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 »