26163: Voordouw: (news) Panos Follow up article on 2004 floodings (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JVoordouw@aol.com

More Than A Year After Devastating Floods,  Haitians Still Look for
Conditions That Spawn Change

by Michael Deibert,  Free-lance  reporter

FONDS-VERETTES, Haiti, 31 August 2005 (Panos) -  Below  mist-shrouded
mountains largely stripped bare of trees, amidst a clutch  of  tarp-covered
market
stands pitched beside an immense field of  boulder-sized  rocks, Elise
Rousseau,
44, stands with her sister and  stirs a pot of boiling  marinade patties,
remembering the terrible  flood that swept through this small  town over a
year ago.

â??About midnight, the water started rushing in,â?? she says, her  voice
choked
with emotion, as a persistent drizzling rain descends into the   valley where
the village of  Fonds-Verettes lies.  â??Our houses  were swept away,
everything
we had was swept away. Everyone was  running, but they had no idea where they

would go. My daughter was  sixteen years old and she drowned.â??

In the  village of  Thomin, a rough 30-minute drive down  a  trickling stream
bed from Fonds-Verettes, the story is much the  same.

â??Many, many people died here,â?? says Louis Cantel,  a 67-year-old  farmer,
as
he stands surveying a field of corn cut through at  various  points by a
similar violent swath of rocks and stones, deposited as  the  waters swept by
in May
2004.  â??From  here all the way to  the frontier, those who didnâ??t die,
their
goats, cows and  chickens  were all washed away.â??

The rains of May 2004 in this remote, mountainous  region where   Haiti
straddles  the Dominican  Republic, killed over 900 people  in the two
countries,
the vast majority of them Haitian peasants  caught asleep in their  shacks or
market women who worked the two  border crossings at the frontier.

Though subsistence farming forms the backbone of  the lives of   Haiti's
poor,
rural majority, one only needs to take a look at the imposing  hills
surrounding  Fonds-Verettes, green and brown, but nearly devoid  of trees, to
realize
the dire  environmental problems confronting the  country as it tries to feed
its 8 million  people.

â??We have a serious environmental crisis in the  country, for sure, but  one
with several causes,â?? says Camille Chalmers, director  of the  Plateforme
Haïtienne de Plaidoyer pour un Développement Alternatif   (Haitian Platform
to
Advocate Alternative Development, or PAPDA), an   organization which promotes
grassroots developmental initiatives on behalf  of  Haitiâ??s  poor.

â??But the first cause is misery, people are born  here with a lot of
desperation and their sole source of liquidity are the  trees.â??

Over the past 50 years, 90 percent of  Haitiâ??s tree  cover has  been
destroyed
for charcoal and to make room for farming, with the   resulting erosion
destroying two-thirds of the countryâ??s arable farmland.  With  little left
to
hold
the topsoil when the rains fall - often  torrentially after  prolonged spells
with no precipitation at all - it  rushes in torrents down the  mountains,
carving
gullies and carrying  crops and seeds along with it, sweeping  vital minerals
into the  countryâ??s rivers to be deposited, uselessly, in the  sea.

Though these conditions have made the valleys set  between the steep  hills
of
the Caribbean nationâ??s  countryside prone to flash floods  (similar flooding
around the northern city of  Gonaives killed some  3,000 last  September),
residents say they have little choice but to  remain where they  are.

â??Itâ??s dangerous to live here, because we know that  the water could
always
come back,â?? says Thomin farmer Gerard Pierre Paul, 40, as  he  eyes the
clouds
from beneath a straw peasantâ??s hat. â??But we donâ??t have  any  money to
put
our
houses on top of the mountains.â??

Haitiâ??s  tumultuous political situation - which saw the ouster of  President
Jean-Bertrand  Aristide amid an armed rebellion and street  protests against
his
rule in  February 2004 - has repeatedly, scuttled  any efforts at
reforestation or other  programs to help people in  villages like
Fonds-Verettes. The rate
of hunger in  the country is now  ranked as the worldâ??s third highest,
surpassed by only  Somalia  and  Afghanistan, and  the countryâ??s literacy
rate hovers
around  60%.

â??Haiti is  a country thatâ??s in chronic crisis, and itâ??s a low-boil
crisis,
so you have any  major incident, whether itâ??s a natural  disaster or a
man-made,
socio-political  one, and things go under very  quickly.

"For the people who suffer most, itâ??s been a very  rough year,â?? says  Abby
Maxman,  Haiti country  director for the aid organization  â??CAREâ??,
speaking
in
the groupâ??s headquarters  in the capital,   Port-au-Prince.

An interim government headed by President Boniface  Alexandre and  Prime
Minister Gerard Latortue took power in  Haiti after   Aristideâ??s departure.
But,
beset by an armed urban campaign of violence  against  police and civilians
launched by Aristide-aligned street gangs  in the capital,  the
administration has
largely appeared to be too busy  trying to put out  political fires and cling
to
power until legislative  and presidential elections  this November, to spend
much time on issues  such as environmental degradation  and land reform.

â??There needs to be a serious and sustained  investment in Haiti  countrywide
by the international community to insure that we  just  donâ??t come here to
respond to an acute crisis, because itâ??s the  low-level  crisis that keeps
everyone
unstable,â?? says Maxman. â??We canâ??t  just look at the  elections as if
thatâ??s
end game.  Thatâ??s the  beginning of it, of the real process for getting
Haiti
on a  track  for development.â??

The problem of the tenuous existence of Haitiâ??s  rural poor is further
complicated by the fact that governments based in  Port-au-Prince,  usually a
remote
entity for peasants living hours away on  rumbling  roads, have often viewed
any kind of organizing by the peasant masses   with suspicion if not outright
hostility, and have responded in kind.

In the 1950's, the military ruler Paul Magloire  displaced thousands  of
peasants to build the Peligre hydroelectric dam near the  Dominican  border,
but
those evicted, like the people of Fonds-Verettes, from   their land, never
saw any
of the electricity the dam was supposed to  produce. A  few years later, the
dictator Francois Duvalier formed the  Volontaires de la  Sécurité Nationale
(VSN) militia, which became  popularly known as the Tontons  Macoutes after a
Kreyol expression (the  name translated as â??uncle knapsackâ??) for  a
boogeyman, in
part to keep  an eye on the restless provinces.

In 2002 Aristide, in contrast to the agrarian  reform policy of his
predecessor, Rene Preval , who governed from 1996-2001,  bulldozed some  of
Haitiâ??s most
productive farmland on the green and fertile   Maribaroux Plain in the
northeast of the country, to enable the Dominican  Grupo  M company to create
a â??free
tradeâ?? zone. In practice this meant  that workers  were assembling Levi
Jeans
from 7 in the morning until 7  at night, having a  single 45 minute break to
eat
lunch and use the  bathroom.  Compensation was 432 Haitian Gourdes  (around
US
$12)  per week and unions were not permitted.

But PAPDAâ??s Camille Chalmers, for one, refuses to  give up hope  that
Haitiâ??
s  environmental degradation is irreversible. PAPDA  itself was formed in
1995
in  response and opposition to a clutch of  economic reforms - including
rapid
trade  liberalization, privatization  of key state enterprises and financial
deregulation - that the first  Aristide government agreed to, in order to
facilitate his return from  exile after being ousted for three years by a
military
coup. Growing  up in such an environment has made the group, like  Haitiâ??s
peasants, no stranger to overcoming adversity.

â??We need to have a system of cooperation between  the peasants and  people
in
the cities to address the planting of trees and the  use of  charcoal,â??
Chalmers says.  â??We need an aggressive strategy of  cooperation to plant
trees and an
administrative system that will make  that happen.â??

Meanwhile, in Fond-Verettes, a steady rain is  falling, and the market  women
pull underneath their fragile shelter.

â??Itâ??s not just the floods only,â?? says Pastor  Destine Charles, a 34
year-old
Fonds-Verettes native who has formed an  organization, Kote  Pa-M (â??Where is
Mine?â?? in Kreyol), to help alleviate poverty  and  unsafe living conditions
of
those in the area. The road near the  market  stands has now turned into a
steady gurgling stream and the  clouds have  descended low over the valley.

â??People donâ??t have houses, access to water, nor  hospitals. We have a  lot
of
children that donâ??t have access to schools. We want  to  ameliorate our
situation but we need help.â??
(END/Panos/310805)


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