Helping to fix Haiti

Editor's Note: This is the first part of a two-part series chronicling Gary Close's experiences during a mission trip to Haiti. The next part will appear in the Oct. 14 edition of the Culpeper News.

Haiti.

It is the smell that hits you first.

To start it is just the odor of dry unwashed bodies. Not the cloying odor a body gives off just after a good workout: steamy and wet. This is different. It is dry and dusty and suggests a lack of water. 

And then, underneath that, on the crowded roads of Port-au-Prince, the smell of urine and decay works its way to forefront of your senses. Not the decay of flesh but more the decay of wood and vegetable matter. And then underneath all of that there is a pervasive hint of wood smoke from the thousands of cook fires that dot the city.

Then there is the chaos - the crowds of people on the streets, on the shoulders of the road, in the ditches. In the trash choked riverbeds. Some walking. Some standing. Some sitting on the ground. Talking. Bartering. Staring at the traffic. Staring at nothing. Like one long organic string of misery, people line the road in crowds or groups of two or three from the airport terminal to the compound outside Port-au-Prince where we stayed.

Tap Taps weave in and out of the traffic. Brightly painted pickup trucks with benches and a roof over the bed, tap taps are the public transportation. Generally crammed with people the vehicles cough and gasp exhaust as they dodge cars, bicycles, children, pigs, chickens and goats on the throughfare.

Yellow double lines, when they exist, are ignored. Blind curves are an invitation to pass - oncoming traffic be damned. There are no traffic lights. And if any worked they would be ignored. Intersections appear to be a free-for-all. But somehow they work. Somehow traffic moves. Somehow no one dies…much.
Somehow Haiti works.

Haiti works in the sense that people still live there. Haiti does not thrive. It's estimated population of nine million grows at three percent per year. But it does not pulse with vigor or purpose or creativity. It is enough that people live and do not die. Haiti does not aspire to be more. It merely seems to exist: to squirm and quiver without hope in the harsh Caribbean sun.  It is a society that has crashed and burned so long ago that no one even remembers a time when things were different.

At best people remember the repressive and corrupt regime of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier or his equally ruthless son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Both of whom ruled through terror and killing. Papa died in 1971. Baby was forced into exile in 1986.  And yet, there was a time when things were different. Not a golden age. Slavery and war and rebellion are hardly that.

But there was a time when Haiti was rich - rich because of slave labor. Haiti at one time created one fourth of the revenue of the French Empire. But that was on the backs of an estimated 700,000 slaves at the time of the colony's 1791 rebellion from France.

Nevertheless there was a time when Haiti fed its own and exported food to others.

There was time when the mountains and valleys were fertile and covered with trees. There was a time when the rivers ran clear and clean. There was a time when the brilliant blue ocean shores of Haiti did not run brown with topsoil washed from the mountains. There was a time when children did not run naked and starving in the slums of Port-au-Prince. There was a time.

Fix my country
"Fix my county," the woman demanded.

I was walking the countryside in the Plain of Cul-de-sac. The dirt roads arrow between villages bordered by mostly fallow fields. I doubt white men had walked there in years- so I stood out.  Men, women and children would stare as I walked by.

Some shouted "blanc, blanc" meaning white, white.
She walked towards me on the track.   

"Fix my country," she shouted to me in Creole. It wasn't a plea for help. It wasn't threatening. It was insistent. Almost as if she was bewildered at her life, her country, her ragged clothes and she didn't know how to change any of it but knowing that it did need changing. Knowing that somehow it was not right to live in the squalor that was her life.

How do you fix a country-
Joe Van Wingerden thinks he knows how. A tall 55-year-old greenhouse operator and builder from Culpeper he is trying right now without government help. Without U.N. experts or American aid. Without the money from the innumerable aid agencies in America and Europe. And, most importantly from Van Wingerden's viewpoint, without handouts to the Haitians themselves.

On a 200-hundred acre compound just outside Port-au-Prince there is a place called Double Harvest and it is there that perhaps something truly revolutionary is happening.  It is there that maybe someone will actually fix a country.

Double Harvest is a sprawling complex on the alluvial plain called the Cul-de-sac east of the capital city. Huge deforested mountains loom over the flat land and buildings.  On the compound there is a school for 400-plus children. There is a new medical clinic with facilities for major medical procedures.

Work sheds and barns service the cultivated earth.  In the fields gangs of men till the land. Women sit in the shade and sift soil for greenhouse operations.

Everywhere there is purpose and noise and activity. The men in the field wear yellow shirts identifying them with the compound. The teachers wear ties and dresses. The children are in uniform. Van Wingerden and the various men he brings with him from the United States tear around the farm on machinery immersed in projects that make the clinic better, the irrigation system more efficient, the school more suited for education.
Counting students on any given day close to 600 people come to Double Harvest. All for a purpose. For Van Wingerden the purpose is to change a country. For the people it depends.

Some are there to change Haiti. The teachers are. The men in the fields I suspect are there because it is a job. The young children do not know Van Wingerdeen's hope. The older children are told. Some understand.

It costs almost $20,000 a month to run the compound.  It is almost entirely supported by various members of the extended Van Wingerdeen family and the people they get to pitch in from time to time.

Take for example the clinic. The patriarch of the family, Dutch immigrant Aart Van Wingerden, with a passion to help the poor and spread Christianity, set up agricultural based missions in Ethiopia, Indonesia and Haiti.  In 1990 the Van Wingerdeen children built the clinic as a birthday present for their father.

After 20 years the original building was out of date so they built a new one. The family subsidized the construction. Men and women from all over the United States worked on it. One man from New York spent two weeks hanging sheet rock. A plumber from Virginia went several times to plumb the clinic. A lawyer helped hang cabinets. A youth minister brought a gang of teenagers to paint. All volunteer work.

Joe, Tom and Nick Van Wingerden, all three successful independent businessmen, brothers and also sons of Aart Van Wingerden, worked as hard or harder than the volunteers swinging hammers, running wire, installing roofing, or you name it. All was done without government aid and sometimes with government resistance. Not active hostile resistance. Just the bureaucratic red tape and inefficiency that governments both Haitian and American seem to create.

School. Clinic. Farm. Three simple components. Yet like many pivotal concepts the spark comes from the combination.
"It is absolutely revolutionary," Art Spaulding said to me one September afternoon as we stood on the school grounds.

Spaulding is an American from New Jersey who has worked in missions on the west coast of Africa and pastured churches in the United States. His blue eyes ignite with excitement when he talks about Double Harvest.

"It is the most effective ministry I have seen," he said. " We are changing the way people think."

The executive summary reads:

1. The farm provides employment to the poorest of the poor in the area. Estimates of unemployment in Haiti start at 67 percent and go up.  The food they grow is sold to be eaten in Haiti. It is estimated at least 44 percent of country is malnourished. The growing techniques are meant to be seen and copied by other farmers so that food production rises. The crops, like Swiss chard, are meant to introduce new cheap nutritious food into the Haitian diet. The structure of work introduces a new way of ordering life beyond subsistence farming. And the farm provides clean water to the community. It is estimated that only 41 percent of the population has access to safe drinking water.

2. The clinic is open to all. Clean and orderly the clinic is now under consideration by the Haitian government as model for others to follow.  With two resident doctors and visiting medical teams from the United States minor medical procedures to major operations are performed regularly there. In Haiti average life expectancy is 53. The infant mortality rate is 71 deaths per thousand live births. The doctor to population ratio: 1:4,000.

3. The school. Open to all especially the poor. The school strives to provide a superior education. French, the language of the upper class and English the language of business and technology are mandatory subjects. Begun in 1997 the school carries grades Kindergarten to 12th grade. This year in a nationally administered exam the pass rate average for the country was 40 percent. Double Harvest's pass rate average was 100 percent. Included in the tuition, which is minimal even by Haitian standards, is a meal packed with nutrition and medical care at the clinic. Haitian illiteracy is estimated at 55 percent.

"Foreign Earth"
Foreign Earth. In Creole that is what the locals are beginning to call Double Harvest according to Cidelus Jean Disusibon, the Haitian headmaster of the school.  Not in a bad sense. More in the sense that they know something different is going on here.

They've seen clinics. They've seen missionaries. In nearby villages Gaman and Baron I saw empty food bags imprinted with the American flag. They've seen food donations and money donations and clothing donations. Too many donations according to Van Wingerden. Too much charity. Not enough productivity.

This is something new. This is a new way of thinking and doing in Haiti.

"I want to teach them to be productive," Van Wingerdeen explained to me. "I cannot fix Haiti. Only the Haitians can change Haiti. But they will not change Haiti unless they learn to be productive."

How do you fix a country- How do you teach a society to be productive-

Chad Texler is a 32-year-old engineer from Colorado. The trim, blond, American has spent the last half-year teaching computer skills at Double Harvest.

"I was up at the Montana. That's where the NGOs and aid agency heads hang out," he explained. NGO stands for non-government organization. The Montana is a hotel in Port-au-Prince that is good even by American standards.  "One guy there told me that this agency wanted to figure out how to stop the gangs. The thought was to teach technical skills as a preventative. That gang members, if they were working in shops and factories, would have a part of the infrastructure. Then they wouldn't join gangs."

He chuckled with a hint of sadness, "It cost them $5 million."
The result. Tools and machines were stolen from the school. Gangs continued.

"The real challenge is the integrity issue," he said.
In other words a culture that honors and rewards truth telling and honesty is needed. Not said but implied: a society that operates by rules and by law is a productive society.

"Education can change society," headmaster Dieusibon said, "but there must also be integrity."

The first day of school
 What would strike any American are the uniforms. Blue for the upper grades. Brown and yellow for the lower grades. The teachers are formal in ties and dresses. The children are excited but orderly.

Order. That is what stands out.

The buildings sit on a tree-shaded campus. The classrooms are without window glass so you can hear the teachers' voices float across the grass. The smaller children recite in unison. The stamp of feet rings out as kindergarteners move from bathroom to classroom. There is a murmur of women talking as lunch is prepared in kitchen. A rooster crows from neighboring Coupon. Beethoven's' Ode to Joy drifts from building to building as a music class practices recorder.

The rhythmic sweep of brush broom across gravel as cleaning women gather up the tree debris that fell during the night. The quiet consultations between teachers and administrators in the shade. The smell of something hot to eat wafting tree to tree.

And later, if you stand outside a classroom, the squeak of chalk on chalkboard.

It is foreign earth.  Immediately adjacent to the school is Coupon. A field hand-work camp originally, it has now become home to about 1,500 people. All squatters on an absentee landowner's corner of field. But that does not begin to convey the utter chaos, the utter poverty, and the utter hopelessness that is Coupon. Coupon is separated from the school by a wall. And, more importantly, by a world-view that expects order and honesty and intellectual questing and joy. 

And joy. I noticed one thing after several days at the school. People of all ages stood and looked over the wall, peered through the bars of iron, to see this different world. Almost no one looked out to the dirt and mud of Coupon.

"Learning and food go together here," Dieusibon told me. "We have a saying in Haiti:  'an empty stomach cannot hear.'"
Food.  So basic. Yet in a society so broken that children often run naked in the sun, bellies distended, hair red from malnutrition, it is a foundation that cannot be neglected.

"We try to feed them early," Spaulding told me. "We have found that nutritional deficiencies actually impede their ability to learn."

So children who come to school early in life are assured of at least one good meal a day. And that one thing can make a huge difference.

"I see a difference," Spaulding said, between those who have attended from a young age and those who did not.

Texler agrees but for different reasons. "There is more integrity."

More understanding of rules. More expectation of truth. Less tolerance for theft.

"Our school works on three things," Dieusibon said to me while sitting in his office. He unfolded three fingers and touched each to emphasize what he was saying. "Honor. Academe. Physic."

Gary L. Close has visited Haiti twice. He is the Commonwealth's Attorney for Culpeper County.