Cap-Haitien, Haiti: Part II

I've been busy here in the office but I'm back now to tell more about my crazy adventures in Haiti.

I'll start where I left off, Friday evening I believe...

After exploring the community in Trou-du-Nord, all of us piled back into the truck to head back to Cap-Haitien. The car rides were not fun. By some combination of road conditions and traffic conditions I felt as if I were inhaling 50% smoke, 50% dust in every breath.

Once back in our room, we all eagerly showered and changed clothes before pulling some furniture out onto the porch to enjoy the night. We had a dinner of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, washed down with a Prestige, Haiti's beer, which I actually prefer to the DR's Presidente. We spent the evening just hanging out outside, talking about life, development, family, friendship, love, all of the things that sound cliché when written out but remain the most absorbing sources of late-night conversation among a group of people who have grown to trust each other. It is, as fellow intern David once said about a similar occasion, "raw life", and it is an incredible thing to feel.

Saturday was sight-seeing day! We woke up, piled in the car, and after another unpleasant ride over bad roads arrived at the Sans-Souci Palace, built by King Henri Christophe to rival Versailles. The palace was ruined in an earthquake, and still maintains a sort of exotic beauty as the remnants of walls and pillars mix with the surrounding natural environment.
From the palace, there was a stone road winding uphill for several miles before arriving at the Citadelle Laferriere, probably the most spectacular site in all of Haiti. The hike up there is long, and it is hot. Tourists like us are dogged at the heels by Haitians with horses, just waiting for us to give up and hire a horse to ride to the top. Not long after starting, members of our group began dropping off and hiring a horse, and soon David and I were the only ones left on foot. Fueled by little more than the obstinate determination not to give in to the horsemen who persisted to follow us most of the way to the top.

The Citadelle was pretty epic. See for yourself:



Saturday night, well... Nate has already written a good account of what transpired, so I'll borrow his words:

Saturday night, the whole hotel situation hits the fan. What happened is this: Some random employee had said that it’s $120/night between the 5 of us at the hotel. He wasn’t the boss there, just some kid who quoted a number, and said the sorts of facilities they had. As I listed above, the facilities were terrible. Being experienced travelers, we figured the price should have been closer to $50 per night. When we approached the employee who had been around all week about this (via Obed translating), he said, “Ok, fine – I’ll just charge you $350 instead of the $360.” Our response: ARE YOU JOKING?, that’s $3/night off. Ridiculous. After allowing Obed to translate this, the kid called his boss to tell him to come.

This is when it gets real interesting. The boss enters, and doesn’t act anything like a reasonable owner of a hotel at all. Instead of acting as he should have (weighing our complaints about the hotel to figure out a fair price for us to pay), he was extremely aggressive. He entered and immediately began accusing us of being unjust customers, stating angrily “Who do you think you are, coming into MY hotel and telling ME what to charge you?”, and otherwise changing the subject from the faults of his hotel to show why we deserved to pay the $120/night. David, one of the other fellows, did a good job of attempting to keep the conversation focused on the issue at hand – we cannot and would not pay that much, for the very understandable reasons we laid out. We were misled into believing this hotel was of higher quality than it really is. Perhaps someday it’d be that valuable, for now, it was on the same level (if not lower) than a Motel 6.

At some point in the night, several of us started to pick up that we may have started to bring ourselves (or Obed), into physical danger by agitating this man. He certainly was very wealthy, and we assumed he had friends in high places who he could call to deal with the issue of five pesky Americans. We were finally offered $260 for the three nights, and accepted it. Though this price was too high, it seemed to us that we needed to get away from this man.

We went to withdraw extra money from the main Roi Cristophe hotel to give to this man. At the Roi Cristophe, we learn an amazing fact: we had been part of an employee who was committing fraud. The man at the desk on Thursday who said that it was “full” was a friend of our not-so-friendly manager, and would send potentially wealthy people (i.e. anyone white) to the other hotel, which was no where near the same quality. In fact – the other hotel wasn’t even related! It was all a ploy to make us think we were somehow going to a legit place, which wasn’t legit at all.

In the end, the Roi Cristophe offered us rooms to stay the night at their hotel that night as a recompense for dealing with the fraud. We gladly accepted and quickly packed up from the other hotel and moved into a (MUCH) nicer and safer hotel for the last night.

Yep, that's pretty much how things went. The whole ride home all I could think about was the psychology of the owner we dealt with. In a society like Haiti, if you're an ambitious person, as this guy clearly was, it seems to me you probably look at your options in life and find that the honest routes to get ahead are basically closed to you, and so you start thinking OK, I guess I have to be dishonest. This is not to excuse in any way what he did. It was wrong. He took advantage of us, and that infuriates me. But I think it's difficult for us in the developed world to wrap our heads around how much greater the incentives for dishonesty are for people in places like Haiti. Now the specific guy we dealt with probably no longer needed to be dishonest to do okay for himself, but I imagine he had been involved in some decidedly illegal practices to get there, and he no longer cared about the morality of it. I can imagine him looking at people like me and my friends and thinking What are you complaining about? Do you know where I came from? You have no f***ing clue, you sheltered American children. Now shut up and pay.

Whether or not this was his actual thought process, I cannot say. But all-in-all it was an extremely eye-opening experience on many fronts.

Cap-Haitien, Haiti: Part I

I have returned from an extended weekend in Haiti with several of my fellow Fellows, wonderful folks each one. Their names are David, Madeleine, Nate, and Maira. There is much to tell. I suppose I will start from the beginning.

Last Wednesday I came home from work here in San Pedro, showered, packed my things, and hopped on a bus to Santo Domingo. The plan was to wake up early Thursday morning and catch the charter bus going from SD to Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. I got into Santo Domingo and met my friends at an apartment where several of Esperanza's long-term interns and American staff live. We ordered pizza, drank some Presidentes, and had a fun time just hanging out together. Later, the five of us going to Haiti convened to discuss our plans for getting to the bus station and buying our tickets. We eventually decided to walk to the bus station that night to see if they were still open so we could buy our tickets early. Maira, one of the interns going to Haiti, mentioned something about needing our passports to get the tickets.

Passport. Hmmm... passport.

S***.

Mine, of course, was still next to my bed in San Pedro. Remarkably, it had not once occurred to me that I might need my passport to go to Haiti. Half an hour later, I'm on a bus going back to San Pedro, where I will retrieve my passport and hop on an early bus back to Santo Domingo in the morning.

All of this, luckily, goes more or less according to plan. I get my passport and am back in SD before 8am on Thursday morning. There is one near-disaster: when I get off the bus in Santo Domingo, I walk a few steps before realizing that the front pocket of my backpack is wide open, and my wallet is missing. I almost go into cardiac arrest, but luckily the cobrador from the bus (a guy who collects fares and gets people on the bus) had chased after me, my wallet in hand. I thank him profusely and check to make sure everything's there. It is. Phew. Crisis averted.

I walk to meet my friends at the Caribe Tours bus station. Buying a ticket to Haiti takes forever. In protest, an intern who shall remain nameless decides to steal the inflated Air France plane hanging from the ceiling. He/She unhooks it from the ceiling, deflates it, and shoves it in his/her backpack. The people at the desk don't seem to notice.

And on the bus we go! We stop briefly in Santiago to change buses. Crossing the border takes a long, long time. All of us stay on the bus as the attendant handles getting passports stamped. We arrive in Cap-Haitien after roughly nine hours of sitting in buses. Driving through Cap-Haitien is a surreal experience. We see an endless line of tin shacks lining the sides of a muddy river. We see rows and rows of pick-up trucks converted into public cars, packed with people. We pass a UN armored vehicle next to a UN base garrisoned with Chilean peacekeepers. The place is dirty, chaotic, and unsightly in a way that I haven't seen in the DR. It makes Santo Domingo and San Pedro looked like the developed world.


Getting off the bus, we are immediately greeted by Obed, Esperanza's only intern stationed in Haiti. Obed spent several years of his childhood in Haiti, and as such speaks fluent Creole. He informs us that something had gone wrong with the reservation he had originally made at a hotel in town, and that we had been referred to a "partner" hotel because the hotel we thought we had a reservation at was full.

No problem, we'll just go to the other hotel. When we get there, we find that the place is still under construction. It isn't a hotel so much as a three -story building with partially furnished rooms. The beds are terrible, the shower has no faucet, instead spewing water out of a pipe. Service is non-existent. There is no railing on the balcony outside so someone could quite easily fall off and impale themselves on the rebar sticking out of the unfinished retaining wall below.

Understand, none of this by itself is a problem. We volunteers are fine with staying in cheap hotels. The problem arose in the fact that this place was not cheap. We were informed by the "manager", some guy who met us there and gave us our keys, that it cost $120/night. When we first got there, we were not fully aware of the situation and thought whatever, we'll deal with it later. Mistake #1. The manager leaves, we go out with Obed for food, and return later that night, tired and wanting to go to bed. The manager is there briefly, but we have no way to communicate with him because Obed is not staying with us.

More on that later. On Friday morning Obed picked us up at the hotel with a couple of his local friends who he hired to drive us around for the weekend. Eight of us pack into a small, beat-up suv that has consistent trouble starting and head to Esperanza's office in Trou-du-Nord.

We hang out in the office for awhile while Obed takes care of some business. Later we are taken to the office director's house for a Haitian lunch. The director is out of town, but his wife had made an amazing meal for us. See for yourself:
After eating, Maira and I took the opportunity to go out and meet a couple of the associates with Obed, in my opinion one of the highlights of the trip. We first visited a woman with a small colmado-like store in a road-side shack, stocked with drinks, snacks, and common convenience goods. She wass rather shy, and Maira and I stood around while Obed interviewed her for a story. We got the chance to ask her a couple questions through Obed, and then left, Obed buying a soda from her as thanks.

We then went to meet another small-business owner nearby, who also had something of a general store. This man was remarkable. After Obed talked with him for awhile, Maira and I again had the opportunity to ask questions and take a few pictures. Maira told him that she was planning on going to business school soon, and asked what advice he could give her on running a business. Obed translated, and the man paused thoughtfully before diving into a detailed answer. The gist of what he said is as follows: "Business is about principles," he said. "I form good relationships with my customers because I value them and want them to come back. They come back here because they know I have good prices and because they like me and know I appreciate their business."

I'm paraphrasing Obed's translation, but that's about what he said. What was so remarkable was what I could learn about this man without knowing what he was saying. Despite having a small business in a poor neighborhood, he dressed nicely, wearing slacks, a collared shirt, and dress shoes. He stood up straight and spoke clearly and deliberately, with a evenly measured rhythm. I could tell simply from how he spoke that this was an honest, stand-up guy; a man who knows his business, knows his clientele, and acts professionally despite his humble circumstances. It was truly a privilege to see his business and have the chance to talk with him.
(Obed, right, with the business-owner we talked to)

Whew, I'm thinking there may be too much for just one post. Stay tuned for Part II of our Haitian aventura.

Trip to Haiti

I, along with several other interns, will be heading to Haiti tomorrow to see the Esperanza office in Trou-du-Nord (just outside of Cap-Haitien) and see some of the sites in general. There is one intern in Haiti, Obed, who was born in Haiti but grew up an graduated from college in the States. The rest of us will surely be relying on him quite heavily as he is the only one among us who can speak Creole. On Saturday we will be going to see the Citadelle, a fortress built by leaders of the Haitian slave rebellion. Apparently it's one of the most spectacular sites in all of Haiti, so I'm quite excited to see it. I'll be sure to take pictures.

San Pedro's Law

Anything that can be carried by moto, will be carried by moto:


Those, if you cannot tell, are five or so live chickens.

Playing the Shame Game

On Monday, I interviewed a new borrower, a young woman named Miguelina, planning to take her information and make a Kiva profile for her and her group. She told me about how she is a single mother with three children, ages six, five, and five months. She is 21 years old. That's a year older than I am. When she told me her age, I was firmly slapped in the face with the realization that she is one of my peers. Before me was a product of my own generation, living a life that is unimaginably distant from my own experience. Yet here she was, eager to tell me about her plan to start a business selling food supplies: rice, beans, cooking oil, candy, etc. Here she was, telling me about her determination to keep her kids in school so they can fulfill their dreams.

And I believe her. I believe she will do it.

Perhaps it is wrong of me to stereotype, but I have difficulty imagining that an American girl in the same situation would have that kind of attitude and ambition. I think there is a reason for this. Miguelina, despite having three children at a shockingly young age, is not ashamed of her circumstances. She has the support of her family and community in what she is doing.

In the America that I grew up in, a mostly white, upper-middle-class society, there is an immense culture of shame concerning teenage girls who get pregnant. In a society, shame is primarily a social deterrent mechanism. So the argument goes, if we do sufficient damage to the reputations of those who make mistakes, then others will be more careful. And if we do not use shame as a deterrent, than what else is there? After all, it's far better that we use shame than try to use rule of law.

However, on the subject of teen pregnancy in particular, shame is a double-edged sword. We may be deterring others from making foolish mistakes, but at what cost to those who do? More importantly, at what cost to the children of these young women? A young woman who finds herself pregnant may look upon her child as a curse, a scarlet letter, something that has ruined her life and her dreams for the future. Indeed, many young women feel compelled to "deal" with the problem before it becomes evident. Even for those who don't, what sort of environment are these children growing up in, when their mothers do not have the love and support of their community? It's quite possible that many of the undesirable results of teen pregnancies today might not occur if we did not condemn young parents so harshly.

All of that being said, I am not necessarily going to come out as strongly in favor of de-stigmatizing teen pregnancy. It is true that if we as a culture become more accepting of it, it might happen a lot more. All I will say at this point is that the costs and benefits of how we handle this issue deserve to be examined much more closely, and may be due for recalibrating.

Why Development?

While in Santo Domingo this past weekend, I had a lengthy conversation with a couple of the other interns, Tim and Nate. At one point, Tim posed the question, "why are you interested in development?" He went on to talk about how when he asks people this, there are generally two answers that one gets. The first answer is religious motivation: "Because God wants me to," or "It's what Jesus would do," etc. The second answer is more secular but can just as easily have a religious motivation by extension: "Because I want to help people."

To which one could ask, why? Why do you want to help people? Why do you think they want your help? When we follow our motivations to their source, we generally find that there's no such thing as a selfless motive. In the end, we're always scratching some kind of itch, chasing some kind of feeling. If we knew that a particular action would yield nothing but bad feelings, we would never do it. We can not help but run towards pleasure and flee from pain. This sounds hedonistic when taken at face value, but when we think of pain and pleasure as being complex entities with a number of different forms, it begins to make a bit more sense. If my grandmother comes to visit my family, and brings a heavy suitcase, I carry it for her. Although carrying it causes me more physical discomfort than I would otherwise feel, my conscience would punish me were I to let her carry it herself. Thus, my motivation for carrying my grandmother's suitcase can be seen as entirely selfish. I am fleeing from the pain my conscience would afflict to the satisfaction of helping my grandmother.

Getting back to Tim's original question, why am I interested in development? Several Reasons. First, how I feel about myself is largely affected by my perceived positive influence on other people (granted, given my level of experience it's debatable how large a positive influence i'm having this summer). Second, as a person I'm very prone to boredom, and so I crave a sense of adventure and feel that this sort of work can provide that. Third, I feel it's extremely valuable to be exposed to other ways of life on a long time-scale, both to appreciate other cultures and to gain new perspective and appreciation for one's own.

I wholeheartedly admit that all of these motives can be seen as selfish, as chasing my own satisfaction in life. The thing is, happiness is quite a complex animal. We can chase it in dozens of different ways. Some of these paths yield positive social externalities, and some yield negative. It should come as no surprise that the paths to happiness that yield positive social externalities are frequently those that require a significant investment of time and effort before they begin to pay off.

So what's the lesson here? That we should try to chase the pleasures that carry the most positive social impacts. It's far from the easiest kind of life, but it may be one of the most fulfilling.

Avast!

I'm back for another week of action here in San Pedro de Macorís. This past weekend was spent in Santo Domingo, celebrating birthdays (of people and countries) and going-aways of a number of people. It was quite a fun time, but an unfortunate dearth of sleep on Friday night led me to exhaustion a bit too quickly on Saturday night. Friday night began with several other Fellows and I moseying to a colmado/bar/local hangout near our hotel, where we met a few interesting folks and were eventually joined by several other interns. I met one amusing character who had come all the way from Finland(!) to vacation here in the DR. I don't remember his name (he had a pretty heavy accent), but he was a pretty big guy with a bleached-blond faux-hawk. When I asked him why he came to the DR, he responded (in a thick Scandinavian accent) "for the rahm (rum), the baych (beach), and the crazy wild seks (guess)". ...oooooookay. I guess that's what does it for him. We later went to an awesome open-air club playing non-stop salsa, merengue, and bachatta (sp?). Didn't get back to the hotel until really late, but it was well worth it.

Saturday was more relaxed. The day was mostly spent hanging out with Nate and Tim, two other Fellows. Nate is going into his senior year at University of Washington. Tim graduated from Princeton, then spent a year in Tanzania before coming to the DR. After wandering around a bit and eating lunch, the two of us went back to the hotel and played a whole lot of Dominoes. Nate won handily, but it was pretty much entirely luck.

Later in the evening we headed to the house where several of the interns in Santo Domingo live. We sat around and talked for awhile, before ordering a whole bunch of pizzas from, believe it or not, Pizza Hut. I guess nothing says Independence Day like cheap American-imitating-Italian food. Later that night was spent at hanging out at a club called "The Blue Velvet". Going there, I was slightly afraid it was going to be a gay bar. It turned out to be a normal, if kind of underwhelming, venue. I would have danced a lot and probably had a much better time if I wasn't so exhausted. It was still fun though, a lot of the time was spent outside chatting with the other Fellows.

All things considered, though, a weekend well spent. More to come soon!

Microfinance: The Next Bubble?

That's the headline of a recent posting on Newsweek's Wealth of Nations blog. It talks about a recent study by two American economists whose primary conclusion is that while microfinance isn't hurting anybody, there isn't a lot of solid evidence that it's helping them, either.

It may surprise many of you that I don't really find these conclusions to be very troubling, even if they are spot on. And yet, I still believe that microfinance should continue to expand, that it should try to reach as many of the poor as possible, all over the world. Why? Because I don't believe that microfinance is truly about helping poor entrepreneurs escape poverty. I believe it's about helping their children escape poverty. The blunt fact is, most of these poor entrepreneurs do not have the education to become sustainably affluent. Microcredit cannot do a whole lot to help them get one, because they need to be working to pay back their loans, besides having children and a home to maintain.

What microcredit can (and does) do for the poor is provide them with the necessary stability of income to keep their children in school long enough for them to have a good enough education to give them a much higher chance of escaping poverty than they ever had themselves. I have no rigorous studies immediately on hand to prove my claim, but it is what I believe after spending a bit of time in the field and it makes a great deal of sense. If one is looking for massive improvements in the well-being of a country's poor population, one will have to wait roughly 25 years after a significant proportion of that nation's poor population had access to microcredit.

Of course, it would also help immensely if the governments of these countries would meet their poor citizens halfway by focusing relentlessly on improving both quality of education and access to it. But that's a whole different battle.