Although everything I say here should be read as my opinion or observation, I need to own that I, like too many visitors to Haiti, make assumptions that ought to be corrected by deeper exploration. In my previous blog I talked about the garbage situation in Haiti and made some interpretations that turn out to be wrong.
First, I was over-generalizing, looking at several specific areas and assuming the rest of Haiti followed along. The truth is, much of Port-au-Prince is swept and quite tidy most of the time. Today, after my visit to the orphanage to check on the school (There was no electricity so not much to be done), my motorcycle driver took a very different route home, and I saw neighborhoods I'd never seen before. Many were very neat. I even saw women and some men along the streets sweeping. And it should be added that the major effort of removing the rubble from the 2010 Earthquake (The anniversary is this Sunday) has been pretty much completed.
Having said that, a further explanation of what I saw before that prompted my previous comments is needed. The fact is that the part of the Ministry of Transportation and Planning that deals with "trash" hasn't given out trash bins anywhere I can see. So the real problem is there is no place to put trash. What I experienced on the bridge (Throwing bags of trash over the bridge to a dry river bed) is one of the few options open to people. And further, even if homes were given receptacles like we have in San Francisco, many streets and alleys where houses are, are too narrow for trucks to pick them up. The burning of the trash which I have seen is, perhaps, the best way to process the trash. Last night I saw a dump-truck and a bulldozer picking up what looked like charcoal. It was, in fact, the remainder of a garbage fire which could now be processed more efficiently.
From the outside, it is easy to see something and apply the gestalt from your own experience for interpretation. Haiti has been a major victim of that. From the early French slave-owners to modern times (like me, several days ago) people see Haitians and interpret what they see by their own inner sense - which usually comes from a very different set of experiences.
Many of you have heard stories about students who end up fulfilling what the teacher expects of them. If the teacher feels "These children aren't going to be able to accomplish much." then, in fact, the children won't accomplish much. We have also seen the exact opposite happen when a teacher expects great accomplishments from her/his students.
A wonderfully written and highly informative book: "Haiti: The Aftershocks of History" by Laurent Dubois, records, among much more, many examples of this biased interpreting of Haitian people and culture. This is perhaps the best place to start if you want to understand Haiti now. It is where I started, but I fell into the trap of believing my perceptions rather than challenging them by looking deeper.
One of the many exciting things for me about retiring here is that I can keep challenging my assumptions. Already, Haiti has taught me a lot about world economics and political striving. I see Haiti as a kind of microcosm of poverty and the dis-empowerment of people throughout the world. But Haiti is also challenging my own inner microcosm from which I interpret the world outside. Most situations are more complicated than they seem. There are no simple answers, but there are answers. Much of the work to find those answers is inward, then moving outward.
The adventure continues.
No comments:
Post a Comment