27582: Bell: Preval for President (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: madison bell <mbell@goucher.edu>

Preval for President

I?m not Haitian, don?t have a right to vote, don?t really even have the
right to an opinion..  But now that the votes have been cast, if not
counted, let me say one thing -- mwen te we nan je mwen.

In the late 1990s I drove to Marmelade from Pilboreau, the town was a
skeleton with hardly a rag of flesh on its bones­kept upright by the
strength of the spirit of the people who lived there and just about nothing
else.

In 2003 I drove to Marmelade from Dondon on a road that previously didn?t
exist: the trees were blooming, there was a clinic and a cybercafe on the
square, schools were up and running, there was a coffee plantation up and
running as a fair-trade cooperative on the site of the colonial caféière
Habitation Boché, and also a bamboo plantation with a furniture factory
behind it. Reforestation was underway, motivated by coffee?s need for cover
trees.  The people of the zone were working on all these projects with hope
in their hearts­and they were getting a fair return on their labor.

Isn?t that what everyone hoped for all Haiti in 1995?  It has looked so
much farther away ever since, yet Preval made it happen in Marmelade, AFTER
he left the Presidency.  It could happen all over Haiti, if people could
get their heads together to make it happen.  Never mind his association
with Lavalas for good or ill (I don?t know); his relationship with Aristide
(I don?t know); if Aristide was/is devil or saint or somewhere on the
spectrum in between (I don?t know)?

?the one thing I have seen with my own eyes is that Preval restored Haiti
Fleuri in Marmelade.  Does anybody else have as much to show?

msb