19415: (Hermantin) Sun-Sentinel-Some Americans wont leave smoldering nation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Some Americans won’t leave smoldering nation

By Tim Collie
Staff Writer
Posted February 28 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE · Keith Flanagan has lived and worked in Haiti since 1986. At
a time when many Americans are fleeing this strife-torn nation, he is
digging in and planning to stay. He just welcomed his youngest son back from
the United States last week for a three-year job in tropical horticulture in
Haiti's remote countryside.

Flanagan has witnessed the collapse of one 30-year dictatorship, the
election of the first democratic president in the nation's history, a
military coup d'etat and a U.S. invasion of the island nation.

Now, he's looking at a possible civil war. But he isn't even thinking about
leaving.

"When people ask me if I'm ever coming home, I tell them I'll be back when
all of Haiti's problems are solved," chuckles Flanagan, who speaks Creole
with an Oklahoma drawl. "And since things have only gotten worse here over
the last few years, I don't think I'm going to be going home for a long
time.

"But what would I be doing back in the United States anyway," adds the
55-year-old livestock veterinarian. "Treating somebody's poodle?"

Haiti has a way of bypassing the brain and going straight to the heart, say
many who live here. How else to explain why Americans who could make
lucrative livings in the United States choose to spend years dealing with
this country's immense poverty, its myriad failed governments and a complex
culture that's an intriguing mix of French, Caribbean and African
influences.

"It's hard to explain to people because if you don't have experience in the
place it can seem very complex, very depressing and hopeless," says Terry
Snow, a minister who has lived in the western Haiti city of St. Marc for
nine years and recently brokered a cease-fire between anti-government rebels
and local militants who support embattled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

"But it's not that complex at all after a while. It's just different, the
way people think here," says Snow, who with his wife has raised five
children in Haiti, the last born in a peasant's tin-roof seaside shanty.
"Once you understand how they think, you find so much beauty. But Haiti is
really unique in the Western Hemisphere."

Foreign diplomats estimate as many as 20,000 Americans live in Haiti. Many,
perhaps most, are still here despite the waves of foreigners who have fled
the violent anti-government rebellion that has gripped Haiti over the last
three weeks, claiming more than 80 lives and spreading to more than a dozen
cities and towns.

The vast majority of Americans here work for religious and international
charities. A substantial numbers of Americans also run small businesses that
give them enough to live on and employ local residents. Others operate small
charities that, in many cases, represent the bedrock of social and
educational networks here.

"Who else is going to do this work if not us?" says Patrick Moynihan, who
runs a school that gives gifted children from the worst slums in Haiti an
elite private education. "We're not going to shut down unless its impossible
for the children to come to the school. And I'm not leaving. We're educating
the next generation of Haitian leaders -- people who'll be in position to
run this country in 10, 15 years. You don't just stop doing that."

Carole Stufflebeam recently decided to stay in Haiti after completing what
she had expected to be a one-year stint running a small school, Notre
Maison, for 30 handicapped orphans in the city's capital. If she were to
leave, the school would close down because there is no government agency or
Haitian charity that could handle the children.

Many of the children, who have cerebral palsy and other severe neurological
problems, might end up on the street, were she to leave. "I hear that
question a lot -- when are you going to leave? -- and I really hate it,"
says Stufflebeam. "We'll leave when the Lord tells us to. We'll know. For
the most part, most of the people I know are staying unless their missions
ask them to leave.

"The need is so great here for many of these children. The biggest problem
is often just getting a doctor here who is qualified to do the surgery that
can help many of them. But I cannot think of leaving now, especially at a
time like this. Who else would come?"

Glenna Stinson first came to Haiti in 1989 after becoming involved with an
alternative church that specializes in global environmental concerns. She
runs an Internet café in the middle-class town of Petionville, just outside
Port-au-Prince, and has raised two daughters here.

"All of my family and friends think we're under siege here. It's hard to
convey to people that there's a life here, that Haitians are a genuinely
peaceful and passive people," says Stinson. "Especially when they see these
sensational images of people running around with guns."

Like many others, she acknowleges experiencing "surreal moments" of living
here.

It's a place where a militant gunman at a barricade may pause to inform you
that your car tires need air, then guide you to a roadside stand where
you'll find a pump. A place where stunningly beautiful rainforests thrive
just a few miles from eroded deserts carpeted with cacti and cracked earth,
caused by Haiti's severe environmental problems. And a place that is home to
a seemingly endless supply of odd characters: The young man who stands
outside the city jail with a thick resume advertising himself as the
country's next president; and the numerous would-be novelists who, for want
of a decent publishing house, push their thick French-language manuscripts
on passersby.

"I've had more surreal moments in Haiti than I've ever had anywhere else,"
says Stinson, who, in the midst of the country's current troubles, is trying
to set up an environmental institute to combat the deforestation and erosion
that has crippled its countryside. "Maybe it's the mystical element of the
culture, the religious elements, its history. Maybe it's just the people.

"Even traveling in the countryside, which is so devastated, yet in many
places so beautiful, you feel this immense passion," adds Stinson, who was
raised in the Midwest. "There's such a strength in human nature here, and
there's also a naivete and innocence. Haitians are very open at every
level."

Stinson is currently involved in a plan to bring lumber and wood to Haiti to
help take the pressure off forests that have nearly been eradicated by
peasants chopping trees to make charcoal -- one of the few cash crops
Haitians can count on.

Flanagan, meanwhile, finds that every trip home to Oklahoma only leaves him
eager to return to Haiti with a greater resolve to have an impact here. He
is currently working on a project that aims to eradicate hog cholera, but
his real desire is to develop a fuel source from paper compost that will
also help spare the environment. But he's the first to admit that it's a
huge undertaking, the kind that you can only find in a place like Haiti.

"The needs for someone with my skills, veterinary skills, are so great
here," he says. "But that also leads you to so many issues that are
connected -- issues like roads, education, the lack of farm credit. It just
never ends but it's also ultimately rewarding. You feel you're making a
difference at some level."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4375.



Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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