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| David Lammy visit to Haiti |
| Friday, 01 October 2004 |
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Below are excerpts from the diary of David Lammy, Member of Parliament for Tottenham and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, during his visit to Haiti in August 2004 in his role as a Trustee of ActionAid.
The Caribbean nation was rocked by violent conflict and political turmoil in addition to the disastrous flooding which hit the country in May. Heavy rains brought flooding to the rural areas in Haiti’s south east region. More than 1,000 people were swept to their deaths when rain-swollen rivers burst their banks. At the time David visited many were still missing and since his visit there have been further floods.
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere with desperately inadequate health and education services and 70% unemployment. 80% of people live off the land, much of which suffers from serious environmental degradation. ActionAid has been operating in Haiti and the Dominican Republic since 1996 and now works with 30,000 people in both countries. The charity works exclusively with local organisations and community groups.
Monday August 9th
After a morning meeting with the ActionAid team in Haiti and its partners we visited to Fort Mercredi in Carrefour Feuille, a Port au Prince shanty town not that dissimilar to the slum area in Brazil made famous by the film City of God. We spent time in a school sponsored by ActionAid who is providing basic education for children in difficult circumstances, particularly those who had been working as domestic helpers or in manual labour. The teachers talked of routine physical and sexual abuse, the lack of play and leisure activities how, to make ends meet, young people are forced into domestic and manual labour. The education programme integrates the children into formal education but also provides them with sport, cultural and leisure activities as well as legal representation/ documentation schemes. The success of the school has been remarkable with many of the children entering the job market and some of them returning as teachers themselves. Pass rates at baccalaureate had averaged around 80 to 90%, but civil unrest over the past year has led to a drop to 60-65%.
Tuesday, August 10th
Took a precipitous off road drive to Thiotte, 4 hours South East of Port au Prince and close to the border with the Dominican Republic. This area was affected by the floods in May.
I couldn’t help being struck by the sheer enormity of the flood plain and what had happened to people’s lives, homes and families. It was hard to comprehend that an area that was once fertile farm land is now completely devastated. White rock boulders had rushed down the mountain side to replace the green of farms, fields, trees and gardens; not only killing livestock, but leaving personal possessions shrewn across the valley, and concrete homes torn apart.
On the way, we met a woman in Mapou plain who had lost one child and most of her neighbours to the flooding. They had been woken in the night by the sound of rushing water and rocks as the waters rushed down towards the plain. Her house was mostly submerged in the lake and she was forced to head up the hillside where we found her living in a shack made of sheets, sticks and stones. The NGOs had stopped distributing food in that area a month earlier and she and her family were living off some maize that they had planted on the hillside. This poor woman not only had to look out at the remains of her former home, but knew that much of her entire village, her friends and family lay submerged under the muddy sludge.
It is hard to contemplate poverty on this scale not in Africa but in the heart and soul of the Caribbean, and that this terrible destruction was not solely a natural disaster, but a human one. For the last few decades farmers had been forced by their poverty to cut down the trees that covered the hillsides for firewood. Now whole mountains lay bare with nothing to protect the valley from the elements.
In 1997 flooding took place when Hurricane Georges hit the country. It had taken seven years to begin to get back to normal before the flooding took place again. We all knew in our hearts as we drove through Thiotte valley that it would happen again.
Amidst all the tragedy, ActionAid and its partners are doing all they can to help the people of this region get back on their feet, and to bring revenue to the area. We spoke to peasant farmers who were being helped to stop cutting down the trees. They told us about a coffee programme sponsored by ActionAid with the help of the EU, which has had a significant impact on production and revenues in the region. In the early 1990s, coffee sold for around 1 gde per pound. Today farmers receive around around 20 gdes per pound in addition to the profits generated after the coffee is sold on the Fair Trade markets of Europe and America. An ActionAid and DfID co-operative farms programme has brought much needed aid and finance to damaged and destroyed habitations in the southeast. As a result, up to 4,500 benificiaries (or approximately 25,000 people when the average family size is accounted for) have been able to sow seeds in time for the planting season with the fertilisers, tools and seeds provided by the project. The distribution of livestock has also contributed to the relaunch of economic activity in the area.
Another effect of the floods has been to pollute the drinking water in affected areas, causing illnesses including dysentery, diarrhoea, stomach cramps and fevers. We visited workers in the field digging ditches to lay pipes for a Drinking Water Rehabilitation Program sponsored by ActionAid with the help of the EU and DfID, which will provide local people with clean drinking water.
Visited a summer championship organised by the Thiotte Football Association between neighbourhood teams of the Thiotte area. The winning team received a full Tottenham Hotspur team kit which I had brought. There was a great atmosphere – a feeling of togetherness and hope. The whole community had turned out for the event and the referee for the competition was the local Mayor. Couldn’t help but chuckle at the prospect of Ken Livingstone refereeing a match in London!
Thursday, August 12th
Another car trip today, this time to the Dominican Republic to visit the Jimani refugee camp, created after the May floods, where Haitian migrant workers are still being held in difficult conditions with restricted access to the available aid. Many of these migrants had lost their documentation in the floods making them ineligible for housing or other aid from which they might have benefited.
The local authorities here have given the responsibility for the coordination of all the aid flowing into the area (about $20 million) to a Dominican Catholic Priest. The refugees of Haitian origin claim that he has purposefully ignored their plight, directing all the aid towards the affected Dominican population even where there has been a surplus of that aid. They claimed that 300 new houses have been built whereas there were only 200 Dominican victims. Regardless, no victims of Haitian origin have ever received a home. The general sense was of desperation with most victims expressing that they were at the “mercy of God.” ActionAid and their partner MUDHA are working onsite to provide medical attention and psychological support to the victims. MUDHA was doing all they could to keep the people mentally and physically healthy with the provision of medicines, counselling, as well as leisure activities such as basket making and sewing.
Drove down the route of the floods to a lake 40m below sea level – the hottest place in the Dominican Republic. Saw bodies of Haitians drawn here by the floodwaters now rotting in the lakes and rivers. People are forced to drink this water to survive - a serious health issue. It is probable that more remains have been eaten by the many crocodiles.
Haitians view funerals as very important but they cannot bury their dead as the bodies of their relatives can’t be found, and as a result can’t accept their deaths. Many have begun to hold ceremonies with stones to try to register some degree of closure on the lives of their family and friends.
I noticed that the people in this area were destroyed by the lack of work. This is particularly difficult for Haitian women, who have traditionally worked extremely hard. Now, they are making candles and accessories to pass time and to try to earn some money. The young boys have lost all sense of hope without access to the labour market and seem to have nothing to do other than to wait and see what will happen next.
Friday, August 13th
Today we visited San Pedro de Macoris Batey in the Dominican Republic. A batey is a housing project near sugar cane plantations for (mainly Haitian) migrant workers. The batey we visited housed around 200 people but they vary in size from approximately 100 to 3,000 people.
Conditions of extreme poverty persist here, the worst I saw in Haiti. People’s living space is totally inadequate, with each family of between 6 and 10 people living in one room of about 6ft by 10 ft. Where they exist at all, sanitary facilities are poor, and residents have little or no access to health facilities and very limited access to a water supply.
The batey we visited was equipped with some minimal services acquired through ActionAid support such as a water tank for safe drinking water and a school/community centre. But there are many bateys where such services do not exist.
The privatisation of the sugar industry by the Dominican Government in the 1990s has aggravated the situation for batey inhabitants. Since privatisation, production and output have decreased by two thirds and work has become far scarcer. Alternative employment for these people is not an option due to the reluctance of the authorities to register batey inhabitants with either resident status or citizenship. This hesitancy is based on their Haitian ancestry and the political, historic (and racist) notions that define Dominican nationalism and identity.
The Dominican Republic is the only country in the whole of Latin America not to have gained independence from a European power. As a result, Dominican nationalism and identity as well as Dominico/Haitian relations have been defined in relation to that history.
I met an old man called Lewis in the batey. He was in his 80s and had lived in the Dominican Republic for 40 years. Like many others he is now too old for manual work, but as he has no papers, he has no social security and no means to survive.
Here there was none of the collective power that I had seen in Haiti. Complete disempowerment meant that there was no fight left in the people.
It also seems that discrimination against Haitians in the Dominican Republic is entrenched in the judicial system.
I was told about the “Guyayabin Case” where six Haitians were killed whilst being transported across the border illegally and the murder case of a woman who was killed in the North by a powerful landowner with close contacts to the party of former president Meija. Her crime was to have picked a papaya from his land.
I think the situation for Haiti is extremely challenging. It’s challenging because of where it’s positioned in the world, it’s challenging because of it’s deep, troubled political history and it’s challenging because of serious environmental degradation. So I think there’s a lot of work for ActionAid to do over the years ahead and for the NGO community fullstop. I suspect that Haiti will continue to be a country that commands the attention of not just us in the UK, but of America, France and others.
I am really proud to have had the opportunity to go to Haiti. I fell in love with the place. Absolutely wonderful people, wonderful music and fantastic Caribbean food. Despite being the poorest country in the western hemisphere it is also one of the culturally richest countries that I have been to, and is really a jewel in the Caribbean.
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