NEWS BRIEFS from Haiti chèri

PAP (Port au Prince)

- this morning Guylene (our friend, MCC colleague and Gabriela's god-mother) picked up the paper signed by the important person in ARCHIVES

- she spent a few hours at IMMIGRATION to start the passport process

- the file needs to go over to the Ministry of the Interior to be signed by 3 different people

- Friday morning, she will try to get that done in collaboration with a few high level people in the Ministry that Matt has been able to make contact with thanks to help from some other friends with friends

- we are and hoping and praying that the file will be signed in the morning on Friday so Guylene can go back to Immigration to get the passport done. She has friends there who can get the passport done quickly for us. If we get the passport today or first thing Monday morning, we should be all set for the Wednesday departure!

Dezam
-G and I are catching up with old friends and colleagues and loving the SUNSHINE and living outside and sleeping under the stars
-this morning Gabriela said "Brian" (her uncle here) and "benyen" (which means to bathe, her favourite hobby)

keep praying! we're getting somewhere : ) GEM

Saving Gabriela !

It’s official! Gabriela's adoption papers passed through the Haitian courts late February (we didn’t actually know it ourselves until April!). Looking back we can’t imagine how we ever lived without her. Looking further back we can’t believe that we’ve lived here in the Caribbean for nearly 4 years. I vividly remember arriving in Dezam and not being able to imagine how we would live there for 3 years in the heat, in Creole, without Chapters, or mixed field greens but that was a few days before the community showed up at our door l i t e r a l l y to welcome us with Haitian hospitality and curiousity and before we tried pikliz (spicy cabbage salad) and watercress not to mention mangoes, loquats, and Haitian lemonade. . . Now it’s hard to imagine not being here.

Every so often people (Haitians and foreigners) meet us, all three of us, and they compliment us for "saving Gabriela". Every time I hear this the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. So when it happened most recently, I waited until my neck hair when down again and I said to Matt, let's make a list of what we are "saving" Gabriela" from. Here's what we came up with...and we wanted to share it with you.

we saved her from:
• not being able to find books and websites in her first language
• corporal punishment in school
• not having health insurance
• having to work b/c her parents can’t afford to send her to school
• having to stay inside if the protests on the streets get violent
• wearing American hand me downs
• Giardia
• not knowing how to set her alarm on her phone or wake up with anything but the sun or the roosters, or early choir practice
• not ever going tobogganing
• thinking white is better

and we saved her from:
• living with her grandmother
• going to church on Sunday with nearly everyone else
• germs
• trusting in God to meet her in daily needs
• harvesting sugar cane from her garden, loading it on a horse, and riding the horse to the market
• knowing where her food comes from
• shopping in an outdoor market
• having only 1 choice of cereal
• seeing babies being born
• being vulnerable
• seeing sick people and old people die
• knowing how to chill out
• having too few possessions
• riding public transportation
• patience
• mangoes
• fresh juice
• taking her goats out to pasture at dawn
• 363 days of sunshine a year
• rice out of a husk and beans out of a pod
• doing laundry in the sunshine with her feet in the river while chatting with her neighbours (weight machines can’t compete with this muscle toning action)
• having a reasonable ecological footprint
• watching a tarantula spin its legs up effortlessly in marvellous self defence
• knowing how to make rope
• knowing how to make her own soccer ball or kite out of a plastic bag(s)
• knowing how to fix a fuel line with a rock
• pounding her own coffee and not drinking it double, tall, nor with skim or soy
• valuing every drop of water that it takes to fill her jug at the public tap
• looking physical poverty in the eyes every day
• being valued just for showing up

oh, there’s more! we are also saving Gabriela from
• not having the chance to play with toy guns
• not having the chance to watch 4 hours of television per day
• not having the chance to be self conscious about her weight
• not ever finding out what a transfat is
• never going to Walmart
• never having the opportunity to be overwhelmed by opportunities
• not getting to work overtime
• not having the choice to eat local
• not ever having the chance to see 8 lanes of traffic, or even 4
• not having to read a map to get there
• being Afrocentric, or whatever the opposite of Eurocentric

I've noticed that when I pray with Haitians, they say thank you for this food. When I pray with North Americans here in Haiti and beyond, we say thank you for this food and thank you that we are so blessed. What does this blessed mean? Looking at the biblical “blessed”, God blesses everyone, everyone who wants it, everyone who admits they need it.
Specifically...
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5: 3-12

I don’t see blessed are those who work overtime, manage their money well, have a free education, are born in Canada, drink bottled water, drive a hybrid car, or have the biggest wood lot. The possessions we have are not going to bless us or save us. What we achieve by worldly standards is not going to get us anywhere but here (on earth) either (unless the worldly standards start to resemble God’s). These things are manifestations of the state of our hearts that can help us or block us from God’s blessings.

We didn’t save Gabriela. I know without a doubt that by adopting Gabriela and introducing her to a “GWO PEYI” (big country, as Haitians appropriately refer to “developed” countries) she will miss out on the blessings God gives the physically poor. If you have ever visited a peasant in their home, you’ll know what I’m talking about. God chose the poor in the world to be rich with faith and to received the kingdom God promised to those who love him James 2:5 (see also: Mark 12:43).

Also, if we didn’t adopt Gabriela there’s a really good chance she would have gone to Holland (her orphanage was a Dutch NGO). She might have become tulip engineer and she might have even liked dropjies. If no one ever adopted her and she stayed here in Haiti she might have become a role model to younger orphans or a human rights activist right here in Port au Prince or even a banana seller. If Gabriela goes to Canada, she might become the governor general (she’s already mastered the wave), or a secretary, the prime minister, a dancer, or a factory worker. And it won’t really matter what she chooses or what chooses her because God works through everyone. In fact, for those of us who are in the habit of feeling “blessed” because water comes out of our taps or when we buy two and get one free, God might even be working overtime, particularly on the days we are feeling like we’re “blessed” because we’ve earned it and we start preaching the gospel of “do it like us” from our car windows. What would the world look like if we were all “blessed” like North Americans. Would we still call ourselves “blessed”? Does our blessed-ness depend on others not meeting OUR “definition” of blessed? I’m asking.

Haiti has blessed us richly. Three plus years later, I can ride a taptap one-handed, carry bananas on my head, walk by half-moonlight, bathe in the river with my neighbours, and live without lettuce and while these might be guides on the road to “blessed”, these are not the true blessings (although the river bathing gets close).

Three plus years and a Haitian baby later I can let the market women rip me off,
spend 15 minutes greeting people at my office, listen to my colleagues, drink juice with an unreasonable amount of sugar just because someone made it for me, and smile at the guys making cat calls at me (this one was a LONG time coming!) Gabriela has been busy chipping away at my hyper-productivity and to everyone’s honour, I’ve been scheduling time to “pa fè anyen” (do nothing). Soon I just might be able to laugh a nice big laugh when things don’t go as planned.

The hair on the back of my neck is sticking up again, for the guard’s 12 year-old son and Gabriela who are chasing each other in the front yard as I type, for the way the human heart gets more generous the less we have, for Haiti who’s fighting whether at home or on the streets for the right to have enough to eat, and for the opportunity to be meek.

Blessed be.

Us all.

Well, it's official. . .

. . . Gabriela's adoption papers passed through the Haitian courts making us all officially adopted late February 2008. We have a few more steps and we need your prayers BIGTIME for this next week before we come on tour!!!

Here are the steps to adopting Gabriela
(when you see one of these: - that's where we are right now)

• Gabriela comes home (July 20, 2006)
• we find and meet our lawyer, Jean-Baptist MEME
• vaccinations
• complete our dossier
• Matt’s fingerprints for some reason had to take several trips to Canada and back
• social services
• Parquet
• letter proving OUR sterility (well actually, MINE, b/c the Haitian government is confident
that no man would ever be sterile)
• Tribunal
• Etat Civil
• decide on Gabriela’s new last name ; )
• Parquet
• Archives
• submit citizenship application with Canadian Embassy
- Haitian Immigration
- Interior
- Immigration again
- Haitian Passport
- Visitor’s Visa to Canada

thank you for your prayers...tour dates coming next!
G E M

The Healing Ceremony

Lots of you have asked about my healing ceremony so I wanted to share a little. The ceremony was held at Janey Wynne’s place, a cottage up above Port au Prince. It was a dark and stormy night until the clouds lifted the reveal the stars and Coleen and Dja wiped down the chairs so we could sit cozy under the open gazebo. Before we sat, the space was prepared with incense (earth and air), water, a candle (fire). And, we all gently sang Gabriela to sleep in Matt’s lap.

To the ceremony we invited all that and who is part of us, past and present.
I lit candles from the centre candle and named each with one of my fears.
Volunteers held the candles and we all prayed for the release of the fears. Then I released the fears one by one extinguishing their light and replacing them with my commitments to walk among others, be authentic in relationships, wholeness, and to trust that my gifts will be transformed in the process.
We prayed.
Drumming brought us back.
Then as we sat in a round, we sewed together a medicine bag, representing my re-member-ing and remembering who i am with out the eating disorder. Into the medicine bag, I put symbols to remind me of my wholeness as part of the whole universe.

The candles were re-lit and my commitments sent into the heavens.
Then we went inside and Amy served us the best chai tea ever.

I am the kind of person who likes to try different things. (duh!) It wasn't until after I graduated from university and had returned to university that i realized if you just do exactly what the teacher says, you will get an A (and that's because that's exactly what the prof. said) I was always trying to do it like that with a creative twist. My creative spirit has brought me into many adventures-- lots of bike trips and skinny dipping, Senegal and chimp tracking etc., not to mention marriage, AND also the 9 year adventure of an eating disorder. The Kikuyu of Kenya say "Coming out of your house is learning." But maybe i would add that you often have to come back home to realize that you've learned something while out and also that how much you learn is proportional to how freaked out you get on the way. In many ways the healing ceremony was my homecoming.

I’m going to do a little advocacy here too regarding eating disorders after having one. 1. do what you love – I like this quote by Audre Lorde (an activist of Caribbean decent): “When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid". It’s true. 2. don’t comment on people’s weight, good or bad. it’s really a non-issue like height. but it’s also a marketing strategy and it’s making millions by making us think we can change something that we can’t. (that’s why an eating disorder which is about control NOT about food or weight manifests itself in food and weight). we can change how we think about ourselves though, by not by ourselves.

thanks for joining with me in this fight please support the women in your life with confidence and positive role models

Esther STAR child of God

If we don't talk, the rocks will talk!

Gabriela, Martha, and I spent a week in Ti Plas (North-East near Anse Rouge) to participate in a workshop by Bread and Puppet hosted by the organization AMURT. Bread and Puppet is art & theatre group from Vermont that does peace education through stories, dance, music, puppets, and love. I don't have the words to express the power of this peace movement not what they did so much as what they inspired in us and WE DID TOGETHER. (I'm having shivers writing this!) We spent 3 days preparing our props and then took to the streets in nearby Sous Chòd on their market day.

We were the sides of a big boat with this written on it: Si nou pa pale, wòch yo ap pale (if we don't talk, the rocks are going to talk) from a song that we sang as we sailed through the market. Bread and Puppet shared with us the tools of peace education using the theme we chose for Haiti: food. MCC Dezam is also organizing a peaceful march for May 1st where many have been invited to walk together with djakouts (bags hand-woven from a local palm tree) filled with the bounty of Haiti, mangoes, sugar cane, rice etc. I heard a podcast this morning about a guy who ate 31 different animals in a month in part as a way to reconnect with the food we eat. Then on the 7:30 CBC satellite news, I heard that the World Bank is discouraging big countries to export so much food to countries like Haiti. I am SO excited about the future for our children. And I'm planning a trip to visit Bread and Puppet in Vermont- probably not this summer but next. Come with!
see Bread and Puppet at: http://www.breadandpuppet.org and AMURT at: http://www.amurthaiti.org/

Eric Pierre, New Prime Minister in Haiti

Just got news that Eric Pierre is the Prime Minister designate, chosen by President Preval. It appears that Pierre will have a difficult time in the approval process, but it is likely that he will be approved. Eric Pierre has worked for many years in Washington at the IADB, the InterAmerican Development Bank. So . . . he obviously comes from a certain perspective, one that many, especially Lavalas types, aren't too fond of. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Stay tuned.

M

Food Props

Speaking of food, I've yet to take the time to give props to my brother Jeff and his restaurant, Aurora Bistro in Vancouver.

But now is the time. They just won two awards, one for Best Regional Cuisine and also the Green Award.

Living so far away, I've only had the chance to eat there once, but I've sent many, many people there to eat (earning chits for my free meals!!!!) and everyone loves it. We are hopefully heading that way this summer, to celebrate Aurora's Fifth Anniversary, hang with friends and family and get some good eats.

So, check it out when you get a chance.

M

Some Deeper Analysis of the Food Crisis

It's been amazing how much international press the "global food crisis" is getting, and now reports of hoarding rice at Walmart in the US. But this is not a problem that started this month . . . the roots are deep and complex. I'm copying an article below that starts to examine some of those roots. I thought it was a pretty good analysis. Also check out the statement from RNDDH, one of Haiti's leading human rights organizations.

USA Role in Haiti Hunger Riots

By Bill Quigley


Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port au Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are “like toothpicks – they’re not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even make a plate of rice for one child.”

The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port au Prince, serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children – five times a week in partnership with the What If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat, spices, cooking oil, propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise and more and more children come for the free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there are few leftovers.

The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages – the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.

Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?

In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.

Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”

“American rice invaded the country,” recalled Charles Suffrard, a leading rice grower in Haiti in an interview with the Washington Post in 2000. By 1987 and 1988, there was so much rice coming into the country that many stopped working the land.

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Haitian priest who has been the pastor at St. Claire and an outspoken human rights advocate, agrees. “In the 1980s, imported rice poured into Haiti, below the cost of what our farmers could produce it. Farmers lost their businesses. People from the countryside started losing their jobs and moving to the cities. After a few years of cheap imported rice, local production went way down.”

Still the international business community was not satisfied. In 1994, as a condition for U.S. assistance in returning to Haiti to resume his elected Presidency, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced by the U.S., the IMF, and the World Bank to open up the markets in Haiti even more.

But, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, what reason could the U.S. have in destroying the rice market of this tiny country?

Haiti is definitely poor. The U.S. Agency for International Development reports the annual per capita income is less than $400. The United Nations reports life expectancy in Haiti is 59, while in the US it is 78. Over 78% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, more than half live on less than $1 a day.

Yet Haiti has become one of the very top importers of rice from the U.S. The U.S. Department of Agriculture 2008 numbers show Haiti is the third largest importer of US rice - at over 240,000 metric tons of rice. (One metric ton is 2200 pounds).

Rice is a heavily subsidized business in the U.S. Rice subsidies in the U.S. totaled $11 billion from 1995 to 2006. One producer alone, Riceland Foods Inc of Stuttgart Arkansas, received over $500 million dollars in rice subsidies between 1995 and 2006.

The Cato Institute recently reported that rice is one of the most heavily supported commodities in the U.S. – with three different subsidies together averaging over $1 billion a year since 1998 and projected to average over $700 million a year through 2015. The result? “Tens of millions of rice farmers in poor countries find it hard to lift their families out of poverty because of the lower, more volatile prices caused by the interventionist policies of other countries.”

In addition to three different subsidies for rice farmers in the U.S., there are also direct tariff barriers of 3 to 24 percent, reports Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute – the exact same type of protections, though much higher, that the U.S. and the IMF required Haiti to eliminate in the 1980s and 1990s.

U.S. protection for rice farmers goes even further. A 2006 story in the Washington Post found that the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all; including $490,000 to a Houston surgeon who owned land near Houston that once grew rice.

And it is not only the Haitian rice farmers who have been hurt.

Paul Farmer saw it happen to the sugar growers as well. “Haiti, once the world's largest exporter of sugar and other tropical produce to Europe, began importing even sugar-- from U.S. controlled sugar production in the Dominican Republic and Florida. It was terrible to see Haitian farmers put out of work. All this sped up the downward spiral that led to this month's food riots.”

After the riots and protests, President Rene Preval of Haiti agreed to reduce the price of rice, which was selling for $51 for a 110 pound bag, to $43 dollars for the next month. No one thinks a one month fix will do anything but delay the severe hunger pains a few weeks.

Haiti is far from alone in this crisis. The Economist reports a billion people worldwide live on $1 a day. The US-backed Voice of America reports about 850 million people were suffering from hunger worldwide before the latest round of price increases.

Thirty three countries are at risk of social upheaval because of rising food prices, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told the Wall Street Journal. When countries have many people who spend half to three-quarters of their daily income on food, “there is no margin of survival.”

In the U.S., people are feeling the world-wide problems at the gas pump and in the grocery. Middle class people may cut back on extra trips or on high price cuts of meat. The number of people on food stamps in the US is at an all-time high. But in poor countries, where malnutrition and hunger were widespread before the rise in prices, there is nothing to cut back on except eating. That leads to hunger riots.

In the short term, the world community is sending bags of rice to Haiti. Venezuela sent 350 tons of food. The US just pledged $200 million extra for worldwide hunger relief. The UN is committed to distributing more food.

What can be done in the medium term? The US provides much of the world’s food aid, but does it in such a way that only half of the dollars spent actually reach hungry people. US law requires that food aid be purchased from US farmers, processed and bagged in the US and shipped on US vessels – which cost 50% of the money allocated. A simple change in US law to allow some local purchase of commodities would feed many more people and support local farm markets.

In the long run, what is to be done? The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who visited Haiti last week, said “Rich countries need to reduce farms subsidies and trade barriers to allow poor countries to generate income with food exports. Either the world solves the unfair trade system, or every time there's unrest like in Haiti, we adopt emergency measures and send a little bit of food to temporarily ease hunger."

Citizens of the USA know very little about the role of their government in helping create the hunger problems in Haiti or other countries. But there is much that individuals can do. People can donate to help feed individual hungry people and participate with advocacy organizations like Bread for the World or Oxfam to help change the U.S. and global rules which favor the rich countries. This advocacy can help countries have a better chance to feed themselves.

Meanwhile, Merisma Jean-Claudel, a young high school graduate in Port-au-Prince told journalist Wadner Pierre "...people can’t buy food. Gasoline prices are going up. It is very hard for us over here. The cost of living is the biggest worry for us, no peace in stomach means no peace in the mind…I wonder if others will be able to survive the days ahead because things are very, very hard."

“On the ground, people are very hungry,” reported Fr. Jean-Juste. “Our country must immediately open emergency canteens to feed the hungry until we can get them jobs. For the long run, we need to invest in irrigation, transportation, and other assistance for our farmers and workers.”

In Port au Prince, some rice arrived in the last few days. A school in Fr. Jean-Juste’s parish received several bags of rice. They had raw rice for 1000 children, but the principal still had to come to Father Jean-Juste asking for help. There was no money for charcoal, or oil.

Jervais Rodman, an unemployed carpenter with three children, stood in a long line Saturday in Port au Prince to get UN donated rice and beans. When Rodman got the small bags, he told Ben Fox of the Associated Press, “The beans might last four days. The rice will be gone as soon as I get home.”




Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com People interested in donating to feed children in Haiti should go to http://www.whatiffoundation.org/ People who want to help change U.S. policy on agriculture to help combat world-wide hunger should go to: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/ or http://www.bread.org/

Update #4

We just got news that the Senate has forced the resignation of Prime Minister Alexis. This is seen by many as a symbolic gesture to the people, to show that the government is doing something. Preval also spoke today, giving more details about his ideas for supporting national agricultural production, as well as immediately cutting the price of rice from $51 to $43 for a sack of imported rice. These measures will certainly help, but are only part of the solution. The fact remains that Haiti, while an island, is not and island unto itself. Global food prices, climate change, the price of oil, demand for food in other countries and a whole host of other factors have driven Haiti and other countries to this point. We can only hope and pray that the news today will help avoid further violent protests which had been scheduled for Monday. Stay tuned, and thanks for your prayers for Haiti. G E M.

from the street, Port au Prince, Haiti

We stayed home for two days. That means we didn't go out or, for me, I didn't go out too far. When I did go out in the afternoon under the pretext that I had to buy soft drinks (and yes, Haiti does actually make a wonderful soft drink with real ginger called Ragamon), here is what I saw:

market women selling (bread and cookies and candles)

nice cars whizzing by

young men playing street soccer

black Haitian men and women of all ages standing around talking

women sweeping up glass

I admit that I was a little scared; my body was acting scared. It didn't help that all I saw were black people everywhere and I spent a long time wondering if there usually are this many black people on the streets I walk and if my Haitian friends are black.

The next day, Matt went to the grocery store . It's only 3 minutes away but he came back almost an hour later and said the store shelves were as empty of food as the aisles were full with people. When he got home, we heard this important announcement on his UN radio: “Now it is safe to go to the grocery store.”! Later, on the way to the MCC office, what looked like a road block was actually cars overflowing on to the street, lining up to get gas.

and here is what i was thinking:

market women selling
-these women are good business people - they are risking their lives for the benefit of less competition
-these women live close by
-these women are bored or overworked at home
-these people have to sell their stuff b/c they need the profits to buy their next meal

the store shelves were as empty as the aisles were full of people buying
-in times of crises, buy stuff
-if you’re bored, go out and buy stuff
-rich Haitians and foreigners don't have enough food at our houses aka if you have a car, you don't have enough food at your house
-if we’re stuck at home we want to be self-sufficient
-are we (foreigners) and well-off Haitians at greater risk? what’s the risk? losing our life or losing our lifestyle?
-my family shouldn’t go hungry
-why are we stocking up?
-”Do average Haitians stock up?” I asked Martha, Gabriela’s nanny. Or, do they know that cooked food has no keeper (manje kwit pa gen mèt) and that mice and rats will eat their leftovers? Do they offer food without limited because they have nowhere to store it or is it because they know sharing food as good for one’s health as eating local or not eating transfats if not better?
-Did they really believe Matthew 6 (vs. 25-27): Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them...
-Do average Haitians laugh when they see us worrying and buying or do they weep?
-Do they know that living simply increases their capacity for generosity like nothing else does?

nice cars whizzing by AND was actually cars lining up to get gas and overflowing onto the street
-cars can protect you
-if you are in a car, you have something to be scared of that other people on the street do not have to be scared of
-if you drive your car fast enough you might forget that this country's healing depends on your behaviour as much as the behaviour of the people throwing rocks (this goes for car drivers everywhere even if the rocks flying in your neighbourhoods are not literally rocks).
-when more than half the world is not getting enough to eat due, if only in a superficial way, to the price of gas, you should go out and buy gas— Since when does less gas equal more hunger?
-if you have a car, you should fill your tank, that way if there’s trouble, you can drive away like to Miami, Canada, or Iraq (I heard it’s hard to run out of gas there!)

young men playing street soccer
-it feels good to be active
-being active is a natural remedy for stress
-not all Haitians do violent things
-someday soon Haiti's going to qualify for the world cup

black Haitian men and women of all ages standing around talking
-being with others is a good remedy for stress
-we depend on each other in times of crisis, just like we do in good times
-not all Haitians do violent things

women sweeping up broken glass from smashed windows
-Haitians love to sweep! (no doubt about this one!)
-life goes on!
-the world is everyone’s backyard- we’re all responsible for what happens here and cleaning it up even if we make our moms do the latter
-we can go ahead and clean up messes that we didn't make because WE did make them

BEFORE we went out to the grocery store, we had more food in our house than an average Haitian has at their house at any time in their lifetime.

EdG, Haiti

Update #3

Today has been very calm. We heard no shooting, saw no tires burning and there were no protests in Petionville today. The same is true for most of the Delmas road where we have some other friends living. Downtown there seem to have been more protests, but not nearly as big or violent as yesterday. Many people, including the majority of the Senate, have asked Prime Minister Alexis to resign. This morning we thought that if this didn't happen today, the crap would hit the fan again, but as of 6pm, there is no news of a resignation. Seems like Alexis is being offered up as a sacrificial lamb because Preval's speech didn't do much to make people feel like change would happen in the short term.

We did venture out a bit today, including a run to the supermarket which had been closed since Tuesday morning. It was very busy, with people stocking up on essentials. It made me feel very akward - stocking up on food in case of further crisis - while the very point of the riots is that many Haitians hardly have enough to eat. I'm just trying to provide for my family - that's normal - and we have a different standard of living - but it just all made me feel a little gross. We'll have to reflect more on that.

We'll write more tomorrow.

Love from the three of us.

G E M

Update #2

I woke up early and went running (heavenly for a serotonin junkie like me) where i saw other people running and walking for sport, bread and banana sellers, people hanging out and - get this - people playing soccer at that short soccer field in Place Boyer WITH A BASKETBALL, and UN trucks and some private cars too whizzing by.

It does suck being confined but we feel so much better because Martha and the guards and the guard’s son is here with us (Junior and I played a lot of Gabriela’s memory yesterday) and Martha made lunch for everyone! And she still had time for a 3 hour nap! Even the housekeepers came to work (one ran to get here) and when I asked her if she wanted to go home, she insisted that she do the urgent housekeeping! When I asked what that was, she said making the beds! There’s definitely at least one thing a day here to make us laugh and laugh even when we’re stuck inside.

Preval made a lovely speech yesterday at 2 PM, it was all about supporting "pwodiksyon nasyonal" (national production). Last night, the protestors gave Prime Minister Jacques E. Alexis 24 hours to resign. It’s 8 AM, everyone here knows that protesting starts around 9 or 10 and ends around 3 and 4 when the protestors get hungry.

Yes people are frustrated by protestors being violent but Martha said very clearly yesterday, those who are on the streets are fighting for all of us. Everyone is and should be affected by this crises, not just here.

What a blessing that many of you have been able to experience Haiti with us! Thank the good God we got Grandma and Grandpa to the airport- an hour 1/2 later would have been too late and they would not have flown (Grandpa wrote us already this morning that's what got me writing this update). What a blessing that our family has a little Haitian in it now and the chance to see more! You should see this little Haitian! On Monday she was fighting over bones to suck on with 1 year-old Francia.

Blessings to you all.

Esther, Matt and Gabriela.

Update from Haiti

(the view from our apartment window at 10 am, April 9, showing smoke from burning tires).

Hi everyone,

We are currently holed up in our apartment. We live on a side street but we hear a bunch of noise from the main street. We hear the occasional gun shot, which is likely the police trying to break up groups of people. Our friend Kurt who is not too far away has seen a bunch more and had big wafts of tear gas float into his apartment.

The situation here is complex. Here (below) is an article from CBC
which is pretty congruent with the reality here. We at KPL have been recording the increasing of food prices since January! and you they go up by week on staples like rice and oil.

It’s true that gas and the increasing demand for biodiesel is making things more expensive here! It’s also true that Haiti has learned to become dependent on imports, since Haiti conveniently became a good dumping ground for surplus food items - first grains, and now everything from sugar (totally producible here but produced in southern US by Haitian legal and illegal immigrants) to drugs (new and expired) used clothes and those big fat televisions.

I know Haitians who eat a 90% local diet and I know Haitians eating a 90% imported diet. Guess who’s in the city and who’s in the country!

Every day in the Nouvelliste (national paper) on the radio and on TV, the government is talking about local production! who knows if Haiti can produce the majority of its food itself because Haiti has never had the chance to try, but we can do better than 90% imports and if we did, there’d be much less pressure on the city and the ports and less opportunity for corruption which is so real. (We have even seen MCC aid meat -another story all together- sold in markets many many mountain kilometres from where it was given out.) Imports are a band-aid solution for a country that’s overpopulated and a nice little boost for the US economy. When I was working at the Nature Centre at the Royal Botanical Gardens, we had a program for kids called Move, Adapt, or Die referring to what animals do when times get tough. Move, Adapt, or Die or Import - not so catchy. (No I don't think humans or animals but you'll agree there are similarities.)

As for: "Currently if you're in Haiti, unless the government is subsidizing consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut consumption. It's a very brutal scenario, but that's what it is." from the article below, this is not a joke! Every day the average person here, both in the city and country, literally works to make money to eat their next meal– while prices from rice to the taptap fare it takes them to get to work, they make the same amount of money but they can afford half as much. Turkish cookies are cheaper than Haitian bananas. Spaghetti noodles cheaper than Artibonite rice or plantains.

(other things you might hear or read about Haiti are a joke or actually not true- like people eating dirt when they are hungry- it’s not happening nor the whole story- another story actually- please take news about Haiti especially when it makes people look really stupid with a big grain of sea salt. Guaranteed it’s not the whole story! )

This crisis of food prices has given an old word a new definition: Clorox or Klorox is kreyol for bleach (chlorine). In the past month, “klorox” has come to mean the burning in your stomach when there is no more food coming. I don’t know why we had to wait until this point to say enough is enough or we've had enough of not enough. God help us!

love from Haiti, where were there’s going to be more moving, a whole lot of adapting, and dying.

ps we’re all at home with Martha and Junior and the guards too and we’re fine!

Soaring food costs threaten world's political stability: UN official
Last Updated: Tuesday, April 8, 2008 | 12:14 PM ET Comments70Recommend68
CBC News

Rising food prices could cause political instability worldwide, the UN's top humanitarian official said Tuesday, as clashes over food costs in Haiti and Egypt continued for a second day.

Pointing to a 40 per cent average rise in food costs worldwide since mid-2007, John Holmes, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, said the trend is likely to exacerbate both the incidence and depth of food insecurity worldwide.

"The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe," he said.

Egypt has been rocked by two days of unrest as thousands protest the country's worsening economy and rising prices. The cost of cooking oil, rice and other staples have doubled since January, while the country of 76 million is suffering a shortage of government-subsidized bread.

UN peacekeepers in Haiti clashed with a crowd that gathered outside the presidential palace Tuesday, the second day of protests in the capital, Port-au-Prince, over food scarcity and costs.

The impact of climate change has worsened the food problem, Holmes said, as the number of recorded natural disasters has doubled from an average of 200 a year to 400 because of "extreme weather" over the last 20 years.

The rising price of fuel, particularly diesel fuel used to transport food, is also adding to the issue by prompting a simultaneous increase in the cost of food, Holmes said.

"Compounding the challenges of climate change in what some have labelled the perfect storm are the recent dramatic trends in soaring food and fuel prices," he said.

The UN's World Food Program has said it is short $500 million US needed to feed 89 million hungry people this year. Meanwhile, consumers should expect high food costs for at least another 10 years, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

"It's not likely that prices will go back to as low as we're used to," Abdolreza Abbassian, economist and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains for the FAO, said last month.

"Currently if you're in Haiti, unless the government is subsidizing consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut consumption. It's a very brutal scenario, but that's what it is."

With files from the Associated Press

Children adopted overseas now eligible for immediate citizenship

The Canadian government passed a new law in December that will allow internationally adopted children to automatically apply for Canadian citizenship, instead of having to become landed immigrants and wait a number of years to become a citizen. This is obviously great news. We have already applied for Gabriela's citizenship, even though her paperwork is not yet fully legalized here in Haiti. But, the process is picking up with a lot of pressure from us and our lawyer. Someday we'll write a book about it.

That's Gabriela among some of her friends at an after-school sports program in Cite Soleil. She's the really smiley one in the middle!

All is well here in Haiti, we'll try to send another update soon, along with more pictures. We're looking forward to the next set of grandparents coming to visit - Ted and Marge arrive on April 1.

Children adopted overseas now eligible for immediate citizenship
Last Updated: Thursday, March 27, 2008
www.cbc.ca

A 13-month-old Toronto girl has become the first adopted child born abroad to enter Canada as a citizen.

Citizenship Minister Diane Finley presented a teddy bear to the infant when she arrived at Toronto's Pearson Airport on Wednesday, recognizing her as the first child to be allowed into the country under the new rules.

In the past, adopted foreign-born children had to go through two steps to become a citizen: first they'd be processed as permanent residents, then they'd wait three years to become a citizen.

Changes introduced in December mean the children now become citizens as soon as their adoption is complete.

Rory-Adele Chan-Rushton is the first child to apply and become a citizen under the new regulations.

Her parents, Mark Rushton and Angela Chan, say it was important for them to bring home a Canadian child.

"It makes the process so much easier and so much less stressful. The journey, especially for international adoption, is so long, it can take so much time … and to have this at the end of it makes it so much easier for a lot of families," said Chan.

The Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada says about 2,000 foreign-born children are adopted by Canadians every year.

All of those children now have the option of becoming citizens right away.

A Taste of Danger You Won't Find in Port Au Prince

A Taste of Danger You Won't Find in Port Au Prince

I received an email this past week. The title was "A Taste of Danger You
Won't Find in Port au Prince." The junk email came from Kayak.com, a
website that helps would-be travellers find good travel deals on
flights, hotels and car rentals. They were advertising for some
off-the-beaten path "dangerous" destinations such as Beirut and Morocco.
I must have registered my email address and entered some basic
information about myself, because they knew that I live in Port au
Prince. You might have received one of these emails too - but yours said
"A Taste of Danger You Won't Find in Vancouver" or " . . . Miami" or . .
.. "fill in your hometown here."

This probably didn't strike you as odd or ironic - because it's true,
there probably isn't a whole lot of danger in Campden or St.Catharines
or Wichita. But when I got the email, I couldn't help but laugh.

I do live in Port au Prince and yes, (mom, stop reading now) it can be
dangerous. There are some areas of the city controlled by gangs. Drug
and weapon running is becoming serious business here. There is simmering
political tension that could explode at any minute. Haiti, if only
temporarily, overtook Columbia as the kidnapping capital of the Western
hemisphere. These are all facts that affect daily life here.

What struck me most about the email was the reminder about how little we
know about many of the places we hear about in the news. Or, should I
say, how little we know about the truth. Or how little we know about the
rest of the story. When we hear "Kenya" we used to think of red-beaded
Massai warriors, or vast game parks. Now we think of a contested
election and violence. But what about the reality that exists between
the National Geographic version of Kenya and the CNN version?

Unfortunately for Haiti, the National Geographic perception does not
exist. For the vast majority of people, the CNN version is their only
understanding of this incredibly fascinating and complex country. The
guidebooks and travel sites that we read before coming to Haiti in 2004
all started with the phrase, "Haiti, the poorest country in the Western
hemisphere, . . . " That's the CNN version of Haiti. But the reality is
so much deeper and while I don't pretend to understand Haiti, I do feel
like I've gotten to know it much better over these 3+ years. Danger
exists and poverty is real - that is to be neither diminished nor
ignored. But thankfully, the truth is so much deeper.

For example, did you know that Haiti was the world's first free black
republic and the site of the first successful slave revolt? (This is not
the place to talk about modern day economic slavery being exacted on
Haiti - we'll save that for another entry.) Or, did you know that
Christopher Columbus' first landing spot in the "new world" was Haiti?
You've probably heard of some famous Haitians. One of the most popular
right now is Wyclef Jean, but there are many more - artists, athletes,
business leaders, and many more. Don't forget about Michaelle Jean,
Canada's Governor General. CNN shows you the denuded hillsides, but I've
walked through pine forests here. You've probably seen the seaside
shantytown of Cite Soleil, but I talked to someone today that lives in a
"good" neighbourhood who said that Cite Soleil has more paved streets
than most areas.

The good news I want to leave with you is that Haiti is getting better.
Things have changed - a lot - since the crisis of 2004. The government,
while struggling, is stable. There are signs of economic growth and
investment in Haiti. There is an exciting movement to support local food
and artistic production. It's ok to walk the streets in many parts of
the city. Kidnapping has decreased dramatically. Many gang leaders have
been arrested and there is news of high profile arrests quite often. So,
if it's a danger buzz you want - go to Morocco. If it's an experience
that will make you shake you head, laugh, cry, shake your fist, smile,
think, dance and lift your hands to the heavens, and in the end
transform you beyond your wild imagination, well, we have an extra bed
waiting for you here in Haiti.

The Adventures Come Home for Christmas

We're re-sending this as many of you did not receive the first version
because it was too big with all the pictures. Check out the blog for the
picture version. G E M

****
Dear friends and family,

Another year has come and gone on this lovely island we call home. Attached
are stories and adventures from the past year. We hope and pray that you
are all well and that this year brings blessings, fun and adventure for you.

Gabriela, Esther and Matt

PS. If you can't open the attachment, you can also find this posted on our
blog: www.mattandestherinhaiti.blogspot.com

The Adventures come HOME for Christmas!

We’re sitting here listening to Stuart Maclean on CBC on our satellite radio – it’s a story about Dave raising a Christmas turkey. It’s a worldly reminder that the season of celebration is here, but the celebration we anticipate is not so much the turkey dinners (even though the turkeys are piling up at the markets even here in Haiti), the caroling or the gifts. The Celebration we are always eager to celebrate is the birth of Jesus.

Christmas for us this year was a rite of passage. It was the first time since the day we got hitched in 1998 that we celebrated Christmas at HOME. Many of the years, we were shuffling between St. Kits and Sarnia, Christmas in Senegal, and the last few years here in Haiti always called us into the city or up into the mountains.

Home for Christmas was made possible by a visit from Oma and Opa who called in November and said “if you really want us to come for Christmas, we will!” Of course we “really wanted” and so they came. Everyone got along famously. . .



And we went all out for the occasion…Christmas cookies, tree, and an angel..


Highlights of Christmas at HOME were plentiful…

Esther- reading the Christmas story by candlelight followed by Handel’s Messiah, making and giving out Christmas cookies, the birth of Isabel

Gabriela- everyone staying home, going for walks, the birth of cousin Isabel (a fellow diva in amongst a pack of garcons).

Matt- finding ways to meld our Canadian and Haitian experiences into a fun and unique Christmas celebration, some much-needed new books to read.

You’ll have to ask Art and Thea about their highlights of Christmas in Haiti.

But the most fun and powerful was New Years at Gwo Jean, our fondest New Year’s ever - topping driving home from Florida once, being on an airplane back to Senegal, and drinking whiskey while Niagara Falls fell and froze onto us (remember Trevor?). What’s really special about January 1st in Haiti is that it marks Haitian independence. So while we were spending our 4th New Year’s in Haiti, Haiti was celebrating it’s 204th year of independence. There was drumming, strumming, dancing, and chopping (the vegetables for the pumpkin soup we and everyone else in Haiti eats for breakfast on New Year’s Day). The highlight was the dual bonfires, one representing 2007 and one for 2008. Into one we offered our regrets and thank yous and the other our hopes for the new year.

We are especially thankful for 3 lovely years with MCC in the countryside of Dezam, where Gabriela tasted her first sugar cane, took her first steps, made her first phone calls, and enjoyed country living; this ended in early October when we moved to Port au Prince.

. . .we said we wanted to stay away from Dezam for 3 months but we couldn’t resist showing
DEZAM to Gabriela’s cousin ZAVI and Matant (Aunt) Jennifer when they came for a visit in late November.



As for our hopes, they are in the making:

Matt: I started a new job with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM is implementing a large US government stabilization program throughout Haiti. This includes short-term projects such as paving small portions of roads, rehabilitating schools, installing street lighting, fixing canal and water systems, etc. These are all simple projects, done quickly with the intent of making people in some of the most volatile neighbourhoods in the country feel that things are getting better in Haiti. It’s hoped that this stability will create the opportunity for other international organizations, the private sector and the government to make more long-term investments. My own role is on the management team in the headquarters of IOM in Haiti (we have six sub-offices throughout the country). It has been a big change – long days sitting at the computer – but a good challenge for me to work in a new kind of environment.

Esther: I couldn’t imagine living in Port au Prince but here we are. We have a lovely apartment that makes it possible for Gabriela and I to get around on foot and public to work, the gym, the market. My 2nd job after the most important job in the world (mothering, duh) is working with a group of people to promote buying, eating, producing, celebrating everything Haitian for the good of the environment, economy, and all that is in the Haitian soul, not to mention the Haitian stomach. The campaign, should you hear about it on CNN, is called Kore Pwodiksyon Lokal. And I’m not joking, KPL will be on National Television beginning February. My participation involves a developing a school garden and curriculum, promoting hand-woven djakouts (grocery bags), among other things.

Gabriela: Mama and Papa speak three languages to me: Creole, English, and sign language. After 17 months of this, they started wondering (out loud) if I was getting confused. So here’s my trick. Every time someone comes to the gate or knocks on the door, whether they are my mama or not, I call out “Mama. . .Mama”. It cracks them up every time and there’s nothing I like more than cracking people up.

Our favourite things about Port au Prince: staying in until 10 AM w/o turning into toast, trying to speak French, picnics in the Wynne Forest Reserve on Sundays, my nanny Martha and going with her to play with Ti Jo most mornings, ping pong at the gym, our swimming pool, the big mix of people.

Scary things about the city: traffic, motocycles, driving in traffic to work everyday, sometimes an hour.

What we miss most about Dezam: planting, hiking around the mountains, my MCC colleagues, knowing what my job is, those gorgeous bucket showers, rivers to splash in, Lusilya, Jean Remy, Tonton (Uncle) Brian, bean sauce every day for lunch at Edith’s restaurant

Favourite food (after soap): currently mandarins, bonbon siwo, akra and local chicken

Favourite past-times: playing ping-pong with Matt on the weekends, moving furniture, riding around the city in my sling, jumping on Papa at night, and dancing to the ringing cell phones, playing with Gabriela.

Aspirations for 2008:
Finish two children’s books I started in 2006.
Visit my Oma.
Get up the slide at the park by our house.
Meet my cousins.

Challenges:
Sleeping without putting my feet in my parents’ faces.
Staying focused
Having so much.
How to live well as a stranger in a strange land.

Stay tuned to http://www.mattandestherinhaiti.blogspot.com for other news and pictures. Thank you for your news and for helping hold up the sky.

G E M

to my cousin Zavi

Dear Zavi,
It was SO much fun to meet you!
Thanks for coming to see us.
Hi to my TonTon Will and kisses to Matant Jennifer!
mucho amor, Gabriela

city life II

city life I

Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts

This article appeared in the NY Times today. I think it's a perfect example of how prescriptive development has gone wrong in so many places and how just using a little common sense can have dramatic impacts on people's lives. Unfortunately, most majority world government leaders are either too inept, too corrupt or too susceptible to pressure from the powers that be, that they aren't able to make the same kinds of decisions that the Malawian government made.

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing comments.

Matt


December 2, 2007
Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts
By CELIA W. DUGGER

LILONGWE, Malawi — Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.

But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the United Nation’s World Food Program than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.

In Malawi itself, the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.

Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

“As long as I’m president, I don’t want to be going to other capitals begging for food,” Mr. Mutharika declared. Patrick Kabambe, the senior civil servant in the Agriculture Ministry, said the president told his advisers, “Our people are poor because they lack the resources to use the soil and the water we have.”

The country’s successful use of subsidies is contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy: fertilizer, improved seed, farmer education, credit and agricultural research.

Malawi, an overwhelmingly rural nation about the size of Pennsylvania, is an extreme example of what happens when those things are missing. As its population has grown and inherited landholdings have shrunk, impoverished farmers have planted every inch of ground. Desperate to feed their families, they could not afford to let their land lie fallow or to fertilizer it. Over time, their depleted plots yielded less food and the farmers fell deeper into poverty.

Malawi’s leaders have long favored fertilizer subsidies, but they reluctantly acceded to donor prescriptions, often shaped by foreign-aid fashions in Washington, that featured a faith in private markets and an antipathy to government intervention.

In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an economist at the University of London.

In a withering evaluation of the World Bank’s record on African agriculture, the bank’s own internal watchdog concluded in October not only that the removal of subsidies had led to exorbitant fertilizer prices in African countries, but that the bank itself had often failed to recognize that improving Africa’s declining soil quality was essential to lifting food production.

“The donors took away the role of the government and the disasters mounted,” said Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist who lobbied Britain and the World Bank on behalf of Malawi’s fertilizer program and who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa’s farmers.

Here in Malawi, deep fertilizer subsidies and lesser ones for seed, abetted by good rains, helped farmers produce record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007, according to government crop estimates. Corn production leapt from 1.2 billion metric tons in 2005, to 2.7 billion in 2006 and 3.4 billion in 2007, the government reported.

“The rest of the world is fed because of the use of good seed and inorganic fertilizer, full stop,” said Stephen Carr, who has lived in Malawi since 1989, when he retired as the World Bank’s principal agriculturalist in sub-Saharan Africa. “This technology has not been used in most of Africa. The only way you can help farmers gain access to it is to give it away free or subsidize it heavily.”

“The government has taken the bull by the horns and done what farmers wanted,” he said. Some economists have questioned whether Malawi’s 2007 bumper harvest should be credited to good rains or subsidies, but an independent evaluation, financed by the United States and Britain, found that the subsidy program accounted for a large share of this year’s increase in corn production.

The harvest also helped the poor by lowering food prices and increasing wages for farm workers. Researchers at Imperial College London and Michigan State University concluded in their preliminary report that a well-run subsidy program in a sensibly managed economy “has the potential to drive growth forward out of the poverty trap in which many Malawians and the Malawian economy are currently caught.”

Farmers interviewed recently in Malawi’s southern and central regions said fertilizer had greatly improved their ability to fill their bellies with nsima, the thick, cornmeal porridge that is Malawi’s staff of life.

In the hamlet of Mthungu, Enelesi Chakhaza, an elderly widow whose husband died of hunger five years ago, boasted that she got two ox-cart-loads of corn this year from her small plot instead of half a cart.

Last year, roughly half the country’s farming families received coupons that entitled them to buy two 110-pound bags of fertilizer, enough to nourish an acre of land, for around $15 — about a third the market price. The government also gave them coupons for enough seed to plant less than half an acre.

Malawians are still haunted by the hungry season of 2001-02. That season, an already shrunken program to give poor farmers enough fertilizer and seed to plant a meager quarter acre of land had been reduced again. Regional flooding further lowered the harvest. Corn prices surged. And under the government then in power, the country’s entire grain reserve was sold as a result of mismanagement and corruption.

Mrs. Chakhaza watched her husband starve to death that season. His strength ebbed away as they tried to subsist on pumpkin leaves. He was one of many who succumbed that year, said K. B. Kakunga, the local Agriculture Ministry official. He recalled mothers and children begging for food at his door.

“I had a little something, but I could not afford to help each and every one,” he said. “It was very pathetic, very pathetic indeed.”

But Mr. Kakunga brightened as he talked about the impact of the subsidies, which he said had more than doubled corn production in his jurisdiction since 2005.

“It’s quite marvelous!” he exclaimed.

Malawi’s determination to heavily subsidize fertilizer and the payoff in increased production are beginning to change the attitudes of donors, say economists who have studied Malawi’s experience.

Britain’s Department for International Development contributed $8 million to the subsidy program last year. Bernabé Sánchez, an economist with the agency in Malawi, estimated the extra corn produced because of the $74 million subsidy was worth $120 million to $140 million.

“It was really a good economic investment,” he said.

The United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it. Over the years, the United States Agency for International Development has focused on promoting the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed, and saw subsidies as undermining that effort.

But Alan Eastham, the American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent interview that the subsidy program had worked “pretty well,” though it displaced some commercial fertilizer sales.

“The plain fact is that Malawi got lucky last year,” he said. “They got fertilizer out while it was needed. The lucky part was that they got the rains.”

And the World Bank now sometimes supports the temporary use of subsidies aimed at the poor and carried out in a way that fosters private markets.

Here in Malawi, bank officials say they generally support Malawi’s policy, though they criticize the government for not having a strategy to eventually end the subsidies, question whether its 2007 corn production estimates are inflated and say there is still a lot of room for improvement in how the subsidy is carried out.

“The issue is, let’s do a better job of it,” said David Rohrbach, a senior agricultural economist at the bank.

Though the donors are sometimes ambivalent, Malawi’s farmers have embraced the subsidies. And the government moved this year to give its people a more direct hand in their distribution.

The village of Chembe gathered one recent morning under the spreading arms of a kachere tree to decide who most needed fertilizer coupons as the planting season loomed. They only had enough for 19 of the village’s 53 families.

“Ladies and gentlemen, should we start with the elderly or the orphans?” Samuel Dama, a representative of the Chembe clan, asked.

Men led the assembly, but women sitting on the ground at their feet called out almost all the names of the neediest, gesturing to families rearing children orphaned by AIDS or caring for toothless elders.

There were more poor families than there were coupons, so grumbling began among those who knew they would have to watch over the coming year as their neighbors’ fertilized corn fields turned deep green.

Sensing the rising resentment, the village chief, Zaudeni Mapila, rose. Barefoot and dressed in dusty jeans and a royal blue jacket, he acted out a silly pantomime of husbands stuffing their pants with corn to sell on the sly for money to get drunk at the beer hall. The women howled with laughter. The tension fled.

He closed with a reminder he hoped would dampen any jealousy.

“I don’t want anyone to complain,” he said. “It’s not me who chose. It’s you.”

The women sang back to him in a chorus of acknowledgment, then dispersed to their homes and fields.

Killing a Chicken, Softly

Here's Josh and Marylynn (ok, really Joseph and Sayil) killing two chickens for our first "local" dinner!!

These are the days we'll remember (10 000 Maniacs).


Stay tuned for Gabriela and the loaf pan. And soon after, Gabri meets cousin Zavi who's coming with his Mom from Winnipeg later this month. Yippee! In the meantime keep your tires pumped, if not you can find Gabriela and Joseph at Delmas 75.

BREAST IS BEST !

Here we are with our Milk Mamas (2 babies and their Mamas who helped us be able to nurse Gabriela 5.5 months on breastmilk only). Mèsi, Thank you Ketly & little Jazlene, Bel Fanm and little Karlens. It was a scandal as they say in Dezam (the most popular, hard-to-believe story in Dezam for months) a miracle that continues. We switched to bottle at 6 months (incl. still one bottle/day of breast milk) but Gabriela has continued to nurse at my breast --she just feel asleep at my breast-- despite not getting milk still today at almost 16 months. (She actually made me relactate small drops at 12 months). I LOVE that Gabri does love-nursing and Gabri showed us that the nursing is SO MUCH MORE than MILK. I once asked Matt what he liked about Gabriela and he said: I love it that she still nurses! (Guess who's back in the running for husband/papa-of-the-year!!!?)

Gabri and Janey

Here's Janey Wynne, Haiti's leading ecologist, sharing the secrets of the earth with Gabri including LOVE and SHARING, BEING TOGEHTER, RESPECT for LIFE. . .

The Current and Future MCC (Haiti) Directors

We know we can't play this game much longer.

That's the-what-we-want-Gabriela-to-be-when-she-grows-up-game. Gabriela's personality is bursting out. And everyday she makes it more and more and more obvious that she understands what we say and do, FOR EXAMPLE: Matt dropped his keys on the ground, Gabri picks them up and walks over to the door, holds the keys up to the keyhole. She shampoos her head in the shower whether she has shampoo or not, she's eats soap (just kidding that's not an e.g.), the other day, well actually everyday, kids yell "blan blan" to me and when they yelled it, Gabri yelled "blan" too (Who know to whom but it makes me nervous?) (Imagining that "blan" might be her first word is my little nightmare : } but already she calls me Mama despite the fact that 3 in 8 people we pass on the street is saying..."you're not her Mama".)


what her parents want her to be when she grows up:
Esther- dancer (in the Lion king) b/c I'm not denying that this is still what I want to be as long as I still have time to garden
Matt- good at sports





The photo is Gabriela w/ Charity Coffey who has a neice Gabri's age far away in Michigan which I suspect is why she invites little G to visit her at work.