Seeing is sometimes understanding.

[bcholmes]

So, here's the story. Overnight, one of our delegation members got really sick. I could hear all the commotion at, like, five in the morning. Don't know what's wrong with him, but he sat out the day.

As for the rest of us, we went off to Site Soley.

We had a full morning of talking to various groups. At our first stop, we heard from a number of Lavalas activists. They were pretty passionate about the whole issue of Lavalas being excluded from the upcoming elections. One of the fellows who identified as a Lavalas activist was running in the upcoming election under a newly-organized party called Solidarity.

In the past, some people who've done this sort of thing have ultimately drifted away from Lavalas and fallen across the event horizon of Préval's new party. To us, it looks like a real problem: there's a real risk of fragmentation and diffusion of the Lavalas movement. So we asked pointed questions of some of the other Lavalas people: what do you think about this behaviour? They were surprisingly pragmatic about it all. As they said, their experience of 2008 was that boycotting the elections bought them nothing. They didn't know what a good strategy for 2010 was going to be, so they understood that some people wanted to just remain part of the political system, even if that meant running under a different party name.

For my part, I was struck by the fact that we were approaching the situation much more ideologically than the Haitians were. For us, drifting away from Lavalas was bad bad bad. The Lavalas activists: well, people try to do their best.

I guess I started to get a richer sense of how dangerous these election exclusions are. At face value, they keep Lavalas out of the government, and that's problematic. But they also risk fragmenting and undermining Lavalas itself, as a way of weakening the party from within. And I'm willing to bet that these effects did not go unimagined by the people (foreigners, I bet) who pulled the strings to make the exclusions happen.

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) calls this "Promoting Democracy" when it spends aid money to achieve political effects like this. I wonder if they took cues from COINTELPRO.

One of the activists was Florence. She was a fiery, passionate speaker. She was also a Lavalas organizer, but worked primarily with women's groups. She was pretty vocal about the idea that when the most important party is excluded, that this is not election, but selection. And that the women of Pòtoprens were firm in saying "no" to this kind of agenda for the country.

She also talked about the killings and kidnappings that still plague Site Soley. Again, pretty pragmatic. Even when one of us broached the question: "what happened to Préval?", they were all fairly reasonable. In many ways, Lavalas helped get Préval elected, and yet he's really been a tremendous disappointment. There's some evidence to suggest that he's trying to co-opt the Lavalas base. If I were Lavalas, I'd be bitter. I'd view him as an enemy. But the actual Lavalas organizers were pretty upbeat: "we don't have anything against him, personally, they said. But we think that his policies are wrong for Haiti -- especially the Haitian poor."

There was one last important concept that I took from this. The activists criticized MINUSTAH a fair bit and called for them to be withdrawn from Haiti. Often for a lot of the typical reasons: petty burglary in the guise of random stop and searches (no warrant required!) Strip searching in the middle of the road that seems to serve no purpose other than to humiliate people or as a show of power. But there was an important comment that one fellow made that made me go "ah-ha!": MINUSTAH ignores the wishes of the Haitian people when they are "stabilizing" the country. These Haitians viewed that as fundamentally disrespectful. Respect is a hugely important part of Haitian culture. If you ignore the Haitian people, you're saying you don't respect them. How could an operation like MINUSTAH overlook such an important element of the local culture?

Shortly afterward, we moved to another location. There was a whole panel of Lavalas organizers. They were nice enough folks, but I think that they were a bit repetitive. They essentially kept reiterating these two points:

1. That Obama campaigned on changes to foreign policy, and that as far as Haiti is concerned, he hasn't followed through. They appealed to the Americans in our group to stress this point with their representatives
2. That they hope that Aristide could return to Haiti in 2010.

Earlier, I said that, in general, the Lavalas organizers had a pretty nuanced and pragmatic assessment of the political situation. In this instance, they seemed to be espousing a fairly simplistic argument: that Obama was African American and should therefore automatically want to improve the situation for Haitians, who, through the Haitian revolution, provided a potent example for the world. I think it's probably true that all Haitians view the world through a lens of the Haitian Revolution. It looms so large on the Haitian character that I think that they have difficulty imaging people of colour who aren't awe-struck by its importance.

As I said, this particular meeting was a bit repetitious. But part-way through the meeting people started a huge argument in the other room. Me, I'm pretty familiar with Haitian arguments, and thought nothing of it. The Lavalas organizers kept interjecting that there were some other groups that felt that they hadn't been told about this meeting and wanted their opportunity to speak. The fight kept going and going and going, getting louder and more heated. But, like I said, it's pretty typical of Haitian disagreements. Haitians can seem like they're about to come to blows one moment, and then laughing together the next.

Except: at one point Kevin came out of the back room and said, "We need to get back in the van. Now." Even as we left, I wasn't sure if that was a statement of "we're really behind in our schedule and we need to get back on track," or "things are getting really heated here, and we need to make an exit in case it gets violent." Later I learned it was the latter. Apparently guns were involved.

I don't want to leave that story hanging because I still honestly believe that Haiti is not a violent place. We were in the middle of Site Soley, which is a pretty dangerous place. But I can't say that I ever really felt unsafe. I dunno if I'm lacking important situational assessment skills or what.

What could we do in a situation like that except get back on the bus?

After that, we grabbed lunch. It was a big lunch. Too big I think. Here's a meal I have a lot in Haiti. Chicken, with some rice and beans and some sos kreyòl. In the corner, there are some friend plaintains and picklis (a somewhat spicy coleslaw-like side dish). This chicken seems a bit overcooked, so it's not the best poulet avek sos kreyòl that I've ever had.

Speaking of lunch, we finished the day at St. Clare church -- the former church of the late Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste. We were visiting the food programme that they have there.

The food programme provides a meal for 810 to 815 kids every Monday to Friday, plus about 450 to 500 adults. The programme costs approximately USD $1000 a day to run. It's a big programme and money's running out. And nobody -- not the Haitian Government, not USAID -- wants to help out. Families often travel for an hour of more to get to St. Clare. And it's great that the kids get food. But none of those kids are in school.

The woman who manages the logistics of the programme was another great speaker, and I enjoyed her comments immensely. I am starting to feel like we're treating these meetings like good television. We sit down, expecting to be exposed to Heroic True Tales of Struggle Against Adversity. We're supposed to have some reflection on these events as a group, and I want to raise that as a concern, but I'm not sure when that's taking place.