Duke Haiti Lab Kreyòl (Creole) Blog

Men, Mèt ou a kap pale sou Televisyon Nasyonal ([H])ayiti (TNH). Nan Ayiti yo di TNH paske yo ekri tit la nan franse. Tande emisyon an yon fwa.

1) Anba, kote genyen repons, nou dwe ekri pawòl kreyòl n ap tande nan emisyon sa a.

UNESCO had created international coordination committees (ICCs) in the past for Cambodia, Aghanistan, and Iraq. It is now proposing an ICC for Haiti, with a mission, according to the Haitian Minister of Culture and Communication Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassègue, “to inventory, safeguard and rehabilitate all the assets and remains linked to Haitian heritage.” Inventorying alone could bring a radical adjustment in the international sphere’s comprehension of the historical and artistic treasures of Haitian civilization.

Unesco cites 150 participants on the proposed ICC, including “representatives from UNESCO Member States and organizations including Interpol, Blue Shield, the World Customs Organization, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and museums including the Quai Branly (France) and the Smithsonian Institution (United States).”

Napoleon Bonaparte did not take kindly to the overthrow of French colonialism in Haiti in 1804. To this day, French media accounts of Haiti often bypass the French colonial role there. See this TV5 Monde clip on “Haiti, Saint-Domingue, deux destins” contrasting the misfortunes of the “francophone” Western part of the island of Hispaniola with the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, without any allusion to the history underwriting what remains of francophonie in Haiti. In the immediate aftermath of the quake, a French news video aired which spoke of the glory of the Haitian overthrow of slavery, without qualifying the national affiliation of that slavery. (-That video is no longer accessible. To be fair, it was followed on Jan. 17 by a more detailed account of the conflict between Napoleonic France and the slaves of French Saint-Domingue, “Les Origines tourmentées de la république haïtienne.”) Confusion over the French colonial name for Haiti, “Saint-Domingue,” and the current French name for the Dominican Republic, also known as “Saint-Domingue,” adds to the politics of postcolonial amnesia that Christopher L. Miller outlined in his essay “Forget Haiti.”

But today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is in Haiti.

The only previous visit of even a cabinet-level French minister  to Haiti was that of French Minister of Defense Michèle Alliot-Marie after the fall of the government of Aristide in 2004. (Following Aristide’s complaints that he had been “coup-napped” to the Central African Republic, Alliot-Marie had commented cryptically,  “At present, I would say he is being protected rather than imprisoned.”)

French humanitarian, medical, and other relief organizations have responded to the Haiti disaster with speed and efficiency. Is today a new day for Haiti/France relations?

Where is the money going? Relief Web provides FTS (Financial Tracking Service) for global humanitarian funding, which you can break down for specific countries and emergencies. Research for Haiti provides further digestion of financial flow information.

Relief Web also provides detailed Latest Updates on relief efforts in Haiti, which you can break down by sector, to learn of breaking news in your relief area, such as Health or Education. Relief Web details work Vacancies by Emergency for those seeking recruitment information.

The NYT has covered the phenomenon of the lightening-quick person to person spread of verbal information and disinformation in Haiti, called telediol. Check it out!

Many relief workers may be using smart phones in Haiti with little inkling of the size of the bills that can ensue. If you have had this experience and are an ATT customer, call ATT, as they are currently accepting petitions for credit on international charges for voice, text, and data roaming in or with Haiti.

Unless your professional work depends on internet access from your phone, consider acquiring a local pay-as-you go phone with text messaging in Haiti. You can find one of the ubiquitous Digicel stores through the site below. If you need more minutes, you can do so online, or you can purchase supplementary sim cards with minutes from street vendors (–tell anyone on the street “Mwen vlè achte minit Digicel,” and a vendor will likely materialize):

http://www.digicelhaiti.com/en/

For people communicating by phone with Haitian contacts, you can “top up” their phone minutes by registering at the Digicel site and choosing “topping up” under “Quick links.” Cell phones are lifelines; preservation of your contacts’ communicative access to a larger world can be an important first step.

Health care workers using smart phones can download an app with English-Haitian medical Creole from Educa Vision.

Social media have been blazing new logistical and networking trails in the disaster zone. People considering relief work in Haiti may want to subscribe to the Facebook page of the Haiti Response Coalition-Tèt Ansamn pou Yon Nouvo Ayiti, where individuals currently in Haiti provide reports and comments from the field. On Twitter, Multilink’s InternetHaiti and the Fletcher School’s brilliant USHAHIDI are particularly effective organizations to “follow” for news about relief efforts–sign up!

The history of Haitian debt has been particularly fraught since Haitian President Boyer agreed in 1825 to pay a massive indemnity to France of 150 million francs (–an amount that can be reimagined in contemporary terms as roughly the equivalent of 21 billion dollars). This agreement made by Boyer in the hope of reducing the critical commercial isolation of Haiti, went largely toward repayment of French colonial planters’ property losses when the colony’s former slaves defeated the forces of Napoleon at the end of 1803. Since colonists’ property deeds often had slaves attached to land, the newly freed slaves of the first black Western nation were to some extent paying back the value of their own persons, after a legitimate military victory. The debt to France was fully repaid in 1938. The process of repayment helped to divide the cultures of the Western and Eastern sides of the island of Hispaniola; Boyer presided over the unification of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but the DR chafed under the economic burden of the debt to France.

Debt cancellation by the IMF, World Bank, and the US has been underway since 2009. See the BBC article on the most recent pledge, by the finance ministers of the G7 nations–Canada, the U.K., the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, and Japan–to cancel Haitian debt:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8502567.stm

Pledges and follow-up can be entirely different beasts. As Paul Farmer, founding co-director of “Partners in Health” (Zanmi lasante), recently noted, “Despite $402 million pledged to support the Haitian government’s Economic Recovery Program [in April 2009] … as of yesterday we estimate that 85% of the pledges made last year remain undisbursed…. [we don't need more pledges] We need a reconstruction fund that is large, managed transparently, creates jobs for Haitians, and grows the Haitian economy. We need a reconstruction plan that uses a pro-poor, rights-based approach far different from the charity and failed development approaches that have marred
interactions between Haiti and much of the rest of the world for the better part of two centuries.” – Dr. Paul Farmer, U.N. Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti January 27, 2010