Last week, I had the chance to hear Amy Wilentz speak about her new book, Farewell Fred Voodoo, at Oxfam’s Boston headquarters. “Fred Voodoo” is a term that international journalists in Haiti used for the typical Haitian. When reporting a story, they would look for the Fred Voodoo quote – the average Haitian perspective on the topic at hand. It’s something like what “Joe the Plumber” became in the 2008 election.

Living in Haiti as a journalist, Ms. Wilentz experienced the small, storied Caribbean nation as an outsider. While I haven’t spent the same length of time in Haiti, my work with Oxfam brings me there frequently, and I can definitely relate. Ms. Wilentz talked about traveling around Haiti in what felt like a bubble. Trying to listen, be open, learn – to not be that all-too-typical outsider arriving with all the solutions for a “better” Haiti. In Kreyol, white people are blans, basically their version of Fred Voodoo. I’m a blan, I’m Jane American Pie.

With Farewell, Fred Voodoo, Ms. Wilentz signals the end of that era of stereotyping Haitians in journalism – and even beyond journalism to development and the overall international presence in Haiti. If the 2010 earthquake did anything positive, it showed the world who Haitians really are. The devastation, the bravery, the strength, the strife, the hunger, the vitality. Fred Voodoos they are not.

I attended Ms. Wilentz’s talk – as I think many of my colleagues did – to gain some perspective about Haiti. To get some answers to some of the most puzzling questions that plague us about how we can be of best use in Haiti, how we can help and not contribute to the complex problems there. But Ms. Wilentz didn’t come to the table with answers, or advice, or declarations. She came with questions. And her book does the same. It’s not a journalist’s job to write solutions and occasionally insert a Fred Voodoo quote. Just like it’s not my job, as an Oxfam media officer, to answer questions on the Haitian people’s behalf to my US audience.

Jane American Pie will never fully understand what will bring sustainable change to Haiti. But if I drop that label for myself, and we all say farewell to Fred Voodoo, asking the right questions of ourselves and each other will get us there.

OxfamBuzzList is a blog series about the movies, books, blogs, music, and more that have Oxfam staff and supporters talking. If you’d like to contribute a guest post or suggest a topic, please leave a comment below

Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens recently visited Haiti to document our work on revitalizing rice farming and reducing the risk of disasters—including outbreaks of cholera.

If I had to choose one place to sit and learn about a rural town in Haiti, I’ve decided, it would have to be the community well. In places where there is no running water, the local well has a steady stream of visitors, and everyone has a story.

Even the well has a story.

"We love the Oxfam staff here," said Jean Jose. "They've given good advice and really helped us get rid of cholera." Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam

On a November afternoon in the town of Atchevrot, Marchand Dessalines, my Oxfam colleagues and I crossed a rickety bridge over an irrigation channel to the place where villagers were collecting water.

Jean Jose—the man who dug the well with his machete back in 1984—joined us there, and Valeus Wislor, the engineer that Oxfam hired to fix it up last year was with us, too. The concrete cover, sand filter, hand pump, and drainage channel were his work.  And gathered around the well to meet us that day were members of a team—trained by Oxfam partners from El Salvador—that is helping communities of the lower Artibonite Valley protect their water supplies from cholera bacteria and prepare for emergencies of all kinds. Read more about this program.

The team leader’s name is Philippe Merisson, and he is a middle school teacher. We learned that day that he is also a master in the Haitian martial art of stick fighting, and he told us a little about it. A stick fighter, he explained, learns to anticipate and block blows from all directions—even in the dark. Even when the stick is swapped out for a machete.

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Classmates Merline Jacques, right, and Soeurette Charles. “We’re really proud to be agricultural mechanics,” said Charles. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam America

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

“Some of my women friends don’t like the idea of being in grease all day,” said Merline Jacques, a young woman I met in the town of Liancourt in the Artibonite Valley. But she doesn’t seem to mind.

Jacques is a pioneer—a woman setting out to become a professional mechanic in a country where such a thing is unheard of. She’s one of five female students in a class of forty who are taking a two-year course to learn not only mechanics but also a specialty within it: how to fix agricultural equipment.

“People have said that the Artibonite region alone could feed this whole country,” explained Chandelère Mayette, who helps run the course for an Oxfam partner. “But there’s a lack of technicians in agriculture.”

And that is costing farmers dearly. These days, getting a piece of equipment like a cultivator, rice mill, or irrigation pump fixed can take weeks, because the mechanics often have to be recruited from the Dominican Republic. A delay like that can ruin a season’s harvest, so training up young mechanics is an important part of strengthening the rice economy.

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MAFLPV founder Marie Melisma Robert (right) with members of her organization, standing in a field of rice. Oxfam has helped MAFLPV members make the transition to a high-yield growing technique. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

My first meeting with a women’s group in Haiti was on a pitch-black night. At first there were just a few of us sitting on a porch, our faces lit by the eerie glow of a solar lamp, but every few minutes a new arrival emerged from the darkness, and soon the crowd was spilling out into the yard.

The Mouvement d’Aide des Femmes Liancourt-Payen de la commune de Verrettes (MAFLPV) is a key partner for Oxfam in the rice-growing Artibonite Valley. It’s a women’s organization that provides its members with access to low-interest loans so they can successfully market rice and whatever other goods they want to sell.

“We used to go to loan sharks when we needed money,” said Marie Melisma Robert, the founder and president of MAFLPV. She explained that the local moneylenders charge monthly interest of 25%. “When we couldn’t pay back the loans, we were arrested.” Now the women have access to credit at three percent – which can spell the difference between a successful business and spiraling debt.

Read the rest of this entry »

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs, Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our program to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable—counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

Oxfam and our partners have helped restore 4,700 acres of land to cultivation by clearing and repairing irrigation channels. Photo: Anna Fawcus/Oxfam

The muddy water coursing along the roadsides and through the rice fields of the Artibonite Valley plays a prominent role in the lives of rice farmers.  Rivers and channels nourish the rice, the vegetables, the goats and cows, and the riot of greenery in the countryside.  But when storms and hurricanes strike, it’s those same waterways that overflow and carry away livestock, drown the crops, contaminate wells, and deliver deadly cholera bacteria to rural communities.

If the water moves freely through the channels—unimpeded by sediment, weeds, and debris—the risks subside, and the benefits can transform communities, which is why we’ve focused resources on helping farmers clear more than 60 miles of irrigation canals.

Dubuisson is one of the towns where we’ve been working, and I visited there with an Oxfam team last month. Clearing channels isn’t all we’re up to in this area.  We and our partner have  introduced methods of improving rice yields, provided access to low-interest loans, and helped boost the vegetable harvest in the off season for rice. But here what people talked about most was what it’s meant to them to restore irrigation to fields that had gone dry.

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When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January, 2010, it shone a spotlight on the need to ease the dangerous overcrowding in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. So, after responding to the disaster with emergency programs,  Oxfam shifted some of our focus to the countryside. Together with our partners, we ramped up our efforts to reinvigorate the rice economy of the Artibonite Valley, with the goals of reducing rural poverty, contributing to food security in Haiti, and—by making rice farming more viable —counteracting the continuous pull to migrate from the country to the city. As Oxfam’s Elizabeth Stevens reports in a series of blog posts, Haiti’s rice farmers are embracing the program and making it their own.

"If your crops fail, you become poor," said Willi Elimelec (above). "You can't send your children to school." Photo: Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam

Here in the lush Artibonite Valley—a region that produces an abundance of rice—the farmers are poor. Undercut in the market by cheap imported rice and lacking the basic governmental supports that farmers in wealthy countries take for granted, Haiti’s small-scale rice growers can barely eke out a living.

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As a Radiohead fan, I’m always proud to count the band among the list of great artists supporting Oxfam America. Ever since Haiti was devastated by a major earthquake in January 2010, Radiohead and their fans have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Oxfam’s Haiti earthquake relief and recovery efforts, via a benefit concert, fan-sourced concert videos, and more.

Just last week, a group of fans released a new concert film of Radiohead’s show at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom on September 29, 2011—one of only two US shows the band played that year. (I was lucky enough to be there that night, along with a group of Oxfam concert volunteers who reached out to Radiohead fans before the performance.) The crowd-sourced video was created with the blessing of the band, who even contributed audio from the soundboard of the show.

The film, below, is free, but they are asking those who watch and download it to give to two great causes: Hurricane Sandy relief in the US and Oxfam America’s Haiti Earthquake Fund. As Oxfam’s programs in Haiti move more toward long-term rebuilding and recovery efforts, it’s good to know that Radiohead and their fans are still supporting the cause.

Rice fields owned and farmed by the women of MAFLPV, a women’s farming collaborative in Liancourt. Photo: Maura Hart/Oxfam America

My trip to Haiti last month was my fifth since the 2010 earthquake. As a press officer, I work with journalists to report on the progress and challenges rebuilding Haiti in the last three years. This role mostly keeps me in Port-au-Prince, the hardest-hit area, where you typically see the television cameras reporting.

This time, I traveled further, to visit Oxfam’s projects in the rural farm areas of Haiti. Sixty percent of Haitians rely on farming to earn a living, and investing in agriculture is crucial for the country’s future. I felt as though I finally got the opportunity to see the part of Haiti’s character that I was missing.

It was also my first time traveling with a fancy smartphone—and more importantly, Instagram. Oh, Instagram. My photographic vocabulary is limited to point, click, and usually, delete. But Instagram makes even me look like a purposeful, artistic photographer. With a simple click, filter, and post, I gave Oxfam America’s followers a glimpse of the Haiti that they don’t normally see on CNN.

Josephat Evania, vice secretary of MAFLPV in Liancourt, in her thriving rice field. Photo: Maura Hart/Oxfam America

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Hurricane Sandy brought flooding to Haiti. Photo: Reuters/Swoan Parker, courtesy the Thomson Reuters Foundation – AlertNet

Sophia Lafontant is Oxfam America’s lead organizer for Haiti.

It is amazing how quickly life can change. In a matter of hours, people in New York’s Breezy Point, The Rockaways and Staten Island, in New Jersey’s Atlantic City, in Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti were all faced with the reality of lost property, death, and power outages. It makes me realize how interconnected we all are and dependent on our families, friends, elected officials, and the kindness of strangers to help us when we cannot help ourselves.

I live in Washington, D.C., and while Sandy came through here too, it was not with the same force.  While holed up in my apartment for the better part of two days, my mind and thoughts often raced to Haiti, where 54 people reportedly died in the storm, and my extended family and friends still there. Both my parents were born and raised on the island and came to the US as young adults to escape the repressive government of Jean Claude Duvalier. Like many children of immigrant parents, I was raised with one foot in the US and one foot in Haiti. Despite the extreme differences, I love both countries dearly. As an American, I cherish the opportunities and freedoms I have had all my life living here. But Haiti, the land of my parents’ birth, pulls at my heart strings constantly. And the storm, in an odd way, brought into focus for me the sudden similarities in these neighboring nations: the anxiety, fear, loss, suffering, and high-level discussions about if and how to rebuild. Read the rest of this entry »

A girl uses one of the chlroine dispensers Oxfam installed in Haiti. Photo by Elizabeth Stevens/Oxfam

When I look at pictures of Haiti’s countryside, I’m always struck by how beautiful much of the landscape is, particularly in the rice-growing region along the Artibonite River. But then I think about the grim underside of that beauty—the cholera that can so easily course through rivers like the Artibonite, spreading sickness and death.

The outbreak that started 10 months after a devastating earthquake in 2010 has now claimed more than 7,000 lives and sickened more than half a million people—as if Haiti needed any more trouble heaped on its citizens. The cholera epidemic is reportedly the largest in modern history, and it’s been in the news a lot lately. The New York Times ran a lengthy story early this month and yesterday, NPR filed its own report on the urgent health problem.

The heart of the trouble is the almost complete lack of functioning water and sanitation systems across the country. Many people are pretty much on their own when it comes to providing water for their families: They lug it home from wherever they can find it, and in the rural areas that’s often streams and rivers. Whether it’s fit for drinking—and cholera-free—can be hard for families to determine. Read the rest of this entry »