Hurricane

Preparations ramp up as Haiti braces for Hurricane Matthew

Miami Herald
October 2, 2016 4:45 PM By Jacqueline Charles

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI

Haitian interim President Jocelerme Privert warned Haitians Sunday to make preparations for Hurricane Matthew, which no longer threatened just the southern peninsula, but all of Haiti.

The heavily deforested nation is not only at risk of mudslides, but also serious flooding that could lead to the loss of lives and damage to homes. There are also concerns about a spike in cholera, the waterborne disease that has killed more than 9,000 and sickened more than 700,000 Haitians since it was introduced to the country six years ago this month.

It’s not just cholera residents are concerned about. Next Sunday’s rerun presidential and legislative elections could also be affected by the storm. Privert said the elections remain as scheduled for Oct. 9. However, one official said they will decide if a postponement is necessary later in the week after they have a better idea about Matthew’s impact.

Preparation, Privert said in a national address, cannot wait. He called on those living in houses at risk of collapsing under rain and wind to seek refuge with family and friends, and for those living along the coast to evacuate.

Privert also announced that schools would close on Monday and Tuesday so that many of them can be used as shelters. Haiti suspended inter-departmental travel and public outdoor markets Sunday and the Interior Ministry announced late in the day that both international airports in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haitien would be closed from 6 a.m. Monday to 6 a.m. Wednesday.

“My Haitian people,” Privert said, “don’t be stubborn, don’t think ‘God is Good’ [and will take care of you].”

“The message we are giving is important. You will have to evacuate all of the areas that represent a danger for you,” he said. “The life of every person is important to us.”

Haiti’s 10 million citizens were told to heed all warnings from authorities in the coming hours so that “if the hurricane comes to Haiti, the damages are as less as possible,” the president said, speaking in a national address from the National Emergency Operations Center (COUN) Sunday afternoon.

Since Saturday, workers in orange shirts from the Office of Civil Protection were mobilizing across the mountainous country, warning citizens of the pending storm. They also were trying to buy hurricane supplies.

Haitian officials said they did not get the same quantity of aid, including hurricane supplies, from foreign donors this year as in previous years. And while they “drastically reduced spending,” they remain strapped for cash to address damages if Matthew hits the country hard.

 

“We will not beg, but we will not refuse either,” Interior Minister Francois Anick Joseph told the Miami Herald.

Joseph said they had several tons of rice, which had previously been donated by Japan, that they plan to use if need be. There were also water and mattresses in stock. On Sunday morning, France had asked whether it could dispatch two surveillance airplanes into Haitian airspace to survey the southern coastlines. The government gave the O.K.

The U.S. Agency for International Development deployed two disaster response teams to Haiti and Jamaica Sunday to help coordinate relief efforts in the region.

“The biggest threat we have over our heads is water,” Joseph said. “When you hear hurricane, it means rain, it means wind, it means the sea rising.”

Joseph said there were 1,300 shelters available for the country that were able to host 340,000 people. He also clarified another statistic. He said there were 381 firefighters for the country — not 30 as someone said the previous day during a hurricane preparation meeting. He said there were 30 for Port-au-Prince.

“We are very concerned about the country’s vulnerability,” Joseph said. “We’ve redoubled our efforts to reduce the risk for the population.”

In all, he said, there were 18,196 government employees already deployed or ready to be deployed to help the population if the storm were to hit hard.

In Port-au-Prince, winds were beginning to pick up and it was drizzling on and off Sunday afternoon. Bulldozers could be seen in some parts of the capital, clearing streets of mountains of trash. Many canals, however, remained clogged with trash.

By 5 p.m. the rain had also started to pour in the southeastern coastal city of Jacmel.

Officials did not discuss money during the national address. But Joseph conceded that the cash-strapped country was working with very little and did not have the financial means that it had in years past. What it does have, he said, is manpower, which is being tapped throughout the country.

“We have no choice but to mobilize throughout the country,” he said. “I also believe that it’s an occasion for us to show our resilience, to show the capacity that we have in the face of adversity.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti authorized family members of U.S. government employees to leave the country and recommended that U.S. citizens do the same. The embassy will be closed Monday and Tuesday.

In Petionville, a tiny suburb above Port-au-Prince, at least one gas station had already boarded up Sunday evening.

Dr. Jean Pierre Brisma, who was buying groceries at Big Star Supermarket in Petionville, said he is concerned about Matthew and the damage it could create.

"I don't think the country is ready," he said. Brisma said recent rains, which have triggered flooding in Petionville and elsewhere, show what a little bit of rain can do.

"If the government doesn't stop people from building anywhere and how they want, we will always be vulnerable to hurricanes," he said.

Canada & Haiti

Canada showing Haiti some tough love

Canadian officials feeling 'intense frustration' with Haiti's 'kleptocracy'
By Evan Dyer, CBC News Posted: Sep 25, 2016

Two protesters carrying Haitian flags on their heads march during a demonstration against the electoral process in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Canada has told Haiti it will not provide additional funds to rerun its election next month; international international observers say the result should have stood when Haitians went to the polls last year. (Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hosted his U.S. and Mexican counterparts in Ottawa in June, the three countries' foreign ministers found a topic they could all agree on, according to Canadian officials.
Everyone has had it with Haiti.
The earthquake that levelled much of capital city Port-au-Prince in 2010, killing at least 200,000 people, triggered the largest outpouring of Canadian private charity ever directed overseas: $221 million.
Since the quake, Canada has sent about $1.2 billion to Haiti, the hemisphere's poorest country, including $11 million to help pay for its failed presidential election last October. Per capita, Canadians have given more to Haiti in recent years than any other country.
But donor fatigue may finally be setting in for Haiti's most loyal backer, and the corruption and dysfunction of Haiti's ruling elite is mostly to blame.
From its place as the top recipient of Canadian aid in 2010, Haiti fell to 16th in 2015, with new favourite Ukraine getting more than five times as much.

Democracy delayed

Next month Haiti will attempt to rerun last year's national election.
The October vote failed to produce a winner after opposition parties claimed it was marred by widespread fraud, including hundreds of thousands of "zombie votes." Opposition mobs attacked polling stations, overwhelming Haitian police and forcing the cancellation of the second round of voting.
But the foreign donors who paid for the election — and who dispatched 408 observers to watch it — said it was clean.
"They tossed out the results from a perfectly good election," says Jim Morrell, executive director of the Haiti Democracy Project in Washington D.C. His organization provided 208 of those 408 observers.
The 200 observers from the Organization of American States, paid for mostly by the U.S., Canada and Brazil, agreed: the election was clean by Haitian standards and the results should have stood.
However, faced with a fait accompli, the foreign donors reluctantly agreed to try again when Haiti promised a rerun in January. But two days before it was to take place, Haiti postponed it again, setting yet another date in April.

Residents walk next to graffiti of presidential candidate Maryse Narcisse, together with ousted deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in a street of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. (Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

By this point, Haiti was being ruled by an unelected interim president. When Haiti once again announced it was not ready to open the polls, donors' patience began to run out.
"Canada deplores the fact that the elections, scheduled to take place on April 24, have been cancelled for the third time," said Canada's Foreign Minister Stéphane Dion at the time.
With the latest rerun just around the corner, on Oct. 9, it's not clear what has changed, except that Haiti will have a whole lot less Canadian assistance.

Canada: No new money for elections

Haiti went into last year's presidential election with a fund of about $100 million from foreign donors to pay for it. The U.S. and Canada provided about half of that money.
Canada has told Haiti it will have to use whatever money is left over from that to pay for next month's rerun. (Global Affairs Canada, the federal body that leads Canada's international development and humanitarian assistance efforts, estimates that $6.3 million remains in the fund.)
It's also looking doubtful Canada will provide observers this time.

Presidential candidates, left to right, Jean-Henry Ceant, Jude Celestin, Edmonde Supplice Beauzile, Moise Jean-Charles and Jovenel Moise get ready to pose for a picture at the end of a debate in Port-au-Prince, Haiti last year. The results of that election were thrown out. (Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

"We are currently assessing our potential support for the OAS Electoral Observation Mission," says Jessica Seguin of Global Affairs Canada. "Canada urges Haitian political actors to assume their responsibility to the Haitian people by completing impartial, transparent and credible elections within the established timeline."
It's a dramatic change from past elections, which Canada has always been there to scrutinize. In 2006, Canada's then-chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, personally led a team of Canadian observers to Haiti. One of them, Cheickh Bangoura of Ottawa, was shot in the arm carrying out his duties in Port-au-Prince, but was back at his post observing the vote the next day.
In private, senior government sources say Ottawa may yet relent and provide some token assistance, but with the clear message that Canada is fed up with Haiti's leaders playing political games on the donor's dime.
"At the end we may make some small contribution," says a senior official with the Trudeau government. "But mainly because we don't want to spite ourselves," he added, pointing out that if Haiti descends further into chaos the fallout could end up costing Canada even more.

Disillusioned by corruption

A major factor in Canada's disillusionment with aid to Haiti has been the ruling elite's penchant for violence and venality.
"It goes to the behaviour and opportunism of the political class," says Morrell. "Typically a president arrives in power with one idea, to hold power and aggrandize power. They don't really represent anyone but themselves."
Political parties in Haiti are organized around personalities and patronage, rather than ideology, which former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide once described as being like a hat you can put on and take off.

'You have no choice, because otherwise the money will just go into the pockets of people who are building the mansions.'  - Jim Morrell, Haiti Democracy Project

The Haitian government has criticized Canada for channeling its aid money through foreign NGOs, rather than through the Haitian government.
One senior Canadian official says Canada has little choice, describing Haiti's system of government as a "kleptocracy."
Morell admits that approach has failed to build capacity within the government. "But you have no choice, because otherwise the money will just go into the pockets of the people who are building the mansions. That's why we keep coming back to elections. That's why we've chosen to make our investment in building Haitian democracy.
"Over time, if given real choices, Haitians would choose the more competent people from among them."
Morrell says it's sad that Canada is pulling back from assisting Haiti, but also understandable.
"They need some tough love," he says

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HTT Editorial: We feel there are a couple of issues which aren't mentioned in this article.  1.) Once again, due to the government not being able to manage the country in a responsible manner, continuing to alienate Haiti from the rest of the world, it is the individual Haitian who ultimately suffers the consequences of their government's actions.  2.) Donor fatigue. as reported in this article, has a trickle down effect, which ends up threatening all donations, aid, assistance to the Haitians, because donors continue to read about the corruption of the Haiti government.  Again, it is the individual Haitian who bears the brunt.

Election Update

International observers will start arriving in Haiti for Oct. 9 vote

Miami Herald
September 17, 2016
By Jacqueline Charles


"Elections materials continue to arrive in Haiti from Dubai for Oct. 9 presidential redo and legislative vote. Courtesy of Provisional Electoral Council"

  Elections experts from the Organization of American States will begin arriving in Haiti on Sunday for the Oct. 9 presidential rerun.

The OAS is expected to have about 130 observers for the balloting for president and legislative seats. Former UruguayanSen. Juan Raul Ferreira will lead the OAS’ mission.

“Even though we never expressly accepted that the right decision was to do a redo, the OAS is there,” said Gerardo de Icaza, director of the hemispheric body’s department of electoral cooperation and observation. “We’re happy that at least a political crisis is being solved through a democratic way.”

The United States and others in the international community have publicly opposed Haiti’s decision to scrap the results of its contested Oct. 25 first-round presidential vote. The U.S. announced that it would not underwrite the $55 million re-do and the European Union pulled its elections observers. But in recent months, U.S. officials have said they support the process and the U.S. is among seven countries funding the OAS’ elections mission.

De Icaza said they have received reports that Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council is applying some of their recommendations, like better ink, to improve the process. The OAS has also offered statistical training for quicker preliminary election results.

“It was the Haitian decision to do them over and now it’s the Haitian responsibility to own that decision and to prove to the world that they were right and they could have better elections than the ones we saw on Oct. 25,” de Icaza said. “Every electoral process has flaws, but hopefully they won’t be as significantly as they were on Oct. 25 and Aug. 9.”

So far every major presidential candidate has been out campaigning in hopes of avoiding a Jan. 8 runoff. Also campaigning is former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. On Friday, he fainted during a campaign rally in the city of Cap-Haitien on behalf of his Fanmi Lavalas political party candidate Maryse Narcisse. "I did not drink enough water", Aristide told reporters Saturday before continuing on to Ouanaminthe.

Last week, opposition candidate Jude Célestin who finished second last year, announced the signing of a political accord with five political parties and four presidential candidates backing his program.
Meanwhile, Jovenel Moïse and Moïse Jean-Charles, who finished first and third respectively, are also mobilizing supporters telling them they are the best choice for a politically unstable Haiti.

No Electricity

7.5 million Haitians are living without electricity
Haiti Libre
09/09/2016

According to a study of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) presented by Fernando César Ferreira, Executive Secretary of the Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE), in Latin America, nearly 30 million people are still living without electricity, including at the top 7.5 million in Haiti, followed by Argentina (2.1 million), Bolivia (1.8 million), Brazil (1.7 million), Colombia (1.7 million) and Guatemala (1.6 million) among others.

Fernando César Ferreira, stated that the lack of access to electricity in the most affected countries, is mainly due to lack of infrastructure and not to the cost of energy.

The report indicates that in Latin America the average rate of urban electrification is 99% and 82% in rural area with large imbalance for some countries like Haiti.

Moreover, according to this report, in the Region, 87 million people still cook with charcoal.

Justice Thru Coffee

"Journeying through the mountains of Haiti to see the face of Justice"
A reflection by Nicky Santos, S.J.

In a number of instances, Pope Francis invites us to go to the margins to encounter the real lives of the poor. In many respects my trip this August was such a journey.

I had the privilege of journeying with Kim Lamberty through the mountains of Haiti, visiting associations of coffee growers who benefit from the Just Haiti model of business. My interest in the trip to Haiti was to understand this business model and, as a co-formulator of the Integrative Justice model, to assess Just Haiti's conformity with the normative prescriptions developed in this Integrative Justice model.
 

When I signed up for this trip I had no idea how bumpy and treacherous  the mountain roads in Haiti were. On our first day as we drove from the Torbeck area to Baraderes and then to Fond TorTue there were many a time I thought to myself that I would be lucky to get through this trip alive. Well, I am writing this account so I did, thanks to an excellent driver and the grace of God of course. 

This trip to Haiti was on the heels of two other international trips: in July, one to Ghana and the other to Kenya. In all these trips I was able to briefly enter the lives of the poor, momentarily experience the struggles they face, be inspired by their resilience and at the same time be appalled by the injustices of the world we live in and to renew my commitment to work for justice in whatever way I could, however small. While I could have perhaps studied Just Haiti's business model from their website, what was important was to see it in action and to hear the stories of the coffee growers and to judge for myself whether Just Haiti's claim that it provided maximum benefit for the coffee growers was indeed true. 
 

We visited three associations of coffee growers: KDB in Fond TorTue (Baraderes region), OPCDEL in Toy-Toy (Belladere region) and one in Beaudachita (Leogane region). My assessment after my trip is that Just Haiti does provide much value to the coffee growers. In all three locations, the coffee growers were extremely happy to do business with Just Haiti. Earlier, they had been accustomed to being exploited by coffee speculators or unscrupulous middlemen. With Just Haiti not only were they grateful for a higher price for their coffee but also a share of the profits after final sales in the U.S. (benefits as they call them). 

Just Haiti's model is indeed a unique one, although it borrowed initial ideas from a Mexican model. Just Haiti's model uses a combination of earned revenue (selling coffee) and contributed income (contributions and support from U.S. partner organizations to the coffee growers' associations). However, unlike most social entrepreneurship organizations that I am aware of, contributed income does not come just by way of a one-time grant but rather a process of constant accompaniment.

Further, I also believe that Just Haiti's model conforms to the normative prescriptions of the Integrative Justice Model (IJM) for impoverished markets. For those not familiar with the IJM, I mention the key elements of the framework briefly here:

1. authentic engagement without exploitative intent;
2. co-creation of value;
3. investment in future consumption;
4. interest representation of all stakeholders; and
5. long-term profit management.

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Author note:
Nicky is a Jesuit priest from India and currently a member of the Wisconsin Province. He is an assistant professor of Marketing at Marquette University, Milwaukee and is co-director of the University's social innovation initiative. He is also co-chair of Marquette's CRS Global Campus Initiative.

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Drink Just Haiti Coffee to grow justice, support Haitian businesses, create jobs, provide education!

New UN-supported water supply system inaugurated in Haiti

Caribbean News Now! Published on September 10, 2016

One of seven drinking water kiosks for residents of Madame Cyr, Haiti.
Photo: Frederic Fath/MINUSTAH

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti -- As part of its quick impact projects, the United Nations mission Haiti has inaugurated a new water supply system that is expected to provide for more than 13,800 people – more than half of whom are women – in parts of the country’s Central Department (Département du Centre), the mission said on Thursday.

“We are aware that this is not enough and that there is still much to do,” the Chief of Civil Affairs of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), Pierre Ubalijoro, said in a recent news release.

“The task is great but the UN system will continue to support the Haitian government and the Central Department to strengthen the system of supply of drinking water,” he added.

According to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), quick impact projects (QIPs) are small-scale, low-cost projects that are planned and implemented within a short timeframe. Different actors beyond peacekeeping also fund or implement QIPs with varying objectives. MINUSTAH has undertaken QIPs to support the country’s government in implementing projects to combat water-borne diseases, such as diarrhea, typhoid fever and cholera.

Built at a cost of $95,000 – 95 percent of which was funded by MINUSTAH – this latest project is centred on Nan Pwa, Madame-Cyr and nearby localities. It is expected to help ensure that need for clean water for drinking, cooking and hygiene is met even during rainy seasons, during which the usual sources of water are contaminated by sedimentary sludge. Some 250 local residents were also provided with temporary jobs during the construction of the system.

The water system, which includes some 5.5 kilometres of pipes and seven water distribution points, is also expected to alleviate the burden on the local population of having to travel long distances to fetch safe water.

The project has now been handed over to the country’s national agency for water supply and sanitation, called the Direction nationale de l’eau potable et de l’assainissement, which will look after the running of the system, providing services to the population and the plant’s maintenance.

U.N. & Cholera

H.T.T editorial note: We can only imagine if this had happened in the U.S. Events, as such, in developing countries are greatly minimized. And instead of being being seen as the victim, these countries and their circumstances are sometimes seen as the cause. It becomes a vicious circle, of catch twenty two implications.

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"The U.N. finally owns up to its role in Haiti’s cholera outbreak."
The Washington Post
By Editorial Board
August 18 at 7:20 PM


LIKE CLIMATE change deniers, the United Nations for years has stood virtually alone against the weight of scientific opinion on its own peacekeepers’ responsibility for the outbreak of cholera six years ago in Haiti, which continues to suffer from the world’s worst epidemic of that deadly disease. That stance, regarding an epidemic that has killed more than 10,000 people and infected hundreds of thousands, is “morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating,” according to a new report from a top adviser to the organization. Not to mention scientifically obtuse. Spurred by the report from Philip Alston, a New York University law professor who is a human rights adviser to the organization, the U.N. is finally acknowledging its complicity in Haiti’s cholera crisis. Breaking a steely silence, a spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the New York Times that the organization “needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera.” A new policy will be prepared after consultations with Haitian officials and other governments.
It is difficult to overstate the damage the U.N. has done to its own prestige and moral standing by its pig-headed denialism. The disease, absent from the country for at least a century, struck soon after the arrival in 2010 of several hundred peacekeeping troops from Nepal, which at the time was struggling with a cholera outbreak. Untreated waste from the peacekeepers’ base was discharged into a nearby river and, in short order, Haitians in nearby villages began to get sick and die. In a nation with paltry infrastructure and an anemic public health system, the disease spread quickly.
Epidemiologists soon traced the outbreak, and even the specific strain of cholera, to the U.N. base, concluding there was no other plausible source of the disease. Despite that, U.N. officials adopted a three-monkeys policy: They saw nothing. They heard nothing. They said nothing.
That tone-deaf stance appeared driven by U.N. lawyers, loath to crack the shell of legal immunity they insisted was the U.N.’s birthright. Doubtless, they feared any admission that might expose the organization to billions of dollars of claims in lawsuits arising from deaths and infections, not to mention from people affected in the future.
That lawyerly posture was heedless of the U.N. charter, whose preamble affirms its commitment to human rights, “better standards of life” and other goals at odds with a flat refusal to own up to the facts in Haiti.
The reality, which the U.N. at last seems ready to accept, is that the organization must recognize its responsibility and renew its commitment to combat cholera in Haiti and strengthen the nation’s public health infrastructure, which the organization has previously pledged to improve, to little effect. That may be difficult and costly; the alternative was untenable.

New Motorcycle Regulations

Haiti Libre
30/07/2016

The General Directorate of the National Police of Haiti has decided to establish a set of security measures, which will be strictly enforced throughout the territory of Haiti, to better protect the population.

These measures will take effect first in the metropolitan area, before spreading across the country.

Michel-Ange Gédéon, the Director General a.i. of the PNH, ask all "motorcycle owners in the metropolitan area to go to the Polcie Station of Communes in which they reside, to declare all newly purchased motorcycle and register those already in circulation.

Communes directly affected by the new measures :
Port-au-Prince, Pétion-ville, Delmas, Carrefour, Cité Soleil, Tabarre and Croix-des-Bouquets.

Motorcycle owners will have to submit upon registration the following documents :

• National Owner Identification Card ;
  
• Tax ID or driving license of the owner ;
  
• Original of the vehicle insurance card ;
  
• Original of the vehicle registration card ;
  
• Contract signed between the owner and driver ;
  
• National Identification Card of driver ;
  
• 2 recent ID photos of driver ;
  
• Driving license of the driver ;
  
• 2 reference names.
  

The persons concerned must report immediately, in the Polcie Stations of the respective commune for the registration formalities. The Directorate General of the PNH, relies on the cooperation of all for the full respect of these measures."

Conservation Hero: Jean Wiener

For nearly a quarter century,
a local marine biologist has been fighting for Haiti’s environment.
It’s finally paying off.

bioGraphic
Story by David Brian Butvill



It’s high noon on a hot, Caribbean island when a young boy arrives at a stretch of coast. He doesn’t play in the sand or splash in the water. He just takes in the incredible scene: trash, a foot deep, as far as he can see. Plastic bottles, busted television sets, shoes, car tires—you name it, it’s there. Ripped clothing washes up into rippled piles like seaweed. It smells like a seashore—with rude overtones of human feces and urine. Nobody is in the water but for a few fisherman. All they ever haul in is garbage or dead, decomposed fish, poisoned by the pollution.

This is the child’s local shore in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The impression is still raw 45 years later. “It’s so literally disgusting, with trash and oil and… everything you can imagine,” says Jean Wiener, now 51. But even as a child, he knew it didn’t have to be that way. His family would travel an hour north to another beach, where he swam, snorkeled, and buried himself in the sand. Local fishermen gave him rides in their creaky wooden rowboats. “They’d come up and sell you fish and oysters,” Wiener remembers. He adored the place. But it made the disgraceful degree of filth back home unbearable. He remembers thinking, “Why—for God’s sake, we’re on a Caribbean Island—why can’t we just go to the closest shore and swim?”

In fact, it would be two decades before someone would do anything about the problem—and that someone would be him. More than 20 years ago, Wiener set out, alone, on an almost impossible journey—to revive the seas and coasts of one the most dilapidated nations on Earth. His crusade would mobilize entire villages and rescue hundreds of thousands of acres of endangered corals, critical wetlands, and everything in between.

Today, thanks to Wiener’s indomitable drive, Haiti’s coasts are making a comeback, and communities throughout the country are stepping up to protect their backyards and improve their lives. No one saves any habitat alone. But if Haiti’s coasts—and their plants, animals, and people—have a hero, that man is certainly Jean Wiener.

It was the late 1970s, and while soon-to-be U.S. President Jimmy Carter was selling peanuts, Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was exporting human body parts, making millions literally converting his people into profits. Following in the footsteps of his late father and predecessor, Francois Duvalier, his own private militia kept the public in line through violence and fear. People suspected of harboring anti-government sentiments—even kids—were systematically beaten and slain in the streets, some burned alive. Tens of thousands were kidnapped and tortured. Many simply disappeared.

Meanwhile, Duvalier partied and lived the high life, on the state’s tab. He accumulated motorcycles, sports cars, a yacht—even a condo in Trump Tower—while some 80 percent of the populace lived as they still do today: in abject poverty, without shoes, toilets, or basic services like gas or electricity. Most Haitian families live not check to check, but meal to meal. And too many of their babies die before their first birthdays. The last thing on people’s minds is how to save the environment.

But for pre-teen Jean Wiener, life was good. “I felt safe, things were calm, quiet,” he said, referring to his middle-class upbringing. He had a bike and would ride the dirt roads—the inevitable street dog nipping at his ankles—to meet up with friends to play soccer. Or pedal out to a creek to poke around. He appreciated the electricity and water when they were flowing, missed them when they weren’t. He had the luxury to care about the environment, and to want something better.

And for good reason. Although there were less-polluted oases—places where more fortunate families like Wiener’s would vacation—the country’s environment as a whole was in utter shambles. The problems started well before the Duvaliers. Since French colonial times, Haiti’s forests have been indiscriminately leveled; 98 percent of the trees are gone. At the same time, the country lies at the center of so-called Hurricane Alley, the warm, storm-spawning waters between Africa and the Caribbean. Relentless natural disasters (10 full-blown hurricanes in the past 11 years), on top of a long history of revolution and corrupt leaders, have wiped out Haiti’s natural areas, farmlands, infrastructure, and economy. Today, some 8 million of its 10 million people are living off a battered and beaten land and sea—with virtually no rule of law.

“Here, it’s the wild, wild West,” says Wiener. Locals mine corals and crush them to make concrete, or burn them into a powder and add water for cheap white paint. Fishermen trap basketfuls of underweight lobsters and fish—all the big ones are gone. On land, villagers hack down mangroves, the last coastal trees standing, and cook them into charcoal—a high-demand product, the main fuel used for cooking. All the while, each storm season, tens of thousands of pounds of garbage and topsoil from the denuded landscape wash into the Caribbean sea, burying seagrass beds, smothering reefs, and blocking the light that fuels the food chain.
 

This was the world Wiener set out to save. At 17, he left to study in the United States. He returned to Haiti in 1989, a 25-year-old marine biologist bent on making a difference.
 

He gave himself a fancy moniker—Fondation pour la Protection de la Biodiversité Marine, or FoProBiM—and within weeks was on his natal Port-au-Prince beach with an army of school kids and local fisherman. He’d convinced about 20 local businesses to donate gloves, water, and garbage bags. They collected hundreds of pounds of trash, documenting every item, and published the results in the country’s largest national newspaper, “to kind of announce our arrival,” Wiener says (even though FoProBiM was only him). This would kick off a lifelong habit of engaging people of all walks of life to solve their local problems. “You can’t do anything without the local communities being onboard,” says Wiener.

He’d spend the next several years cleaning other beaches and meeting with everyone he could—fishermen, farmers, church groups, hotel owners—to pinpoint problems, teach them about the bigger environmental issues, and rally folks into action. He also gathered research papers and reports from international scientists and institutions that had conducted projects in Haiti and then gone home with their data—creating the country’s only repository of local information on coastal marine science and resource management. He translated fisheries laws, written in French, into Creole—the only language understood by those the laws pertained to—and developed a field guide to marine life that unified terms in Creole, French, and English. He also trolled the international conservation community for funding. Heavyweights like the World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy took notice, and Wiener received his first grant, for $10,000, in 1994. The following year, Haiti recognized FoProBiM as an official nongovernmental organization, creating the first-ever coastal conservation institute in the country.
 

And so began another long list of firsts. With support from the United Nations’ scientific (UNESCO) and environmental (UNEP) arms, Wiener took to the marshes, measuring tree heights and trunk diameters of mangroves; to the sea, documenting corals and fish and gauging the health of reefs; to the air, assessing the coverage of coastal vegetation and encroaching agriculture; and even to space, using satellite imagery to pinpoint the countrywide extent of each of these ecosystems. He collected the nation’s first baseline data on seawater quality and spearheaded the first surveys of endangered sea turtles, manatees, and sea grasses. Synthesizing the data, he identified nine priority areas to be protected and restored, and he started pitching lawmakers. They didn’t see the point. “Believe it or not, on a Caribbean island nation, there is not a good understanding of the ocean and its importance to a Caribbean island nation!” Wiener says, incredulous.

So he began protecting the areas himself. He hired a right-hand man—a local fisherman still with him today—and together the duo began restoring reefs, transplanting healthy corals to degraded areas to bring them back to life. They created “coral gardens” away from reefs, to continuously sprout new specimens to bolster populations. And they built new reefs: one from 10,000 concrete blocks, and another out of 8,000 pounds of seashells. Both are thriving today.
 

On shore, they harvested mangrove seeds and grew seedlings offsite in makeshift nurseries. They paid some villagers to make bamboo pots, and others to plant young trees back where they belonged. “You pop them into the ground, basket and all,” explains Wiener. “The basket biodegrades, and the mangrove takes off.” The effort has bloomed into four active projects in the north. Wiener estimates that they’ve added about a million trees so far.

“Jean knows how to get things done in Haiti,” says Greg Cronin, an applied ecologist at the University of Colorado, Denver, who helped Wiener assess the potential impacts of a controversial U.S.-backed industrial park built just upstream from one of his priority sites. “He persistently pushes forward in the face of adversity.”

Indeed, by 2010, Wiener had reams of baseline data, had proven that areas could be restored, and had gotten local communities throughout the country on board with change. He’d even drafted the language for a law designating and protecting the priority sites he’d been pushing for a decade. Literally all the politicians would have to do was sign on the dotted line. He just needed the right politician.
 

That person came in the form of populist President Michel Martelly, elected in 2011. The horrific 2010 earthquake that rattled the world had come and gone. Haitians were hoping for a better future. And Martelly, a colorful, nationally famous musician known as “Sweet Micky,” was a breath of fresh air. “One of the priorities of [that] government was the environment, which was unheard of,” says Wiener.

Wiener pounced. With backing from the Organization of American States in Washington, DC, he systematically valuated the so-called ‘ecosystem services’ of his target habitats. For example, both mangroves and reefs serve as shelter and nurseries for fish, crabs, shrimp, and other commercially important species. They also act as first-line defenses against waves, storms, and wind. Mangroves stabilize the shoreline and trap silt from inland areas, maintaining water quality and protecting reefs as well as equally important seagrass beds. Wiener put a price on these benefits.
 

He concluded that the nine proposed conservation sites provide, at the very least, $9.6 billion worth of public services to Haiti annually. That’s a full two billion dollars more than the country’s entire GDP the year Martelly was elected. And that number was based on the ecosystems’ current state. Make these environments healthier, and that number would skyrocket. It was a language leaders spoke. “You have to put a dollar sign on it for them to understand,” says Wiener.
 

In a governmental blink of an eye, in July 2013, Haiti had signed into law the first marine protected area (MPA) in its 350-year history—a feat that had seemed all but impossible just a year earlier. By December, they’d banned the use of plastic bags and Styrofoam containers, made it illegal to cut down mangroves anywhere in the country, and added another MPA. All told, nearly half a million acres of the country’s healthiest and largest expanses of reef, seagrass, and mangrove were protected.

Just like that. “It was only 23 years of work,” jokes Wiener.

The achievement made Wiener a bona fide conservation icon. President Martelly would go on to present him the first environmental award ever given in the nation’s history. Wiener would also collect awards in England and the United States.

Most recently, last April, he’d find himself on stage in front of 4,000 people in the San Francisco Opera House. There to receive the coveted Goldman Environmental Prize, or Green Nobel, he spoke to the plight of local Haitians in light of the new MPAs. “No one will protect any resource until their basic livelihood needs are met. I can guarantee you that there is nowhere in the world where there is a hungry conservationist.”
 

Park or no park, if Haitians are to stop burning mangroves and hunting fish, they need new livelihoods. True to form, FoProBiM is creating some. Their most ambitious project turns fishermen and charcoal makers into beekeepers. Working with a master apiarist, Wiener and his crew install hives in mangroves on the outskirts of towns and train teams of locals in beekeeping. They guide them for months, as they learn how to manage bees, harvest comb, and eventually, establish spin-off colonies. The beekeepers sell honey and comb locally and at supermarkets in the city.

Fledgling apiarists are working dozens of hives throughout the northeast, and FoProBiM is now trying to develop new income streams around soap, wax candles, and lip balm. “It’s win-win-win-win all the way around,” says Wiener. The people get a long-term, multi-faceted flow of income—and free honey for life. The mangroves get an army of people guarding them like their lives depend on it. Every fisherman that is converted gives fish that much more of a break. And more mangroves means clearer water, healthier reefs, and eventually bigger and better fish populations.

FoProBiM is helping others start fruit tree farms, and is developing a project to grow specific seaweeds from which companies extract commercial gelling and thickening agents. Wiener hopes to get folks farming oysters next year.

At the same time, his organization is hoping to spawn a new generation of local marine conservationists by co-funding the Jean Wiener Environmental Scholarship. Denver ecologist Cronin, who started his own nonprofit (Yon Sel Lanmou, or One Love) to empower local Haitian communities by making them more self-sufficient, established it last year. “When people asked me why I did it, my most succinct answer was ‘to create more Jean Wieners.’ Jean has a deep love, respect, and understanding for the marine environments of his birthplace. He has worked so hard, and sacrificed so much, for over two decades.” The first reward was presented last July to a student poised to become the first Haitian in history to earn a degree in marine conservation from a Haitian University.

Today, FoProBiM has three offices and a full-time staff of eight. The organization also pays people to carry out conservation and restoration. All told, FoProBiM has a hand in supporting some 2,000 people fighting for a better Haiti.

Still, says Wiener, “We’ve barely scratched the surface of what needs to be done.” Innumerable inland issues affect the coasts. For example, FoProBiM recently stepped up and built a new latrine for a public school outside of Port-au-Prince. Its old one, used by 450 students as well as the general community, had long been full. With nowhere to go, everyone was using the beach as their toilet. Similar environmental “fires” need to be put out throughout the country.

In the meantime, Wiener is pushing for seven more protected areas, as well as the region’s first trans-border protected zone with the Dominican Republic. The new MPAs need to be patrolled and managed. FoProBiM’s reef and mangrove restorations need to be replicated at locations throughout the country. On top of that, the team basically needs to detour an entire coastal culture onto a new career path—at least until the fish populations bounce back.

It’s a tall order—but it always has been. Wiener doesn’t think pessimistic thoughts; his journey would have ended before it started. Wiener said it best on that stage in San Francisco, ending his acceptance speech with an anonymous quote: “The fool didn’t know it was impossible. So he did it.”

Election Finances

Let the discussions continue/begin.
Will the U.S. change its mind and continue to pay?
Should the U.S. and other outside nations continue to pay for Haiti's election?
Can Haiti ultimately finance its own election?
Should Haiti be financing its own election?
Is it possible for Haiti to conduct a fair election?
How is Haiti's future influenced by its upcoming election?
How involved are Haitians outside of Port au Prince in the election?
Do NGOs have a role, influence in the elections process/outcome?
How critical is it for Haiti to ultimately establish a working government?

This is just our short list of speculative questions to prime the pump to hopefully raise awareness and discussion among all the players in Haiti, ever minding the values of subsidy and sustainability as they do so.

U.S. to Haiti: Pay for your own elections
The Miami Herald
By Jacqueline Charles
July 7, 2016 8:44 PM 

 
 

 

The U.S. will not be financing Haiti’s Oct. 9 rerun presidential elections, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.

Kirby said Haitian officials were notified on July 1 that the U.S. government, which provided $33 million toward last year’s contested legislative and presidential elections, “has suspended its assistance toward the completion of the presidential electoral process.”

“We did not plan funding for two more electoral rounds in 2016 and 2017,” Kirby said.
He insisted during a news briefing that the suspension of electoral aid did not symbolize a “reduction in U.S. support for the development of Haiti” or its people.

The U.S., along with the European Union, which announced last month that it was pulling its elections observer mission from Haiti , has made no secret of its displeasure with the country’s decision to rerun the first round of the presidential race. The decision was taken by the Provisional Electoral Council on the recommendations of a five-member panel tasked with auditing the Oct. 25 vote.

Even before the U.S. announcement, a number of Haitians, including the elections council head Léopold Berlanger and interim President Jocelerme Privert argued that the country should find the estimated $55 million to finance the upcoming presidential rerun and contest for 10 Senate seats, and Jan. 8 runoff.

“We already made ourselves clear: Haiti will make all effort to find the $55 million to do the elections,” said presidential spokesman Serge Simon. “If no one comes to our assistance we will manage because the priority for us is the elections.”

The U.S. announcement comes as Haiti’s bickering parliament continues to stall over whether to prolong the term of Privert, whose 120-day mandate expired on June 14, and the head of the United Nations peacekeeping operations warns that the international community is losing patience with the ongoing political crisis.

Coming Home!

Our friend Dick Neves recently emailed us about his 32 hours journey (June 27-28) to get from Savanette, Haiti back to his home in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Dick's parish is St. Mary's in Blacksburg; his Haiti twin parish is St. John the Baptist in Savanette. This is Dick's 10th year of visiting this community, usually 1-2 times each year.

Anyone who has traveled to Haiti at least a few times, to include us, could have at least one interesting travel adventure they could share.

We see Dick's travel adventure as a lot more, though.  Also included is a story within a story of the dedication it takes to be a volunteer, relationships and life as it exists for a lot of Haitians today.

Here is Dick's tale, enjoy!



"My flight was at 9 AM out of Port-au-Prince (PaP) for Ft. Lauderdale. We (Fr. Nicolas, his 2 sisters and 2 nephews, 1 niece, and me) got up at 2:30 AM to leave at 3:30 AM for Pignon, where he and Berteau would swap vehicles, Berteau driving us to PaP.

By the time we had all the stuff (pots and pans, bags of fruit and vegetables, coolers, unknown items in plastic bags brought by his sisters to help with the meal preparation for the feast day on June 24) lashed to the roof rack, and suitcases and bags in the back of the land cruiser, it was already 3:50.

It had rained a hard shower (~1 hr) that night, so the road was slick and all potholes full of water. So it was Berteau and I up front, and the 5 in the back seat.

About 10 minutes out toward Pignon, a herd of sheep decided to sleep in the road that night, and they would not budge. The Lord may be my shepherd (Psalm 23), but I certainly was not theirs and they did not respond to my voice or prodding. Berteau finally had to get right up to them, flash his lights, and race his engine while bumping them to get their tails off the road.

We get to Pignon and pick up 2 more passengers; an amputee named Guilande, who lost her leg near the hip in the 2010 earthquake, and her companion. She had an appointment at the hospital in PaP that morning, to see a couple specialists in prosthetics to determine whether it was possible to fashion a leg for her to walk again. For the last 6 years, she has been getting around on a hand-cranked wheel chair, and this hospital visit was her only hope.

So we got her comfortable in the back of the vehicle between the suitcases and stuff, and her companion road up front by the gearshift between Berteau and me. So we had 9 passengers now and were 45 minutes behind schedule.

The next 20 miles of road between Pignon and Hinche is dirt and water-filled pothole country, with allowable speeds between 3 mph and 30 mph (on short rough stretches). We had 2 rivers to ford (did I mention the rain last night?). The first was OK because we could determine by the motorcycles crossing where not to go. River two was not so easy; muddy, flowing fast, and motorcycles on both sides fearful of venturing into the swift mess.

Fortunately nothing deters Berteau. He plunged the vehicle into the river, with water at floor-board level, and drove it like a tank until we got decent traction on the opposite bank, spinning the wheels to get up and out onto the bank (would make a great car commercial), fish-tailing on the muddy uphill road until we hit level ground again.

Now we were about 1 hr behind. The remaining 15 miles of dirt road were traversed in record time, although a short visit to a chiropractor in Hinche would have helped my neck.

At Hinche, the road was paved, so the land cruiser became the Bat mobile, as we raced at unsafe speeds toward PaP, whizzing by donkeys, dogs, goats, ox carts, motorcycles, and slow trucks (passing on left or right is apparently sanctioned), only slowing down for signs that said STOP.

By the time we got to the outskirts of PaP is was 7 AM, so I was feeling relieved (to be alive) and leery about getting to the airport still 5 miles away.

Then we hit the traffic of PaP's narrow roads, single lane in each direction, with so many buses and trucks that you could not see why traffic crawled along so slowly.

Berteau decided to do some additional creative driving and took the sidewalk approach, bouncing along the rough sidewalk with horn blazing to warn pedestrians that it was now in use for motorized traffic. I looked back to see that he created quite a following of vehicles who liked his idea of the sidewalk shortcut.

By the time we were 2 miles from the airport, traffic was stopped and police were in a major intersection to direct traffic around an accident. I resigned myself to taking a later flight, but Berteau had a new idea. He flagged down a motorcycle taxi, put me behind the operator with my backpack and suitcase across my lap and another Haitian behind me on the seat (the motorcycle sandwich, or more colorfully, a turkey on rye sandwich).

I told Berteau not to worry about me, but rather focus on getting Guilande to the hospital to see the doctors (my problem was an inconvenience, hers was life-changing).

The operator cranked up his bike and squeezed between and around stationary cars and trucks, with some sidewalk driving for the first half-mile, and then began to pass moving vehicles (left and right) as the airport tower now became visible.

The last half-mile was almost open road, and we sped along at 50 mph, me clutching my suitcase as a shield in case of possible impact. We got there a few minutes before 8, and I rushed to the counter, only to be told that I was too late for check-in for the Ft. Lauderdale flight. So now I was on standby for the rest of the trip; PaP to Miami, Miami to Charlotte, Charlotte to Roanoke.

My suitcase did get checked to Virginia; unfortunately, it went to Norfolk and not Roanoke and may show up by the end of this week.

So this explains only the first 5.5 hours of my return home.

I'll stop there, because the most significant delays were in the U.S. and not Haiti (2:30 to 8:00 AM), and many of you have likely experienced the delays I experienced in U.S. airports like Charlotte. I still have not mastered the ability or location to sleep in an airport, but just a word of advice. Do not lay on the floor behind Handicap Assistance chairs or you may get hosed (vacuumed) by the cleaning crew.

My next trip may be this fall, so if it's adventure you seek, you too can experience some excitement first-hand."

Scouting in Haiti!

"Virginia Venturing crew starts Scout unit at *orphanage in Haiti"
Posted on May 3, 2016 by Bryan Wendell
International Scouting
(H.T.T. Editor's note: *Maison Fortune Orphanage Foundation Kudos to Maison Fortune and Hannah for this very worthwhile, sustainable initiative! - Steve)



Things were a little different the second time Hannah Wheaton visited Haiti.

In her first trip, in 2014, Hannah visited Haiti with a grand but complicated idea for a service project: Her Venturing crew wanted to start a Scout unit at a Haitian orphanage.
Back then it was just an idea, but in Hannah’s return visit last month, she could tell right away that her crew’s hard work had paid off.

When she arrived at the Port-au-Prince airport wearing the red-and-blue Haitian Scout neckerchief, complete strangers greeted her saying “Scout, Scout” (pronounced there like “scoot, scoot”).

Brunel Etienne, International Commissioner of Scouts d’Haïti, was there to greet her, too. When Hannah, her dad and her sister arrived at Maison Fortune Orphanage, more familiar faces awaited.
Now, thanks to this service-minded Venturing crew in Virginia, more than 90 residents at the orphanage in one of the world’s poorest countries are enjoying all that Scouting has to offer.

Service without borders

It all started in October 2014 when Hannah, her sister and her dad (also the crew advisor) met with Haiti’s national and international commissioners about the possibility of establishing a Scouting program at the orphanage.

Crew 824 of Chesapeake, Va., in the Tidewater Council wanted to support the unit as a way to spread Scouting to young people who need it. After all, Scouting has no real borders. Scouts in the U.S. and Scouts in Haiti are members of the World Organization of the Scout Movement.
Last month, Hannah, Southern Region vice president of communications and a recipient of the Venturing Silver Award, saw the results of her crew’s efforts when she attended a Scout meeting at the orphanage.

She practiced her French-speaking skills — and her dance moves, which they call “animation.”
“The meeting was full of more ‘animation,’ which could be a great thing to liven up a [Venturing] crew meeting,” she says. “I was particularly impressed that the Scouting meeting was entirely youth-led.”

The same, only different

After the meeting, Hannah talked to some of the leaders about the similarities and differences between Scouting here and Scouting there.

For one, the Haitian Scouts were confused by how we Americans identify our Scout units.
“They also were confused why we name our groups with numbers,” she says, “because in Haiti, they use names of famous people.”

Hannah’s a member of Crew 824 back home, but the Scout unit at the Haitian orphanage is called Catherine Flon, who in 1803 sewed the first Haitian flag.

The activities are a little different, too. One game was called “Mange Pomme,” in which apples are tied to a string from the ceiling of a tent and participants try to eat it without using their hands.

The game is “more difficult than I thought,” Hannah says.

Another difference: the use of the neckerchief. While the neckerchief is optional in many Scout units in the U.S., in Haiti it’s the primary way to identify Scouts.

But there are plenty of similarities between Haitian and American Scouting. One is service. All Haitian Scouts complete a project to improve their community.

Another is pride in the uniform — but for slightly different reasons.
“For many Scouts at Maison Fortune, [the uniform] is the nicest clothes that they own,” Hannah says. “So they wear it to church.”

Clean Gas Cooking!

"A Call for Change – A Move to Clean Gas Cooking"

Article written by Mary Kwasniewski (Email)
Maison Fortune Orphanage Foundation
Executive Director
June 16, 2016
(HTT editor's note: Thank you Mary. We see this as an outstanding example of subsidy to sustainability.)

On the campus of Maison Fortuné the day starts, as most do, with breakfast, then there is a mid day meal served to all the school children, followed then by dinner.  Our cooking staff of works non-stop on the weekdays and on the weekends the boys cook together for themselves.  As with all kitchens – it’s an area to congregate, share stories and hang out… but unlike your kitchen, our cooking flames are fueled by charcoal.  Each WEEK we procure 150 lbs of charcoal to keep our fires hot while the rice is cooked.  In Haiti charcoal makes up more that 60% of the consumed energy but it doesn’t have to.

              

The cost of charcoal to the island has been devastating – the deforestation, especially in the high mountains, has serious consequences: it causes soil erosion, which affects hydro-logical cycles and threatens the quality and availability of drinking water. It also causes longer periods of intense drought like Haiti experienced this past winter and has even been linked to rising levels of malaria incidence. Another effect is the destruction of the habitat of species endemic to the country and, more dangerously, makes Haiti vulnerable to natural disasters.  According to the New York Times, Over 98% of the Haiti’s lands are deforested and illegal charcoal is now flowing across the border from the DR where long ago their government banned the production of charcoal to protect its forests. 

At Maison Fortuné we are striving to raise the future leaders of Haiti – many of them will find work in agriculture.  This means it is also our job, to make sure jobs in agriculture will exist in the future. For this reason and to begin to reverse the effects described above Maison Fortuné has decided to take the steps towards Clean Gas cooking.

              
The cost to not do so is far more than the price tag it will take to make it happen.  We are especially thankful to report that thanks to the generous support of MFOF partners and friends, this effort will begin September 1, 2016!

Maison Fortuné will set the example for others and work to ensure the future of Haiti’s lands in the process.
 

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A 501 (c) (3) corporation serving the needs of children in Hinche, Haiti.
Post Office Box 3092, Chesapeake, VA   23327-3092
www.mfofoundation.org