if I was President

A few years ago, I had the opportunity of hearing musical stars like Shakira and Alicia Keys perform at a Clinton Global Initiative concert event at the Apollo Theater. Watching Miss Shakira shake her belly in front of Former President Clinton was really something. One of the performers, Wyclef Jean crooned, "If I was President..." Creepy foresight.

Due to Wyclef's recent announcement that he's running for Haiti's presidential elections, Haiti's been on my mind recently--thoughts about foreign intervention and salvation, idealism in particular. What does it say about a country when one of its leading candidates is a musical celebrity? I feel like you can't even talk about any political, social, international humanitarian issue anymore without celebrity name dropping--when did actors and singers take over the world? I'm considering my future in this industry, possibly working for future "acclaimed humanitarian philanthropist" Justin Bieber, truly depressing.

One of my favorite This American Life's podcast stories, Haiti is Destiny, by Ben Fountain poignantly captures the turmoil, confusion, and frustration. An excerpt: 

"You know what I've noticed?" he (a Haitian eye doctor) told me at his house, "God gives you 205 years to do something with Haiti, and if you fail he passes it on to someone else. The Spanish had it from 1492 to 1697, 205 years. Then the French from 1698 to 1803, 205 years (sic). Then Haitians from 1804 to 2009, 205 years." So what was coming next? "Maybe a revolution," he answered cryptically, "Or maybe Haiti would survive as a sprawling industrial park for the international aid complex..."

"Poor Haiti," people say, "so primitive, so backward, so far behind the times." I've been hearing about how backward Haiti is for as long as I've been going. But how about this? What if Haiti is ahead of the times? It seems to be on the leading edge of so many current trends--environmental degradation, serial ecological disasters, crumbling infrastructure, a population that exceeds resources, plus a skewed economic water that channels vast wealth to a privileged few while the great majority of people stagnate and struggle. By any objective measure Haiti appears well advanced on the track that the rest of the world seems hellbent on following.

 So how do you feel about Wyclef's candidacy?
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I'll leave you with this. Thanks to my cousin (and avid reader), I was able to attend the amazing Arcade Fire concert at Madison Square Garden. Win Butler came out into the crowd, and his wife Regine was beautiful.

Lyrics from my favorite song, one that Regine always sings with such fervor, Haiti:
Haïti, mon pays,
wounded mother I'll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nés
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n'arrete nos esprits.
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see.

In the forest we lie hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haïti, never free,
n'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
In those days their blood was still warm

what's going on with Haiti now?

A more serious post today.

I was revisiting an episode of This American Life that aired on May 21 called "Island Time," and it reminded me of a question that always seems to plague international aid. Simply: why isn't it working?

It seems that the more aid that is being pumped into so-called "developing" nations, the worse off they are.

Haiti has long been that sort of nation in the Western Hemisphere, becoming increasingly worse off within the past fifty years. Now, with the incredible influx of aid due to the earthquake, there is potential to do great good, but how? For example, one of several dilemmas: a lot of the aid money right now is going to food aid since many people are still stuck in displacement camps. But this means that it is no longer profitable for farmers to begin growing food since they will be competing with aid. Is it more acceptable to stop destabilizing an already poor country's economy, but at the same time stop providing food to people who desperately need it and make them buy it instead?

This podcast tells an amazing story of how these questions coupled with bureaucratic issues hinder the path between idea and implementation through a woman in the mango-growing town of Casale (shown below on google maps). All she needs is a small irrigation canal, but instead years go by, organizations (10,000 of them!) eat up money in negotiations, and nothing.

What spoke to me the most, having worked at USAID, is just how fickle aid agencies are. They want to see results quickly. They want success stories to put into newsletters and websites. But the fact is, real lasting success takes time. It takes building up community and allowing them to take ownership of their successes, but it's often just quicker to have foreigners in NGOs dream up projects in action memos but never have enough funding to see them through. I've seen USAID answer to the whims of Congress in ways that open and close projects, moving around funding from country to country, like a capricious child. No wonder aid doesn't work.

I hope that doesn't happen in Haiti. So many households in the US, even in this recession, gave money due to the recent tragedy. Let's not see that squandered. We might not see quick success stories, but we should let our congressman know it's the long term, community built success that counts.