Nanowrimo

It's National Novel Writing Month, and I've signed on. The premise - write a half-assed, unedited novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. It's more gratifying than I ever imagined. What a joy, to unleash the creative juices, to surrender to the muse, to let your fantasies come true. It's more fun than writing proposals, editing academic book chapters, and most obviously, more fun than grading papers.

Oganizasyon Fanm Pwogresiv Fondwa

I visited with the Women's Progressive Organization of Fondwa last week in rural Haiti. The group has been around since 2001 supporting each other in various ways, surviving and resisting oppression in Haiti. Unfortunately, they lost their building in the earthquake where they had been making peanut butter from peanuts grown in Fondwa. They want to get back to work but can't because they have no place to do it! Here they are singing a song to open their meeting. If you happen to have any ideas or resources toward this end, please let me know.

PAP's Apocalyptic Grin

Why is it that you inspire me to poetry, Port-Au-Prince?
Is there even one single unit of beauty left in your withered bones?
Is your sweat full of a sweet fragrance I cannot smell?
Are there diamonds sparkling in the mountains of rocks called roads?

The ti machann arranges her previously used pillows on the ground, for sale,
on top of the rubble that has been here hundreds of years
The rebar is a relic of the most brutal French colonialism
You used to be adorned with pearls,
but now your necklaces are made of plastic bottles and candy wrappers
on a string that has almost but not quite given up

Maybe it is your new tarpulein dresses laced with the latest prints of USAID
Or, the UN gunmen from Sri Lanka and Canada and South Korea
who are driving around with nothing to do but point their guns
at no one and everyone

I think that it must be that apocalyptic grin that seduces me
That "this is what the end of the world looks like" knowing in your eyes

Women's situation in Haiti

There is a lot to be disturbed about when one is immersed in life in Haiti. I guess the situation that bothers me the most is that of women. They get up at the crack of dawn and cook and clean and wash and try to sell some shit until it's dark and they're too exhausted to do anything else. It's sweaty and it's dirty work. And then do the same thing the next day. And the next day. Now that the conditions have worsened, with so many families still basically living outside, things are even tougher. Domestic violence and sexual assault have increased significantly since the earthquake. With many people sleeping on the streets right after the event, women were particularly vulnerable to sexual assault.

Women do resist when they can - they sing, they form groups devoted to micro-enterprise and domestic violence reduction, they laugh, they talk, they support each other. But, the men here have a huge investment in maintaining the very little power that they have in this world. And so, change is not exactly on the horizon. Just talking about these issues and making some small gestures towards women's equality, which is partially what we are doing here, is significant.

I've only been here 10 days and I'm just sick and tired of the sexist attitudes toward women - including me, yes I am one - some subtle and some not so subtle. I have been doing an exercise from the Theater of the Oppressed with some of the various groups I am working with which allows people to experience and reflect on being both oppressed and oppressor. Some of the insights have been profound, from people who descended from slaves who staged the only successful revolution in world history.

I don't know how social change really happens; I used to think that conscientization was the be all and end all. But, now I realize that small changes in material conditions are really, really important. Having just slept my first night with a fan in 9 nights, I understand what a huge difference something like that can make.

What does Solidarity mean?

I am sitting outside at the Solidarite Guest House of the Association of Peasants of Fondwa in Port-au-Prince. We've just finished a meeting and lunch with the staff of APF and discussed our participatory action research that we are embarking on here. The guest house is serving as temporary office space for APF and their sister organization that I am working with SEKONAPA. Their permanent space was flattened in the earthquake so they are in these temporary conditions. These temporary spaces are really semi-permanent at this point, as I can't imagine where they would actually move to.

After two extremely grueling nights in some fairly difficult living conditions that I am in for this month - no running water, no electricity, about 90 degrees in my room at night with no fan, mosquitoes, and really the most challenging for me - an invasion of rats in my room - I believe I am in a position to at least consider this idea of solidarity. So, is that what it would mean, give it all up and live in conditions like I am now, which is very similar to many Haitians right now, some worse, of course, (with no food and living under tarps)? (The family I am staying with right now, like so many in the epicenter, is living outside the house under tarps because they are too afraid to come inside and sleep, so I am alone in the house with the rats who have taken over). Let's just say, I hope to hell not. But, I think solidarity does imply giving something up, not just acknowledging our privilege, not just giving back, but really giving something of our extreme comforts (where we are taking too much) up. I don't know where the lines are to be drawn, but it's a question that we have to be willing to ask ourselves if we are interesting in any kind of sustainable (and by extension, egalitarian) world.

I am happy to report that we are going to borrow a cat and see how it does in chasing away the rats. Second option, rat poison!

University of Fondwa, Haiti

University of Fondwa, only rural university in Haiti; this 2-story building is one of the 7 buildings that was destroyed in the earthquake

Konbit

Konbit (Haitian Creole for community working together) to clean up destroyed church

Fonkoze

Fonkoze, largest network of micro-credit banks in Haiti, founded by Fr. Joseph; this one in Fondwa survived the earthquake; the building grounds also include a restaurant, bakery and tool rental business

Post-Earthquake UNIF Conference

University of Fondwa International Conference, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Feb 2010

Haiti or Bust

I'm leaving for Haiti tomorrow night...I'll take the train to Penn Station, a taxi to the airport, a direct flight from JFK to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic...then I have to call someone named Dante to pick me up and take me from the international airport to the other airport and then I'll fly from Santo Domingo to Port Au Prince, and then somehow I'll end up in a rural, mountainous area about 40 miles from PAP called Fondwa. It's a multi-purpose trip - a tour of the damage in Fondwa, a conference about how to rebuild this community and university and meetings with some of the grassroots organizations who I will be working with on some future projects. The University of Fondwa has a Facebook page you can check out...

I'm not really thinking about how intense it is all going to be. If one did think about such things too much or be bothered by such thoughts, well, nobody would go and help them. But, I think once you've lived and worked in an apocalyptic disaster site, it gets in your blood. I have to recommend a couple of books that I'm reading now - Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster and Beverly Bell's Walking on Fire: Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. When people look at me curiously, wondering why the hell I'd want to go visit a place of such suffering and devastation, I guess I have a different take on it. On the one hand, it's bearing witness to this devastation and this is always a powerful thing to do. But mostly I see, as Solnit does, "the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster." Contrary to the reigning disaster narrative, people are not helpless (the people who are living through it always do the bulk of the work, before the media arrives, before the government arrives, and before the professional macho, male disaster rescuers arrive). I go to learn about and support the strength, resilience and resistance in Haiti, the country with the only successful slave revolt in history.

One final note...I have this recurring dream (once or twice a year for about 20 years) that I have to leave quickly for an international flight and I am not packed but have to leave anyway...it's always a horrible feeling. This has been a somewhat last minute trip and I'm feeling like this dream state is trying to take over my waking state...very strange. I'm almost all packed though, so no worries. I think I'll have the dream tonight, but then I will never have this dream again.