Haiti Earthquake

I arrived in Haiti without incident, but there was definitely something more emotional than usual about the flight. Mine was one of the first commercial flights. Usually planes to Haiti are filled with U.S. church people on one kind of mission or another (it seems like everyone and their cousin has some kind of project in Haiti, and that was before the earthquake), and you can tell which ones they are because they often wear matching hats or t-shirts...and sometimes great big crosses. There was one such group this time, but there were also groups with t-shirts that said things like "hazmat team," and there was one obvious medical team as well. The one church group had matching combat vests, and i saw one of them reading a manual entitled "hostage survival." I think they have been watching too many sensationalistic news reports. And you can imagine that i have some choice words to say about equating church ministry with combat.

But the vast majority of passengers were Haitians visiting their relatives, all of them carrying stuff. Many people had tents and sleeping bags as their hand luggage...maybe for themselves but more likely for relatives who are still sleeping outside. People were also carrying bags of toiletry items...probably because their checked bag was overweight, and so they had to take it out and carry it on (i did the same thing...i had 150 pounds of luggage and had to stuff things into my carry-on while at the check-in counter so they wouldn't charge another 100 bucks for being overweight). Several people were carrying on giant teddy bears. That was what nearly moved me to tears.

As we were landing in Port-au Prince I could see from the window vast tent cities. The nicer ones were relief workers, complete with supplies piled high. When we were driving through Port-au-Prince, i could see that some of the Haitian tent cities had matching canvas tents which were obviously donated by some agency or another. But many of them were tents made of any kind of thing: tin, plastic, cardboard, sheets...whatever. They were packed into places where the rubble had been cleared. There was plenty of substandard housing like this in Port-au-Prince before (something that many relief workers likely do not know) but now it has multiplied and is located in places where it never was before. And they are all suffering from lack of sanitary facilities, clean water, or food.

You have all seen pictures of the devastation, so there is no need to repeat it here. Basically, there are piles of rubble everywhere.

I am in Les Cayes now and leave for Baraderes tomorrow. I am staying with my friend Pascal, who is also housing a group of medical relief workers from Mexico. I had an interesting discussion with them this morning. They were telling me about their work, which involves treating amputees and all kinds of injuries from the earthquake. Some people were lucky enough to make their way to Les Cayes for treatment, and they are still arriving. Many of them have received no medical treatment whatsoever since the earthquake. They say the hospitals here are saturated.

They told me the story of one man who was trapped under the rubble and he cut off his own arm to escape. He arrived at the hospital some time later, with his arm wrapped but the bone and muscle hanging out. And they said there are many such stories.

Then we got into a discussion about what they have learned from being here. They are horrified at the extent of the poverty, and that it is the whole country, and not just isolated or small pockets. They don't understand why it is like this, but by and large they blame the government. They said they felt "impotent" here...that they could not even make a dent in the need. (I have heard medical people say that before. I think they are used to being able to fix things.) They are amazed at the resilience of people (like someone cutting off his arm, and then surviving for several weeks before making his way to another city because he heard there were foreign doctors there). They said it made them think about their own lives in Mexico. Haiti does that to people.

They said that they learned that life is short, too short to just conform to social norms and live a life according to the expectations of status and success. They said you have to do at least one good thing with your life. One young nurse told me that she thinks this trip was not that thing...that she has to think of something to do with her life that will affect others long term... not to save the whole world, but affect some small group or groups where she is. It was good to reflect with them. I hope those sentiments last.

Tiquisio and World Peace

Main Street in Tiquisio

Tiquisio has been hit hard by the long-running conflict in Colombia. A long list of people from the area have been killed or "disappeared" by all three types of armed groups: guerrilla, para-military, and Colombian armed forces. In 2003, instead of displacing, which many communities in their situation feel forced to do, under the leadership of their creative parish priest, Padre Rafael Gallego, Tiquisio decided to take matters into its own hands.

The community launched what they call "The Citizens' Process," and, with the accompaniment of a number of outside groups, they developed a plan to stay on their lands and kick out the armed groups. They say that as a result of this process, the activities of armed groups have decreased dramatically, and now they have opened up the space for economic development. They have a well-thought-out plan for doing so; they just don't have anyone to invest in them.

Like everywhere in Colombia with natural resources, they are under threat by large multi-national corporations who want to come in and exploit the resources in away that benefits investors, but will displace the people. In other words, after kicking out the armed groups, the threat of displacement is not over, because the multinationals are a new threat. They feel that the solution is a development project of their own which does not leave any space for the multinationals to enter.

After awhile, everywhere I go it starts to feel like the same story. The multinationals are a catalyst for more violence, because they are a threat to peoples' identity and way of life. One of the things that the conflict resolution literature of the past few years has taught us is that people resort to violence when their identity is being threatened in some way.

I asked a number of people why they thought people joined the armed groups (whether guerrilla, para-military, or military). The answer was uniformly the same: unemployment. People are not joining for ideological reasons; they are joining to deal with poverty. This should give all of us pause, since US tax dollars are paying for the Colombian military. What would it be like if US tax dollars paid for small-scale development projects that brought work and dignity to poverty-stricken communities, instead of paying for the military to violently rout out the other armed groups only to open up space for the multinationals to come in and do so-called "sustainable" development projects?

Another interesting thing I learned was that prior to the beginning of the Citizens' Process, there was a goup of Franciscan missionaries in Tiquisio who fled as a result of threats from the Colombian military. This happened in the early 90s. Padre Rafael also displaced for a short time this past spring due to threats from para-militaryforces (which is basically the same things as the military in Colombia). But as a result of the Citizens' Process, Padre Rafael and others dialogued with the Colombian military and created the conditions for him to return to Tiquisio.

I have learned that processes like the one in Tiquisio, which rely on accompaniment for a variety of things, end up opening up space in a conflict zone both for dialogue with armed groups and for economic development. The key to a lasting peace are economic development projects that don't just lead to further poverty and displacement for local people.

What the people said confirms a lot of what I already thought. For one thing, lasting peace will not come from above; it will come from below, village by village. If we want to build a lasting peace, we have to invest in these villages, one-by-one. Now I think you can understand the rationale for Just Haiti. We have to invest in them, but not with our charity, which gets them nowhere. We have to invest in them so that they receive training and leadership formation, so that they can come up with their own development plans, and then we have to invest in their plans. I wish it was as simple to put in practice as it is to write about here. Where are the people who want to put their money here?

In my view, what Tiquisio really needs right now is a sister parish (and people said as much, but in different words). They need the friendship and solidarity of a community that is walking with them, and regular investment of funds from a parish in the north. They don't need huge investment; they need small-scale investment. They would be an awesome candidate for it.