I seek out books on the Haiti earthquake in the hopes of
finding one that captures what I experienced and perhaps helps me to understand
it better. Instead, all of the books seem to describe a different event. Like
the story of the blind men trying to describe an elephant, one author talks
about the leg and another about the trunk. Perhaps all I know is the tail.
I had high hopes for two books that just came out: Jonathon
Katz’ The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster
and Amy Wilentz’ Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti
part of what I experienced, but they each described a world that I didn’t know.
Jonathon Katz was an AP reporter that had lived in Haiti for
a couple of years before the earthquake. His account of the actual earthquake
and the events of that night were the most powerful part of the book. I found
it to be especially spooky because Carolle and I had lived and been married in
the house that collapsed under him. I had hoped that his book would show a
strong understanding of Haiti and how the events unfolded. The best parts of
the book were his description of the night of the earthquake and then his quest
to find out the UN’s role in introducing cholera. Unfortunately, most of the
rest of the book felt superficial—more of a drive-by viewing of the disaster
response.
Amy Wilentz’ book was the opposite. Whereas Jonathon Katz
tried to tell a straight forward story of the disaster, Amy’s book seems to be
more her grappling with the earthquake and its aftermath. The book reads more
as a collection of thoughts than a coherent story. It is a very personal book
as she openly wrestles with her feelings towards Haiti and journalism—is she
helping Haiti by getting people’s stories out or is this just voyeurism? Her
first book had been on the epic struggle to get rid of Duvalier and of
Aristide’s rise to power. But Aristides’s presidencies were failures and
Duvalier is back in Haiti. Perhaps it wasn’t such an epic time after all. Her
book clearly reflects her personal struggle with the impact that she is having.
Both books skewer the disaster response provided by the
international community. The subtitle of Katz’ book nicely sums up his view,
How the International Community Came to Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. Amy
Wilentz wrote “It’s fair to say that one of the biggest issues to rise from the
earthquake’s dust is whether aid agencies and international development
organizations can ever be trusted, either by the victim community or by the
donors who fund them. Are they honest—do they know how to be honest; can they
be honest and survive?” She goes on to complain that aid agencies are not
effective at working themselves out of a job.
Yes, it was confusing and there were some big mistakes made
(the construction of the Corail camp out in the middle of nowhere being
one—providing services in makeshift camps was another). Both lionize Sean Penn
for running a camp as well as the pros. But if the pros are running camps as
well as Sean Penn, doesn’t that mean that the “pros” were doing something
right, too?
This is where both she and Jonathon Katz got it wrong. The
earthquake response that I saw was an exhausting slog against incredible
obstacles and through a bizarre maze. Although some of the early journalists
seemed to have believed that Port-au-Prince had been completely destroyed, that
was never true. Half of all the buildings in Port-au-Prince were not
significantly damaged. Although President Preval’s government seemed to
disappear in the first days after the earthquake, it soon reasserted
itself.
The biggest complaint against the work that the NGOs did is
that we did not build a shiny new Haiti from the rubble of the earthquake. Yet
that was never our mandate. As weak as the Haitian government was, it was still
the national government. It was the only institution that could have declared
eminent domain to seize land to create camps, widen streets, or enforce a new
city wide master plan. Neither the NGOs nor the United Nations had this
authority. When the government was unwilling to take these steps, no one could.
But what’s the point in bashing the Preval Government? Its weaknesses were
quite well known and documented.
I ran the earthquake response for the Pan American Development Foundation, one of the larger NGOs, from the
day after the earthquake until this past January. Of course I made mistakes—we
were trying to move as fast as we could in a very complex environment and using
whatever resources we could find. We passed out food and other goods that had
been collected in the States to help the poor Haitians. I would much rather
have received cash, but our local partners were happy to receive whatever we
could give them. I would much rather have purchased local rice rather than
receiving donations of fortified rice, but the imported rice was free and we
didn’t have much cash. Our first attempt at home repair in the Jacmel area fell
flat—we had budgeted too little money and the repairs were too isolated.
We also had huge successes. We helped evaluate the safety of
over 400,000 structures throughout the earthquake impacted area. This gave
hundreds of thousands of people the confidence to return to their safe house
and provided a blueprint for the repairs that were needed. We trained hundreds
of engineers, masons, and contractors in improved construction techniques and
used them to repair 10,000 houses. We helped neighborhood committees come
together to determine how they wanted their neighborhood rebuilt. We helped scores of microentrepreneurs to
start small businesses.
In Dr. Farmer’s earthquake book, Haiti After the Earthquake
seemed to believe that his organization was the only one to do a good job. I’ll
bet a lot of us feel this way. My organization did a great job. It’s too bad
that all the other organizations couldn’t do as well. Naturally some organizations
did better than others. Unfortunately, most people who donated, donated
blindly. They gave to the Red Cross because they always give to the Red Cross,
even though the Red Cross’ reputation as a slow bureaucracy is documented after
every disaster. They gave to Wyclef Jean because he is a famous Haitian, not
because they thought that he had a professional organization behind him. I wish
that more of the funds had gone to PADF and other organizations that were well
established in Haiti, but I thank God that people did give.
Perhaps someday I’ll find a book that tells the story of the
earthquake as I saw it—the story of a hard struggle to have the greatest
possible impact as quickly as possible in an incredibly complex situation.
Our work wasn't perfect, but it was the best that we could possibly do and Haiti is better off for it..