Truck Stop

Crazy weekend, crazy parties. Caribana, it turns out, is more of an afternoon dance party with moving trucks than a ‘parade.’

I need to party less. Or more. Maybe more.

Ok, so it’s a great jam and all, but the idea of Wyclef as an actual president is perhaps, well, misguided.

CBC is reporting that Wyclef Jean has registered to run for office in Haiti’s fall election. Although he’s yet to officially decide whether or not he will run, he’s filled out the appropriate paper work and has been cleared as a potential candidate.

I just finished writing an op-ed column (to be published in September) about my own experience with disaster relief in Haiti. During the research I discovered this little report by the smoking gun. It suggests that Wyclef’s charity, the Yele Haiti Foundation, functions as much as a front to personally enrich the hip hop star, as it does to raise money for Haiti. The details are sketchy, perhaps even complex, and I’ll leave it to you to form your own opinion.

HT Mr. Myles Estey.

Communities of migrant workers, known as bateyes, spring up within the cane fields. They are far from the rest of civilization, and become home for those who venture across the border. Most will never return to Haiti.

stacked cane

cane cutter

long days in the field

25 years in the bateyes.

Three generations, supported by cane.

]]> http://www.earthfeed.com/faces-of-beladere/ /feed 0 http://www.earthfeed.com/late-night-wisdom-from-my-fixer/ http://www.earthfeed.com/late-night-wisdom-from-my-fixer/ #comments Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:23:44 +0000 Earth Feed http://www.earthfeed.com/?p=509

Jonny

We are squatting in what remains of a mostly abandoned building in Port au Prince.

English is the language of business,

Spanish is the language of love,

And Creole, Creole is how I speak with God.

Taking pictures has been tough. There are cues of people waiting for food aid and armed combat officers. Flattened buildings are ubiquitous. Added to this is a burgeoning foreign influence. Haitians are proud, strong, warm people. They don’t want to be pictured in these moments. Some moments should perhaps remain private. People deserve dignity. And really, I have nothing to add to this particular narrative. It’s been said.

munching on cane

shaving cane

There is money here. Tremendous amounts.  UN workers and aid workers and high end automobiles and fancy diplomats. Cascading falls and swimming holes and green green green with floral accents. Fancy pastries. There is money here.

But it remains in the hands of very few.

I’m working with a group of talented, high energy guys, and the sugar angle is slowly but surely coming together. There are security issues to contend with – a spat of recent kidnappings and a hotel that’s caved in in the centre – but I feel remarkably safe. This is perhaps because my fixers won’t let me out of their sight and are decidedly heavy handed on what I can and can not do. I suppose this is what I pay them for. I wonder how this will translate on the ground. I am used to walking free, doing as I please when I please. Seems part and parcel with snapping photos. But I’m learning to listen more than I speak, trust local advice, and be patient. I am a stranger here, in devastating strange times. That needs to be respected.

I’ve just finished reading Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place. It’s got me thinking about the nature of travel and tourism. I travel a lot (too much for someone who claims to have a green thumb.) These days it’s less as a tourist, and more for work. Still, I’m forced to admit a certain degree of voyeurism in the work that I do. There are tough ethical questions that need to be asked, and after Zambia, I can’t help but ask them every day. A Small Place is a good read, and made me reexamine some of my own assumptions on post-colonial landscapes.

From the book:

Antigua is a small place, a small island. It is nine miles wide by twelve miles long. It was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493. Not too long after, it was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa (all masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted; there can be no question about this) to satisfy their desire for wealth and power, to feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they would be less lonely and empty — a European disease. Eventually, the masters left, in a kind of way; eventually, the slaves were freed, in a kind of way. The people in Antigua now, the people who really think of themselves as Antiguans (and the people who would immediately come to your mind when you think about what Antiguans might be like; I mean, supposing you were to think about it), are the descendants of these noble and exalted people, the slaves. Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your masters yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.