18 - 25 January 2010 -- Returning to Labadie, Haiti

18 January 2010 – Sosua, Dominican Republic
Relaxed in Sosua. Made up my mind to return to the boat and return to sailing. Haiti has been a great experience and I have been lucky to see more than most in my short time here, but in the end, Haiti is not a good place. A slow, steady physical decline through poor food and filth, the constant threat of catastrophic illness or injury without appropriate medical facilities, a continuous frustration with the unproductive culture, and a pervasive social stigma based on my skin color and fueled by primitive attitudes make it clear that the future lies elsewhere. Avoidance of personal responsibility is a big factor in Haitian culture. Voodoo and various superstitions are convenient explanatory mechanisms to avoid taking personal or societal responsibility for their actions and overall condition. I am convinced that personal and societal identity are key to our functioning in life. Unfortunately, this programming is so deep that we lack humane methods of effective change.

19 January 2010 – Return to Cap-Haitien, Haiti
Boarded a bus to Santiago, Domican Republic, and then another to Cap-Haitien, Haiti, and marveled at how modern the buses were. The Dominicans have a talent for organization that really shines in their public transportation. Their motorcycles, taxis, mini-buses, and big buses are so well integrated that you can quickly travel on pocket change to almost anywhere in the country and walk no more than 10 steps. America should hire a Dominican to fix our public transportation system. Arriving in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, the ultra-modern bus slid through filthy crowds of people in the streets. Their mood was bad and people were showing their middle finger to my white face. Ate supper near the bus station at Kokiaje, one of Cap-Haitien’s better restaurants. Decent food, but the service is pathetically slow and their last act is always a slow walk downstairs to stand in the grocery store cashier line to get your change.

20 January 2010 – Back to Labadie, Haiti
Woke up at Hotel Imperial after a night of wrestling mosquitos and no-see-ums, smelling rotten sewage from the poor plumbing, and sweating profusely. High-tech businesses, such as banks, laundromats, and Internet cafes were closed, but the street people seemed comfortable with their societal lurch back toward the Stone Age. I boarded a tap-tap to Labadie. We only had 18 people and baggage in the Toyota pickup, so it was a good ride, with only one near-disaster when the truck slipped out of gear by the top of the worst hill. Nearing Labadie, I marveled once again at someone’s attempt to pour waste concrete onto a washed-out section of road. The construction company building the cruise ship pier was obviously trying to fix the road, but local traffic had repeatedly driven through the wet concrete and created permanent, crisscrossing, deep ruts. Finally back on the boat, Noralis quickly paddled out to see me. I pay him a bit of money every week to watch the boat. He always justifies his money by relating an imaginative story with himself as the hero in saving my boat. This time he had tied a large rock to a scrap of rope as an additional anchor, in the middle of a storm. The only result I could see was the potential to chafe through my real anchor line. Later, I found out that he was spreading rumors of my death in the Port-au-Prince earthquake so he could claim my boat. As we talked, his main concern was deciding whether it was God or the French people that caused the earthquake. I lost him by talking about building codes and emergency preparedness, so he paddled away to spend my money on beer.

21 January 2010 – Laundry day in Labadie, Haiti
Dave Ellis, a sailor from Belize, and his family left early this morning for Manzanilla Bay, Dominican Republic, to withdraw money, stock up on food, and continue north into the Bahamas. I worked on straightening up the boat, and then went into the village to wash some clothes. The local women washing clothes and children did not seem to mind, but the men could not believe a white man was washing his own clothes. They must have been scared their women would start expecting men to wash clothes, which would ruin their easy existence of hanging around, complaining about no jobs, and drinking. Everything needs to be done in Haiti, if locals would simply start doing the simple things that are desperately needed, an economy would develop and jobs would appear. But wasting the day sitting around is more important than anything else.

22 January 2010 – Cap-Haitien, Haiti
Spent the day in Cap-Haitien. Tim Mangs went to assess the building construction on Maurice Laroche’s new house. The house is an old colonial structure sitting on a bench high above the city. The whole property shows promise of becoming the grandest estate in Cap-Haitien. I went to talk to Maurice about the upcoming trip bringing his new motoryacht from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Provo, in the Turks and Caicos.

23 January 2010 – The road to Labadie, Haiti
There is no road to Labadie. But there should be. A particularly nasty dirt track leads out of Cap-Haitien, crossing two mountains before it ends one mile from the village of Labadie. It goes to the cruise ship resort, but no further. More than two decades ago, National Geographic published an article featuring Labadie as the stereotypic, idyllic Caribbean village. Today, Labadie is home to more than 4,000 people desperately scrambling to survive off the pittance Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines throws their way. Without one more mile of road, the town’s development is choked. For a man to build a house for his family is a nightmarish struggle here. Sand for mortar is collected from the local beach, which is rapidly becoming depleted. Rocks are broken out of the surrounding hills with iron bars and hammers, then rowed across the bay and carried to the job site. Cement is purchased by the bag in Cap-Haitien, transported along the dirt road, and then carried the last mile by water taxi. Finally, fresh water is carried from the mountain stream and the whole process of mixing mortar by hand can begin. No power tools are used or available, since there are only a few hours of electricity each week. A mile away, the cruise ship resort has plenty of electricity all the time. The lure of money and jobs brings more people to Labadie all the time. How far does corporate responsibility go in taking care of its workers? Surely it goes beyond giving them a corporate logo t-shirt to wear when they are entertaining tourists. Keeping them poor and desperate helps the profit margin.

24 January 2010 – Potential Marine Park in Labadie
Eggy Suarez, Tim Mangs, and myself took a short boat ride to a beachside property that is just begging to be developed. Not sure what the final project will be, but it has an ideal beach, with a good central location for a waterpark and a large marine aquarium, where you could even swim with dolphins. The outside of the property could be lined with tourist cabanas. Tim bought a large crab and a lobster from some local fishermen. Eggy and I helped him eat them for supper.

25 January 2010 – Lazy Day in Labadie
Cooked breakfast, read for awhile, cooked lunch, then napped for a while. Ate supper with Tim Mangs and his friend Dr. Mark Binard. Dr. Binard grew up in Haiti, had a medical practice for 10 years in the northern Bahamas, now lives in northern Wisconsin, and is here volunteering with the earthquake relief efforts.

17 January 2010 -- Finding Perspective

Spent the night in Santo Domingo. In the morning, Angi and Nancy flew to Washington DC on Jet Blue, a little later I boarded a Caribe Tours bus to Sosua, and then Tim drove to Sosua later in the afternoon. The earthquake aftermath in Port-au-Prince was rapidly becoming a memory as I ate a tasty cheeseburger in an upscale Sosua restaurant. What is my next step? The stark contrast between a reality where most Haitians simply return to never-ending struggles for existence and the unrealistic portrayal of devastation by media and self-interested aid agencies haunts me. Tim is preparing to return and carry on the fight. It seems there is a growing awareness that the devastation is overstated and that incompetent management is slowing relief efforts. Foreign aid is especially prone to unequal distribution in crises. Resulting Haitian attempts at conflict resolution seem crude by our standards, but make for sensational news stories. I am nagged by a thought that overall the Haitian people simply live the way they want to. For decades, they have been sliding down the easy path of dependency. Are we showering them with excessive, mostly-wasted aid for personal or political reasons? Worst of all, what allows politicians, aid workers, and corporate media reporters to discard morals and truthfulness?

16 January 2010 -- Escape

Discouraged by the flagrant waste and mis-direction of expensive aid resources, we decided to help evacuate Alex Deprez's 12-year-old daughter, Angi, and her present guardian, Nancy, to the Dominican Republic, where they will board a plane for Washington DC. Early in the morning, we siphoned diesel out of the generator fuel tank and filled Tim's truck. Then we drove through the streets of Port-au-Prince wondering why we saw no aid vehicles, but relieved that the Haitians seemed to have returned to normal life. The only thing missing was the school children in uniform, and for some reason, there were not as many beggars as usual. Haiti will probably survive the actual earthquake better than they will survive the brewing aid disaster. The trip to Santo Domingo was easy. The border was crowded with aid vehicles and foreign troops, but we drove right through without stopping. Normally the Dominican officials want money, maybe since they cannot accept bribes now, they are too lazy to even check passports. Halfway to Santo Domingo, Tim stopped and bought some jugs of wine made by local nuns. In Santo Domingo, Nancy had her hair done, while I replaced the upper radiator hose on Tim's truck and Tim recruited an Anthropology student to return to Haiti with him.

15 January 2010 -- The Real Nightmare

Driving home this afternoon through Port-au-Prince, less than 72 hours after the earthquake, the collapsed buildings stood as testimony to the quake. The Haitian people, however, seemed normal. The gas stations are functioning, the cooking charcoal is available, drinking water is flowing, and the street markets are operating. Ate too many MREs yesterday, so we stopped and bought a papaya, a pineapple, two avocados, and several tomatoes. The fruit was beautiful and close to normal Haitian prices. Where is the disaster? This morning we drove to the airport and offered our services to an Army unit distributing bottled water. The US taxpayer flew bottled water down here, along with heavily armed troops to distribute it by helicopter. We could have delivered it by Tim's truck. The Haitians would have been happy to have an extra plastic bottle, but they are getting plenty of water from their normal wells. Then, the mission was postponed and the troops were diverted to handle the "riot" of passengers boarding planes to leave. The chaos I saw today was inside the carefully-secured confines of the Airport and was the chaotic process of gaining positive media attention. Time to leave. With luck, the chaos will remain at the airport and the Haitians can get on with their lives. Later, we did see one helicopter delivering water to a select group of people within easy news camera range of the US Embassy. At the embassy, the security guards claimed a "riot" justified their increased presence, which prevented us from even entering. Scripted justifications easily allow millions of dollars to be wasted. The streets of Port-au-Prince already show many healthy signs of normalcy, before the tsunami of massive foreign "aid" has even struck.

14 January 2010 -- Disaster Relief

"Man, I cannot write a book about this because people will just think I am bitter," are the words of Tim Schwartz after a day of driving a Search and Rescue Team around Port-au-Prince. We went to the US Embassy to help, since they had evacuated so many embassy personnel that they are now short-handed. We helped a Search and Rescue team from Fairfax Virginia drive around town. Tim's fluent Kreyol and knowledge of Port-au-Prince seemed to be the only thing that kept them on the right track, in the right place, and out of the traffic jams. In the afternoon, Tim's pickup truck was the only transportation they had. Embassy vehicles I saw were either sitting empty and waiting to go on some convoy, or sitting broken in the parking lot. The Fairfax team had sniffer dogs and we went to several collapsed buildings where high-profile people were trapped. For some reason we drove past the buildings where Haitian peasants would have been trapped. The dogs were not impressive and by the end of the day we had not found anyone, but the team did present themselves well for the media. At the end of the day, the back section of the Embassy compound was filled with groups of additional searchers and their equipment. They did not have vehicles available to go out and do anything, but they seemed to entertain themselves with stories of how well trained they were. The Haitians seem resigned to facing another disaster. Many have left the city and are living with relatives in the countryside. Once relief efforts actually start distributing aid, it will probably only attract crowds of people back to a city that is still lacking a full complement of services. The first thing I would provide is gasoline. The indigenous transportation network could provide services, if it only had fuel. I could go on and on, but you would just think I am bitter....

13 January 2010 -- Earthquake in Haiti - The morning after

The largest earthquake in 200 years hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last evening. I was in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic, with Tim Schwartz and Alex Deprez. We had just checked in to a hotel by the beach, when we were warned of a possible tsunami from the earthquake. Time to get away from the beach. We decided to drive to Port-au-Prince. Partly to get Alex Deprez, a US Embassy employee, back to his family, and partly to see if we could help out. Driving all night, changing cars in Santo Domingo, and slipping through a deserted Haitian border station, brought us to Port-au-Prince as the sun was coming up. The bigger buildings that could not flex enough seemed to bear the most damage. Many badly wounded people are still lying in the streets because the hospitals are filled. Aftershocks are still coming through. It seems that only an earthquake could make Port-au-Prince any worse. When will something good happen to the Haitian people?