"They tell you, 'You are in the fifth world.' What can that do to you? You are not even in the third world-you are in the fifth world! It means what? Be ashamed of yourself and took at us as the great ones? I don't admit that issue of being in the fifth world. We are Haitians and we are in Haiti and we should not be ashamed of our conditions and ashamed of ourselves. If we hold to that attitude and are ashamed we won't go forward and we will always be asking for help. This is why I am against that question of being ashamed of ourselves.
"For instance, you take some Haitians and they are with a foreigner and there are some things -- some parts of the city or something they will not show a foreigner. To me, if a foreigner wants to see-let him see everything! Why be ashamed! America was worse than Saint-Domingue two hundred years ago. So why should we be ashamed when at one time this country was one of the richest countries in the world? We are in poverty because so many things have changed. We had hard times. We had a beginning as slaves. We have not been able yet to unite ourselves into five million people. Okay, it will come. This is why looking at history helps you to accept your conditions.
"If someone wants to go to a country and criticize -- you can go anywhere and criticize. But when a country is big it will have no effect because you can go and describe a slum area in America and what affect can that have? Nothing, because in general the country is a rich country. Poverty exists everywhere even in the midst of richness. Richness exists everywhere. Here you have people living as well as Americans. Now the question is to bring equality so that everyone can enjoy that sun, that climate, those beaches, the mountains ... so that everyone can enjoy it. I think that is what we should strive for." Ary Bordes
Day begins very early in a Haitian village. It is not so much the specificity of the hour as the action. The villagers stir groggily even while night has left dark daubs of purple in the sky. Purple is a royal color and the sky also has a majesty about it, but brooding with overhanging mist, like King Saul on his throne chair, neurotic, bitter, obsessed, perhaps, by the sad destiny of this country and the suffering ahead this very day.
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Bob Corbett corbetre@webster.edu