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!