In my last post, I wrote about how well Clean Water for Haiti is doing. It’s true. We are absolutely killing it, and will continue to kill it barring unforeseen circumstances. However, much was left out of that post.
Several years ago we came up with an expansion plan. The filter project is modest; perhaps 25,000 of our filters are currently in use, providing water to perhaps 125,000 people. Of those people, many many of them are still alive because they drink safe water that they get from their filter and never caught a deadly disease. 125,000 people represents just over 1% of Haiti’s population. Why can’t Clean Water for Haiti reach the rest of Haiti’s population, too? Of course, we could. The solution we use is thoroughly proven to be effective and we have an implementation model that works well in Haiti. Importantly, it’s cost effective – the most cost effective and appropriate solution I know of in Haiti. Looking at it that way, it would be criminal NOT to expand until we reach every corner of the country.
When we came up with our expansion plan, the biggest sticking point was fundraising. A lot of Clean Water for Haiti supporters don’t realize this, but nearly all of our fundraising is done by Leslie and me, or by volunteer CWH supporters who set up fundraisers of their own. There is no fundraising staff. Our fundraising budget is mostly for postage and printer ink! In a way, it’s a small miracle that we have reached 1% of Haiti’s population when we’ve done almost all of our fundraising from right here in our office in Haiti. With rare exceptions, any organization that wants to grow beyond a certain size needs a professional fundraiser to make that happen. Of course, as soon as you hire a fundraising professional (most often called a Development Director) overhead goes up substantially. To put it in perspective, Clean Water for Haiti’s annual expenditures have been averaging just under $300,000 in recent years. A Development Director who knows what they’re doing demands $80,000+ per year. With medical and taxes, CWH would be spending over $100k per year without a single dime of that money actually helping our beneficiaries. Overhead would go from almost nothing to some 30% or more. This doesn’t sit well with me. However, we decided that the project was too important and we would have to live with the higher overhead in order to reach more people. The hope was that within two years, our income would exceed $600,000 so that our overhead would at least drop below 25%. At the same time, we could increase production here to 4800+ filters/year and make plans to open a second facility somewhere else in the country.
In order to implement this plan, we would need enough reserves in the bank to cover the first year’s salary of our new development director, in addition to the normal reserves we need to carry. This plan was approved by the CWH Joint Charitable Activities Committee and over a period of three years even while increasing production, we managed to reach the reserve level we needed to hire our first ever Development Director.
Well…… things have changed over the past three years. MINUSTAH, the U.N. mission to stabilize Haiti, left the country in spite of things not really being stable. Gangs grew in power and influence, pushing the police out of large sections of the country. Travel on the roads became much more dangerous as kidnapping became shockingly common. The president was assassinated and his killers still roam at large. Many organizations have left the country and, oddly, the Haitian government has increasingly made it more difficult for the remaining international organizations to operate. It’s easiest to blame foreigners when things aren’t going well, I suppose. Fuel shortages have become more common and last for a longer duration each time. As of writing this, there is no diesel or gasoline available in any of the stations within reach of us.
If we had substantially more funds available, would we be able convert those funds into filters? Yes, but there is a limit. At this point, we can still expand our work here in Camp Marie. As the country gets worse demand for filters just keeps increasing and we still have plenty of room to expand capacity here. The problem comes when we need to expand to a second facility. With the way things are in Haiti right now, the obstacles we would have to overcome to establish a second facility are so many and so high, it seems inconceivable. It’s not safe for foreigners to be out and about on the roads right now. How do we get around that particular problem, for example? I can’t see a reasonable solution to that problem, or many others. Sadly, I don’t see things getting better any time soon. There are many scenarios where things get quite a lot worse.
Our plans to hire a Development Director are now on hold, indefinitely. In a way it’s a relief that we’re not moving ahead since I’ve always been adamant that the vast majority of donated funds needs to be spent on our work in Haiti. However, it also feels like a surrender. If anyone is able to bring potable water to the large part of Haiti that doesn’t have it yet, it probably won’t be Clean Water for Haiti, and it probably won’t happen in my lifetime.
So what does this mean for the future of the filter project? In the short term, I don’t need to be afraid that we’re going to run out of money, because we have somewhat more reserves than usual and they need to be spent down. As I mentioned in our last post, we’re killing it, with 24 workers employed as of today, and a record 452 filters installed last month. So will we be able to reach 4800 filters/year? What about 6000? 8000? I don’t know, but I really want to try and find out. In the longer term money will certainly present a problem, as always, but perhaps more of the right people will support the project and then tell their friends about what we’re doing. In the end we won’t reach all of Haiti, but if we can turn that 1% into 2%, and then 3%+, I’ll be feeling pretty good.
Life for a foreigner living in Haiti isn’t what it used to be. Foreigners inevitably end up hanging out with each other because it’s easier to relate when you have a common background and it’s nice to be able to talk about the aspects of day to day living in a country which is not your own with someone who can understand. Well, most of the foreigners have left the country or are making plans to leave. In practical terms, that means for us that our social interactions have largely moved online, as was the case for so many others during the pandemic.
I’m not terribly excited about interacting with people online, so I need to make an effort. I noticed that the last time I made a blog post was November 2019, so it’s about time I made a new post! I’m going to try to write in the old-school, stream-of-consciousness type of blog writing.
I’m going to write what I’m excited about. Clean Water for Haiti is, at this moment in time, killing it. I love the work we do, and in the absence of any kind of normal social life outside of my own family, my work is the center of my existence. I really want to tell people (brag) about it!
In January 2019 one of our delivery trucks got into a terrible accident. It was a complete and utter nightmare. All 6 guys in the truck had to go to the hospital, and one of them was really very badly injured indeed. The truck was totaled, but we didn’t realize just how badly damaged it was at the time. Worse than all of that though, a woman, the passenger on the back of a motorcycle, was killed. She left 5 children, including a 3-month-old, behind. Even now it’s hard to think about those children and how their lives changed forever.
I knew immediately that this is the kind of event that could end our work altogether if things weren’t handled very carefully. Fortunately, we all went into crisis mode and dealt with one thing after another as best we could. There’s a lot I could write about all of the craziness which ensued, but I don’t want to focus on that today. The long and short of it is that we dealt with various aspects of the aftermath of the accident right through 2019 and most of 2020 and kept Clean Water for Haiti alive. The financial cost was huge, and it set back our work substantially.
Later in 2019 and into 2020 I discovered one worker after another who had been committing small-scale fraud and needed to be fired. Now for me, if someone steals from Clean Water for Haiti I take it personally. You’re going to compromise my life’s work? NO. My outlook on life, already pretty dark, became darker. At one point, I told Leslie I wanted to go ahead and fire the entire follow-up crew and start over. We had a long conversation in which she reminded me that I had never fired someone before without proof of wrongdoing, and that while I can do whatever I think is best, it would have an effect on morale. Well, I didn’t fire the whole follow-up crew. Not right then. I waited until I caught each one of them committing fraud first. It ended up not taking all that long. All told, 2020 was a terrible year. And our filter deliveries were down 40%!
At the end of 2020, I had a good think as I was hiking up the mountain behind our house. Although I care about Clean Water for Haiti and the work we do very much, why should the workers? In a community as poor as ours, charity work for others probably isn’t going to be a priority. I tried to think of a way we could improve morale with the workers, and really form a team instead of just all working in the same place. Starting January 2021 we announced bonuses. In each month that we installed 250+ filters, each worker would take home an extra day’s pay. 300+ would mean 2 days extra pay, 350+ 3 days, etcetera. In 2020, we didn’t exceed 250 filters in even a single month. Things changed very quickly. The first month, over 300 filters were installed and we had a small party to celebrate. On 9 out of 12 months last year, the workers got some kind of bonus, ending up with our most productive year ever, for a total of 3308 filters! Then, this January, 402 filters were installed! That’s 4 day’s pay – a full 19% extra pay for each of the workers! It feels good to be able to give out bonuses. (From an administrative perspective, the added drain this puts on our payroll isn’t that big a deal. The increased productivity and efficiency more than makes up for it.)
One year to the next, morale went from rock bottom to sky high – definitely for the workers but just as importantly, for me.
I made another decision at the end of 2020. I was going to do everything in my power to avoid giving revocation pay in cases of fraud. I want Clean Water for Haiti to be respected, and I want people to know that we’ll go to extreme lengths to protect it from fraud, theft, or whatever else.
In 2021, I only had to fire one person. I was able to think it through ahead of time and I recorded the conversation where laid out the situation clearly and that unlike in the past, there would not be any revocation pay. I explained that he could take us to court, but since we had him dead to rights, whatever he paid a lawyer would be money wasted. I said something along the lines of “When you steal from Clean Water for Haiti, you’re stealing from the Haitian people, and the Haitian people have had too much stolen from them already. I won’t accept that. You won’t be getting anther Gourde, and it’s time for you to leave.” I think that perhaps that one interaction was another huge step toward improving my own morale.
So where are we at now? As I stated earlier, we’re killing it. It’s not just the day-to-day activities what are going well. Clean Water for Haiti has money in the bank. Somehow last year, in spite of record production, our reserves increased. I hired two more workers in January, two more yesterday, and we’ll likely take on another two in April or May! Looking at our numbers, I can already tell we’re headed for a record year, and we’re going to DESTROY last year’s record, not just knock it over. It’s exciting!
The topic for today is Haiti’s current socio-political
situation. It’s a very complicated situation, and there are many things we
don’t know, and can’t know. With such limited information and contradictory
information in the media, the simplest thing to do is to grab onto an
interpretation of the situation that falls into a narrative we can all relate
to – that there are “good guys” and “bad guys” and that things will get better
when the good guys win. The one thing I’m sure of in this situation is that
there are no “good guys”. Corruption is virtually universal amongst Haiti’s
leaders, and political struggles are largely about how the spoils are to be
divided among them.
The president:
Jovenel Moise was elected a few years ago. He is the chosen
successor of the previous president, Michel Martelly. Martelly may or may not
have known Moise before picking him as his successor to run the Tet Kale (bald
head) political party. In Haiti, the president can serve two, five year terms
but not consecutively, so one strategy is to have a close associate serve a
term in between your two terms as a seat-warmer of sorts. There is little more
than speculation about the relationship between these two presidents. I have
heard that they have almost no contact, and I have also heard that they meet
once a week.
Moise was elected as president largely because he was seen
as a successful businessman. He started an organic plantain plantation to produce
for export, so he became known as Neg Banan (Plantain Man). The plantation is
now defunct.
Opposition:
Confusingly, the opposition is loosely led by Jean-Charles Moise, so there are two Moises involved, not related to each other. Jean Charles was a main candidate in the last election, which was disputed and needed to be re-held.
The head of the senate, Youri Latortue, is also a leading
member of the opposition. Wikeleaks published an intercepted a communique from
the U.S. ambassador which stated Youri Latortue was “one of the most brazenly corrupt of
leading Haitian politicians.”
Venezuela & PetroCaribe:
With the PetroCaribe program, Venezuela sold fuel to the
Haitian government for credit, to be repaid later. The idea was for the funds
received from fuel re-sold by the government to the various gas stations around
Haiti to be used for building roads, social programs, and the like. A LOT of
the money has been stolen, but we don’t have all of the information about where
the money went. The program is now over.
Recently, the U.S. put pressure on Haiti to come out in
opposition to Maduro’s government in Venezuela at the U.N. This upset a lot of
Haitians, who saw the PetroCaribe program as a huge help to Haiti. It’s common
for people to say that the people stand with Maduro, even if the government
doesn’t.
USA:
The USA has been heavily involved in Haiti since the fall of
the Duvalier regime which lasted from 1958-1986. The Duvalier regime was a
period of autocratic stability without democracy, and the U.S. hoped to see a
stable democracy begin after Baby Doc’s departure. After an interim period when
a new constitution was written, Aristide was elected by a landslide – not
America’s choice at all. However, after the military coup d’etat in 1992,
Aristide took refuge in the USA and continued to control a large amount of
Haitian government money which he used to lobby the US government and the
Organization of American States to put an embargo on Haiti to force the
military regime to collapse and accept Aristide back. The Clintons have a
sentimental attachment to Haiti (they honeymooned here) and Bill backed the
effort with redoubled effort when he became president, bringing about his
return. The US remained heavily involved, along with a U.N. mission in ’94-’95
after Aristide’s return. Aristide finished his first term, helped Preval get
elected under his Lavalas party banner (as seat warmer), then was elected to a
second term in 2000.
Aristide upset the Americans in many ways. He was not America’s
favorite candidate. It’s surprising that he was brought back, until you
consider both the lobbying money being spent and the growing power of the
Haitian-American voting block in the US. There are about 3 million Haitian
Americans living in the U.S., and many of them saw Aristide as a hero. After
his return in ’94, he went back on a number of promises which he made to the
U.S. officials as they negotiated his return.
In his second term, Aristide continued to upset the
Americans. In 2003 they backed an uprising against him with the aid of Guy
Philippe, who led an armed group around northern Haiti, chasing the police away
from each town they came to, until eventually marines from the U.S. embassy
knocked on Aristide’s door and whisked him off into a plane headed to the
Central African Republic. Three days later 2000 marines arrived along with the
French foreign legion to quell the massive rioting that accompanied Aristide’s
departure.
The U.N. took over for the marines, and stayed for 13 years.
In 2010 came the earthquake, and planeloads of do-gooders arrived from the U.S.
The 101st airborne came for a while. As far as I can tell, they were
basically here for photo ops while Haiti was the main item in the news cycle,
but I digress. (An airdrop on the Petionville Golf Club? Seriously?)
That brings us to now. The current U.S. administration is
NOT interested in being involved in Haiti – a major departure from the past 43
years. I’m not sure that this is a bad thing. In any case, they are not getting
involved.
Canada:
Canada will follow whatever the USA does, probably. They
won’t get involved.
France:
France is Haiti’s old colonial power. Haiti is the only country in the world to be founded on a slave revolt, and won independence from France in 1804. Some time later, the Haitian government agreed to pay France reparations for the value of the slaves which they stole from them (plus land, other properties) at the threat of attack by the French military. That’s pretty messed up. Payments on this “debt” were made for over 100 years, and only ended in the 1940s. Aristide gained enthusiastic support in Haiti by demanding this money back in his second term. It didn’t go over so well in France.
I heard recently that France is continuing to support
Jovenel Moise because they are worried Aristide could come back to power if he
leaves. I have trouble believing that this is really an issue with the French;
surely they know that Aristide will never come back to power again. Even in
Haiti, people think that two coup d’etat against the same president is too
many. It’s also against the constitution to run for a third term.
The point though, is France isn’t getting involved.
The U.N.
MINUSTAH was a peacekeeping mission without any armies to
keep apart (Aristide disbanded Haiti’s army in 1995). It was widely criticized,
even from leaders within the mission. There were several scandals, including
the introduction of cholera to Haiti, goat stealing, and lots of rape. If they
raided gang bases they were accused of human rights violations, but if they did
nothing, they were accused of… doing nothing. The U.N. is probably not going to
get involved. As far as I know, Haiti isn’t even an item up for discussion.
Aristide:
After living in exile for 10 years in South Africa, Aristide
moved back to Haiti. His party, Lavalas, is still active but not very popular.
He influences Haitian politics in many ways, but does not take the limelight.
Duvalier:
Baby Doc Duvalier returned to Haiti around the same time
Aristide did, then died a few years later. Even dead, though, Duvalierism lives
on. A surprising number of people would like to see Haiti go back to the
oppressive, yet stable, ways of the Duvalier regime.
Cocaine:
As a major trans-shipment point, Haiti is a non-producing
narco-state. Many wealthy and aspiring-to-be-wealthy Haitians are involved in
the drug trade, and it’s common to move back and forth between cocaine selling
and politicking. It’s key to have political connections when you’re moving
cocaine, and a politician can make a lot of money by facilitating the movement
of cocaine in and out of the country. It would be difficult to overstate just
what a profoundly negative effect America’s drug habit has on Haiti. The value
of the cocaine trade in relation to Haiti’s total GNP is substantial, and
breeds corruption like crazy. The cocaine trade may explain America’s seemingly
erratic involvement in Haiti. The DEA is heavily involved in America’s policy
towards Haiti in ways that are never made public.
So what’s going on in Haiti?
The Haitian government sets the fuel price in Haiti. The
slow-motion disaster started for Moise when in July 2018, he announced a fuel
price raise just as Brazil lost a football match to Belgium. Haitians love
football, and Brazil is by far the favorite team. Jovenel’s plan was that
Haitians would be pleased about Brazil’s easy win and be distracted from the
price rise. Oops. With the loss, many people rioted and burned businesses in protest
to the fuel price rises. (All the worst-hit businesses were Syrian-Haitian
owned, for some reason.) Moise backed off on the planned price hike, leading to
the inevitable: In an attempt to continue to pay for the subsidized fuel, the
government had to dilute the money supply. This is devaluing Haiti’s currency, leading
to the nominal Gourde price of fuel to become less and less in USD terms,
causing the fuel subsidies to be still more expensive, causing the currency to
devalue further, etcetera. The price of diesel is now about $1.80, way less
than it needs to be for financial stability.
The first fuel shortage was in February. People became
frustrated, and protests broke out which extended well past when fuel became
available again. Eventually people got tired of the disruption and the protests
petered out.
In March the police arrested a group of foreign mercenaries,
including retired navy SEALs, outside of the national bank. They most likely
had been hired by the president himself in an effort to have some government
funds transferred to an account he controls. It’s a clear violation of Haiti’s
constitution for mercenaries to be employed this way on Haitian soil, but
unsurprisingly, the mercenaries were released and flew back the U.S. the next
day and faced no consequences.
There are accusations that the president has paid
troublemakers to take various actions around the city, and that he has provided
gangs with guns. That may or may not be true. It’s certainly true that
troublemakers are being paid by multiple people or groups. There are also a LOT
of guns around, far more than in the past.
Just like the previous president, Jovenel Moise is
attempting to revive the Haitian army. This is a move favored by Duvalierists
who look back to the happy times when political dissent was quickly met with a
crushing response by authorities.
The more recent fuel shortage, starting in late August, has
been much more severe. At this point (Oct 29), there is fuel available in Port
au Prince but not outside of the capital, because there is only one fuel depot
that tanker trucks can fill up at, and the roads leading out of Port au Prince
to the north and south are blocked by angry young men.
Most protests in Haiti start out with paid leaders. For
political reasons, politicians (or anyone) will pay young, unemployed men to
block the highway, throw rocks and generally make trouble. The payment can be
cash, but it might just be clairin (Haitian moonshine). Other, unpaid young men
may join in the protest too. In this most recent instance, the road blockages
have gone on a LONG time. In desperation, people have been making the road trip
into the capital anyway, allowing money to be extracted from them by the young
men manning the road blocks along the way. Inevitably, the result is that many
of the angry, young, unemployed men have spied a business opportunity. The
result is widespread banditry along the highways. I’m really unhappy about this
trend.
How did things get so bad?
Ultimately, the biggest reason is universal corruption. Government
corruption got quite a bit worse under the previous president, and Jovenel
Moise was elected under the same party banner. The previous congressional
elections were held without eliminating candidates with a criminal history, so a
number of senators and deputies have a criminal past. The political struggle is
between different corrupt groups, all of which have no problem with sacrificing
the Haitian people to gain or maintain power. It’s much easier to steal if your
own people control the national treasury.
The Haitian constitution of 1986 contains a lot of checks
and balances. For example, the President must appoint a Prime Minister who runs
the day-to-day affairs of the country, but the Senate must ratify the
president’s nomination. Unless a senator is from the president’s own political
party, he/she will typically need to receive some sort of payment before voting
in favor. Strangely, a senator recently admitted to taking $100,000 for voting
in favor of Jovenel’s choice for prime minister without any apology whatsoever.
While checks and balances seem like a good idea on paper, or seem to work in
America’s own constitution, in Haiti’s case the result is complete gridlock.
Haiti has a large cohort of single, unemployed, angry young
men who feel like they have had their future stolen and they don’t know who to
blame. In addition to the lack of opportunities in the economy, matters are
made worse because Haiti is a (unofficially) polygamous society and, like other
polygamous societies around the world, it disenfranchises
young men. Two things have come along in the past 10 years to make this
group even more volatile: motorcycles and smart phones. Those two things
together mean that whatever perceived outrage might occur at a particular
moment can immediately spawn a group of angry rock throwers. They feed off one
another’s anger, and are keen to impress each other with acts of bravado. These
young men want desperately to create a life for themselves and to be part of
something that’s important. People in politics use this group as much as they
can to try to achieve their goals.
In the past, the Haitian army would have put a stop to civil
unrest. After the army was disbanded, the police took on that role. At the
moment, the police are very unhappy with their situation. I heard that they
haven’t been paid in the past 4 months, which may or may not be accurate. The
police actually joined protesters marching in Port au Prince on the weekend.
Even at the best of times, the police are a weak institution with a very
top-heavy command structure that discourages independent action. They don’t
have the capacity to deal with the present crisis.
What is going to happen next?
I don’t know. But I have an idea of what is NOT going to
happen.
There is not going to be a foreign intervention. For
decades, every time the situation in Haiti has gotten out of control there has
been a foreign intervention. Haitians from all social classes seem convinced
that we are about to have a foreign intervention again, but I strongly believe
the situation has changed. The U.S. is concerned with internal politics and the
current administration has little interest in third world countries. The recent
U.N. mission is widely considered a failure, so they aren’t coming back soon.
When protesters block roads and throw rocks, they are
largely playing to an international audience that isn’t looking. When they say
“we’re going to make the president leave” they really mean to say that they’re
going to make the USA decide to make him leave.
A common refrain I’m hearing is that things are going to get
better, because they can’t get worse. Of course, they can get a lot worse.
Things may get worse or they may get better, but it’s hard to see a way through
at this point. Perhaps secret meetings are going on even now and people are
figuring out a way through the mess, but I doubt it.
What should happen?
I don’t know. I don’t know if there should be another
foreign intervention. The previous interventions haven’t worked. They have been
implemented with the internal politics of foreign countries in mind, not the
good of the Haitian people. Some Haitians state that “the foreigners” should
either occupy Haiti altogether or leave it alone to figure out its own issues. Haiti’s
socio-political issues are very, very complex, but a dynamic that makes it
worse is that Haitians have come to expect solutions to come from abroad rather
than from within.
I don’t believe a new leader coming along is going to fix
everything. It’s wishful thinking. As far as I can see, there are no “good
guys”. Worse than that, if a “good guy” did come along, I don’t see how he/she
could make a difference while working within Haiti’s political system. There
are currently no consequences for a wide range of evil behaviors if you are
part of the political or elite social class. A well-intentioned leader, focused
on eliminating corruption, would likely find themselves assassinated.
I don’t know if it’s possible, but I would really like to
see parts of Haiti’s constitution rewritten to avoid the continual political
deadlock. I’ve heard discussion of a new constitution where the elected
president leads the country directly without a prime minister, the chamber of
deputies is eliminated, and the senate is reduced by half. It sounds like a
good idea to me. There could be fewer checks and balances, while creating ways
to ensure greater transparency. The idea of centralizing power to improve a
corrupt system may seem counterintuitive, but there needs to be someone in
charge for there to be accountability. With the current system, everyone blames
everyone else, the truth of the matter is elusive and accountability doesn’t
exist.
For my part, I’m going to keep doing the work at Clean Water for Haiti. We’ve found a way to help the Haitian people advance that doesn’t involve politics. We don’t get involved in politics. Our program is mainly for the poorest of the poor, people who wouldn’t dream of throwing a rock or blocking a highway. Even though things are unpleasant, we’ll wait out the violence, anti-foreigner sentiment and fuel lines. We’re helping people, and even though it doesn’t always feel like it, we’re helping to make Haiti a better place.
