Aid Progress or Performance Aid in Haiti?

Performing Progress in Haiti, Aloral

by Mark Schuller - Haitian Times

After I return from a trip to Haiti, I am often asked, “How are things in Haiti now?” Last week I returned to Haiti, and on this trip, it’s particularly difficult to respond.

Camp Karade, tucked away in hills of Port-au-Prince / Mark Schuller

Particularly when you get off the plane, there are signs of progress. The airport has been renovated. The roads around Port-au-Prince are being repaired.

For those in bright t-shirts on their way to the provinces, travel times have been considerably reduced. Stopping en route in a guarded, air conditioned restaurant or supermarket offers the appearance of relative affluence with customers stopping to inspect shelves full of packaged imported food. If one has the funds, a private vehicle and the inclination to go to a night club or restaurant in the affluent Pétion-ville, the trip home is safer, since large parts of Route de Delmas — a main thoroughfare — that now has solar lighting.

Many new light posts are adorned with pink posters alternating in French and Creole celebrating Haitian President Michel Martelly’s two years in office. One in particular asks “who has done better in the past 25 years?”

Before his career in politics, Martelly was a performer, known as “Sweet Micky,” (in)famous for his ribald lyrics and stage antics, including dropping his pants.

Now, as head of state, he is performing progress (as noted anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse puts it), most recently to new Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last Tuesday. Port-au-Prince was all decked out: the route from the airport was adorned with Venezuelan flags and signs saying Bienvenidos y muchas gracias. These new signs sit next to ubiquitous banners that begin with pouvwa pèp la (the power of the people) has accomplished this or that thing: increasing the number of children in school, “helping poor for the first time,” repairing the airport, etc. often punctuated with the phrase tèt kale, Martelly’s slogan, a play on words noting his bald head but also meaning no bull.

The performance appears to be working, with positive reviews from official development agencies, NGOs, foreign governments, mission groups, many in the Diaspora, middle class and even some within Haiti’s poor majority, like my neighbor who has a job as a driver for the government.

Mark Schuller is assistant professor of Anthropology and NGO Leadership Development at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. He is the author of Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs and co-editor of three volumes, including Tectonic Shifts: Haiti Since the Earthquake.

[For complete article, please see Haitian Times here.]