"Confused thoughts from Haiti."

The following is a write up by my dear friend Fiona Littlejohn-Carrillo whom I visited in Port-au-Prince this summer while she was working for a development organization that's based in Quito, Ecuador. During my stay in Port-au-Prince, the issues that she writes about came up repeatedly and much of the confusion that she expresses in the following is something I very much share with her. What she wrote was something that I also found very relevant to our experience in Quintana-Roo and Belize during our study tour last semester.

While I came away from Haiti this summer very disillusioned with the development situation, I was also very optimistic and touched by the fight that I saw in the Haitian people and their continuous determination to make it through any adversity they are faced with. If Benitez-Rojo talks about people in the Caribbean finding a common ground in their "ability to survive", Haitians, I dare say, are the living embodiment of such a statement.

To the people of Haiti, in the upmost solidarity.

Jesus

Fiona's confused thoughts:

As the plane comes down, you see an island beneath you. Palms. Hills. Beaches. Turquoise Ocean. All you would expect of a tropical island. But then you get closer. And closer. And you realize that it’s not quite the typical honeymoon destination paradise.

What, from a height, appear to be rows of houses flanking the runway beneath you are homes of a different kind. Tent cities. Sprawling left, right and centre. A haphazard collage of materials, shapes, colours, fabrics, designs, logos (USAID, UINCEF, CHF, CRS, ICRC, IOM, Islamic Releif …. And the list goes on) all assembled for one raison d’être: to provide shelter. But over a year has passed. These are no longer shelters, temporary resettlement camps, displaced persons refuges or whatever the name the relief world wishes to give them. They are homes. Painted, decorated, personalized homes. As you drive by you see the children running up and down the narrow passages between tents, a group of women stirring up delicious smelling concoctions over an outdoor stove, a young girl hanging up the family laundry on washing line strung between the roofs of the ‘shelters’. So what does ‘temporary’ mean? 6 months, a year, two years or 10? I find it hard to believe that these ‘cities’ are going anywhere any time soon. There are over 200 of them in the Port Au Prince alone. All public spaces have been taken over. A football pitch, a plaza, the Prime Minister’s office gardens… doesn’t really matter what it’s ‘supposed to be’. It’s valuable space. Solid ground. Space for a roof. Space for a home.

I cannot but feel that this city defines the word ‘juxtaposition’. A wave of different emotions would envelop me each time we ventured out on the streets. Despair? Hope for the future? Empathy? Frustration? Joy? Mourning? I can’t quite pin point it. Signs of utter desperation, tragedy and loss sit side by side admirable demonstration of hope, solidarity, drive and vision. A majestic building only half standing becomes the home to a barber shop. A young man sits weaving wicker chairs beneath the crumbled remnants of the spiral staircase of an old bank. ‘Resourcefulness’ assumes a new meaning.

And amongst all this, and perhaps the reason for my current state of confusion, the one sector that is thriving, moving more money than you can imagine and continuing to grow above anything else is the one industry that is supposed to be producing these very same outcomes amongst the target population: the development industry.

And I find myself caught in this all enveloping whirlwind that, to me, seems to spiralling out of control. I am now am now another cog in the development machine. How I feel about this, I have not yet decided.

So you enter into the world of development/ humanitarian work because you feel that’s where your heart is. You want to ‘make a difference’/ ‘help’ or even just ‘do good’. There is no doubt in my mind that this supposed ‘altruism’ is ultimately self serving perhaps you could even call it selfish. I entered the development world because I feel it is where MY heart lies, I enjoy the life that comes with it and it makes ME feel good. So there we go. It’s an industry, for it truly is an industry, that thrives on misery, disasters and despair. An industry that’s supposed goal (although this will never happen) is to work itself out of business. A political machine that whose engine keeps growing in size, that swallows immense amounts of money just to keep the cogs turning.

I had read about the politics of the development industry extensively during my masters and mulled over this very concept time and time again, bouncing thoughts and reactions off of my wonderful study group mates on many an evening. But it all felt very distant and external until this week when I landed myself into the thick of it in Port Au Prince.

So 16 months on, and aid agencies are still talking about building temporary shelters. This baffles me. Why pour more money into building structures that you will have to replace in a year or so, that cannot withstand the hurricanes that are on route, that are not a sustainable solution, when you can use this money to begin to build solid houses?

Let’s talk about putting that money into a different pot, of building permanent houses. No. These ‘pots’ are precisely the problem. Sitting in a meeting in the US Embassy with a team from USAID, I pose the question. And receive a very matter of fact almost ‘it’s elementary’ type answer. ‘There is limited funding in the infrastructure, permanent houses or ‘development’ pots. There IS money in the emergency relief pot. Shelters count as ‘emergency relief’, houses don’t. we can upgrade from tents to T shelters, but we can’t use that money to build permanent structures’. So there we go. Politics. Regardless of what makes most sense… that’s what the money was pledged for, so that’s what it is to be used for. Terminology is important. The words ‘development’ or ‘strengthening livelihoods’, ‘building capacities’ are out of bounds. They won’t get you money. Proposals need to be filled with the key words: ‘relief’, ‘recovery’, ‘sustaining livelihoods’. It’s all about language. The same project with a different name. the difference between being put on the shelf of being put into action.

So then we come to the next set of mind baffling, enraging politics. USAID passes on X amount of funding to establish and run camp. IOM selects a site and gets it up and running. The rains arrive and the area floods. People loose everything for the second time. So USAID comes in and gives them a huge slap on the wrist saying ‘you didn’t comply with our environmental assessment regulations’. You must do that now. Sun Mountain International (the company I work for) gets hired to do an extensive environmental assessment of the region and produces a 400 page report that’s basic message is: you chose the worst possible place to put the camp, it’s in a floodplain at the foot of the largest watershed in the region (The fact that the road that runs through the region is elevated about 1 m above the surrounding plane so as to avoid being washed away, should have been enough of a give away at the start.. but I guess not everyone’s logic functions in the same way). Recommendation: move the camp to one of the other 5 potential spots identified. The donors are then happy since they can tick of the box saying IOM complied with that particular condition (carrying out the study). The report gets put on a shelf to collect dust and decorate the office. A year later we return to the same office and the majority of staff (the staff turn around is unreal!) was unaware of the reports existence. When asked what has been done, the reply is … the tents have been upgraded to T shelters since they wish stand higher winds and have proper floors to avoid sinking into the mud when it rains. So what the heck was the point of flushing tens of thousands of dollars down the drain and getting SMTN to carry out the study? A bit of an expensive way to adorn your office shelves.

An then we head to a CRUSH site. This is a fantastic project run by CHF, financed my USAID, basically demolishes condemned houses, removes all material of value for owners to be able to sell on (doors, metal girders, etc..), then crushes the rubble them into little pieces, clearing the space for property owners to start anew. Chunks of buildings are loaded into the CRUSHING machines and little, gravel sized pieces emerge. The gravel is then donated to other organizations that recycle it and turn it into cement to be used the create floors for new houses. The unusable output is used as land fill to level out areas for future construction. An all around great project.

So, since the project is receiving US funding it must comply by US environmental, health and safety regulations. So Sun Mountain International is hired to help the program ensure it is complying with US Environmental Compliance regulation 216 (bare in mind that funding for the program is due to finish in about 3 months… is it really necessary to spend oodles of money .. to produce reports that will probably be ready days before the program ends??) . So the sites are visited and a EMPR (Environmental Mitigation Plan and Report) is drawn up so that the project manager can use it as a check list to ensure compliance. So we spend a day coming up with brilliant ideas such as ….. workers should not defecate on the work site: install porter potties; workers should not be given water in individual sized bottles: keep large water tanks; workers safety should be safeguarded: ensure use of adequate boots, helmets, gloves etc. And the list goes on. We then spend hours of the project managers time discussing the feasibility of such measures (and determine that half of them are no feasible). The project manager is then supposed to carry out spot checks so this EMPR can be filled out, filed, put on a shelf, and exist as proof of compliance with reg 216.

I ask the project manager when the program will be ending. He says funding will end in august, but he will halt operations in June. Why? Because he has to write final reports to hand over to the donors so he wont have time to run the operation. So we are halting operations, an opportunity cost of clearing god knows how many more thousands of cubic meters of rubble, so as to be able to produce reports that no one is going to read. Seriously??? So I can’t but ask…. Of the total budget allocated to this project, how much of it actually ends up going into ‘doing’? how much of it is tied up in ‘report writing’, ‘compliance monitoring’ and other such fruitless activities.

I am torn. Yes, it is important to take the environment into consideration, to ensure program participants wellbeing, to ensure you are not causing more harm. But at the same time, there is a scale of priorities here that I feel is getting mixed up. If I had just lost everything, my home, my possessions, and perhaps even my family, cutting my finger or hurting my toe would be the least of my concerns. Give me a pair of gloves and a helmet, and yes I would probably sell it and come to work the next day to work without them. I would prefer to risk breaking my toe and have an extra few dollars in my pocket. So what do you do? Refuse to allow the worker back onto the site? Provide a never ending supply of gloves (that will absorbe a huge part of your budget), halt operations since they are not ‘in compliance’??? I don’t know. In one house all these ‘criteria’ have to be met because of where the money is coming from. Next door, an individual is carrying out the same task… smashing up his fallen house, clearing the rubble, making space for a new home. No gloves, no helmet, no mask. But since he is not USAID funded he can keep working.

And then I walk into the embassy and my blood boils. We sit in a meeting with all the head honchos of OFDA and USAID discussing where Sun Mountain could be useful. What studies could be done. What regulations we could help agencies comply with. And I feel like a sales person. With a stack of 20 or so reports in my bag, we sit trying to ‘sell the concept’ to the money givers. To show off our product, to identify a market for it. And while we are out here policing all these ‘environmental regulations’ on projects. Conditions that MUST be complied with. And the embassy cafeteria is unable to use metal cuttlary, porcelain plates, glass glasses. Styrofoam containers, plastic knives and forks, paper cups. Bags and bags of rubbish produces in a country that does not have the capacity to dispose of waste. If we are going to preach environmentalism… how about we begin with the most basic of measures… control the environment you can control.

And then,

We head into the UN log base. A city, and when I say city, I really mean it, of UN offices. After the quake hundreds of container offices were plopped down in some baron land by the airport, offices from which UN operations are run. So there is a UNESCO street, a UNICEF street, WFP, UNOPS, OCHA, UNFEMME, UNEP… and the list goes on and on. UN police mann the traffic, blue helmets drive in and out. Seas and seas of white land cruisers. Hundreds of people ‘ever so busy’ running around. I am gob smacked by the size of the place. Amazed at how that level of organization/ infrastructure/ resources can be mobilized at the drop of a hat. And then I ask a colleague at IOM. ‘how much do you think this place costs’…’humm… between the infrastructure required and the running of the place, there are probably between 100 and 150 MILLION US DOLLARS tied up in here. And then my jaw drops. WHAT?

So I don’t know what to think, what to believe and what to feel about my role in all this. How much of development money actually goes into development? How much is just circulating round and ending back up in the pocket of the ‘wrong people’. How much is actually just feeding itself? The person sitting in the comforts of HQ offices in London, NY, Washington.. creates policies, regulations, conditionality. Consulting firms emerge left right and centre to help organizations ensure compliance. People are hired to make head or tail of these policies. More people are hired in the donor institutions to monitor that the reports are produced and the motions are performed. So how much of it actually adds value? Haw much of it is just a show? A performance of motions? How much of the 450 million dollars spent by USAID in the Haiti Relief operation have remained within the confines of the embassy walls?

It’s all rather overwhelming and confusing. And I’m struggling to decide how I feel about it.

Fiona.