Our trip to Dezam

A common theme running through discourse on Haiti's reconstruction is the need for decentralization - shifting Haiti's population from densely populated Port-Au-Prince to less populated areas. Last weekend, we visited Dezam, one of the less populated areas, namely, to learn more about MCC's work in that region, the development taking place there and what could be done to promote migration to the rural areas of Haiti.

Our lesson on decentralization began before we even reached Dezam. There are two main routes from Port-Au-Prince to Dezam, and we traveled on the route that takes us through Mirebalais, the location of Partners In Health new teaching hospital in Haiti. We were kindly given a tour of the new hospital and it looks extremely beautiful and big. (It's still under construction but almost complete). The hospital has been designed with a special emphasis on maternal and child health; it has a special waiting and consultation area for women needing maternal health care . It also has an emergency room specifically for attending to patients with complications that may arise due to pregnancy. The belief that maternal health matters, is evident in almost all aspects of the hospital's design.

Through our discussions with the Hospital Project Coordinator, we really wanted to learn more about how the local community was reacting to the construction of the hospital, what the anticipated effects on the community would be as well as how the organizational and hospital set-up had taken into account the cultural and social contexts in which the hospital was being built. We learned (from the Hospital Project Coordinator) that generally, the community is quite pleased with the arrival of the hospital. The hospital should be able to provide local employment both directly and indirectly that would facilitate the community's economic growth. It also means a greater chance of better health outcomes for those living in the community.

Some of us though, left the visit a little worried about how the hospital's day-to-day functioning had taken into account the social norms of the local society. For instance, we were informed that parents would not be allowed to stay in the hospitals overnight with their children. What would this mean though, for parents traveling from far-away places to a rural area with little guest accommodation? Would parents feel comfortable leaving their children with nurses and doctors (who are more or less strangers)? We also thought about what the impact on local "midwives" would be once the hospital began to encourage hospital births. Despite some of our concerns, we were generally impressed with the hospital.

Once our tour at the Mirebalais Hospital was over, we continued our trip to Dezam. There we met Jean-Remy, a Haitian MCC employee who has worked for the organization for 25 years (ever since MCC began working in Dezam). Currently, MCC's work in Dezam focuses on reforestation and environmental education. Jean Remy began his discussion with a brief time line of deforestation in Haiti. Before the early 1980s, many Haitians living in the rural areas owned Haitian pigs (don't know a better technical term for the pigs but they were local, indigenous pigs). The pigs were cheap and easy to raise and were often considered as bank accounts for rural households; were a family ever in some dire economic situation, the pig could be sold to help remedy the family's situation. In 1983, the U.S. government supported the mass slaughter of all Haitian pigs because of the outbreak of a swine disease (we were not told exactly what disease). The loss of these pigs, a huge economic resource for families, provided a great impetus for families to begin to cut down trees to sell for firewood or to make coal. Trees took the place of pigs and became the new bank accounts for families. Today, only about 2% of Haiti's original forest remains. 

MCC's partner's approach to reforestation is two-pronged. On one hand, the partners realize the economic value of trees to rural families, who are often overlooked by government and NGOs in the development process, and have designed a project that allows planters to plant trees that they can later cut down for sale. On the other hand though, these partners also realize the need for more long term reforestation of Haiti, and work on planting trees in protected regions where cutting them down is illegal.

After lunch, we visited a technical school being built by a local NGO called GASA. GASA believes that rural communities will develop through love for education and that education and community growth are achieved through patience and sacrifice. Love, Education, Patience and Sacrifice.This technical school trains its students in a variety of skills and jobs e.g. mechanics, plumbing, agriculture, computer technology etc. GASA believes that by training community members in these skills, community members can find employment that would help them improve their economic situation. It was easy to see that the school had been built with the community's growth and welfare in mind.

While we were at the technical school, we were reminded of how negative agricultural practices in the U.S. had crossed borders into Haiti. The school used feed with growth hormones to raise its chickens such that withing 47 days of a chick's birth it would be ready for sale and human consumption. We were further remind of how agricultural practices cross boundaries, when on Saturday morning, we had the opportunity to visit a local farm. We learned about the increased use of fertilizer among farmers and how very often, these fertilizers are used without proper education on their application or possible health hazards. There also seems to be a greater desire among farmers to use fertilizers in farming despite a lot of the information we have in the U.S. on the detrimental effects of the fertilizers.

At the farm, we also learned about land acquisition practices that make the poor poorer and the rich richer. Very often, in rural areas, if a man is in need of money, a wealthier man will lend him the money in exchange for the  borrower's land. The lender will work the land and own all the crop that comes from it until the borrower returns the full amount of money loaned. While the man in need of money obtained a loan to help him through those rough times, he lost the land he used to farm on and generate money for himself and his family; it thereby becomes harder for him to raise the money needed to pay the lender back.


We ended our time in Dezam with a stimulating and insightful discussion with Josh and Marie-Lynne, a Canadian couple working for MCC. They spoke to us about their roles as aid workers and how very often their role in Haiti seemed comparable to the role of colonizers in Haiti - how no matter how much an aid worker tried, they would always carry a certain amount of privilege with them. This raised interesting questions among us, and seemed to echo a lot of the sentiments we had been hearing throughout our time here. What is our role as aid workers? How long should we be out here working as aid workers? Should we be here? If we are not here, what can we do to support international development?

After our Saturday lunch (and yes, I'm ending the discussion with Josh and Marie-Lynne with the above paragraph, because we really did leave with more questions that answers), we headed off to Obama beach. The beach was breath taking, the water was just the right temperature. We met a few members of the UN peace keeping force there.

Well that's a summary of our Friday and Sunday and believe me it really is the summary! We're having a great time - learning a lot and enjoying each others' company in the land that was and will again be the Pearl of the Antilles