An Eye in Haiti's Storm
CLEAVER, CAROLE
JACMEL JOURNAL An Eye in Haiti's Storm BY CAROLE CLEAVER JACMEL "HOW HAS Jacmel changed in the last 20 years?" an . eager young United Nations monitor asked. "Are things better or...
...Nevertheless, in the teeming market square fruits and vegetables, piles of multicolored grains, powdered maize, barley, peanuts, four kinds of beans, live chickens, slaughtered goats, fish, and lobster are sold or bartered briskly...
...It shipped coffee, sugar, essential oils, and indigo to France, and CAROLE CLEAVER, a frequent New Leader contributor, is the coauthor ofSpirits of the Night: The Vaudou Gods of Haiti...
...They currently have a staff of 28—down from a peak of 80 workers during 1984-85—producing handpainted trays, boxes, furniture, and other objets d'art which are sold in gift shops all over the Caribbean and Florida...
...At the beginning of February two crimes were committed, both by outsiders...
...As for the UN presence, it has largely calmed the fears of the rich...
...Things never change and they never will...
...Visiting Americans tend not to notice the inflation, since a soaring exchange rate gives them three times more gourdes for their dollar than in the Duvalier days...
...The hand-picked candidate of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the hero of the masses, Preval won office in a December election that featured little campaigning and small voter turnout...
...Less then 20 per cent of the people eligible to vote turned out at the last election...
...All these programs are administered, with a paid staff of eight, by Jane MacRae, a Canadian who has lived in Jacmel 23 years...
...I kept asking...
...In early January when then Presidentelect Rene Preval met with local leaders, Victor Boucard joined former Mayor Claude Craan and businessman Jacques Kaowli to lobby for dredging Jacmel's harbor and restoring it to its former glory...
...The beach is littered with dead leaves, plastic bottles and animal droppings...
...second, jobs to ensure each person's survival...
...The country was ruled then by JeanClaude Duvalier (Baby Doc), who two years earlier had been designated by his father, Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc), to succeed him as President for life...
...THAT REVIVAL ended in the post-Baby Doc era of political chaos, embargoes and disappearing tourism...
...Since they already have contracts with European and American companies who will buy their essences, a market is assured...
...Unfortunately, repairing such damage is not a UN function...
...He and his wife, Paule, came here in 1979 to spread the Baha'i faith...
...Today, moreover, the trip to Port-au-Prince takes three or four hours, because the main highway into the capital is full of potholes and suburban sprawl has created frustrating traffic jams...
...This means that 72 hastily trained, poorly equipped, though well-meaning men and women may have to do battle with returning Tonton Macoutes who had fled with their weapons across the Dominican border...
...after ships could no longer dock, the town's gradual decline began...
...Near the pier, several deep holes large enough to swallow a child have opened up...
...The town profited from benign neglect...
...In the 1970s when the elder Duvalier's iron fist was replaced by his son's somewhat milder approach, the French built a road over the mountain range that divides the South...
...Currently, these farmers lack a cash crop...
...they produce only fruits and vegetables for local consumption...
...In Jacmel local public safety will be entirely in the hands of the new Haitian Police Force...
...Still, it never refused attention to sick or injured Haitian children who showed up...
...Kruijer has also transferred several of his Haitian patients to a Jacmel institution run by the Catholic Sisters that cares for orphaned and malnourished youngsters...
...Reports of the incidents were whispered house to house, street to street, with shock and horror...
...Guy Masse, a hero of the Revolution who was forced into hiding for many months, has been elected to the post on the ticket of the Lavalas Party, founded by Aristide...
...Casuarina trees wave gracefully in the breeze and tropical pines raise their needles stiff and proud...
...Next, an American con man, pretending to be with the U.S...
...True, under both father and son no one dared question authority...
...Victor Boucard, who was 11 years old when his entire family left Haiti after Papa Doc's henchmen demanded outrageous kickbacks from them, has returned to claim the family's land and reactivate the business...
...The majority of the population greeted it with indifference, and a few protested that they did not want "foreigners telling them what to do...
...there was small yet steady economic improvement...
...Three more years," the slogan of his supporters, is scrawled on walls and fences all over the country...
...Under the Haitian Constitution Aristide was not allowed to succeed himself, despite having spent three years of his five-year term in exile following an Army coup...
...Papier-mache crafts—the making of Carnival masks and wall hangings—also keep some individuals busy...
...The Boucards want to set up nurseries and distribute plants to encourage production...
...Help in maintaining the country's infrastructure has had to be sought elsewhere...
...But the strife and uncertainty of the decade since his fall in January 1986 have wiped out whatever gains were made and reduced Jacmel to its former decay...
...She pushed her panier at me...
...The current Delege, Ronald Pierre, is of course also a Lavalas man...
...His own position is somewhat delicate...
...La vie chere, la vie chere" (Life is expensive), they cry, shaking their heads...
...Treating locals," he reminded the Dutch soldiers, was not part of the UN mandate...
...And the office of Prefect has been replaced by the "Delege," an official appointed by the President to oversee the affairs of the area...
...A German foundation, the Organization to Benefit Haiti, is keeping the mountain road in good repair...
...She knew she had to take care of herself...
...Are things better or worse...
...The answer of a ragged market woman was typical: "I have no interest in politics...
...He and his brother, Gueric, have a successful essential essence enterprise in Texas, and they plan to set up a Jacmel plant to distill vetiver, lemon grass, sandalwood, and ylang-ylang...
...High prices have made an already miserable situation desperate...
...They subsequently set up the Bon Kote Foundation to pay for necessary surgery on Haitian children at the Adventiste Hospital and the Clinic of the Catholic Sisters of Charity, both in the Port-au-Prince...
...It cut the Jacmel-to-Port-au-Prince drive from eight hours to two, stimulating a flurry of activity...
...An attractive beach hotel was built on the palm-lined shore...
...She has been living in Haiti part of each year for over a quarter of a century...
...In addition, it helps pay tuition for 30 hearing-impaired children who attend the Bon Repos School for the Deaf in Port-au-Prince, and conducts periodic clinics with a visiting doctor from the Ecole St...
...But there is hope that trade in essential essences—once brisk with France, where it was used in perfumes—will experience a rebirth...
...The unpaved streets in Jacmel are dustier and rockier than ever...
...To date, 350 children diagnosed with physical handicaps have received further treatment at the Ecole's clinic...
...There are five outdoor discotheques with boom boxes that make every night a cacophony of sound, drowning out the whir of the two dozen private generators...
...Three people have fax machines that seldom work, and a store offers photocopies...
...The three stressed that power outages, often lasting up to 48 hours, are Jacmel's most pressing problem...
...Much of the land, left fallow, is being lost to erosion...
...The roofs on the homes of the four most affluent residents now boast TV dishes...
...In the area of medical care, too, the UN's stance has been a curious one...
...It doesn't matter who runs the country...
...On the political front, there is a new Mayor...
...She had to make this sale...
...Piles of garbage strewn about are set afire now and then to discourage the rats...
...It is estimated that the factory will employ 50 people, while approximately 300 farms on the coastal plain stretching east to the Dominican border are expected to participate in growing the raw materials...
...No help was coming from above...
...But at the turn of the century the harbor began to silt up...
...Meanwhile, they keep the Haitian government closely informed of their activities to head off actions that could hamper a venture in which they anticipate investing $1 million...
...art galleries and boutiques were opened in the old mansions...
...First, a Port-au-Prince man stole the Delco generator from one of the discos and was arrested next morning trying to board a bus with it...
...Her barefoot six-year-old daughter carried the baby, while her half-naked toddler played with a piece of rusty wire...
...Kruijer himself was chastised for giving UN medications to Haitians, Dutch officers' wives back in the Netherlands organized an appeal on television that quickly raised $10,000 for medical supplies...
...Now people are less afraid to file complaints about abuses with the local magistrate...
...The slight advancement in civil liberties, though, has been sharply offset by the devastation of the economy...
...A computer school has opened where 80 students, divided into 16 sections, learn English and practice their skills on seven computers...
...In large part this is a consequence of the government not having the money to import enough gasoline to keep its generators running...
...Preval, a small, handsome man who is articulate and energetic, listened politely but responded that at present his primary concern is security: first, police protection...
...In addition, desperately needed jobs never materialized because of his failure to encourage foreign companies to establish factories in Haiti...
...Pazapa provides classes, games and three hearty lunches a week for 40 mentally handicapped children...
...The early morning hours remain the province of braying donkeys, crowing cocks, yowling cats, and howling dogs...
...imported building materials, filigreed iron work, and elaborate furniture for the construction and outfitting of a few dozen magnificent, tier-balconied mansions that rival those in New Orleans' old quarter...
...The 180-man Dutch unit assigned to Jacmel in February 1995 encamped near the old airport, now a grassy field on the outskirts of town...
...Unlike the arid North, where years of drought have turned the soil to chalk, Haiti's southern peninsula, stretching 180 miles westward toward Jamaica, is lush with vegetation...
...Mangoes, Madame, papaye...
...NO CHANGES in Jacmel...
...Moro Baruk, an Egyptian artist, is now the town's largest employer...
...Vincent in the capital...
...For the mostly unemployed Haitians the cost of all imported goods—including necessities like rice, flour and cooking oil—is exorbitant...
...Aristide's assertion that he and Preval are "just like twins" implied that the former President's Left-wing policies would be continued after Preval's inauguration on February 7. Whether or not that will in fact be the case is unlikely to be clear for some time...
...Gone, too, is the fragrance of orange peels drying on the flat roofs of the waterfront depots before their export to France, for the preparation of Cointreau...
...Well, there have been a few...
...So people sitting on graceful balconies—screened by clusters of bou-gainvillea, hibiscus and white lilies?overlook the mild surf of the turquoise sea and thick swarms of mosquitoes that spread malaria and dengue fever...
...Last year, in the wake of Tropical Storm Gordon, Canadian and American money and engineering replaced three crucial bridges that were wiped out...
...But democracy continues to be little understood or appreciated in Jacmel...
...A hundred years ago Jacmel was a thriving port...
...Coffee growing has continued to decline...
...As he took office the bulk of the United Nations troops stationed in this country were preparing to withdraw...
...He then borrowed the best car in town and, without paying his bills, disappeared...
...The bulk of the unit's heavy equipment, trucked in at great expense, stood idle all year...
...Avocado, bread-fruit, mango, almond, chadak, coconut, and lime trees, plus three kinds of banana palms, promise there will be food even if there is no money...
...Army Corps of Engineers, made a lot of friends by inviting people for food and drink at the hotel...
...But when one young man, having apparently broken his arm, was taken to the UN Military Hospital in the capital (there being no x-ray equipment in Jacmel), the American officer in charge of the barely used Port-au-Prince facility turned him away...
...Six who are disabled have been placed under the care of Pazapa, a local center for handicapped children that receives most of its funds from Siloe, a California-based charity founded in 1982 by Peter Cunningham...
...That Preval said security is his primary concern is neither surprising nor necessarily indicative of his future course...
...Neither," I laughed...
...Few here have much confidence in the fledgling force, derogative-ly referred to as the "the boy scouts...
...It is difficult to get the beans to Port-au-Prince for shipment to international markets, and the coffee factory that was once the town's major employer closed several years ago...
...To make a living, they experimented with producing decorated clothing, then began training artisans to paint handicrafts...
...This little town on Haiti's southern, Caribbean coast looks almost exactly as it did when I first moved here in 1973...
...They brought up as well the issue of Haiti's erratic electricity supply...
...Aristide's refusal to privatize the government-run electric, telephone, cement, flour, and port management companies —each plagued by inefficiency and corruption—resulted in the cutting off of all loans by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund...
...The people of Jacmel, the Haitian residents and the few foreigners who choose to live here, are basically so nice that crimes like these are almost beyond belief...
...After Dr...
...During the 1960s when Papa Doc's Tonton Macoutes terrorized the land, Jacmel was virtually cut off: The sole remaining access road was set in a riverbed that could only be navigated by a Jeep or similar vehicle capable of fording the stream at 60 or 70 points...
...Just the same...
...The Hotel Jacmelienne, filled to capacity last year with Filipino police monitors, is almost empty save for a few weekenders from the capital and its less than 20-per-son staff...
...Whenever enough money is put together for a thorough cleanup, it is stolen by some official...
...The politicians make promises, but nothing happens...
...But the considerable number of big UN vehicles moving around was a major cause of road deterioration...
...Its medical team in the town, consisting of a lone Dutch doctor, "Nico" Kruijer, and 12 medics, has been busy treating troops for malaria and dengue fever...
Vol. 79 • January 1996 • No. 1
