Unnatural disaster
Even before the earthquake struck, Haiti was a land of broken promises and crumbling buildingsBy Susannah Nesmith
Dr. Paul Farmer opens Haiti After the Earthquake with a short essay by Joia S. Mukherjee, medical director of Partners in Health, the international health and social justice organization Farmer helped found in Haiti in 1987. Mukherjee describes how, two days after the quake, she wept at the sight of a statue of a freed slave that stood in front of the rubble of the national palace. An old woman who was also crying put her arm around her.
“I said, ‘Neg Mawon toujou kanpe!!’ — the free man is still standing!! And she replied, powerfully, ‘Cheri, Neg Mawon p’ap jamn kraze’ — my dear, the free man will never be broken.”
Farmer knows and loves Haiti, and perhaps this incident illustrates why. Though the earthquake of Jan. 12, 2010, destroyed so much, it didn’t destroy the faith ordinary Haitians have in their brave, fragile, little republic.
Sadly, Farmer explains in sometimes daunting detail, the earthquake failed to make a dent in the mind-numbing mess that has always seemed to characterize aid to Haiti. After the disaster, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign governments rushed in, only to continue bickering over funding, priorities and paperwork, while the national government continued to struggle, as it has for so long, to function.
Farmer has attempted for decades to help the country right itself. In 2009, he was appointed U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, working under Bill Clinton to coordinate aid. He has spent a career fighting the theory that Haiti is hopeless. Haiti After the Earthquake chronicles his efforts in the months before the quake and in the immediate and months-long aftermath. The narrative is sometimes dense, but his honest assessment of what the people trying to help Haiti did well — and where they failed — is important for anyone who cares about the country or international aid in general.
The book is not an indictment of the donor nations or NGOs working in Haiti; Farmer is diplomatic, sometimes to a fault. One gets the feeling that he could have gone further, named names maybe. But his goal is to help Haiti, and venting his frustrations too boldly wouldn’t serve that goal. Instead, the book is his answer to the questions: What’s wrong with Haiti? What can we do? And maybe most importantly, why hasn’t what we’ve done so far made much of a difference?
Farmer points out that a much stronger earthquake hit Chile in February 2010, yet fewer than 600 people perished. (Estimates are that 300,000 people died in Haiti.) Haiti’s earthquake would not have been so devastating if the government hadn’t been chronically underfunded, if the infrastructure hadn’t been already on the verge of collapse and maybe if the billions of dollars in aid promised over the years had actually been given to Haiti.
In that respect, not much has changed: Nine months after the quake, less than 15 percent of the post-earthquake reconstruction pledges made by donor nations had arrived. None pledged by the United States had managed to pass Congress.
Farmer frequently takes aim at the reluctance of the international community and NGOs to work with Haiti’s government. Their preference for civil society has left Haiti with more NGOs per capita than any other country but India. And all their fractured efforts haven’t solved Haiti’s problems.
But Haiti After the Earthquake isn’t a grim reminder that Haiti is hopeless. The book is peppered with uplifting tales of how individual Haitian overcame hardships. It also includes essays from leading voices within and outside Haiti, including novelist Edwidge Danticat and several doctors, nurses and aid workers who struggled to help in the immediate aftermath.
Farmer uses the personal triumphs and essays to explain that Haiti’s hope for a better future need not be in vain. The international community’s failure does not have to continue along the same dead-end path. Some will argue with his conclusions; he’s not the only expert on Haiti. Others are experiencing “donor fatigue” after trying for so long to help, with little to show for their efforts. He understands their frustration, even if he doesn’t agree with their conclusions. He’s frustrated, too; but he has not given up.
“We could have done better, certainly, and can do better in the future. We must do better at reconstruction than we have to date. We need to draw on every noble sentiment and every bit of technical skill to make Port-au-Prince a livable city and to make ‘build back better’ more than an empty slogan,” he wrote on the anniversary of the earthquake.
Susannah Nesmith is a writer in Miami.
