Lazy Hatians
It is easy, as a visitor to Haiti, to wonder (though only to yourself; never out loud, except to other visitors when you hope no one is listening who speaks english) why the Hatians don't do more for their country, themselves...There seems to be a lot of standing around and complaining about the state of things, or more often a dull acceptance of the way things are, finding joy in the little things and letting the big picture be what it is: crumbling infrastructure, garbage everywhere, choking exhaust, eroding hillsides...
It is easy to think they are lazy, unmotivated, unintelligent, because they don't seem to get up every day, rool up their sleeves, and set towork to make the country clean and beautiful. It's easy, because you, the visitor, don't live there. You don't live with the reality that doesn't have a return ticket home, that lives, and has lived for years, with corrupt officials, druglords, drough, flood, fire, inflation, and without electricity or potable water.
It's easy because you take for granted that taking on a swaling project at 2.00 in the afternoon on a sweltering Thursday you can swing a pickaxe for half an hour, or an hour; weild a shovel, then walk across the street and take the second shower in a three-shower day; change into clothes that were washed in a machine, with water that came to your house on its own, not on your head.
In Haiti, every movement you make expends energy, energy youmay not have if you didn't eat breakfast. Even if you have the energy, moving at all means sweating, and getting dirty; dodging crazy top-top drivers - If you want to maintain some semblance of dignity and order, it makes sense to draw the line close to self; to take care of one's own appearance and let the rest be what it will be.
Surviving in Haiti, from what I can determine from my second very short visit, is about endurance. It's about saving your energy for what may be coming, tomorrow, or the next day, or the next; it's about taking care of what you have to do. Beyond that, any action seems futile, in a nightmarish version of the tragedy of the commons.
How can that change? My guess would be only by rebuilding from the bottom up, through community-based organizations that reduce the spatial and social unit of action to some reasonable and comprehensible scale. The need for large-scale planning is obvious, but it will never be effective (except temporarily, at the end of the barrel of a gun) unless the government is seen as legitimate. And the legitimacy of the government will likely not come through a single national election. Do people know their neighbors? Is there a sense of common purpose? I don't know the culture well enough to say. What I am sure of is that it is lacking in my own culture, and my own life. The mentality of solipsism is the same, it's just the wrapping paper that's different.
It is easy to think they are lazy, unmotivated, unintelligent, because they don't seem to get up every day, rool up their sleeves, and set towork to make the country clean and beautiful. It's easy, because you, the visitor, don't live there. You don't live with the reality that doesn't have a return ticket home, that lives, and has lived for years, with corrupt officials, druglords, drough, flood, fire, inflation, and without electricity or potable water.
It's easy because you take for granted that taking on a swaling project at 2.00 in the afternoon on a sweltering Thursday you can swing a pickaxe for half an hour, or an hour; weild a shovel, then walk across the street and take the second shower in a three-shower day; change into clothes that were washed in a machine, with water that came to your house on its own, not on your head.
In Haiti, every movement you make expends energy, energy youmay not have if you didn't eat breakfast. Even if you have the energy, moving at all means sweating, and getting dirty; dodging crazy top-top drivers - If you want to maintain some semblance of dignity and order, it makes sense to draw the line close to self; to take care of one's own appearance and let the rest be what it will be.
Surviving in Haiti, from what I can determine from my second very short visit, is about endurance. It's about saving your energy for what may be coming, tomorrow, or the next day, or the next; it's about taking care of what you have to do. Beyond that, any action seems futile, in a nightmarish version of the tragedy of the commons.
How can that change? My guess would be only by rebuilding from the bottom up, through community-based organizations that reduce the spatial and social unit of action to some reasonable and comprehensible scale. The need for large-scale planning is obvious, but it will never be effective (except temporarily, at the end of the barrel of a gun) unless the government is seen as legitimate. And the legitimacy of the government will likely not come through a single national election. Do people know their neighbors? Is there a sense of common purpose? I don't know the culture well enough to say. What I am sure of is that it is lacking in my own culture, and my own life. The mentality of solipsism is the same, it's just the wrapping paper that's different.
posted by ddgregory at 1:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home