Democracy looks like someone's mom

The ruined presidential palace in Port Au Prince

On Fonkoze’s website there is this tagline: Building the Economic Foundations for Democracy in Haiti.

Now often we run into taglines that sound awesome, but don’t really jive with an organization's activity. Fonkoze’s tagline is not aspirational. If anything I think it’s the best descriptor I’ve seen so far of what they do.

Democracy seems to be a notion that’s been on the tip of the tongue here for hundreds of years. Without going into Haitian history, let’s just say the people of Haiti are still waiting. And among the things that Haitian’s seem to want (health care, education, food security, to not live in tents) democracy is a real root desire.

Underneath the loans or the vitamins or the insurance… beyond any of the services Fonkoze provides, there is this subtle current of democracy. The women who come together in solidarity groups are really enacting a deep desire to participate, to be involved in something that isn’t corrupt or coercive. And it seems like with every new group of Fonkoze women there are five more Haitians for whom Democracy is a real living, breathing thing.

Now as far as I understand it, Haiti has a long way to go in terms of political democracy. And I assume the tagline refers to the fact that with greater economic possibilities, political democracy can be built. But I can't help smiling when I think of this growing tide of women who are meeting each day to practice democracy.

Today I'm back in Brooklyn, a day after my own country's democratic low point. What sticks with me most from our weeks in Haiti is this longing for opportunity, this resistance to hopelessness. When people have asked about our trip, I've had nothing adequate to say. But maybe it's just that we saw a little hope in a hopeless place... and it looked a lot like someone's mom.

It's all about the kids

The “Solid Women” blew me away with their generosity and poise.  It’s not easy to do with multiple cameras in your face.  

Even as we said “no no, we promise… this is the last shot!” they would smile and let us get what we needed.  We sat all five women down for an interview, and asked a long list of questions that were translated from English into Kreyol: What was your life like before joining Fonkoze?  What business do you run with your loan?  What are your hopes for the future?

The answers to the last question has stuck with me: What are your hopes for the future? I ask. Some of them mentioned briefly the hope of finishing the renovations on their homes or expanding their business, but the conversation always turned back to their children. I hope my children have better than I have had.  From school fees to food to emergency savings it was all linked to this pack of rascally kids who surrounded us as we worked.

 

If you’ve seen almost any of the videos we make, you might know that we have been lucky to meet kids all over the world with beautiful smiles and quick wits who are kind enough to contribute their magic to our work.  The kids we met in this village outside of Les Cayes were no different: polite, energetic, sassy, excited to see their pictures.  Knowing that Fonkoze's work trickles down to these small toothy grins is, in short, pretty awesome.

There is no Yellow Brick Road

I’m not sure what I thought micro-finance would be like. Maybe after a small loan a woman wakes up the next day and presto!, finds a thriving business that enables her to build a brand new house and send her kids to good schools. I suspect most of the criticism of micro-credit comes from notions like this.

The truth is there is no yellow brick road out of poverty. Instead we’ve watched as Fonkoze provides companion services with their financial ones. Not because it’s a nice thing to do, but because they know that each client is a real human being with many intertwined challenges.

We shot our group of Solid Women at education classes (a few of them can’t read, but decided to skip the literacy module in favor of the business module). There was a vitamin distribution, where children got essential vitamins. And even micro-insurance that helped women deal with the inevitable frailty of their businesses.

And that’s the beauty of Fonkoze… they’ve created a network where any services that might benefit clients can be implemented and integrated with micro-finance. Most importantly I think the women feel that Fonkoze isn’t just a piggy bank, I think they take their commitment to the program pretty seriously. One women we met was in her 60’s and just starting literacy classes. When we asked why she smiled and said simply “I didn’t want to die without knowing how to read.”

This is slow work… often without fireworks. But these women are moving.

Poverty is Misery

What an uplifiting title for this post.... I bet you're excited to read.

During our interviews (conducted in kreyol) the Solid Women use the word misery and the word poverty interchangeably. When you see the life of a Haitian peasant up close, the opportunities for misery peak out of every nook and cranny.

Lozelle told us that when the weather is bad, she “tells her children to patient.” When that doesn’t work, they eat leaves from a nearby tree. Mariette (the vivacious group leader) is a mover and shaker. But she couldn’t build her business with the loans from loan sharks that charged up to 20% interest. Perhaps most heartbreaking was Seden’s story. She told us, “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything.” In the end, misery can manifest itself in this state of paralysis. We’ve seen it often here in Haiti…. people just sitting on the side of a busy street. Waiting.

Fonkoze did not erase misery from these women’s lives. On the contrary each day brings a new struggle. But for each of them it seems the first time in their lives they’ve been provided with an active opportunity to change their circumstances. In fact it was the other four women who came to Seden and said “You can’t just sit around all day. Come on… get up, we’re going to join Fonkoze together.” And they did.

I keep coming back to the above picture of Seden. As we take photos/videos we're hoping to balance the beauty evident in the country, work and faces of these women, with the reality that misery exist in abundance here. There is something subtle about her look that works in this direction...there is a nuance I can't put into words.

Solid Women

These five women are what brought us to Haiti. They call themselves “Solid Women”, but individually (and less imposingly) they are Marriette, Seden, Lozelle, Antonia and Joseline.

When we first approached Fonkoze about helping to tell their story, we were eager to see what micro-finance looked and felt like up close. Most of us have been exposed to the idea of micro-finance in the form of Kiva or Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus, but broadly MF means financial services for the poor. It turns out that millions of poor people through out the world can activate their entrepreneurial potential when given access to small loans.

Our work at Good Eye Video has taken us through the wide and varied galaxy of approaches to solving social problems and micro-finance struck us as one of the most elegant and inspiring. At the same time I know MF has been criticized in recent years for either over stating its effect on poverty reduction or leaving many of the poorest untouched. Which story to tell?

I’d like to say we found some answers, but I think what we experienced was much more important. Over the course of a week we visited each of these Solid Women, in their homes as well as shooting their various business ventures. We learned lots… in the next few posts we’ll share some of our biggest takeaways.

The NEGES Foundation

(note: due to a combination of internet scarcity, lots of shooting and generally getting into the pace of Haitian life... we have a few blog posts going up a bit late)

As we've come to discover, Haiti and the US are intertwined in a deep and fascinating way. First of all 1.2 million Haitians are our fellow Americans. These diaspora communities exist in cities like Miami, New York and Boston and are responsible for almost half of the national income of Haiti (estimated $1.2-$1.5 billion annually in remittances)

Lucky for us, Brooklyn is full of Haitians.... and that's where our next project got its start. We ran into the NEGES foundation through friends at Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture. This small community development project is led by Yoleine Gateau Esposito and James Philemy, two Haitian Americans who wanted to help develop the educational opportunities in Léogâne, a coastal community about an hour outside of Port au Prince.

The 2010 earthquake destroyed nearly 90% of the structures in Léogâne (which was at the epicenter). This of course was heartbreaking for a small development project like NEGES, built up over the course of years with small donations and lavish amounts of personal time and commitment.

We only had a few hours to stop by NEGES, but we were given a tour in the power of resilience. The drive to Léogâne leaves no doubt about the impact of the quake... rubble and destruction still line the road. There are tent cities everywhere. Which makes it all the more remarkable that inside the gates of NEGES we found a primary school fashioned out of shipping containers ready to receive its first classes. We found a Women's center, community space and a beautiful little restaurant.

There are many arguments we've run into against this kind of small development. It isn't scalable, it's hard to get self sustaining, it can throw the local balance out of whack. But it's the human thing to do. It's the kind of project whose warmth, ambition and attention to detail are evident in all sort of ways. There is something beautiful about people who will build an educational center on a far off island. And then do it again.

We hope our video and pictures can help. If you want to, you can visit http://www.negesfoundation.org/Home.html every dollar makes a difference at a place like NEGES. We heard about many cool programs waiting to be enabled by funding.

A picture of Shada

I leave you with this picture of a slum called Shada. You can see how the awe-inspiring landscape is made even stranger with the addition of ad-hoc structures and a sea of trash. As one doctor said… we all know that places like this exist, but don’t really contemplate it fully until we are walking the alleys of broken concrete and sheet metal. As a storyteller, I’m conflicted about what role images of poverty this powerful should play. It think it’s easy to see this and think it’s a dream… some alternate reality where people live ten to a room next to open sewers. I often find myself falling into the same trap when my vision of a visit to a place is mainly through a viewfinder.

What made Shada real for me was playing an evolving game with a gaggle of joyful, shoeless kids who didn’t speak my language. We played catch with some piece of plastic junk, then wall ball, then bloody knuckles, then they taught me different high fives (the entire time obviously making fun of me in Kreyol). Trying to think of these rascals spending their childhood playing games on the banks of this inlet of trash is the only way Shada seems to exist in the same world I do. At our nice American style hotel I thought of this as the A/C hummed and I was clean from the shower and some part of me was longing to file this picture under D for dream.