him, if anything (or, more accurately, any more than we already are doing).
An...
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Caring about "KONY 2012"
Despite all the online backlash against Invisible Children’s “KONY 2012” 30 minute documentary—Ugandan co-founder of Project Diaspora TMS Ruge summed it up as “a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes”—the YouTube post of the video currently...
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The aid economy, housing market in Port-au-Prince
Today Reason published a piece I recently reported and wrote about the aid economy in Port-au-Prince and its effects on the local Haitian economy. Here is an excerpt:
The widespread destruction from the disaster jolted real estate prices, but the presence of foreign NGOs and government organizations, who pay premiums for office and housing space in the capital, pressures local rental markets...
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*A Bed for the Night*, Auschwitz, and Joseph Kony
In his 2003 book A Bed for the Night, David Rieff critiqued some of the moral underpinnings of aid and humanitarian work. Rieff is a writer and journalist who spent years covering conflicts and crises in places including Bosnia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.
Early on in the book, Rieff discusses the penchant of NGOs and media to simplify complex wars and conflicts by dubbing them “humanitarian...
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Haitian politics at the gym
I went to work out this morning, my second visit to a gym in the neighborhood. It’s a concrete slab ringed with a fence made out of corrugated tin and has a basic weight lifting setup—bench press, squat rack, dumbells, pulley machine, etc. A lot of the weights that you stack on the pulley machine to do lat pulldowns or tricep extensions or whatever are either flywheels from old clutches or...
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The U.N. Log Base
Yesterday I went to the U.N. Log Base, the main logistics base in Port-au-Prince for the MINUSTAH peacekeeping force and a variety of the 18 other U.N. agencies working in Haiti. Two other journalist friends and I needed to get a press pass or to renew one.
The communications staff was welcoming and wonderfully helpful, especially considering that much of their work dealing with the press is...
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Christianity, missionaries in Haiti
A view from the road to Kenscoff, a community in the hills above Port-au-Prince
There is a Haitian joke: Haiti is 80 percent Catholic and 100 percent Voudoo. Whether true or not, Haitians are extremely religious in both talk and practice, and virtually everyone is a Christian or “Christian” of one flavor or another.
Missionaries have been in Haiti for decades. Wallace Turnbull...
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Jeffrey Sachs: "I will solve all of the world's...
Jeffrey Sachs has an op-ed in The Washington Post today in which he lobbies for the presidency of the World Bank and outlines how he would some of solve history’s most challenging problems from that post:
My quest to help end poverty has taken me to more than 125 countries, from mega-city capitals to mountaintop villages, from rain forest settlements to nomadic desert camps. Now I hope...
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Quotidian life in Haiti, Senegal
I’ve been in Port-au-Prince for almost two months. For better or worse, I find myself making comparisons about life here to life in another former French colony, Senegal, where I lived for about a year while in the Peace Corps. My daily life there was much different in that I lived in a small rural village. But the country’s towns and cities, especially the capital, Dakar, provide some...
February 2012
20 posts
3 tags
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