30033: Deibert (response) Ferdinand on Martissant (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From michaeldeibert@gmail.com:

Anna Ferdinand speaks with the wise voice of a Haiti veteran. I have always
found it perplexing that, rather than go out and do on-the-ground long-term
reporting of their own, living among the people for years, taking public
transportation across the length and breadth of the country, building up
trust and contacts, that some (particularly the North Americans who picked
up the Fanmi Lavalas banner post-2004) would rather attack journalists who
do just that. In fact, the new website Haiti Analysis, run by Jeb Sprague -
who first contacted me (unsolicited) by emailing me a graphic picture of the
bullet-riddled, blood-soaked bodies of a Haitian mother and her children
along with a smiley face emoticon (I didn't get the joke)  - seems to be
devoted almost exclusively to attacking journalists, myself in particular.
When I read the writings of this political current talking about Haiti, I
see anger, resentment, also often barely-disguised jealously, but, sorry, I
do no see the face of the Haiti I have come to know and love.

I don't see reflected the courage of people who, in their everyday
struggles, display twenty times the heroism of any politician I have seen
there. The man working late hours at his media support group despite the
danger of being kidnapped if he is late returning home; the father, out of
work for three years, who dutifully gets up to pound the pavement every day
in order to search for a job to support his family and restore his sense of
dignity, and his wife, who braves strikes, demonstrations and the daily
threat of violence to go teach school at a facility often lacking the basic
instruments for education such as books, pens and paper; the woman fleeing a
gang war sheltering in the parking lot of a Baptist mission who has nothing
in mind more than keeping her children safe from the struggle for miserable
power. The Haitian people are not symbols, to be manipulated for political
purposes, they are flesh-and-blood human beings, with all the greatness and
frailties inherent in the human condition. These are the real heroes of
Haiti, in my experience, not the politicians.

Likewise, there never seems to be a word about the country's many positive
aspects, its stunning physical beauty, its culture, its religion or its
fantastic sense of humor. As blood-soaked as Haiti's history has been, it
has also been a history of stunning creativity, for my money the most
creative culture in the entire Caribbean. Now, wouldn't it be something if
that could be reflected more often, rather than pointless, internecine
squabbles, which I can't imagine hold much interest to, for example. some
peasant too poor to send his children to school.

Michael Deibert