from Reed Lindsay

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/24/haiti-earthquake-aftermath-reed-lindsay

As the tremors and the NGOs recede, Haitians con­tinue the fight against colo­nial­ism that their ances­tors began 220 years ago

Peo­ple climb onto depart­ing buses in Port au Prince, Haiti. Pho­to­graph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Nearly two weeks have passed since the earth­quake, and jour­nal­ists are begin­ning to leave. The obvi­ous sto­ries have been done and, for some, things are becom­ing monotonous.

I’ve seen this hap­pen before: the hur­ri­cane that dev­as­tated Gonaives in 2008, the food cri­sis of that year, the armed rebel­lion that led to Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s removal by US troops. When cat­a­stro­phe strikes, Haiti is swarmed by for­eign­ers, jour­nal­ists, for­eign troops, aid work­ers, diplo­mats and celebri­ties. But the world can only take so much tragedy and soon Haiti is back to mak­ing occa­sional appear­ances in a news brief.

Yes­ter­day I was behind one of Haiti’s colour­fully painted buses usu­ally adorned with inspir­ing bib­li­cal slo­gans. This one was unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cally mor­bid: “Life is not only roses, it is some­times dark.” Life has never seemed darker. Around 120,000 are dead, thou­sands maimed, hun­dreds of thou­sands home­less, liveli­hoods destroyed. Food, water and med­i­cine are finally start­ing to arrive, but the demand con­tin­ues to over­whelm supply.

The out­look in Haiti was never rosy; now it is bleak. Tragedy was never hard to find, although in ordi­nary times it could take some ground­work to root out the quin­tes­sen­tial story. Now it’s impos­si­ble to avoid.

Dur­ing the five years I lived in Port-au-Prince, the ques­tion would often be raised in con­ver­sa­tion as to whether there was any hope for Haiti. The answer, for many vis­it­ing for­eign jour­nal­ists, UN bureau­crats and aid work­ers, was resound­ingly neg­a­tive. Haiti was too poor, too defor­ested, too far behind the rest of the world. Its peo­ple were too cor­rupt, dis­or­gan­ised, duplic­i­tous, oppor­tunis­tic. In darker moments, I too could fall into this pes­simistic per­spec­tive, but then I would wit­ness an act of unso­licited kind­ness or sol­i­dar­ity or per­se­ver­ance or dig­nity, and I would be reminded of the spirit and strength of the Hait­ian people.

On Fri­day, I vis­ited a refugee camp near the air­port. Nobody had had any con­tact with inter­na­tional organ­i­sa­tions except the Red Cross, which had dis­trib­uted high-energy bis­cuits and 350 tar­pau­lins, enough for 10% of the fam­i­lies. The gov­ern­ment and elite, the US, France and Canada, the UN and NGOs, are already plan­ning to move these refugees into larger camps where tents could be replaced by houses. But the peo­ple here knew noth­ing of this. As always here, the poor have lit­tle or no rep­re­sen­ta­tion in these meetings.

Instead they are on the ground. In the camp, a tall, young Hait­ian stood over a water-dispensing hose, gen­tly berat­ing a group of women squab­bling over their order in the line. He had spent hours mak­ing sure peo­ple kept calm. In the alleys between the tents, one of which already had a street name writ­ten on a piece of wood nailed to a stick, a man was giv­ing choco­lates to chil­dren. He was in a com­mit­tee set up to dis­trib­ute aid when it came. Another group was dis­cussing strate­gies for security.

When the jour­nal­ists are gone, when the inter­na­tional aid busi­ness returns to nor­mal, when the marines leave, when the peace­keep­ing mis­sion packs up or changes its name, life will go on in Haiti and Haitians will con­tinue the strug­gle their ances­tors began 220 years ago against colonialism.

And the major play­ers in Haiti � the US, France and Canada, the UN, the major finan­cial insti­tu­tions and inter­na­tional NGOs, the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and elite � are likely to con­tinue to “help Haiti” obliv­i­ous to this struggle.

The exclu­sion of the poor from the deci­sions that affect them explains why the most recent pre-earthquake inter­na­tional efforts to help Haiti were focused on increas­ing the num­ber of maquilado­ras � or fac­to­ries � where busi­nesses pay neg­li­gi­ble taxes and Haitians make sub­sis­tence wages, if they are lucky. It explains why most inter­na­tional aid is spent on NGO bureau­cra­cies and what rel­a­tively lit­tle money gets to the Hait­ian peo­ple cre­ates depen­den­cies instead of self-sufficiency. It explains why a UN peace­keep­ing mis­sion con­sid­ered a suc­cess in New York and Wash­ing­ton is reviled in Haiti. It explains, in part, why the future for hun­dreds of thou­sands of Haitians is so uncertain.

Reed Lind­say was a jour­nal­ist in Haiti before start­ing the Honor and Respect Foun­da­tion, a project aimed at get­ting Hait­ian chil­dren into school.