‘Immersion to Haiti’ offered during Holy Week

 






by Paul Amrhein
special to The Catholic Virginian

Holy Week 2012 is the time for the next Immersion Retreat in Haiti.


Currently there are over 60 parishes with twinning relationships in Haiti. Some are with other parishes, others with schools or orphanages and still others with organizations.

Relationships between the Diocese of Richmond and Haiti are varied and rich and groups from Virginia are constantly traveling to Haiti.

So what is a diocesan immersion retreat about and who should go on one?

The answer to the latter part of this question is easy enough — any adult interested in furthering their relationship with God is welcome to join this pilgrimage to Haiti. Whether you have been to Haiti a dozen times or never, you will learn about Haiti and listen to God speak to you through the people and places of Haiti.

Indeed, it will be a pilgrimage. We are not going to fix or build, we are going to learn, pray and be transformed. While it is true that so many of our relationships with Haiti have to do with charity, this is about becoming more aware of what Haiti has to offer us.

Each person will likely experience Haiti differently, but what we will see are people of faith who know from their poverty a radical dependence on God. We all, of course, have this radical dependence on God, but we have an illusion of providing for ourselves and earning what we have. It is such a strong illusion that we are most often not aware of it until we can get out of our comfort zone.

This pilgrimage will occur at the end of our Lenten journey where we are asked by our faith to turn away from sin and turn toward God — this is conversion pure and simple.

Our Holy Week pilgrimage will be about conversion, removing the scales from our eyes and deepening our relationship with God. It will be about the movement from charity to the justice God calls us to.

The diocesan immersion trips to Haiti are designed for individuals to be immersed into Haiti and give them an opportunity to learn about its history, culture, economics, politics and religion.

Taking this trip to Haiti is not a tourist visit, but truly it is a pilgrimage. It is the carving out in our lives a holy space and time to be open to the gifts of Haiti and the transformation of God.

Haiti offers the unique possibility for this to happen. In Haiti we, who live and only know the developed westernized world, gain a glimpse of what 80 percent of the world’s people experience every day.
When we humble ourselves and allow ourselves to be vulnerable to this experience and the people, God provides us with amazing change. We begin to see how very interconnected we are with the world and how the developing world has much to offer us.

We come to learn that the future of our world and humanity lies in a large extent to our willingness to build bridges, heal the wounds of the past and create relationships which enable us to work together toward a common fate. Haiti offers us this gift of life.

Please consider taking a pilgrimage to Haiti this year. Applications and deposits must be received by February 1, 2012. 

Contact Paul Amrhein at paul@saintbridgetchurch.org, 804-282-9511 x311;
Diane Atkins at atkins@churchredeemer.org, 804-746-4911 Ext. 2222, or
Carrie at estoncarrie@hotmail.com, 757-761-0504
for more information and for an application.

Haiti Can Be Rich Again

Op-Ed Contributors

 

By LAURENT DUBOIS and DEBORAH JENSON
Published: January 8, 2012 

 HAITI wasn’t always the “poorest nation in the Western hemisphere,” though it’s almost impossible to read about the country today without coming across that phrase. In the two years since the earthquake that devastated it, Haiti has experienced political conflict and its first ever cholera epidemic; hundreds of thousands of the displaced are still living in makeshift tents strewn like dusty flags by the sides of highways. It is easy to forget that, for most of the 19th century, Haiti was a site of agricultural innovation, productivity and economic success. 

 In the wake of the earthquake, many have talked about the need to lay foundations for a better future. To do that, Haiti should look to the past, and the system of small farms and the decentralized economy that once provided Haitians with dignity, autonomy and wealth.

The slave revolution that ended with Haiti’s creation in 1804 led to what the sociologist Jean Casimir dubbed a “counter-plantation” system. As slaves, the islanders had harvested and processed sugar cane, but fed themselves by cultivating their own tiny gardens, for which they developed sophisticated techniques of inter-cropping — a kind of sustainable agriculture that involved planting a variety of crops close together. Once free, Haitians drew on that knowledge to raise livestock and grow fruits, root vegetables and even coffee for export to the global market. In establishing their own small farms, they forestalled any possibility of a return to the large plantations that had defined the days of slavery.

This system of agricultural self-reliance provided a better quality of life than that of African descendants anywhere else in the Americas. The country attracted many immigrants, including thousands of African-Americans. And though the United States government didn’t officially recognize Haiti until 1862, American businessmen eagerly traded with the island nation.

Haiti’s economy was decentralized, organized around 11 largely autonomous regions, each with its own port. There was plenty of conflict in the country, largely over control of the central government, and heavy taxes on exports, as well as the power of foreign merchants, sapped the profits of farmers. Yet the regional economies thrived, and a decentralized political and military system assured many Haitians a great deal of control over their destiny.

In the 20th century, however, this system came under increasing pressure. Outsiders, along with many in the Haitian elite, saw small farms as a barrier to progress. When the United States occupied Haiti, from 1915 to 1934, it worked to centralize the economy in Port-au-Prince. It pushed through a re-writing of the Haitian Constitution to allow foreigners to own land, which the country’s founders had banned for fear of re-enslavement, and worked to replace small farms with large plantations owned by foreign corporations. Many farmers saw their land expropriated.

In the teens, when the countryside erupted in a revolt against the occupation and the use of forced labor to build roads, the United States created a newly centralized gendarmerie to suppress the insurrection. Violence and economic decline in the countryside forced many Haitians to flee to the cities or to plantations in neighboring Cuba and the Dominican Republic. In the years since, the countryside has continued to experience environmental and economic degradation as well as exodus, while the big cities, especially Port-au-Prince, have become overcrowded. Today, about half of Haiti’s food is imported.

The flow of ideas and money to Haiti that followed the earthquake provides an opportunity to restore the system of small farms that was a pillar of Haitian society after independence. Michel Martelly, Haiti’s new president, has talked of the need to decentralize the economy, and nongovernmental organizations have begun projects to help farmers. But far more can be done.

Municipal governments should construct properly equipped marketplaces for the women who sell rural produce. The Haitian state should develop trade policies aimed at protecting the agricultural sector, and take the lead in fixing roads and ports, confronting deforestation and improving systems of water management. Foreign organizations working in the country can help simply by making it a policy to buy food and other goods from local producers.

The return on the investment in the rural economy would be self-reliance, the alleviation of dangerous overcrowding in cities and, most important, a path toward ending Haiti’s now chronic problems of malnutrition and food insecurity. As Haitians look to rebuild in 2012, the best blueprints will come from their own proud and vibrant history.

Laurent Dubois, the author of “Haiti: The Aftershocks of History,” and Deborah Jenson, the author of “Beyond the Slave Narrative,” are co-directors of the Haiti Humanities Laboratory at Duke.

Haiti's Slow Recovery

New York Times

Editorial
Published: January 8, 2012

The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission was one of Haiti’s great hopes after the earthquake, a Haitian-led international partnership that would finally summon the money, will and organizational intelligence to build the country back better than before. But if you visit the commission’s Web site today, on the eve of the second anniversary of the Jan. 12 disaster, this is what you see:

“Please kindly note that the mandate of the I.H.R.C. expired on October 21, 2011. Pending a decision of the Haitian Parliament regarding the future of the institution, a team is currently dealing with day-to-day business. The (re)submission of project proposals remains closed until further notice.”

President Michel Martelly has so far failed to get Parliament’s approval to extend the mandate.

Led by former President Bill Clinton and Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s former prime minister, the commission was given an 18-month mission to oversee an ambitious array of rebuilding projects. It took too long to get organized and former President René Préval was more of a hindrance than a partner. A list of approved projects fills 256 pages, though few are finished or fully financed.

Still, Haitians have seen real progress in the last two years. About half of the 10 million cubic feet of quake debris has been removed from Port-au-Prince and other areas. More people have access to clean water in the capital than before the quake. With investment from a Korean garment maker, an industrial park is being built in the northeast, with the promise of 20,000 jobs.

The commission still has a critical role to play, organizing projects, bolstering accountability and transparency, and working to give international donors the confidence to follow through on their pledges. Only about half of the $4.6 billion promised for 2010 and 2011 has been received and spent.

A United Nations analysis showed that while many nations have been generous, particularly the United States, Brazil, Canada, Spain and France, almost all the money has gone to nongovernmental organizations and private contractors. To build Haitian capacity, that will have to change, and the commission can help — by giving guidance to Haiti’s ministries and monitoring their efforts.

President Martelly is a more engaged leader than his predecessor. In the fall, he announced a plan to house 30,000 residents of six tent cities with rental subsidies and new construction. More than a half-million Haitians remain in camps and it is not clear if he will take on powerful landowners to free up the land needed for rebuilding. He needs to abandon his focus on building an army. What Haiti needs is a professional, accountable police force.

Other governments and institutions are pressing on. Last month the World Bank approved a $255 million plan to build houses, train teachers and feed schoolchildren. The grant includes $50 million in agricultural projects. A nongovernmental organization, Partners in Health, plans to open a teaching hospital in the countryside. The Inter-American Development Bank has gathered about $150 million in a five-year, $500 million plan that will build and repair hundreds of schools and train thousands of teachers to bring free public education to all Haitian schoolchildren.

The Haitian government badly needs a national strategy for creating permanent housing and jobs, to resettle people out of Port-au-Prince. The coming year should be one in which Haitians begin to take control of their rebuilding, with continued outside help.