THE GREAT DEBATE: PATRON OR PARTNER

Some members of the FHC Haiti 2013 team have published significant personal memories about the trip and its impact on their lives.  Those can be seen in this previous post of videos.  Here now is mine.

It was November 1, a national holiday in Haiti, and that morning as I was standing on the road in front of the headquarters of Haiti Outreach in Pignon waiting for my ride, a young man approached and introduced himself.  We chatted briefly in Kreyol until he suggested we move under the shade of a tree and switch to English.  He had something serious to talk about.

My new friend said he and his father, a minister, ran a school for poor children in their church.  He showed me pictures of youngsters and of his family.  He then proposed that I assist their work with money for food for the children at the school.  His presentation was excellent, gracious and direct, qualities I could appreciate as a professional grant supplicant.  I was also humbled by the fact that he was asking for my help in my language while I could not conduct a substantive conversation in either of the two languages he commanded.

I responded to his request that I had neither institutional nor personal resources at my disposal to provide for more than a meal or two for a group of children.  Then I took the occasion to ask what the school could do to enable the children to be fed with resources of their own making, a more permanent solution.  After all, I asked, is it not better to acquire the skill of fishing than to depend on the charity of others to get one's fish day by day?

His reply to me was quick and sure.  It is not possible, he said, for starving people to learn how to fish or learn anything.  One must survive first before one can develop capacities for future benefit. The children he was pleading for needed to be fed now or they would starve.  This was indeed a strong response to my question.  Of course, in the circumstances I had no way to verify how close the children were to starving; but in rural Haiti one can see malnourishment on all sides, even in the countryside where food is grown and sold.  Since I had no intention of giving him money, asking for verification of the need and assurances of his management and accountability was impudent.

I sought instead to ask this eloquent and capable supplicant what kind of help would benefit Haiti the most, charity which satisfied the need of a moment or partnership in developing permanent capacity for healthy living within Haiti.  Haiti, I suggested, would remain poor and dependent on outsiders until it developed the capacity to meet its most critical health and safety needs.  I pointed to the nearby Haiti Outreach offices with its trucks and equipment, and asked if helping villages obtain and manage their own safe drinking water was not making permanent improvements in the lives of people.

My young friend's response was disheartening.  He asserted that developing community owned and managed clean water sources was a hustle that only helped those who were on the organization's payroll. Americans who sent their money for this work were not helping Haiti's most needy, he said, but were instead enriching and enhancing only those who installed wells.  This view was surely not that of the people across Haiti who are now getting clean water daily from a community owned and managed well or those community leaders I saw while I was there working to build their skills and capacities for managing a well of their own.  I read the reports and saw for myself what community development for living water means in Haiti where half the population does not have it.

We had come to a point in our debate where we could only make variations on our respective themes.  He was seeking an immediate grant of cash and my trust that it would be managed and used responsibly for the intended beneficiaries.  I was advocating an investment in personal and community capacity building so that all those who benefited would take responsibility for sustaining and renewing what was used.  We did not resolve our differences before we parted.  I could not and would not accept the role of patron of one or two feasts for his kids and he could not and would not accept the idea of a partnership aimed at reducing the dependence of Haitians on foreign resources.

It is possible that neither of our positions in this debate provide a practical solution for chronic national poverty. He is not wrong to say that people have to eat to live and develop.  I, on the other hand, don't see how people depending on begging alone can count on surviving.  There needs to be a way to participate with communities in Haiti to advance their health, stability and wellbeing; participating not as patrons and beneficiaries, but collaborating as partners.  I can't say that I know yet what that means for me as an individual.  I am fairly sure that people in Haiti who would depend on me for money are in deep trouble.  But is there something else that I have to offer as a partner in community?  What resources can I offer?  Am I open to receiving help in this partnership?

The debate along the road in Pignon is not over for me.  For now, though, I am inclined to be a partner more than a patron.  I can seek for justice with Haitians who see so little of it; I can remember that mercy is something both to give and to seek; and I can trust that, whether I realize it or not, something good will eventually come of my efforts.   I'll need to keep my eyes open for a vision.

--kjl