TRAVESTY in Haiti : A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking A book by Timothy T. Schwartz, Ph.D. (buy the book)
An Ezili Dantò Book Review:
I am feeling this book. It's easy to read and it's a courageous book. The back cover of the book explains that it's "An anthropologist's personal story of working with foreign aid agencies and discovering that fraud, greed, corruption, apathy, and political agendas permeate the industry." Travesty in Haiti takes on the powerful and speaks an explosive truth about the do-gooders in Haiti that, as this reviewer and Ezili's HLLN knows well, would not interest most mainstream book publishers. It's a difficult topic but Dr. Timothy T. Schwartz makes the complex and weighty topic of foreign aid to Haiti, Christian missions and the impact of "charitable" works in Haiti interesting, humorous and readily understandable. With this book, Timothy Schwartz has made a significant contribution to the plight of the Haitian people in the struggle against the institutional poverty pimps and Haiti's deliberate containment-in-poverty.
Schwartz has rendered a service here not because there’s authentic value in being a foreigner’s FIELDWORK. For the sum of the parts do not equal the whole and being someone’s fieldwork is in itself a condescension. But Schwartz’s book reports on his own tribe’s corruption in Haiti and that, indeed, is of value to Haitians.
The book is a must read for anyone interested in hearing the truth about Haiti. Schwartz's contribution is a guidepost to those working for charities, working in the development and foreign aid industries who accept corruption and mediocrity because it's part of the status quo, "it's a job." It's laughably idealistic to wish for accountability, honesty, grace and dignity from the folks at USAID, World Bank, the Christian missions and those "doing good" in Haiti for more than a-half century now, but if just a few people, if one person working in the human rights field who read this book began to re-evaluate and nixed the profit-over-people trend of these failed-State-making-organizations, the world, humanity would breathe that much easier.
There are some slight errors throughout in this self-published book (for instance "the 1891 to 1804 Haitian Revolution." It's 1791.) but nothing serious that takes away from the substance, power and honest resiliency of it. Kudos, chapo ba, Timothy T. Schwartz, chapo ba. You are to be commended.
The best way to encourage the Ezili Network to purchase this, the best book that's been written by a foreigner on Haiti since forever, is to present Timothy T. Schwartz to you in his own words.
Below we outline certain excerpts, especially from the chapter on orphanages.
The sections on The Hamlet, The Village, The Survey, the Windmill Fiasco, The History of Aid in Haiti, The American Plan, The Greed, Rudeness and Renegades in Medical Treatments, CARE International Dedicated to Serving Itself, The Disconnected Directors and Arrogant Haitian Elites, The USAID/World Bank waste of research monies on the obvious and nepotism in foreign aid, are all, highly recommended reading. And, most interesting, alarming and crazily humorous is the final chapter entitled: Colombia and It's Drug Trade To the Rescue.
At first when I read the title of the book TRAVESTY in Haiti : A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking, I thought: Schwartz, he's surely going to demonize the poor in this chapter. It's par for the course. But Schwartz just lays out how the fall of the Haitian army democratized their previous drug monopoly. I know it's not the whole current story on drug trafficking in Haiti because all Haitians know there are 9,000 UN troops in Haiti, lots of Latin Americans during the job of the old Haitian military and keeping the people excluded and impoverished and the Oligarchy and imperialist in power. But the episode recounted in the final chapter where the most neglected and poorest of peasants living in the coastal fishing village approach the heavily-armed drug traffickers in the dead of night, mostly armed with rocks, for their "toll" is such a typically and rurally Haitian way of making those who pass through their territory remember it's their territory, that I forgot I was looking for examples of some white guy demonizing the Haitian poor.
The roadblock is how the neglected poor majority, pèp la, make city slickers, foreigners, the Haitian Oligarchy and outsiders who pass through their territory remember it's their territory. That sense of ownership is part of why although Haiti is occupied by invaders (over 10,000 so-called charitable NGOS and 9,000 UN troops and their sycophants) its soul is still owned by the descendants of African warriors who fought for the land, fought for their humanity after 300-years of brutal European enslavement. Drug trafficking is a sinister thing but Schwartz writes the episode from the poor's perspective not from Officialdom's - not from the enforcers' point of view. For once, the Haitian poor who are the bait for billions in foreign "aid" and Christian "benevolence" that never reaches them finally, finally by some miracle, won the lottery - got some aid, got some charity. Drugs to the rescue! And even the sting of official police revenge that's recounted and the book's foreshadowing of the drug owners' retribution to-come, seems not so alarming. In fact, parts of the story is really comical.
Schwartz's book unveils paradoxes and lots of critical data on foreign aid, mission schools, orphanages and the world's major multinational charities working in Haiti. He writes on a complicated set of issues and politically sensitive topics with the skill and talent of a seasoned novelist. He explores a current Haiti you'll not read about in current mainstream books and papers on Haiti. His voice is likeable - it's that of a regular guy not some dry academic or saintly eunuch.
I know there's a PH.D. in the byline of the book and I should refer to Schwartz by his Western title, "Dr. Schwartz." But not to put too fine a point on it, the man seems too whole to so compartmentalize. At times the reader sees a self-serving drifter, a calculated and unopologetic bum spear-fishing and drinking with "the natives;" at times we understand his discomfort and aloneness as the outsider. But it all goes to make you believe it when he writes he selected to go to Haiti because he wanted to enjoy "a life of adventure and maybe do some good for people while working largely alone and free of the authoritarian constrictions of a regular job." (p.214). And, most impressive of all, for a white guy in Haiti working with the NGOs and in the charitable field, he seems to have no detectable savoir complex, no religious or political imperative, not too much of the nauseatingly patronizing noble white men's burden thing, no fake righteousness - doesn't claim to have "shared the Haitian people's pain," never talks about experiencing some fake epiphany to share the people's pain that compelled him to live with the poor for over ten years in Haiti.
He's struck me as real. He appropriately expresses self-disgust and derision. He smokes, he drinks, he has sex appeal that, well, at least Sharon, if not others, want to own, maybe put a ring on. He seems to feel a lot of guilt about it, always repeating how Sharon helped him while also showing her and her family's corruption. You can tell he may have, wittingly or unwittingly, used his eligibility/exotic presence in Haiti and his male sex appeal on her and elsewhere to live more comfortably or to be successful in his research. But he's not offensive with it, makes strong sense. And he shows he's aware of the power his gender and white skin gives him in neocolonial Haiti. So, vis-a-vis the Haitians in the Hamlet and Village he tries, at least it seemed from reading the book, not to abuse his mobility and relative privileges indiscriminately.
Perhaps the humility is cunningly deliberate but either way, that would make him a good craftsman. For, when you read the book, you come away with the feeling that the author/anthropologist didn't mean to expose foreign aid, fraud, greed and the apathy he experienced in working with foreign aid agencies and the political agendas that permeates the industry but just found himself part of an unconscionable paradigm, part of a palimpsest painting, part of layers that seemed critical to lift up for a look and then, write about, even if it cost him his chosen career and made him unemployable with the NGOS. Like so many others Schwartz could have just done the regular thing, made unusual alliance for the sake of a job or, simply come back to the US and raised funds "for the poor" and joined in the black exploitation game in Haiti. But, this conscience, this unveiling, this choice, makes Schwartz unique - one in a million. Timotè sa a, li se vagabon pa nou. Enjoy:
***********************
TRAVESTY in Haiti : A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking A book by Timothy T. Schwartz, Ph.D. (buy the book) Reviewed by Ezili Dantò/HLLN, December 2009
p. 196 "For me and other anthropologists and missionaries working in the country, the many coups and uprisings in the late 1980s and early 1990s were more an inconvenience than a threat. We were not targets and could resign ourselves to working around them. So while the military was gunning people in the Port-au-Prince slums, I chartered a small plane in Miami and flew into the city of Cape Haitian...That night soldiers shot two young men in the street below my hotel window. (During the three days that followed the ouster of Aristide by military leaders, the CIA trained narcotraffickers described in an earlier chapter...at least 3,000 people were slaughtered in the Port-au-Prince slums)... But for the most part, Cape Haitian was quiet. Within several days, I boarded a Haitian sailboat and 36 hours later I sailed into Baie-de-Sol harbor. And that is where I met Sharon, sunbathing on a beach. She invited me to lunch with her parents, siblings and the other teachers. We became friends ...in the ensuing nine years"
Chapter One - Death, Destruction and Development -p. 2 to 3
"This is the inside story of (development and charitable projects and working with foreign aid agencies in Haiti)...and the impact on the people they were meant to help. It is largely a story of fraud, greed, corruption, and apathy, and political agendas that permeate the industry of foreign aid. It is a story of failed agricultural, health and credit projects; violent struggles for control over aid money; corrupt orphanage owners, pastors, and missionaries; the nepotistic manipulation of research funds; economically counterproductive food relief programs that undermine the Haitian agricultural economy; and the disastrous effects of economic engineering by foreign governments and international aid organizations such as the World Bank and USAID and the multinational corporate charities that have sprung up in their service, specifically, CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and the dozens of other massive charities that have programs spread across the globe, moving in response not only to disasters and need, but political agendas and economic opportunity. It is also the story of the political disillusionment and desperation that has led many Haitians to use whatever means possible to better their living standards, most recently drug trafficking...
The accounts I present herein come from my own experiences while living, researching, and working in Haiti over a period of ten years...I have changed names of people and places...The reason that I have made an effort to disguise people and places is because what I hope to accomplish is not to embarrass or denounce individuals or to attack specific charities. Nor do I aim to damage the industry of charity. What I hope to do is to call attention to the need for accountability for I believe that the disaster we call foreign aid --"disaster," at least, in the case of Haiti --comes from the near total absence of control over the distribution of money donated to help impoverished people in the country.
At the level of individuals and NGOS, the lack of fiscal accountability is manifest in the enrichment of the custodians of the money - pastors and directors of NGOs, schools and orphanages - and the redirection of charity toward middle and upper class Haitians for whom it was not intended. At the level of governments, the absence of accountability invites subversion of a different sort: Charity is manipulated to serve political ends. (emphasis added.)
In both cases lack of accountability allows the aid to be distorted into something that arguably does more harm than good. I hope that this book in some way contributes toward correcting the problem and redirecting the millions of dollars that well-meaning citizens of developed countries annually donate to the people it was originally intended: the poorest of the poor in Haiti."
Chapter Eleven - p. 202 to 204
"...Sharon (the principal of the School for Jesus Christ of America in Haiti) had power. When her telephone didn't work and she couldn't get it fixed, she summoned the children of the head of the (Haiti) state-run telephone company from their classroom and sent them home with a message, "tell your parents that you cannot return to school until my telephone is fixed."
When the school (for Jesus Christ of America in Haiti) couldn't get fuel for the generator, Sharon picked up the phone and called the parents who monopolized the regional gasoline trade and who had children in school: gasoline arrived that evening. When she had a problem with papers for vehicles, she simply opened a spot for another child in her school - for the son of the director of the division of motor vehicles - and registration papers were no longer a problem. When she had problems getting goods through customs she did the same thing, admitted the children of the director of customs.
She also had a plush air-conditioned condominium (in Haiti), a video library, refrigerators and freezers the contents of which looked like a merger between a candy shop and a steak house. She had the ability to get anything imported from the U.S. free of charge and with the rapidity of Federal Express - which, need I say, didn't serve the region. Often I did not even have to pay for what I ordered. I had two pairs of free prescription eye glasses, half a dozen high-priced tape recorders for my research, parts for my motorcycle, free medical care.
...The realization that the school was a nest of elites began to eat away at my conscience. These were the same elites who looked down on and spurned the impoverished peasants, fisherman, and slum dwellers; who referred to them as ignorant and uncivilized, as subhuman, who called them dan wouj (red teeth) and pye pete (cracked fee). It infuriated me. The impoverished children in the Hamlet could not get medical care and when they did, it was bad medical care that they had to pay crushing fees for. But the children of the Haitian doctors who extorted them and the children of the other Baie-de-Sol elite were getting medical and dental care for free. (HLLN Note: Baie-de-Sol is a coastal city in Northwest Haiti that's an 8-hour drive from Port au Prince. It's the fourth largest urban center in Haiti whose actual name is altered in the book to Baie-de-Sol.) They were getting Christmas presents flown in. The were getting a virtually cost-free education. It wasn't meant for them. It was meant for poor children like those in the Hamlet. The kids at The School of Jesus Christ of America didn't need it. Their parents could pay for it. If the Baxters didn't give it to them their parents would send them to private school in Port-au-Prince or Miami. Some parents had taken their children out of school in Miami specifically to send them back to Baie-de-Sol (Haiti) to The School of Jesus Christ of America, specifically to take advantage of the free education, of the charity, the charity meant for children like those of the Hamlet.
On top of all this the Baxter's regarded themselves as altruistic. They thought of themselves as good Christians who made a great sacrifice by coming to Haiti to help the poor. Visiting missionaries thought of them as dedicated spreaders of biblical truth, somehow holier than ordinary Christians, closer to God, better than the rest of us.
I am not a religious person but it seemed to me too that the Baxter's embodied charitable and family ideals that while I myself may fall far short of fulfilling, I nevertheless had tremendous respect for. I respected them, admired their honesty, their good works, the closeness of their family. I had gone to their church services, stood with them holding an open bible in my hand as the Reverend read the words. Then it turned out to be bullshit. Helping the poor? The hell they were!
Now what I saw in the Baxters was a perversion of Christian idealism and I despised them for it. The country-style buffet lunches, the candle-light dinners on the patio with Haitian servants standing off the side waiting for tea glasses to get low so they could rush in and refill them, servants who were likely as not the objects of (Reverend Baxter's) the old man's sexual depredations, servants who had been trained by the mother, a sharecropper's daughter, using money meant for the poor to turn them into waiters and maids so that she could live out what were no doubt childhood fantasies of being a wealthy planter's wife. Those meals on the patio became a mockery of everything that The School for Jesus Christ of America was meant to stand for. It was like CARE, a perversion of American charitable ideals with its false claims to be aiding the "poorest of the poor" when what it was really doing was throwing exquisite banquets at plush hotels while carrying out U.S. political policy in the interest of international venture capitalists and ago-industrialists. The charity and Christian morality of the Baxters was a smoke screen, a rationale like "food aid" meant for the hungry. The Baxters were living like royalty, buying their way into Baie-de-Sol elite, rubbing shoulders with the beautiful people, granting them free education in exchange for favors while they used as lords use sefts the poor who they were supposed to be helping."
Chapter 8 - Orphans with Parents and Other Scams that Bilk U.S. Churchgoers
"Just on the outskirts of the city (of Baie-de-Sol), rising up from the third world squalor is a neighborhood of splendid houses... (Amid these houses) but quarantined from direct contact by an eight-foot cement wall, rises The School of Jesus Christ of America, a monolithic, brightly painted, stucco, two-story, 20-room school surrounded by equally bright and well constructed apartments and houses, workshops, and administration buildings. A brilliant yellow 30,000-gallon steel water tank looms above the compound like a spaceship from the heavens.
The School is a charitable operations, arguably the most successful in all of Haiti's provinces and unarguably the top K thru 12 school in the Province. Tuition costs are a nominal $1.50 (U.S.) per month, low enough for even the poorest Haitian parents to afford. Every year some 20 U.S. Christians sign on as teachers. They have contracts. But instead of getting paid a salary they pay the school. Each teacher raises $15,000 (U.S.) per year in donations and then gives money to the Missouri family (the Baxters) that administers the school. The money goes into the over-all budget. The mission then covers the teacher's living and travel expenses and provides each teacher with an allowance.
Besides the teachers, some 100-plus members of U.S. churches come throughout the year to visit and help out. They come in teams of a dozen or more. Some are doctors, pediatricians, bone specialists, dentists, but most are working class people who have come to help impoverished Haitians. They stay for several weeks. They build classrooms, fix houses and vehicles, give free medical care, cap teeth, hold fairs and field days and Christmas pageants for the children, organize theatrical events and teach the children to paint, take pictures and use computers.
Unlike so many other charities in Haiti where directors clearly embezzle most of the money meant for impoverished children - a trend that I will describe in greater detail shortly - this particular school has something to show for itself. School of Jesus Christ of America money is spent in Haiti and most of it is spent on Haitian children or on the teachers and other people who are providing the children with educations and maintaining the mission. Three 150-kilowatt power generators provide round-the-clock electricity. The monolithic school building, the administration offices, the houses, and the apartments are all air conditioned. Every classroom, house and apartment are all air conditioned. Every classroom, house and apartment has a television and a VCR. There is an impressive video library with all the latest children's films and a 10,000-book reading library. Every child in the school has a U.S. sponsor who donates $40 per month and some children have as many as four sponsors. Besides the monthly checks, the sponsors send their Haitian children gifts. Many of the children have gone on summer and Christmas vacations to visit their sponsors in the United States. Some sponsors have helped their Haitian children get into U.S. colleges, thrown graduation parties for them, helped them buy vehicles and get scholarships and given them jobs and allowances. It appears to most who have visited to be a heartwarming example of privileged U.S. citizens reaching out to underprivileged Haitians.
The secret of The School of Jesus Christ of America is the Missouri family that runs it. The leader of the flock is Reverend Richard Baxter followed by his wife Madame Reverend Richard Baxter and four of their six children, Kirk and Sharon, who were in their mid thirties when I knew them, and their two considerably younger siblings, Karin and Amethyst, who grew up in Haiti, speak fluent (Kreyòl)...
The Reverend and his wife exemplify conservative American values. Married at the ages of 17, they are still together more than 40 years later. Having grown up on a Missouri farm and worked 20 years for a U.S. electric company, Reverend Baxter can fix or, if necessary, created just about anything mechanical or electrical or that has to do with a house or building. He personally constructed and maintains the school and the faculty houses. He runs and maintains the 150-kilowatt generators and the complex electrical systems that spread energy throughout the mission compound.
Madame Reverend Baxter was the daughter of an impoverished Missouri sharecropper. Today she is the able pre-school teacher and director of the family compound (in Haiti). She orchestrates the activities of the 28 maids and cooks who she herself trained, an endeavor that is celebrated every afternoon at 2:00 when the family and some 20 to 30 American school teachers and visitors gather for a buffet lunch typically including fresh cinnamon rolls, homemade bread, pizza and roast beef. And then, not to be forgotten, there are Madame Reverend Baxter's exquisite candlelight dinners of imported steaks or chicken, potatoes, and fresh salads.
Three of the children, Kirk, Karin and Amethyst teach school ... Sharon Baxer...made it possible for me to help Bokor Ram's daughter Albeit and Arnaud's cousin Tobe escape their miserable lives. Tobe from the beatings and cruelty of Arnaud and Albeit from the tragic death of her mother and father. I took both girls out of Jean Makout and brought them to Baie-de-Sol where I rented an apartment for them and with Sharon's support they attended The School of Jesus Christ of America.
At the time I worked for CARE, Sharon was 37 years old, attractive, with sandy blond hair and a body toned by rigorous daily calisthenics and 10-mile runs through the mountains above Baie-de-Sol. She was my closest friend in Haiti, my confidant, the person whom I turned to when I could no longer deal with the people of Jean Makout...All you have to do is ride through the city with Sharon to sense the appreciation the people of Baie-de-Sol have for her. Wherever she goes someone is calling out after her, "Miss Sharon, Miss Sharon." It was Sharon, as I said, who gave me the means to rescue Albeit and Tobe, and who was helping to care for them and feed them. Indeed, had it not been for Sharon I could never have brought them to the city where I put them in a house with a nanny and where they went to The School of Jesus Christ of America.
And it was there at Sharon's that I began my research into orphanages.
*
Sharon has a second-floor apartment in the compound adjoining her parent's house. It is a refreshing break from the dusty poverty outside the walls, like stepping into a suburban condominium in the States. The central air is blasting. There is a long iron-framed plate-glass dining table, an over-sized refrigerator stocked full of Hershey's Kisses, Mound's Almond Bars, M&Ms, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, packs upon packs of licorice, Gold Fish crackers, goat cheese. In the freezer are pre-packaged steaks, de-boned chicken breasts, and gourmet sausages.
Sharon is sitting behind her desk, located in the middle of the apartment, her large-screen computer connected to the World Wide Web through satellite is open in frown of her. I pop down on the sofa, pick a selection of chocolates from a bowl on the coffee table in front of me and pop one into my mouth. I tell her about how CARE wants me to investigate orphanages. "Tim," she says, her interest sparked. "You have to visit the orphanage across the street."
*
Across the street from The School is one of the largest orphanages in the Province. The owner is an American named Harry Wothem. Harry spends most of his time in the United States, collecting money for his Haitian charities. But if there is a contemporary Pied Piper of Protestant charity in Baie-de-Sol, it is Harry. Almost all the evangelical missions in the area, including the School of Jesus Christ of America, began in association with him.
Harry is a charismatic bulldog of a man. A Vietnam veteran and a terrific public speaker whose sense of humor causes frequent eruptions of laughter among his audiences. Besides the orphanage, he has a clinic and a mission. Several times a year he brings in teams of over 100 church members from the U.S. Midwest, people who have come to see Haitian poverty and to do something about it. They build clinics and churches, hand out clothes and witness for the Lord. Each visitor pays Harry US$800 for the week-long trip. Harry charters a plane, and when the teams arrive he beds them down on the floor and in cots, feeds them rice and beans, and gives them what they have paid for: A taste of poverty. When they are not working building clinics and churches he packs the teams into the back of a dump truck and drives them through the dusty dirt streets of greater Baie-de-Sol area to tour the squalor.
As Harry drives along with the back of his dump truck full of awestruck middle Americans, he usually disregards the small niceties of Haitian life. Harry rolls his truck through river beds, past peasant woman scrubbing the family laundry, over their drying clothes, up out of the river and over the coffee beans that peasants set out to dry on the edge of the street. In the city, with apparently no awareness of the damage he is causing, Harry crashes through private electric lines and fences. Once I just missed an episode where he drove his dump truck down the road that passes between his orphanage and The School of Jesus Christ of America, swung around a turn-around, passed a man and several of his helpers making cement blocks and, in Harry's typical way, drove right over the blocks, crushing a half dozen or so and kept right on going. The men making the blocks ran screaming after him...
In addition to Harry there is Slimette, his partner. Harry speaks little to no (Kreyòl). But back in the late 1970s he hooked up with Slimette, a thin, suave, attractive Haitian preacher. A partnership was born...
The orphanage has been a smashing success and while I never learned anything of the benefits Harry derives from the endeavor, Pastor Slimette has done quite well. Today he owns a two-story home in Baie-de-Sol, another home in Port-au-Prince, and yet another in Miami.
Besides the orphanage, Slimette has several churches in the area. He also sells swamp land on the outskirts of Baie-de-sol. He drained the land himself and mortgages lots to poor immigrants from the countryside. His success as a pastor and orphanage manager and slum lord spawned an interests in politics. At the time I was doing the CARE survey, Slimette was the mayor of Baie-de-Sol.
I went by Slimette and Harry's Orphanage. It is called Orphanage of the Father and it is supported by Mission HW, meaning Harry Wothem. Pastor Slimette and his wife, Madame Slimette, are responsible for the orphanage. But at the time a, Heith and Sandy, an American missionary couple were living with the orphans and supervising them. The Slimettes also run a school on the orphanage grounds and Madame Slimette is present during the day.
I find Madame Slimette giving a class to some older school children ...I learn from Madame Slimette that there are 80 children in the orphanage, 35 girls and 45 boys. All the children are sponsored by U.S. churches.
Madame Slimette tells me "all the children are from rural areas" and smiling, explains how they like the young children "because they can better benefit from what the orphanage has to offer. The big children however," her smile fades, "they are a problem." She goes on to tell me that the day before my arrival Pastor Slimette and the orphanage staff had a meeting about the older children and they are going to have another meeting today. "Something has got to happen," she repeats.
Later that day I visit Madame Slimette again. This time I go to her home. She lives behind an eight-foot wall in a two-story cement house as large as the orphanage itself. I tap on the big metal gates. Tap tap. A guard opens and I am allowed into the driveway. An SUV is parked beneath an awning. Her oldest son's 250 Kawasaki motorcycle is propped against the house. Bicycles lie strewn about. It's a much different sight than the orphanage.
I ask if other Haitian families ever adopted any of the orphans.
"Only the parents can come get the child."
A little confused, "The orphans have parents?" I ask.
Madame Slimette's demeanor suddenly changes to indignation and "Look," she says and then, in a comment that surprises and puzzles me "Our orphanage has been here for 20 years and we do not give people's children away. Non!"
Her indignation causes me to back off. I'm not here to offend her. So I let the obvious question go and decide to clarify the matter on my own.
*
I stop back by the orphanage and ask the cook if I could see the kitchen and depot. As I walk through the compound curious children begin tagging along with me. I profit from the occasion to ask several children, "hey, where do your parents live?" I ask five orphans. The responses: "St. Angle," "St. Angle," "La Fonn," "Baie-de-Sol," "Baie-de-Sol." All cities.
All the children I interviewed not only had parents, they also were not, as Madame Slimette had told me, from rural areas. They were from urban areas. I left the orphanage wondering why they call the children orphans and why Madame Slimette misled me about them being mostly from the rural areas. What difference would that make? Unless, since in Haiti rural is synonymous with poor, it was to suggest that they took in only impoverished children, the kind that appeals to sponsors.
That evening I am back at Sharon's apartment savoring a sirloin steak dinner and the air conditioning. There is a knock at the door. Sharon answers and in come the American couple who live at Slimette and Harry's orphanage. Heith and Sandy, a pear-shaped couple, are plain rural middle Americans from Ohio. They have country common sense. Heith is semi-literate but a crack mechanic and handy at building things. Sandy is almost completely deaf. She is a good homemaker - Christian, faithful wife, devoted mother. She and Heith have two children of their own. It is not clear to me if they know that I am researching orphanages, but they immediately begin complaining.
"Harry Wothem is here," Heith tell us with a country twang, "and this very day he and Slimette kicked out 21 orphans (of 76, not 80 as Madame Slimette had said)." Heith explains that they kicked out all orphans over 14 years of age, some of who were 18 or 19.
"Well, where did the expelled orphans go?" Sharon asks.
Heith, apparently oblivious to the irony, says matter-a-factly, "Most are back with their parents." Then looking, befuddled he says, "Did you know that Madame Slimette has a niece, a nephew and some cousins there?"
"Did they kick them out?" I ask.
Heith smirks at me as if I am teasing him.
"I did not realize it," he goes on, "but some of those kids are from wealthy families. Several are from Port-au-Prince."
Heith clucks his tongue and tells us about two brothers who were kicked out and have already rented the house across the street, one of the more expensive houses in the neighborhood, the most opulent neighborhood in a city of 100,000. Their parents who live in Miami, are paying the rent.
"Some of the orphans have two and three sponsors," Heith continues, and then, shaking his head: "You know what Harry said when I asked him why he was kicking the orphans out? He said that he couldn't sell them anymore. They are too old. People don't want to sponsor them. Can you believe that, "he can't sell them anymore."
As I was to learn in the coming days, what Madame Slimette and Heith had done was inadvertently peel back the first layer of a system that benefited almost everyone involved except poor, destitute and parentless children foreign sponsors intended to help when they licked the stamp and put their checks in envelopes and mailed them off to the orphan foundations. The operators of orphanages and nearby or affiliated schools were, in every case I came across, spending only a fraction of the money they raised for the children and pocketing the rest. Orphanages in the area were a business.
*
...The next morning I headed for Jean Makout. My first stop is my American missionary friends Goliath, a man built like a professional linebacker, and his wife Rose Ann, a woman who looks and behaves like a pioneer on the American West...
Sitting in their kitchen the next morning, Goliath and I are talking about a man named Henry Humperdickel who supports hundreds of children in the area.
Goliath says he knows that Humperdickel gets $20 per child from U.S. sponsors and he knows for a fact that at a school across the street there are eight children sponsored through Humperdickel.
He adds that the money is donated in U. S. dollars, but spent in Haitian dollars.
"(But...)" I say, "Haitian dollars are worth only one-third of U.S. dollars."
"I know that, Tim...I asked Henry about it one time. He said he was using the difference for travel expenses. He said there was always so such to spend it on."
...Henry Humperdickel is a large U.S. Southerner with an amicable baby face and a sharp mind. ...Henry has a story much like that of Harry Wothem....
*
In Gonaives I finally encourter true orphans...(p. 141)
*
[- Disappearing Haitian children from Gros Mon:
Orphans with Parents and Other Scams at p. 145)
"...Nurse Matt was working for a French adoption agency. She would approach poor families and offer to adopt one of their children, usually in the five to six year age range. Promised the child would be educated and well cared for, the family would be given a sum of money and the child supposedly sent to live with a French family. Thirty to forty children let (Haiti) in this way. Not one had been heard from since.
..."Not one of the families ever received a single letter from the agency or from any of the adoptive parents." An SOS (Enfants Without Frontiers) employee obtained the address of the parent organization in Paris but, when they called, the person who answered the phone said that the agency had moved and left no forwarding address...
*
I am back in Baie-de-Sol sitting in Sharon's plush apartment. The air conditioner is blasting. Albeit and Tobe are here with us. Perhaps ironically, we have been watching the new version of Cinderella, the one where everyone is black. Whoopie Goldberg is the fairy Godmother and she turns a miserable Cinderella's orphan world into an underprivileged girl's dream come true. But I am barely paying attention. I can't shake the irony of the orphanages and the problem that is facing me: What am I going to tell my employers at CARE?
"Sharon," I say, "I have been to every single orphanage in the Province as well as Gonaives. They all look like scams to me. I don't think I should write a report that says the orphanages are all scams."
Sharon turns her attention away from the fairy godmother and toward me. "You have to do what you think is right," she says.
"Look at this," I say and get up and walk to where my book bag is hanging on a dining room chair. Sharon follows and we both sit down at the table. From the book bag I pull lists I got from a friend in the States.
"This thing is a lot bigger than just the orphanages I visited. Even if the orphanage directors are ripping off a lot of money, at least we know orphanages really exist. But there is much more to this."
I show her the lists.
"World Vision and Compassion International have 58,500 sponsored children in Haiti, a large portion of these are in the Province. CAM (Christian Aid Missions) sponsors 10,000 children in Haiti, some 2,000 of them are out here. The Haiti Baptist Mission has 57,800 sponsored children, many of them out here. And these are the ones I could get the figures for. They are only a fraction of it. In the Province you have Blue Ridge Mountain Homes, Plan International, Child Care, Tear Fund, and God knows who else. Then there are the small operations."
"Look at Pastor Sinner," I say, referring to the major evangelical school in the Village. "He gets $70,000 (U.S.) per year to help some 190 children. There are small sponsorship programs all over the place. There is Henry Humperdickel who may have hundreds of children on sponsorship. There is Harry Wothem. All throughout the mountains there are little Harry Wothem and Henry Humperdickel operations that we know nothing about. This is to say nothing of the Catholic Church which must have its own programs. For Christ's sake, there might be more children on sponsorship out here than there are children. And the corruption? At best, most of the money pays institutional expenses to educate kids who don't really need help. Okay, we could say that it is lifting crooked Haitian pastors and their families out of poverty. But now, now think about all the money that must be collected and never even gets here."
"It looks pretty bad," Sharon agrees.
"I am sure there are at least some needy children in these institutions," I say. "But I can't help feel disturbed by it all. So many people at these orphanages are outright lying. Most of the children are not orphans. That's a misnomer. The least they could do is call them "children's homes."
"That's weird, huh," Sharon muses.
"Ah, Sharon, it is beginning to look like you guys are the only honest charity in the Province?"
"It wasn't easy," Sharon says, and begins to tell me how difficult it was for her and her family to establish a respectable school. "At first everyone laughed at us. The said our school was no good and they sent their children to the Catholic school."
*
As Sharon talks I notice a pile of photos sitting on the table. In my frustration, I pick them up and start flipping through them. Americans, plain ordinary working class Americans. Husband and wife. Husband, wife and kids. Husband, wife and dog. Husband, wife, kids, dog, house and yard. Husband wife and kids on stage in photo studio. I ask Sharon about them. She tells me they are sponsors. I ask her about their occupations. This one is a plumber and his wife is a secretary. Here is a single working mother. Next is a social worker. This one is a school janitor, his wife a homemaker. Here's a farmer. It goes on and on like this, plain ordinary working class American folks doing good things for underprivileged Haitian children.
I ask Sharon about her sponsorship and she proudly says, "Harry Wothem is not the only one who knows how to raise money. All of our children are on sponsorship."
She tells me that the sponsorship for the School is $40 per child per month.
"Many of our children have three and four sponsors," she beams and then, clarifying, she says: "But it's not like one child get more than another. We don't just give the child the money. The money is spent in the interest of the child and that can be interpreted a lot of ways."
Sharon goes on talking and I lean back in my chair and begin to reflect on something that in all the years I have been acquainted with Sharon, her family, and The School, I have never really thought much about: The School is full of rich children.
*
The story of The School began in the mid 1980s when Sharon and her brother Kirk came down with one of Harry Wothem's whirlwind Christian tours of Haiti's poverty. They returned home and told their parents about it. The father, Richard Baxter, promptly retired from the Electric Company, went to Bible school, earned a degree and then Sharon, Kirk, their mother, father, and their two younger sisters all moved to Haiti to work with Harry Wothem. It did not take them long to become disenchanted with Harry's business style approach to charity and so they struck out on their own. As I recounted earlier, they have enjoyed dazzling success.
"It was so tough at first," Sharon is saying again, "everyone laughed at us. They said our school was no good."
The catch is, I am realizing as I sit here listening to her, that what she means by "everyone" is "everyone with money."
Sharon refers to the parents of the School's children as her parents' and as one drives through Baie-de-Sol with her, she is likely to wave at anyone in an SUV, with a large stomach, and with gold jewelry dangling from his or her body and as she waves, she smiles and exclaims, "that's one of my parents."
And "her parents" are easy to spot because most of the people of Baie-de-Sol are scrawny pedestrians in ragged clothes.
There is no doubt about it: The pupils of The School are overwhelmingly not impoverished Haitian kids as it says on The School's website. They are almost entirely composed of offspring from the ranks of the Baie-de-Sol elite. The plumber in the photo I was looking at sponsors the child of a Baie-de-Sol ship owner who also owns the largest regional bakery. The single working mother sponsors the owner of a radio station, an ice plant, a hardware store, an import-export business, and the largest funeral parlor in the city. The janitor sponsors the son of a Port-au-Prince surgeon who works as resident surgeon for the private hospital at La Pwent.
"Sharon," I say, "you're giving charity to the rich. The School is the most elite school in Baie-de-Sol. There are parents in the school who have more money than the people in these photos. Much more money."
"That's not true," she snaps.
"Well let's see, virtually every major ship owner in the harbor and most of the doctors I know in Baie-de-Sol have children in your school. Most of the higher-levels politicians and political administrators, the mayor, the customs inspector, the chief of police, they all have children here. The owner of the Shell gas stations has children in your school. No wait, he has two families in your school because both his wife and his mistress have children here. And, Sousou, who owns the Texaco stations, his wife and mistress have children there, too. The owner of the television station, he has children here. And what about the Benettes? They have seven children in your school. For Christ sake, two percent of the children in your school are Benette children."
"But I love her. Madame Benette is so elegant."
"That is not the point sharon. The point is that the Benettes are among the largest landowners in the Province. Their family has monopolized exports in Baie-de-Sol since before the Marines arrived in 1915. They vacation in France for crying out loud. And you are giving their children cost-free educations. You are giving them school lunches, Christmas presents, free medical care. And it is not yours to give Sharon. The people who give you that money expect it to go to impoverished children. Not to rich people. You are no better than the people who are stealing the money."
"We have poor children, too," she says indignantly. And then, pulling out a list of students to prove it she says: "Let me show you." We go over the list: "More than half the children in that particular class had at least one parent who is a medical doctor.
*
At that point I had visited every single orphanage in the Province and some half dozen in the neighboring Artibonite province. The ones I have not described were just as bad and the directors lied just as egregiously - and transparently - as those I have described. I had zero doubt that orphanages for Haitians and for many of the Americans who were helping them procure funds were businesses. Some orphanages, especially those in the cities, helped some Haitian parents and their children even if they do so in unadvertised ways and do not reach the poorest of the poor. By putting kids, at least some of whom are needy, in an orphanage they are giving them an opportunity to get an education with free books, meals and other benefits, not the least of which would be a the chance to meet a blan (a white or foreigner) who might, as they sometimes do, provide visas to the U.S. and a chance to further their schooling or get jobs there. But there is nevertheless something deeply disturbing about what I encountered. That something may, as in the case of the children in Gros Mon who were never heard from again, be far more sinister and dark than simply ripping off well intended contributors and snatching charity from the mouths of the needy. Indeed, and one of the reasons that I have written this book is in the hope that it will bring attention to such cases and lead to further investigation and clarification. But at the same time I want to make it clear that I am not against charity and certainly not charity for orphans. What I am against is false charity. I believe it is tantamount to robbing from impoverished children themselves. The money is theirs and they are not, in the overwhelming majority of cases I encountered, getting it.
*
In any case, my dismay with charity and development was growing. But the job wasn't over. In pursuit of my CARE employers' desire to expand food distribution, my next job was to investigate the Haitian medical system in the Province. I was in for another alarming series of discoveries, findings that would shatter any remaining faith I had in foreign aid to Haiti." (Reviewed by Ezili Dantò/HLLN, December 2009. To purchase Timothy T. Schwartz's book, go to -TRAVESTY in Haiti : A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud, food aid and drug trafficking.)
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Purchase Timothy T. Schwartz's book TRAVESTY in Haiti
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The Haitian struggle - the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this plane
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‘...Hayti (is) the glory of the blacks and terror of tyrants...I hope that she may be united, keeping a strict look-out for tyrants, for if they get the least chance to injure her, they will avail themselves of it...But one thing which gives me joy is, that they (the Haitians) are men (and women) who would be cut off to a man before they would yield to the combined forces of the whole world-----in fact, if the whole world was combined against them it could not do anything with them...’ ---David Walker
from: David Walker’s Appeal, 1829
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“There must be some kind of way out of here…” is the first lyric sung so prophetically by Jimi Hendrix on “All Along The Watchtower” recorded in 1970, the same year Jimi Hendrix passed away mysteriously. Regarded as one of greatest musicians to ever record, Saturday 18th September 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of his death in London, England. 
In early 1964, he was offered a guitarist position with the nonpareil group, The Isley Brothers, after winning first prize at the Apollo Theater for his playing talents. Later on that same year, he went on to record and perform with the incomparable Little Richard. Lasting through the end of 1965, he performed and recorded off and on alongside The Isley Brothers, Little Richard and other soul acts of the time period.
The singles were all UK Top 10 hits and were also popular internationally including Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan and Hendrix’s popularity grew instantaneously in Europe during this time and had yet to be embraced by the United States audience. Not until Paul McCartney of the Beatles recommended his group to the organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival. It was here where his unsurpassed talent was on full display for many aficionados of pop music.
His career and death grouped him with Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones, a group of profound 1960s rock stars who suffered drug-related deaths literally within months of each other. Circumstances around his death remain a mystery to this day.
