A zoom with a view--pictures from the road

Here is a typical small settlement in the biggest arable region in Haiti--the valley that contains Dessallines. The view from the road is dotted with these little mini settlements where people who grow rice on state-owned land live. The houses are made of mud held together with the occasional rock, and sticks, and generally a metal roof. A few of the houses are made out of cement blocks(for obvious reasons, this is considered an upgrade).



Farming is a relatively simple (though incredibly arduous) affair. Hand tools are the rule, though emaciated livestock do lend a hand. (I love it when I can start and end a sentence on the same word). I did see a few rusty tractors stuck in the mud. The farmers here don't have the means to purchase farming equipment (in fact a lot of their hand tools are hand tooled). But even if they did, they're not farming their own land so there's little incentive, and even if they had the means and the incentive, most of them have no education (by "no education" I don't mean they dropped out of high school--I mean it literally), the only thing they know about farming is what they are doing.



This lady is protesting. The road was blocked by people walking in the road waving branches (or leaves, the branches cooked last night's non-supper). Protests are becoming more common in Haiti (well there's kind of an ebb and flow to the cycle of protests--over the last six months the pendulum has been swinging up). About a month before I went all of the windows up and down Delmar--one of the main roads in Port au Prince--were broken by protesters upset by the price of food.

This woman and those with her were upset about the price of fertilizer. A year ago a bag cost $200 Haitian, Now it costs 600. The land these farmers farm is state owned--they get paid a set amount of money for the rice they grow. this is how the government can make money selling rice even when the price of raw materials goes up--they pass the cost onto the farmers.

The government sells the rice on the global market because it can make more money...then cheaper rice (less filling is the description I got) is imported and taxed so it costs the average Haitian more than they got paid for the better rice they grew in their own fields (or state owned fields).


Just for comparisons sake





This is a house up on the mountain overlooking Port au Prince--where the upper class lives. Lifestyles of the rich and famous. ok, probably not famous.

Ok, maybe that's a little shocking, you might ask--how could they live like that, while those in the valley suffer?

But think about this--the difference between the poor and the rich is even greater in the US. The poor here just aren't as shocking--maybe we're just used to them.

Shoot--why criticize the rich--here's where I live. How can I possibly talk about poverty?




I know that I've said a lot of things on this blog about poverty and how hard people in Haiti have it...to tell you the truth, more often than not I feel like a failure, a hypocrite, and snakeoil salesman. I want you to be moved by the pictures, by my words...but I sit here, typing on a computer in a climate controlled room, stuff, stuff, stuff...all around, invading my life, suffocating me, killing possibility...

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"