Travel Chronicles A Diaspora in Haiti

In Haiti, the impact of the Diaspora is significant and crucial. Over time, millions of Haitian nationals have come to financially depend on family, friends, and support organizations abroad for what is euphemistically called “remittances,” at times more than two billion dollars a year.

The pervasive and profoundly chronic utilitarian and financial need from the in-country receivers, the intense psychological feeling, strong unfulfilled self-validation, and deep remembrances from the givers abroad create between them a solid and long-term relational attachment that ultimately contributes to forging the identity of the Diaspora. This exchange and reciprocity are, in a way, the expression of a gift and a counter-gift.

This relationship has profound consequences over the emergence of Haitians’ capacities to engage in endogenous development. The Diaspora is attuned to this charity-versus-development problem, i.e., development-without-charity? or development-plus-charity? or how to make the transition from charity to development? In so many words, by what steps and conditions could eleven million Haitian nationals come out of their “caves?” By what phases could the Diaspora focus and coordinate for development rather than for survival?

This anthology of disaster dispatches, guides, and allegories demonstrates the fine points of Diaspora strategy-making. The reality herein constantly disconcerts the author and his colleagues who, despite their broad knowledge of the land and the people of Haiti, discover and come to grips with more and more of the country’s worst-kept secrets. The reader will encounter this in a stroll through “Bolivia 1” or the sight of someone desperately eating a spaghetti sandwich, or the paralyzing fear, superstition, and corrupt social control that shuts doors to the twenty-first century. As always, overcoming paralysis – whether personal or national – requires courage, new thinking, and lots of humility.