Why Haiti Needs New Narratives. Gina Athena Ulysse
country—memorial Masses, breakfast meetings, candlelight vigils, symposia—but I’ve decided to go to New York City and join Marching for Change. Initiated by a slew of organizations concerned with the welfare of Haiti’s people, the gathering is set to begin at 2:30 p.m. in Times Square, stopping at the Haitian consulate (Thirty-Ninth and Madison) and finishing at the United Nations.
I am marching because I am a member of Haiti’s large diaspora. We are what was once known as the tenth department, the one million-plus who have made our homes elsewhere—lot bo dlo, on the other side of the water, as some folks at home would say in Kreyòl. With the exception of Antarctica, we are everywhere. We have a notable presence on this continent, in South America, in Africa, as well as in Europe. Our numbers may be infinitesimal in Asia and Australia, but we are still there—nou la.
We are migrant farm and factory workers, dishwashers, nannies, nurses, doctors, professors, students, and artists of all kinds. We come in various shades, classes, political affiliations, and sexualities, and observe an array of religious practices. In spite of simple narratives that tend to reduce us to singular notions, we are and have always been plural. That said, we have a history of discord and dissidence within our communities. Our tendency—as our national motto, “l’union fait la force” (strength in unity), declares—is to bond and become a force. In the past, we have done so to oust our enemies. (In the new issue of Ms. magazine, I write about the enemies Haiti has long faced, from without and within, and the hope now arising from women at the grassroots.)
I am marching because both insiders and outsiders with intimate knowledge of our country’s extremes know that change will not come to Haiti without conscious and radical approaches. Otherwise, Haiti’s future will abound with more man-made disasters. Nou rété, nap gadé—we wait and we watch.
I am marching because we have not been idle as we waited. We initiated, organized, and participated in fund-raisers, medical missions, workshops, academic conferences, poetry readings, and other performances. We rallied to do whatever we could and to (re)consider committing to our Ayiti cheri—beloved Haiti. These moments gave us new opportunities to face each other and become reacquainted with our differences.
Truth be told, for every genuine effort that was made to bring quick relief to those Haitians in desperate need and to help sustain fractured communities, there were too many ready to position themselves for the windfall to come. They saw opportunity in the disaster and took it, with Haiti becoming a free-for-all.
I am marching because, in spite of our divisions, for many of us this has been a year in limbo. A year of living with the awkward privilege of being so far away from the devastation. A year of not knowing what to say anymore when we make periodic calls to loved ones left behind. As the poet Wilbert Lafrance writes in his poem “Kouman,”
Anndan kè-m tankou yogan
Adye mwen bouke di podyab
Yon sèl litany
Yon podyab ki pa janm fini
(Inside my heart is just like Léogâne [where 80 percent of the city was destroyed]
Alas! I am tired of saying poor thing
A litany of poor thing that will never end)
I am marching just days before Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day because, as the great doctor said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
I am marching to represent those whose images have been plastered all over the world but still remain invisible.
I am marching because this litany could end if the international community didn’t continually undermine our sovereignty.
I am marching because NGOs, for all the good that some of them do, still need to be coordinated.
I am marching because the Haitian government must be accountable to the entire nation.
I am marching for all those united against gender-based violence.
I am marching for the many who are still entrapped in trauma.
I am marching for every young person in the country who has a dream and should see it realized.
I am marching because thousands of us have marched before in New York and have been effective.
I am marching because Haiti needs all of us.
Finally, I am marching because at 4:53:10 p.m. last year, when the earth cracked open, Haiti once again was being asked to cause changes in the world. What’s at stake this time is the unfinished business of the Revolution—recognition and uncompromised acceptance of our humanity.
19
Rising from the Dust of Goudougoudou
Winter 2011 issue / Ms. magazine (print)
The world has watched Haiti’s most vulnerable women survive quake, flood, cholera, and homelessness in the last year—yet those women still feel invisible. What will it take for them to be seen and heard?
“Nou pa gen visibilite.” We don’t have visibility, Mary-Kettely Jean said to me.
Her words are ironic, considering the ubiquitous images of Haitian women covered with concrete dust after the devastating earthquake a year ago. Or considering how the global media was plastered with photos of Haiti’s women six months later as they remained in tent camps that replaced their broken homes. Or how the spotlight shone on women again when Hurricane Tomas flooded parts of the country’s southern region and forceful winds washed away tents already weakened by the sun. Or how the cholera outbreak that began in October was illustrated by photos of women and children on stretchers. Or, finally, how the campaign of a woman for Haitian president, Mirlande Manigat, once again brought forth images of Haitian women in popular global media outlets.
So why would Mary-Kettely claim invisibility?
I got some answers on my second trip since the earthquake to the Caribbean country where I was born and still have family. As a cultural anthropologist and university professor, I went to participate in a board meeting for INURED (Interuniversity Institute for Research and Development, a think-and-do tank to advance educational opportunities for the most marginalized) and to hear for myself about the plight of Haiti’s women. Jean—secretary of the Cité Soleil Community Forum and director of GFK (Group of Women Fighters)—and five other women leaders of small grassroots organizations based in the huge Port-au-Prince slum known as Cité Soleil talked with me as we sat under a tarp in the public meeting space of a tent camp.
“Se nou ki pi méprizé lan sosyete a,” said Lucienne Trudor in Kreyòl (Creole). Tudor is the treasurer of the Association of Women from the Iron Gate in Cité Soleil. “We are the ones who are the most ignored in this country.”
The women hoped that I could grant them access to the outside world—an access they don’t have, even with all the media coverage. “If we could find someone like you who would want to help us even when you don’t have money to give us,” said Jean. “If you get just our messages out maybe we could get some visibility.”
Women like Jean tend to be internal migrants who came to Port-au-Prince from one of Haiti’s nine other departments (similar to states) in search of work or education, then found themselves trapped in a cycle of poverty. With unemployment over 70 percent and no social welfare system, such women become dependent on the plethora of NGOs that have replaced the mostly absent Haitian state in providing basic needs and services. They have little or no representation and no access to channels of power.
Throughout its history, Haiti, like its women, has been both hyper-visible and invisible. Once labeled the jewel of the Caribbean, in part because of its high sugar production, Saint-Domingue—Haiti’s pre-independence name—was well known in the eighteenth century as France’s most profitable colony. That is until its enslaved population staged the only successful slave revolution in the history of the world.
After declaring itself a sovereign state in