Haiti is famous around the world primarily for its problems, one being advanced ecological destruction. However, as with its other problems, citizens – with international friends and the occasional help of the government – are working to turn this around and create a healthy environment.

Aldrin Calixte tells of the social, economic, and political causes of the environmental crisis and what is being done to create a different future. One of Haiti’s principal environmental advocates, Aldrin is an agronomist who specializes in natural resource management. He is also Executive Secretary of Haiti Survie [Haiti Survive], an organization which ties broad awareness-raising with citizen action. Haiti Survie believes that the struggle to defend the environment should be an active part of the life of every human being. For more information, see www.haitisurvie.org.

If we take a look at all the components that make up the environment in Haiti, it’s a pretty somber picture. If you look at the loss the trees, soil erosion with millions of tons of topsoil flowing towards the sea every year, waste, air quality, lack of water, threats to an extremely rich biodiversity of fauna… The situation is, well, catastrophic.

• Schoolchildren at the environmental frontline, planting trees. Photo courtesy of Haiti Survie. •

I want to talk about alternatives to change this. But first, let’s take a look at the political, social and economic causes, and foreign influences as well, because we can’t forget that the environment is a single, coherent unit. Something that takes place in one place has repercussions in other places. Look for example at migratory birds from areas with cold seasons. Some of these birds migrate to Haiti, so if we’re looking at protecting Haiti’s biodiversity, it will affect all the areas that these birds are coming from as well. This is just to give you an idea of the complexity and interrelation between all components of the environment, including governmental policies, in different countries.

If we look at the social and economic causes, poverty is one of the biggest forces. Most people live on $1 or less a day. People are in dire straits and they’re abandoned, so they have to use the environment any way they can. You have so many peasants struggling to use such little land, and often land that’s not really viable like on steep mountainsides. In order to ensure their subsistence, people have been forced to exploit natural resources without rest, so the land keeps degrading. A simple example is people trying to farm to survive but it’s not profitable enough, so in order to send their children to school, a lot of them are forced to make charcoal and of course that in turn means exploiting trees.

Let’s look at the political side of things. The decision-makers don’t have a political will to really give priority to the environment. There are already many laws on the books concerning environmental protection, but unfortunately, they’re not implemented.

Over time, the government granted big concessions to foreign firms that came and exploited trees from Haiti; a lot of trees were cut for export. Other foreign companies exploited our resources, leading to degradation of things like soil, and there never was and still isn’t a political will that will encourage all this to regenerate.

Yes, the environment is natural, but the catastrophic situation is all tied to the actions of man: socially, economically, politically. That’s why I believe that even though the situation is very rough, we can find solutions for it. We can develop solutions at the broad, macro-level, in things we can do together, and also at a more local, micro-level, with actions and interventions that work at a smaller scale.

At a macro-level, the government has a large role it has to play to integrate the issue of the environment within overarching development policy. If we’re talking about development today, it can’t give priority simply to economic factors in what we call capitalist development. The government has a responsibility to ensure legislation that will protect the environment. As I said, there are already many, many laws on the books that are meant to protect the environment, but they need to be adapted to the current circumstances, updated within the global development framework.

On this same level, too, we need to look at reinforcing capacity, that is, training citizens. We have to lead big campaigns of awareness-raising, because without awareness there won’t be action. Strength is derived from capacity and training. The mentality of people must be changed, and then their behavior toward the environment will change. Otherwise, everything will always remain at the level of talk, talk, talk. We have to put a lot of effort into this.

At the same time, we have to have proposals for concrete actions. As we face this climate crisis and energy crisis, for example, we need to look for alternative energy solutions which are economically, socially, and environmentally viable. We need to begin thinking about using energy sources that we have at our disposal, like wind or solar energy. We have a lot of sun here. This doesn’t mean that we’ll completely eliminate the types of energy we’re using right now, but that we take measures to diversify.

At the micro-level, I’ll give you some examples of what Haiti Survie is doing. We have a nation that’s ill, suffering from the loss of topsoil and deforestation, so we’re leading campaigns. But before we do reforestation, we have to reinforce community capacity and training. Not just with adults, but children as well, because they’ll be the decision-makers of tomorrow. We educate the children in schools about preserving biodiversity - the multitude of species which are in danger of extinction - and protecting the environment where they live.

And this affects more than just the children themselves, because they have the ability to reach adults. They can teach a lot of things. For example, adults might be handling garbage poorly, and the child could some and say, “No, Mama, Papa, that’s not how you deal with trash; you can’t just throw it anywhere. We can make revenue off it, we can transform it.”

After the education, awareness, and training programs, we move on to concrete action. In the case of deforestation, Haiti Survie begins with replanting efforts involving the community. This way we’re also developing an alternative source of income for the community so people don’t have to create and sell charcoal. Now, instead, we generate income for the people using the trees themselves. We believe that people won’t cut down trees if they’re economically productive. So we have some people here who have fruit trees. Those trees will give you fruit every year, which you can bring to the market as is, or transform it [into other products like jam] and convert into income, or eat it and improve your nutrition.

So we’ve solved the problem on three fronts: deforestation, the ensuing loss of soil, and the loss of biodiversity, because there have been a lot of species of trees which have been disappearing but that we’re reintroducing back. Reforestation programs involve preservation and conservation, regeneration of the ecosystem, and an economic element because people get a source of income.

In addition, we ensure that the replanting activity involves everyone. For example, we have these seedlings but we don’t just plant them, we involve the children to integrate their knowledge with their actions. We’re instilling a sense of connection between the people and the trees that make up their natural environment.

Another project Haiti Survie is working on is water management in dry zones. There were lots of places where the people didn’t have drinkable water. What was worse is that this was most affecting two groups that were already so vulnerable: women and children, who often had to walk two to three kilometers for one gallon of water. It was tiring, plus the children didn’t have time to go to school and the women didn’t have time to devote to other activities at home or in the community. So we said, “When the rainy season comes, let’s find a way to collect the rainwater.” We set up collection and storage systems. We gave people a way to have water for their everyday uses, bathing and cooking, but we also tied it to agriculture because the people used this water for growing their gardens.

This relates to adaptation to climate change, too, because the dry season has become much longer. If it didn’t rain, people simply weren’t able to grow gardens. Now we’re trying to help people adapt, to encourage them to still keep gardens but to water them with rainwater they store in the reservoirs that we built for them. I wouldn’t say that the problem has been solved 100%, but we have definitely improved the situation.

Haiti Survie also has some micro-interventions relating to the catastrophe that took place on January 12. We want to see sustainable development projects taking place, but if we don’t link sustainable development with urgent assistance, it’s a lost cause. That’s because Haiti is always hit by emergencies; every year we’re rocked with natural disasters of some sort: cyclones, floods, droughts, and then this earthquake that caused so much loss of life and so much destruction. So Haiti Survie put in place post-earthquake measures, with the help of Christian Aid and other partners like Friends of the Earth. On the one hand, we immediately helped 344 families in Port-au-Prince and 300 rural families with food, medical aid, preventative health care, and shelter. You know they lost so much in 35 seconds [of the earthquake].

But we also provided financial assistance so the rural people could reconstitute their economies. We helped them reinforce their agricultural well-being so they didn’t have to lose this year’s planting season in March. We also gave them help to send their kids to school, because we believe that education is a cornerstone of sound development. Our goal is to help these people be stronger so they can take part in development.

We know that each person has the right to live in a healthy environment. It’s also the responsibility of everyone to protect the environment where they live. For each of you who has the chance to read this article, what will you do about it?

Thanks to David Schmidt for assistance in translating this interview.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

by Molly Theobald

In 2004 Peter Njodzeka founded the Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC) with a rather simple goal. “I wanted to see the people in my area have clean water,” he said. “And we kept expanding. That’s how it started.”

• A family drinks water purified by a bio sand filter at a training workshop in Kumbo, Cameroon. (Photo credit: LWDGC) •

Six years later, LWDGC, with help from Engineers Without Borders USA Hope College Chapter taught the technicians of LWDGC how to construct and install bio sand filters in the village of Nkuv. In 2008, Thirst Relief International USA partnered with LWDGC and has been bringing access to clean water to over 6 villages in addition to Nkuv, as well as providing wells and latrines for 23 schools, and providing education about hygiene and sanitation practices. And they are providing access to the clean water with a very unlikely technique – they are using dirt and bacteria to make the dirty water clean.

• Technicians cast a bio sand filter in Nkuv, Cameroon. (Photo credit: LWDGC) •

The drinking water slowly filters through the layers of naturally formed bacteria and sand at a rate of about 1 liter per minute and comes out clean and ready for consumption from a pipe that’s connected through the concrete from the bottom to the side top outlet of the filter. If properly maintained a biosand filter can be used for up to 12 months without the need for much maintenance.

When LWDGC partners with a community to provide the filters, the first thing the organization does is hold a series workshops, teaching basic hygiene and sanitation such as hand washing and other measures to prevent the spread of disease. “The workshops are important,” says Peter, “because not everyone realizes that there is a problem.” And then there is the task of convincing the community that dirt and bacteria are enough to actually clean their water. “No one believes us when we say that everything that will filter the water is already in the water,” continues Peter.

But once that lesson is learned, lives are changed forever. The bio sand filters “really help the community” said Peter. “When we finish working with a community they always tell us that they don’t have the sickness like before. It’s helping and saving the lives of people.”

To read more about innovations that help to bring clean water to communities, improving health and livelihoods, see: Funding a Blue Revolution, Getting Water to Crops, Water Harvesting, Slow and Steady Irrigation Wins the Race, and Weathering the Famine.

Rape as a weapon of war continues to take a heavy toll on women’s lives in today’s conflicts around the world. A high proportion of the women who are victims of rape end up infected with sexually transmitted diseases and infections, including HIV. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is experiencing an almost perpetual state of internal strife and lacks medicines and basic health-care services, particularly in rural areas. As a result, becoming HIV-infected is virtually a death sentence for many women.

Rape happens on a wide scale in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Sudan. In the DRC, where more than 3 million people have been displaced by war, rape victims are counted in the tens of thousands. According to some estimates, up to 60 percent of combatants in the DRC are HIV-infected, and can transmit the infection to the women they rape. As Anne-Christine d’Adesky, executive director of Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment stated, “Rape is an engine of HIV infection.”

In Uganda, soldiers from the Lord’s Resistance Army have raped and mutilated women during their struggle to replace the government in the country. Despite the cessation of hostilities the situation in the country remains grim. “The horrific violence committed during the many years of conflict in northern Uganda continues to aggravate discrimination against women and girls in the area today,” stated Godfrey Odongo, Amnesty International’s researcher in Kampala.

While rape in Rwanda has stopped, in Sudan and the DRC human-rights activists say girls as young as 3 years old have been raped with knives, sticks and guns. In the DRC, gang rape has become so common that thousands of women suffer from vaginal fistulas, which leave them unable to control bodily functions and lead to lifelong debilitating health problems.

Rape as a way of humiliating women, their families and their communities is frequently conducted in public, in front of husbands and children. It is, in essence, a brutal way to show or maintain dominance over the women and their families.

There are many other consequences of rape aside from the obvious physical and psychological violence of the act and the high risk of HIV. Many women get pregnant after being raped. In many cases raped women are later killed by their attackers. Among those that survive a high proportion are forced to become sex slaves.

Many men view the rape of their wives as a form of humiliation not only against them but also against their ethnic, tribal or religious group. Many husbands and communities reject rape victims and even their children. The women, having endured the brutality of the rape itself and its physical and psychological consequences, afterwards find themselves denied their most basic human rights.

Even when pregnancy does not occur, men in patriarchal societies still may reject their wives, mothers or daughters after they have been raped.

Is it possible to do something about a situation that causes so much harm to women? Many non-governmental organizations are working with victims of rape, trying to re-integrate them into society, despite the strong social stigma against them. But their efforts should be supported by other actions.

It is imperative to do educational work with men in the military to make them aware of the consequences on women of their atrocities and the importance of stopping this kind of violence. “I actually believe out of many interviews with hundreds of men that this is possible,” declared recently in a TV interview Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International.

At the same time it is crucial to find and punish the perpetrators. “It is of the utmost importance that the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to pursue its efforts to fight impunity,” said a recent U.N. Security Council statement following the mass rape of more than 200 women and children in Congo by Rwandan and Congolese rebels.

Rape of women during conflicts, particularly now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and its impact on the spreading of HIV/AIDS has been one of most neglected areas of intervention in recent times. It is time to bring this knowledge to the fore and improve a situation that has such devastating consequences on women’s lives and well being.

Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant, is an award-winning writer on human rights issues. He is the author of “AIDS: A Modern Epidemic,” a publication of the Pan American Health Organization.

If you are in the Bay Area this weekend, you should check out a great new documentary that is opening at the Balboa Theater. Whiz Kids follows three teenagers as they compete in the Intel Science Talent Search. Director Tom Shepard will be at the 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. screenings tomorrow night for a post-screening Q&A.

“There needs to be a new vision for Haiti, and that vision needs to come from the people,” says Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé, director of the Karl Leveque Cultural Institute (commonly known by its Creole acronym ICKL), a grassroots center which supports peasant and other popular organizations to help them develop their analysis and capacity as a movement.

• A collapsed hospital under the traditional symbol of conquest: U.S., Canadian, U.N., Haitian, and French flags.  Photo: Beverly Bell. •

Post-earthquake Haiti is often portrayed in the international media, by some international humanitarian organizations, and by the U.S. government as a nation of victims whose future depends on the largess of the international community.

A more accurate portrayal is that a large and diverse social movement is highly mobilized to participate in rebuilding a country that won’t resemble Haiti as it was. The movement is continuing in the tradition of awareness-raising, organizing, and mobilizing that it commenced during slavery times, and which it has never ceased, even during the most brutal dictatorships. The core agenda has remained constant. With new post-earthquake particulars, it includes:

1.) Opening the space for participatory democracy. Citizens – all citizens - have to be allowed voice, decision-making, and power to develop future policies and programs which will, after all, impact them more than anyone. Haiti being a democracy in name, the government must serve the people and be accountable to them. Yvette Michaud, an organizer with the National Committee of Peasant Women, said, “If Haitians want to have a better future, we are the ones who must decide what that future is and construct it.”

2.) An essential corollary to the first point, restoring power to the Haitian government. Today Haiti is a literal protectorate, its parliament having voted in mid-April to turn its power over to the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti, a wholly illegitimate body. The commission’s 18-month mandate is to determine Haiti’s reconstruction model, e.g. to create the country’s future. The membership of the ever-expanding group is 50% foreigners, who literally buy their seat at the table: either their government or institution donated $100 million or more since the earthquake, or it cancelled $200 million or more in debt. The only power left the Haitian government is veto by the executive, which power everyone knows that President Preval won’t use. Should the next president choose to use this power, there are other vehicles of control, such as the World Bank being the fiscal sponsor of the process, which means it has oversight over all the international aid of governments, financial institutions, and major agencies.

The members are elected by no one and are accountable to no one. They don’t have to publish any reports or make any statements. There’s no number a Haitian citizen can call to find out what they’re doing, no office to whom they can lobby. U.S. Special Envoy Bill Clinton co-chairs the commission along with Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. This naked colonialism must be replaced by the power of the elected government.

3.) Ensuring women’s and children’s rights, security, and well-being. This must be front and center in the fragile and dangerous post-catastrophe environment.

4.) Providing permanent housing for the homeless and displaced, who the U.N. estimates at almost one in five.

5.) Putting central focus on providing for social needs. Besides housing, people need food, potable water, health care, education, and work with a living wage.

6.) Rebuilding under a new paradigm of economic justice, one which breaks free of the old path in which more than 50% of the people live on less than $1 a day.

7.) Privileging peasant agriculture. Rural farmers comprise 65% to 80% of the population who can barely survive, and who produce only 45% of the food needs of the population. It’s critical to invest substantial resources in restoring the agricultural sector. Just trade policies which protect domestic production are an essential component.

Below, Fils-Aimé tells how Haiti got in the shape it’s in and what is necessary for an alternative reconstruction.

“Haiti’s problems didn’t begin with this earthquake. Haiti began [as in independent nation] in 1804 with a system of exclusion in which a minority was in league with the French colonists. The people of this minority were already big property owners and slave owners when Haiti was a colony - people like Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe, who played a key role in the Independence and in driving Haiti after the Independence. That is to say, class divisions were already existent, so when they took power they developed the system to benefit the minority.

“So from 1804 until today, we’ve had a class system in which a small minority controls all the wealth of the country, while the majority suffers every kind of misery imaginable. And, unlike in many countries in which the wealthy ruling minority develops a national policy for the country’s advancement, in Haiti in general, every government that’s come to power has taken sides with the dominant class and doesn’t make the slightest effort to develop the country. That’s allowed misery to compound upon misery. That’s led to a small group of wealthy today investing its money in foreign countries, in the Dominican Republic, in Jamaica, in the United States. They leave the country in this condition.

“The earthquake of January 12 gave us a lesson. It let us know the limits of this rotten system, a system that can’t be fixed anymore, and it made us see once again the weakness of this government. The government is protecting its own economic interests and its own power, and submitting to the international community which gives the government that power and its blessing.

“The government hasn’t used this event as an opportunity to move the country forward. On the contrary, it’s let everything fall into the hands of the international community, especially the American government. But the American government isn’t here to defend the interests of the Haitian people; it’s defending its own interests. Capitalists do what they do to make more money. They have political and strategic interests. The American governments and Western powers are profiting from the weakness and absence of the vision of the Haitian state.

“Political change is necessary for Haiti to make any progress. But the traditional political class doesn’t agree with this kind of change. On the contrary, members of that class are all restavèk, indentured child servants, of the international community.

“The reconstruction plan is their [the traditional economic class and Western powers’] plan. It isn’t the people’s plan. For us, it’s a false plan, first because the money that was pledged isn’t arriving; second because all the decisions are being made by foreign countries; and third because the plans are to build houses and buildings and roads, but not to build a new system. What we need is real agrarian reform, reform of the health care and educational systems, and another civic system in which there can be real participation by the grassroots majority.

“Real development has to do with the path the nation wants to take, how a country thinks, the participation of the majority. Development doesn’t mean a lot of huge buildings. We don’t need that or billions and billions of dollars. Today, for example, you see schools that were made of cement that were destroyed, so they’ve recreated the same schools under nice big tents, and they’re working.

“People have to have power in their own hands and they have to be organized. With the country’s preexisting resources and solidarity of people in other countries, we’ll have the power to reconstruct.

“The thing to do is to help the people think, understand, analyze. This seems a little abstract but it’s really not, because when people finally take power, they’ll have the will power and the real capacity to change things. We’re helping groups strengthen themselves so they can know we don’t have to wait to get our reward in Heaven. We’re teaching that it’s human beings that created the system that makes them poor, and it’s human beings who can destroy that system. They’re the ones who carry the burden, and they’re the ones who can bring about the solution.

“A few drops of water makes a brook, a brook makes a stream, and a stream make a river. The work we’re doing now, little by little, will grow to encompass the majority of the people in the country. Working together, that majority will create change so they can control the politics and the economic and political affairs of the country.

“I have so much hope for the Haitian people, who are a rebellious people. They’ve been used by others ever since the first battle, by those who took control after 1804. They’ve continued to fight, and they’ve continued to be used a lot. I have hope that one day people won’t let themselves be used anymore. My hope is that, as long as there are people who are being exploited, there will be struggle, and as long as there is struggle, there will be victory.”

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

by Molly Theobald

Throughout the Sahel, recurrent drought since the late 1960’s is turning once crop covered land into desert. And the sand is spreading. Picked up by wind, dunes created by soil particles from the West African coastline and the Sahel are covering villages, roads, crops, and irrigation systems, making it increasingly difficult to farm and maintain infrastructure.

• Throughout the Sahel, recurrent drought since the late 1960’s is turning once crop covered land into desert. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack) •

A new report from the FAO presents a model of success in halting desertification in the Sahel. Based on the FAO’s seven year project in Mauritania, Fighting Sand Encroachment: Lessons from Mauritania provides lessons for similar efforts taking place throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Given the complexity of the problem, and its significant economic implications, the Mauritanian Government decided to make halting desertification a political priority, incorporating desertification control into every aspect of its development strategy. With the support of development partners, such as the FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), among many others, national-level projects and programs were implemented in order to create widespread and synchronized action to stop the spread of the sand.

Between 2000 and 2007, for example, the Rehabilitation and Extension of Nouakchott Green Belt Project, initiated by Prince Laurent of Belgium, funded by the Walloon Region and in partnership with the FAO and the Mauritanian Government worked to improve sand encroachment control and protect the infrastructure of Mauritania’s capital city, Nouakchott.

A series of fences were designed to use wind to create artificial dunes surrounding the city. These dunes reduced the strength of the wind and slowed the advancement of more sand. Set at a 120 to 140 degree angle, deflection fences were also erected in order to redirect the incoming winds and sands, also reducing sand build up. Both fences are made from branches and twigs that were collected from mature forests. Woven together, these materials provide just enough permeability to slow down wind speed while also remaining upright in the face of especially strong gusts.

Once the dunes have been halted with hand-woven fences, the process of creating long-term barriers begins. Though dunes are perhaps the least hospitable environment upon which to grow trees and other vegetation, walls of mature plant growth also provide one of the most effective barriers for sand. Depending on the climate and soil conditions, dry-tolerant and indigenous tree species are selected and planted to act as barriers.

Initial care of plants is critical to their survival due to the harsh growing conditions, but the maintenance of these natural barriers contains more benefits than just the slowing of the spread of sand. Government hired guards protect the barriers from vandalism and wind damage, and the natural walls are also tended by members of the rural community who will eventually benefit from the new source of food, firewood, seed, and livestock fodder that the mature trees and shrubbery provide.

To read more about the importance of government involvement in agricultural development and about innovations that mitigate land degradation, see: An Agricultural Success Story, “Regreening” the Sahel Through Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, An Evergreen Revolution? Using Trees to Nourish the Planet, It’s About More Than Trees at the World Agroforestry Centre, Trees as Crops in Africa, and Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use.

Jonas Deronzil is a farmer from the village of Mogé in Haiti’s fertile Artibonite Valley, and one of about 2,000 members of a production and marketing cooperative. Here he analyzes the problems Haitian small producers face, notably U.S. food imports, and proposes alternatives.

I am a peasant planter, that’s all I do. From 1974 when I got out of school, I attached myself to my hoe so I could earn my bread. I’ve been farming for 36 years. My parents were planters too, my whole family going all the way back.

• Jonas Deronzil and daughter clean this year's meager bean crop. Photo: Beverly Bell. •

Before the 1980s, farmers could work on the strength of their courage. But since 1986 especially, when Jean-Claude [Duvalier] fled, through the government of [Gen. Henri] Namphy in 1988, rice has fallen flat in the country. The cost of everything is rising. The cost of manual labor is rising. They’ve had to leave a lot of their land fallow. What you harvest, you can’t sell for enough money to cover your costs. Peasants have had go to Port-au-Prince. That’s one of the causes for the expansion of slums throughout Port-au-Prince. Peasants are discouraged, the government doesn’t do anything to encourage their production.

Since foreign rice has invaded Haiti, we plant our rice but we can’t sell it. The foreigners have all the possibilities: they have water, they have machinery, they have easy access to fertilizer and other inputs. They can grow their rice in quantity. The peasants, poor devils, we spend a lot to grow it, but we can’t sell it. Sometimes we have to go to the loan sharks just to get enough money to survive.

We had a bad rice harvest this year, we didn’t get a lot of rice. We were already in a black misery by the time all the cast-off rice came here after the earthquake of January 12. But with the rice they’re dumping on us, it’s competing against ours and soon we’re going to fall into an even deeper hole.

This country has water, it has land. They used to call this country the pearl of the Antilles, today they call us the garbage bin of the Antilles. This country has been sold off.

They’re investing in the capital, but they don’t do anything to promote agriculture. What we need from the aid is agricultural machinery, is the means to collect water, ways to clean out our irrigation systems, fertilizer, technicians to help us, outlets to sell our produce, cheap places to buy seeds. Sending us big quantities of rice is not our solution.

We have to be able to work. I plant peas, corn, and rice. But I’m just growing dust.

I’m going to plant my rice this year, the same amount I normally plant or maybe less. When things are as hard as they are now, I can’t be sure that I’ll be able to buy seeds or anything else I need for the harvest. Maybe I’ll be able to buy two sacks [of seeds].

Our pea harvest was bad this year. But we don’t have any agronomists or technicians to help us. I don’t think we even have agricultural labs in this country. We can’t get any solutions. The government is absent.

Peasants have had to stop raising animals, too, because so much meat is being imported; when peasants go to the market with their little animal it doesn’t bring any kind of a reasonable price.

The rice they’re sending won’t be forever. They might start having problems back home, and then what? When they don’t give it to us anymore, are we all going to die? They have to help us produce.

That’s our situation today. If we keep going like this, there’s one chance for the future of this country: to perish. I’ll say that to anyone, including our bum of a president. I’d say the same thing to him.

If our national production were valued, if we got what we needed to produce, we could have another Haiti tomorrow. It could be more beautiful, more prosperous. We’d have order, discipline, security.

RACPABA [the Cooperative Farming Production Network of the Lower Artibonite] gives us support, watches out for us. They buy from us and sell for us, it’s a cooperative for both production and commerce. They help us: they work for us, let us mill our rice and corn, they help us get inputs, they give us credit that we only have to pay back when we’ve harvested. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t survive. But they’re just local.

I would like to tell the leaders the way things should be done. Everyone needs to participate. But the government doesn’t pay any attention to the peasants. They’re thinking about the well-off, not the bad-off. They’re just watching their own backs. But the poor class is dying of hunger, we need people thinking of us. The [earthquake] victims are getting a few grains, but what about the rest of us?

Here’s what Jonas Deronzil has to say to the U.S. government: your policies are bad. Help us produce, don’t give us food. We’re not lazy. We have water. We have land, especially in the Artibonite. Give us seeds, give us material. Don’t give us rice, we don’t need it. Our country can produce rice. If we’re short, we’ll let them know. There’s a lot of things I’d like to tell the American government but I don’t know where to find them. But if I could find the Americans, I’d tell them that.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

by Molly Theobald

Around 1 million people in South Africa—the majority of whom are recent arrivals from the former apartheid homelands, Transkei and Ciskei— live in the shacks that make up Khayelitsha, Nyanga and the area surrounding the Cape Flats outside Cape Town. Just under half, or 40 percent, of the population is unemployed, while the rest barely earn enough income to feed their families.

• While Abalimi Bezekhaya is bringing food and wild flora into the townships, it is also helping the townships to bring fresh produce into the city. (Photo credit: harounkola.com) •

In Xhosa, the most common language found in the area, the word abalimi means “the planters.” Through partnerships with local grassroots organizations, the aptly named Abalimi Bezekhaya, a non-profit organization working with the people living in these informal settlements, is helping to create a community of planters who can feed the township.

Abalimi Bezekhaya is helping to transform townships into food—and income—generating green spaces in order to alleviate poverty and to protect the fragile surrounding ecosystem. Providing training and materials, Abalimi Bezekhaya helps people to turn school yards and empty plots of land into gardens. Each garden is run by 6 to 8 farmers who, with support and time, are soon able to produce enough food to feed their families. Abalimi Bezekhaya encourages community members to plant indigenous trees and other flora in the township streets to create shade and increase awareness of the local plant life, much of which is endangered due to urban sprawl.

But while Abalimi Bezekhaya is bringing food and wild flora into the townships, it is also helping the townships to bring fresh produce into the city.

With support from the Ackerman Pick n Pay Foundation and in partnership with the South African Institute of Entrepreneurship (SAIE) and the Business Place Philippi, Abalimi Bezekhaya founded Harvest of Hope (HoH) in 2008. HoH purchases the surplus crops from 14 groups of farmers working in Abalimi Bezekhaya’s community plots, packages them in boxes and delivers them to selected schools where parents can purchase them to take home.

For families in Cape Town, HoH means fresh vegetables instead of the older, and often imported, produce at the grocery store. But for families of the farmers working with Hope of Harvest, it means much more. “To grow these vegetables here for me, first, is a life,” said Christina Kaba, a farmer working with HoH in a video about the project. “Second, is how you can give to your family without asking anyone for a donation for money or food. Here you are making money, you are making food.”

To read more about innovations that bring produce to cities, see: Vertical Farms: Finding Ways to Grow Food in Kibera, Growing Food in Urban “Trash,” Creating a Market for the Taste of Home, Looking for an Answer in the Private Sector, and Reducing Wastewater Starts with a Conversation.

“To me it means that it will bring life back to that horrible, horrible, tragic site. All we think about when we see Ground Zero is death and destruction. Except for tomorrow, when we’ll talk about life, renewal, and rebirth,” said Ronaldo Vega, design director for the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. He was referring to a group of trees (400 swamp white oaks and sweet gums) that were planted at that tragic place.

Since I live a few blocks away from Ground Zero I still remember that terrible day, when all our lives were changed forever. I was inside my apartment when I heard shouts and cries from the street below. “Oh, no, no, NO!” “Oh my God!” were repeatedly being said. I rushed downstairs (I had been watching on TV what happened after the first plane hit the towers when I heard the cries) and heard that a second plane had hit the towers.

Together with other bystanders I rushed towards the site when we saw a large group of people rushing back shouting “Go back, go back, for God’s sake go back!” We run back only to learn that it had been a false alarm and no further attacks were happening. Without exactly understanding what was going on I still remember the feeling that a relatively peaceful way of life was being replaced by a darker, more sinister one. A feeling of tremendous sadness invaded me.

Shortly afterwards we learned the details of what had happened, and we heard the stories and saw the images of those jumping voluntarily to their certain deaths rather than being trapped in a tramp of fire inside their offices. And as we learned of the heroic behavior of hundreds of firefighters who had risked --and many of them lost-- their lives, we also learned personal harrowing stories of some of those who died there.

One of them, the son of a friend, who just had enough time to call his brother and tell him, “Please tell Mom and Dad that I love them a lot as I love you,” before the communication was cut off. Or the employee of a big firm who left the towers, called his wife to tell her that he was OK after the first plane hit, came back to retrieve some documents from his office and died shortly afterwards by the inclement fire that ravaged his office.

On a new anniversary of the tragedy I wonder about what can be learned from it? One of the main lessons is that, as has been shown many times before, violence begets violence. And intolerance begets intolerance. Unless there is a new approach to terrorist actions we will continue to live under the threat of avoidable acts of terror.

To stop terrorism it is important to address the root causes rather than what we imagine is behind those actions. To pretend that terrorists attack us because they are envious of democracy or of the American way of life is nothing short of naïve.

Terrorists attack us because of the shortcomings of Western powers’ (notably the U.S.) foreign policy. Just as we would not admit foreign troops into our country, people from other countries do not willingly accept the presence of foreign troops in their country. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in the case of Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

In New York, intolerance is shown by the widespread reaction to building a community center, including a mosque, near Ground Zero. A recent fire (reportedly arson) at a planned Islamic Center in a Nashville, Tennessee, suburb is an expression of a climate of hatred and intolerance that will increase animosity among religious groups and unnecessarily increase fear, fueling new terrorist acts.

It is critical to develop approaches that increase goodwill among nations and opposing groups. President Barack Obama has wisely refused to continue the vocally aggressive approach of his predecessor. But more than that is needed. Dialogue is a pre-condition for understanding. We have hardly begun to explore opportunities for civil conversation with other nations, particularly Islamic nations.

Unless Americans show tolerance and a willingness to listen, the dark cloud of misunderstanding and violence will continue to exert its negative presence in our lives. American acceptance of an Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, the current graphic symbol of hatred and violence born of misunderstanding, would be a positive, visible proof that we want to move beyond pain, hatred and the cycle of violence. Ground Zero would then become not a self-defeating shrine to the memory of terrorism, but a testament to the willingness to rebuild a new reality based on religious and cultural tolerance.

Dr. César Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights.

If one positive thing has come from the earthquake of January 12, it is the greater inclusion of Haiti in the human family. True, the catastrophe has brought out of the woodwork many scoundrels – individuals, corporations, agencies, and governments – looking to gain wealth and power off of poverty and disaster. But it has also cracked open many hearts and brought solidarity from people everywhere who view themselves as citizens of the world.

•Marisol Baez (in headscarf) helping earthquake survivors determine their plans for their camp. Photo: Beverly Bell.•

One group of women and men who already viewed themselves that way is the Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women (MUDHA by its Spanish acronym). These Dominicans of Haitian ancestry, together with allies who have joined the group, have long been engaged for rights of Haitians in the Dominican Republic by battling mistreatment of cane cutters and others. Today they are hard at work outside the town of Léogâne, close to the earthquake’s epicenter. There they support three orphanages, some peasant groups, and three women-run internally displaced people’s camps (including the Petite Rivière Shelter Camp described in our August 25 article, “Part of the Dream for National Reconstruction: Haitian Refugee Camps Model Future Society”.)

MUDHA is helping create a dignified, education-filled, participatory, and even joyous experience for earthquake survivors. MUDHA provides staff, shelter, medical care, food, and other resources. In the camps, they conduct trainings in first aid, health care, natural disaster, environment, manufacturing of jewelry and household products for sale, and small business. They facilitate sessions where the displaced people plan priorities for their camp, and others where they articulate their dreams and goals for their and their country’s future.

Their work in the community integrates singing, dancing, and a spirit of celebration. It is based on respect, emphasis on women’s participation and power, and lots of affirmation of the community and its members.

One reason MUDHA’s work is so effective is that the team supports local leadership, instead of leading. It also fortifies the strength and power of women.

It is our hope that the women and men of MUDHA may soon be able to leave their tents and go back home, like the displaced people they are supporting. Would that the Haitian and U.S. governments, U.N., and other international agencies be moved by the same spirit of care and compassion – not to mention respect for the right to housing guaranteed by the Haitian constitution and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights – as MUDHA, and begin meeting the needs of the vast homeless population for permanent housing.

Marisol Baez, a 23-year member of MUDHA who has been in Haiti since the week of the earthquake, tells of the work.

We at MUDHA [the Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women] came from the Dominican Republic to work in Haiti on January 16th, four days after the earthquake. We spent a week carrying victims to the hospitals, helping rescue people under the rubble, whatever we could do. Then we went back to the Dominican Republic and put out a call on the radio that anyone willing could join the ranks to help Haiti. In about a week, we came back with 115 people and 20 vehicles. We came with doctors, orthopedists, gynecologists, all kinds of doctors so we could help Haiti, because Haiti is our country, too. We came from the womb of Haitian families. It’s true that we were born in Dominican Republic, but we’re part of Haiti.

The reason we chose to stay and work in Léogâne is that when our director Sonia Pierre was walking around the town, two people came up to her and told her that there was an orphanage here and the children were in bad shape. Also, we saw that all the international organizations were concentrated in Port-au-Prince; Léogâne had nothing.

The orphanage was in rubble. It collapsed in the earthquake and the children were in peril. They were hungry, they needed clothes, they were abandoned. So we stayed with them. We’re working with the children to do everything that needs doing. We also have doctors who provide care to the community, and each week we bring them in to take care of the kids.

We’re working with three orphanages now, including an all-girls’ orphanage. We also work with some peasant councils helping them with seeds and equipment to clear off the rubble. We’re also supporting the women in three camps.

These camps are mixed-gender, but they’re all run by women. We think that women are the pillar of the home and society. All the load is on their shoulders: the load of the children, the load of marketing. They’re hard-working. People have to take off their hats off to them. Men are always there to help, but the women are the ones with the most responsibility. I think God reserves something for the Haitian people, but especially for women. I think God will deliver Haitian women someday because of what they do.

There aren’t any camps in Haiti that are all women, but there are other camps that are run by women. I think that’s the reason the three camps you see here are different. We don’t need male-dominated [camp management] councils. They have one or two women on them and things don’t get where they are supposed to go, like food rations. Women are better at managing.

We’re working with women in the camps on health, micro-enterprise, education, and a lot of other things. We do classes on protecting the environment. We do preventative health care trainings with the women and children because health care isn’t only when you’re sick and go to the hospital. We’re giving training on women’s personal hygiene. We’re also bringing in doctors to treat the women, and they’re especially finding a lot of cases of vaginal infections because of the [contaminated] water. We’re also training on first aid and on natural disasters so that if something else happens in Haiti, people can know how to help others like the elders and the children.

We’re doing courses with the women so that they can start their own small business, start bringing income into the household so they aren’t dependent on men. The women are eager to learn. They want to find the means to start businesses so they can sell. They can trade, they can do everything.

We always tell the people: because you’re poor, the last things to lose in your life are your dignity and hope. We tell them to be brave, because they can’t let foreigners come and do everything for them. If they don’t have tents yet, we tell them to do their best to find a tarp or something so they can have a shelter. We tell them they’re not obliged to beg or to sell their bodies as women. They can do some marketing so they can survive.

Dignity is a beautiful thing. When you have dignity, you can talk loud and you can walk tall and no one can touch you. You don’t need to let people mess with you because you’re a woman. You have to be strong. You need to respect yourself first so others can respect you, because if you don’t respect yourself, no one will. We always do workshops on this topic with them. I’m so happy with the women in the camp because they take their dignity very seriously.

For Mother’s Day, we got 150 tents for all the families that only had makeshift housing before. So things are getting better. Not all at once, because the tents are not houses where people should be living. When it’s too hot, the people almost pass out in the tents. But in any case, things are getting better.

We’re using alternative strategies on security because things are getting out of hands on the question of violence against women [in other camps]. There are so many rapes in those places, including a 12-year-old girl who was raped by four men until she passed out and was hospitalized. When all the dust settles, we won’t be able to imagine how many girls and women there will be with diseases and other problems. Men are putting guns to women’s heads and knives to their bodies. If someone can do that, it’s because they are either crazy or sick. The Haitian authorities need to start addressing this issue.

Where we work, there are men’s councils who do vigilance to protect the women because these camps are made up mostly of families. Not just anyone can come in. They always ask you who you are and what you need. They keep a careful eye out. Now we’re giving women whistles, so that if they’re being attacked they can start blowing and everyone will know that there’s violence going on so they’ll come to the rescue and identify the person doing it.

I do this work as a woman because I was born and grew up in a neighborhood in the Dominican Republic where Haitians were sugarcane cutters. I’m part Haitian because my grandfather and my grandmother were Haitians. I feel like Haiti and the Dominican Republic are like an animal with two wings; it’s one animal separated in two parts.

When I was growing up, I saw my grandmother frying dough to sell so she could send her children to school. My grandmother was a respected woman, a hard-working woman. So was my mother. Since I was little, I was always helping people, especially the old Haitian cane cutters who were stuck away and forgotten in little rooms.

I joined MUDHA when I was 19 because they were working with Haitian cane cutters. Now I’m 42. If you’re part of MUDHA in the Dominican Republic, you have to be careful because they can easily kill you. MUDHA is always defending Haitians against bad treatment so they view us as devils.

I feel like I can help Haiti, so that’s why I’m here. I have courage and I can help.

As for the future of this country… We have to keep on struggling. Awhile ago I said that the last things someone should lose are hope and dignity. The Haitian people are a strong people; they’re courageous. This is what I wish for the Haitian people: to start being united, to start tearing down the walls in front of us. One thing I believe is that Haiti will be a new, beautiful country because Haitian women are strong and they’ll put all their strength into working for Haiti. If we put our hands together, we can overcome any obstacle.

Many thanks to James Eliscar for translating this interview.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

by Molly Theobald

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, people are forced to travel long distances and spend hours at a time collecting the water needed for cooking and drinking from far away streams or wells. But the residents of Cabazane, South Africa have found a much less labor intensive alternative. They use gravity and let water come to them.

• In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, people are forced to travel long distances and spend hours at a time collecting the water needed for cooking and drinking from far away streams or wells. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack) •

With the help of a team of scientists lead by Jana Olivier from the University of South Africa’s School of Agriculture and Environmental Studies, featured on AlterNet last month, the residents of Cabazane are using nets strung up across a nearby mountain pass to harvest water from the air.

Built at an altitude of 1,600 meters, steel cables held by wood posts support the two layers of shade clothe nets used to catch tiny droplets of water from the passing mountain fog near Brooks Nek Pass. The drops of water create run-off that is caught in gutters built at the bottom of the nets. This water is then carried by tubes down the side of the mountain and to the village. With each square meter of netting providing up to five liters of water per day, Cabazane can collect hundreds of liters on a good day.

And, most importantly, coming from the clouds, the water is very clean—an especially valuable commodity in area previously suffering from water shortages. The nearest stream to the village is two kilometers away and contaminated by animal use. Residents who used the stream were often exposed to water-borne diseases. Once dams were used to collect water in the area, but extreme drought has even dried up this source.

Nandi Ntsiko, a resident of Cabazane, in the Alternet article, “having piped water was a pipe dream for us. We were forced to share drinking water with animals in this stream. The situation was dire.”

Now the villagers not only have a steady supply of clean water, they have enough of it to store in newly constructed tanks. The netting also provides the additional benefit of being completely gravity-driven. No electricity is needed to power this innovation, making it affordable and environmentally friendly, and the technology is simple enough that maintenance is relatively easy.

Collecting water from fog is a technique that has been used for almost 30 years in some mountainous parts of Chile, and the project at Cabazane has been so successful that it’s already been replicated in other dry areas of South Africa, including Venda and Limpopo.

To read more about innovations that improve access to water, see: Getting Water to Crops, Access to Water Improves Life for Women and Children, Reducing Wastewater Contamination Starts with a Question, and ECHOing a Need for Innovations.

Every 24 seconds, a motor vehicle is stolen in the United States. Contrary to popular belief, thieves not only target expensive cars, but most frequently, the cars more often stolen are in the middle price range. Cars are stolen not for their value but for the resale value of their parts particularly valuable when they are no longer manufactured or are too difficult or too expensive to obtain.

Stolen cars transported across frontiers have become common features in many countries, an almost inevitable consequence of globalization.

Recently in Albania, I was amazed at the high number of Mercedes Benz cars in Tirana, Albania’s capital city, until a friend explained to me that many among them were stolen cars that came originally from Germany. A similar sight can be observed in many Central American countries where stolen cars from the U.S. make their way south of the Mexican border.

I was recently talking to a policeman, and when I told him that I lived in Soho, in downtown Manhattan, he asked me what type of car I had. When I told him it was one of the leading Japanese models, he told me, “You are a prime candidate to have your car stolen.” When I asked him the reason, he explained that Japanese cars have a very good resale price and that living in downtown Manhattan, I was near the Holland tunnel. It is thus very easy for the robbers to go to New Jersey, out of reach of the New York police. From New Jersey, the car can be transported to other States. Since the policeman’s comment, I decided to use a parking garage rather than keeping the car in the street, although garage prices in New York can run into several hundred dollars a month.

Recent research from the Netherlands found that thieves are less likely to steal brightly colored cars because they have a lower resale value. They can also be more easily detected. Of 109 pink cars in the study, none were stolen.

In former times, when thieves didn’t steal the car, they would break the window and take the portable radio or CD player. For a very long time, parking the car in the street used to be a rather annoying experience, particularly when one was liable to find the window broken and the interior of the car vandalized.

My wife had this unpleasant experience when she left the car in a suburban parking lot. The car was stolen by some adolescents for a joy ride, and when the police returned it, the interior had been totally vandalized --probably by the police looking for hidden drugs.

A physician friend of mine had apparently solved this problem. When he parked his car in the street, he used to put a note in the window saying, “NO RADIO, NO CD PLAYER, NO VALUABLES INSIDE.” For a long time his car was safe and my friend was very happy at having fooled potential robbers. Until one day, he came back to his car and found a note in the back window saying, “NOW, NO SPARE TIRE”.

Dr. César Chelala is a writer on human rights and foreign policy issues.

Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia and The Washington College of Law 2010 Legal Essay Writing Competition.

The Modern American (TMA) announces the American University Washington College of Law (WCL) essay competition, open to all full-time and part-time law students enrolled in and attending an accredited law school in the United States.

The Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia (WBA) and WCL share an important history in advancing women in the law and women’s rights. TMA celebrates this history by creating a writing competition that highlights the status and future of women’s bodily freedom in American Policy-making jurispudence.

Women’s bodily freedom is an issue that has hung in the balance for a number of years. Yet new, controversial laws that criminalize pregnant women’s behavior and girl’s refusal to receive arguably harmful immunizations have put women’s bodily freedom back into the forefront of the public’s attention. What is the status of women’s bodily freedom and what should women’s rights advocates anticipate?

Topic:
The status and future of women’s bodily freedom in American policy-making and jurispudence.

Prizes Include:
$1000.00 and potential publication in TMA

Deadline: October 1st, 2010 noon EST

Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti) is the oldest peasant group in Haiti, born covertly in 1970 during the Duvalier dictatorship. Today Tèt Kole is one of Haiti’s two national peasant farmer movements, with more than 55,000 members in all ten departments of the country. Here, members talk about their problems, needs, and priorities for their future.*

Silion Pierre, national coordinating committee of Tèt Kole:

• Tèt Kole members head into a banana grove for a meeting. Photo: Roberto (Bear) Guerra. •

How to improve the lives of peasantry? We are always battling for decentralization, the principal problem to be resolved. Most of those who were killed in the earthquake were peasants who went to Port-au-Prince to search for bread and work and a better life. Because the government doesn’t give anything to the country, we have to go to Port-au-Prince for a better life. Some of those who died were just in Port-au-Prince for an identity card or some document. If the country had been decentralized as Tèt Kole has always said it should, the damage of the earthquake wouldn’t have gotten where it did.

Our biggest challenge is to see how Haitian peasants, workers, street vendors, and everyone from the excluded sectors can put themselves together to create another country where the Ayiti Cheri [dear Haiti] that we used to have can return. That’s the work of Tèt Kole. Our idea is to reinforce our strength and capacity to mobilize by bringing together all progressive forces, Haitian and foreign, to make Haiti into another nation, another state, where people can live in security, with food, with education.

Niclaire Auguste, Piatte chapter of Tèt Kole:

We are peasants. Our strength is agriculture. Since January 12, our economy has been so affected. But for God, that’s nothing.

We are organized peasants. If we didn’t have Tèt Kole with us, giving us strength, I don’t know where we’d be today. When you’re organized, you never live alone.

We haven’t been abandoned; we also have friends with us, both Haitian or foreign. So we can’t let the struggle go. It has to go on. I applaud everyone who’s let us know that we peasants aren’t alone, especially since January 12. I applaud all peasants who stand strong in the struggle, especially today when life is so hard after the catastrophe.

Dieudonné Charlemagne, Piatte chapter of Tèt Kole:

We are children of the earth. The earth gives us the food we need to eat, the income we need to send our children to school, everything we need to take care of our lives.

We love agriculture. We love to plant. We love to live as people who’re recognized as citizens of this nation.

So what’s our problem? We don’t have seeds, or when we have them they aren’t producing well. We irrigate a lot of land, but our plants aren’t producing. The banana trees are sick, the melons and peas are barely producing, but we don’t know why. We don’t have agricultural extension offices or anyone to come tell us why our plants are diseased or why they’re not producing and what we should do about it.

We build our canals with our own hands so we can irrigate when the rain doesn’t fall. When the rain does come, it bursts the canals and the water gets wasted and we don’t have the support to restore the canals, so our crops die. No government comes to help us.

We ask for agricultural system to be improved so we can get some relief. We’re working the lands with picks; we don’t have tractors. We’re working so hard to grow food to send to the cities, but no matter how much we work, we can’t ever get ahead. Nothing we do brings back anything for us peasants. It’s all off our own strength, even though we’re skinny with hunger. No one is supporting us to let us work the way we want so we can make something off it.

Even if we’re peasants, we deserve to live, too. It shouldn’t be that because we’re peasants we’re condemned to death.

As for the catastrophe of January 12, the few who didn’t die have all come back home. We’ve had to welcome lots of relatives to our homes. Those who came with friends, we’ve had to take them in, too.

So much of the aid they’ve been talking about has never gotten beyond Port-au-Prince. In Piatte, we are the aid, we’re the ones who’ve had to supply everything.

Sony Jean-Louis, son of farmers:

We ask the national and international community to help us decentralize our nation. We youth of peasants who are living in the countryside, we go to school but we can’t advance. Why? Every last resource in the country is in Port-au-Prince. All those youth who went to Port-au-Prince to get an education: you see January 12, so many of them died. This is what’s behind the drama of January 12: the government chooses not to realize that there is a rural part of the country. They forget us, they don’t consider us human beings.

Take our hand! Support the youth! Give us schools and training. Put some of those resources in the countryside to help the youth of Haiti, including those in rural areas, live.

Vales Gaspard, Piatte chapter of Tèt Kole:

All the small producers in the countryside, they tighten their belts, they work, they buy a cow, they buy a goat and sell the goat, they say they’re off to buy a couple of rooms in Port-au-Prince to see if they can get education for their children because there’s none here. When they get to Port-au-Prince, they build their houses poorly because they don’t have any economic means to build better. When a catastrophe comes, they’re the ones who suffer.

Countries are sending money to Haiti. There’s money to develop the country. Where is it? If foreign powers want to come help us, if they really care about what’s happening here, the first thing they should do is help us reconstruct the land. No country can survive without agriculture. If farmers are unemployed, what’s the country going to eat? Nothing.

They should send engineers and technicians. They should come give us technical support to show us how to produce food: Congo peas, cassava, bananas, vegetables. We need schools, hospital, credit, the chance to buy our seeds and tools at a good price, community stores where we can market.

President Aristide said that we should live in a way that everyone is recognized as someone. We have the means for that.

We’ve buried all our children who died in the earthquake. Now those who’ve come back to our homes, we’re taking care of them. What we have we’re giving to others. You government officials, you do this, too.

* A note on the gender balance in this article: there is none. In two meetings with Tèt Kole representatives involving 39 people, only three women were present. Others may not have been invited by community leaders, or they may not have been able to leave their household and child care responsibilities, or their male partners and fathers may have dissuaded them from attending. The interviewer repeatedly asked the few women who were present to speak, but only one did at the very end of a meeting; it is not included here because she addressed a different topic. When this writer meets with peasant women alone, they have much to say, but the dynamic changes dramatically in mixed groups.

Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is also author of the book Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance. She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives. She is also associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Listen to the August 29 broadcast of Sundays at Five by clicking the play button below.

In this week’s broadcast of Sundays at Five, Kate and Ali talk with Joan Kelley-Williams, the Director of International Services for the American Red Cross San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the lives of many people on the Gulf Coast are still not “back to normal.” Yet another disaster - the current flooding in Pakistan – is having an impact many times more devastating than Katrina.

For more information about preparing yourself and your family for a disaster, please visit 72hours.org

Guest Biography: Joan Kelley-Williams serves as Director of International and Armed Forces Emergency Services for the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter. A Red Crosser since 1984 when she began as a volunteer, Joan joined the paid staff ranks in 1991 as the Chapter's first Director of Volunteer Administration. She has created the Chapter's premier International Services Department delivering direct services and providing outreach and education programs focused on the promotion of international humanitarian/human rights law and rights based humanitarian aid.

About the Broadcast: The WIP’s Executive Editor, Kate Daniels teams up with identical twin sister Ali Daniels to present Sundays at Five, a weekly radio broadcast on KRXA, Monterey Bay's Progressive Talk Radio station. The twins share stories and discuss topics ranging from campaign finance reform to the phenomenon of Facebook. Tune in every Sunday from 5-6 pm PDT or listen online. Podcasts of previous broadcasts are available on The WIP Talk.

Make a cup of tea and join the conversation!

By Molly Theobold

Listen to Radio Fanaka Fana and Radio Jigiya, in the Fana and Zégoua regions of Mali, and you are much more likely to hear tips for improving compost piles and soil quality than you are pop music hits or current events. That’s because the station is participating in Farm Radio International’s Africa Farm Radio Research Initiative (AFRRI), a project to test the viability of using radio as a tool for spreading agricultural information to farmers throughout Africa.

• Mali: Meeting with EVOCA MALI Outside Bamako. Photo courtesy of the author. •

Farm Radio International is a Canadian-based, non-profit organization with partner broadcasters from over 300 radio stations in over 39 sub-Saharan African countries.  Its programs reach an audience of over 600 million people speaking more than 300 languages, providing listeners with valuable information that is increasing harvest yields and improving livelihoods.

Though cell phones, computers, and televisions might seem like more obvious—and increasingly popular—forms of mass communication, the radio is still the least expensive and most widespread communications technology in Africa. In Mali, where the soil is often dry and eroded, AFRRI is taking advantage of radio’s popularity by working with local leaders and extension officers to present radio programs that can help farmers improve soil quality. Radio Fanaka Fana and Radio Jigiya—which have a combined audience of over 170,000 people— present regular shows promoting the use of compost pits to create organic fertilizer.

A case study for this particular campaign shows that farmers in the two radio stations’ regions were listening and responding to the programs in overwhelming numbers. In Radio Zégoua ‘s region alone, households practicing improved composting increased from just over 25 percent to over 89 percent. Farmers reported feeling more comfortable with local extension officers after hearing them on the radio, and—based on word of mouth— other communities outside the reach of the radio stations started requesting programs of their own. One outside community even built a homemade antenna so they could hear the programs being broadcast in the next region over.

To read more about innovations that use communication technology to improve farmer livelihoods, see: Makutano Junction Soap Opera, Using Digital Technology to Empower and Connect Young Farmers, Messages from One Rice Farmer to Another, Improving Women’s Access to Agriculture Training and A Sustainable Calling Plan.

The return of U.S. forces from Iraq in what is euphemistically called the end of the Iraq war is anything but the end of the conflict. The consequences of the war will be felt for many years to come. Former President George W. Bush and his advisers should be blamed for engaging in a war that has ravaged Iraq and cost the United States not only economically but also the lives and well being of hundreds of thousands of its soldiers.

As of February of 2010, approximately $700 billion had been spent in the war. This figure is based on current expenditure rates from figures from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), and estimates by the Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes from Harvard University.

According to Stiglitz and Bilmes, the total cost of the Iraq war will probably exceed three trillion dollars in a moderate scenario. As Stiglitz has stated, “This number represents the cost only to the U.S. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.”

A major contributor to the war’s final cost is the medical care and disability benefits provided to veterans. Since medical consequences don’t become immediately apparent, in addition to present costs, claims are likely to be filed for years after the end of the war.

It is estimated that 20 percent of survivors have suffered major head or spinal injuries, 18 percent have suffered serious wounds and an additional six percent are amputees. More than 7,000 veterans with severe brain, spinal and other injuries will require very expensive round-the-clock care. Presently, government medical facilities in the U.S. are overwhelmed by the needs of soldiers who served in Iraq.

In addition to the economic costs described are the high number of suicides among the veterans, the mental health impact of those that survived and the costs to the families’ economies and well being. These costs also do not include the waste of resources or the cost to the Iraq treasury of theft and corruption both by Iraqi officials and by U.S. contractors.

As Iraqi civilian casualties continue to mount –a reflection of internecine conflicts exacerbated by the U.S. occupation, the effects on Iraqi children are staggering. More than half a million children have been traumatized by the war, according to UNICEF. “Iraqi children, already casualties of a quarter of a century of conflict and deprivation, are being caught up in a rapidly worsening humanitarian tragedy,” warned that organization in 2007.

28 percent of children suffer from some degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to Dr. Haithi Al Sady, Dean of the Psychological Research Center at Baghdad University. How could they not, when they still are being affected by daily explosions, killings, abductions and turmoil in Iraq’s main cities?

More than 2 million children have been displaced from their homes as a result of the war. Children and their families have become refugees in neighboring countries. The sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees has overburdened the recipient countries’ health and social services. In addition, the “brain drain” of doctors and other professionals forced to leave the country has had a negative impact in the quality of services in Iraq.

“Iraqis are suffering from a growing lack of food, shelter, water and sanitation, health care, education and employment,” according to a 2007 report compiled by OXFAM and the NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI). The continuing violence since then has only made matters worse.

Hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, a ravaged infrastructure, a non-functioning and corrupt government and a society terrorized by unending violence is the sad result of a greedy war, in flagrant violation of international norms and treaties. To call the Iraq war a “Pyrrhic victory” is an understatement.

Dr. César Chelala is an international public health consultant and a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.