LETTER TO THE CONSTITUENTS
For MCC Ontario Annual Meeting, November 2007

Our favorite person to talk to Haiti is a man named Ari. He was (and still is) a pro-democracy activist that MCC helped hide during the devastating military coup from 1991 to 1994. Today, he works to connect North Americans with Haiti and Haitian culture. He is one of those people who exudes wisdom with each word he speaks. In Creole, they would say, he has anpil bet nan tet li, or many animals in is head. During one eye-opening conversation, he said his big wish for Haiti would be to have all North Americans to visit Haiti, but only to sit, and listen, and then leave. That is, many of the problems of the developing world could be solved if we in North America (and Europe) would simply listen to the strong voices of people living in these “poor” countries and share that voice with our family, friends, and neighbors. I have kind of adopted that as my motto for my time in Haiti with MCC: I will sit, listen, and eventually leave.

My wife Marylynn and I are nearing the one-year mark of our MCC assignment and it still feels like we just arrived yesterday. There is just so much sitting and listening to be done! Haiti is a country that is full of history- perhaps too much history for its own good. Haiti exists because of the slave trade. Forced labor made Haiti the richest colony in world in the late 1700s, riches that were sent back to France. In 1802, Haiti became the second republic in the Americas (after the United States), and the only example of a successful slave revolution in the world. However, having former slaves running their own country was a massive threat to the rest of the slave-owning world. For the past 200 years Haiti has demonized as a pariah state, which has resulted in a US military occupation, brutal dictators, unfair trade agreements, and prejudice immigration policies. All this has left Haiti with the oft quoted title of “Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere”- a title that continues to strip away the dignity and richness of the life that we witness in Haiti.

The poverty, which I would rather call economic poverty, is easily noticeable. Our white faces mean that one simple stroll down the street will attract at least three people asking for money. There were some boys close to our apartment who would ask for money everyday. Each day I responded, “Pa gen anyen,” or “I don’t have anything,” which of course was a lie. Then one day, one of the boys called for me from across the street. When I looked at him, he said, “Let me guess, you don’t have anything?!” I suddenly felt uneasy. I called him over and asked his name, and he asked for mine. I said one time every month, if he asks, I would give him a couple Haitian dollars, but any other time he should feel free to just come talk with me. Now there is rarely a day goes by that I don’t see Jean Eddy, and spend a few minutes chatting with him. Sometimes I think a good MCC job description title would be, “Sitting and Talking Technician.”

Meanwhile, our official job has been challenging. When people ask what we do here in Haiti, it always takes some time to gather my thoughts and remember what we are actually doing here. Our position is called Policy Analysts and Advocacy Workers (or something like that). Our days are often full of meetings, doing research, or responding to emails. Recently, we have helped to organize a campaign to block a free trade agreement being negotiated between the European Union and African, Pacific, and Caribbean countries. Also, we have started teaching a social justice course at a church leadership training school with one of our partner organizations, and we continue to host visitors to Haiti. I don’t know if this will make sense, but it kind of feels like we are always working, and, at the same time, never working. Perhaps that what working for MCC should feel like?

The work is often discouraging as Haiti’s problems are complex and overwhelming. Trying to communicate these problems back to our families, let alone our constituents, involves a lengthy monologue convoluted with an assortment of development clichés and marco-economic myths until we bore everyone, including ourselves, to death. Here, let me give you a brief example:

Over 50% of the Haitian population lives on less then a dollar a day. While starvation is currently not a grave concern, malnutrition is widespread and a lack of sufficient healthcare leaves the life expectancy of Haitians at 57 years. Our logical response to the problem, morally and biblically, is to send food and feed those who hungry, and send cloths to cloth the naked. Problems arise, however, when the food we send undercuts the selling price of the local farmer trying to make a living and the cloths we send suddenly take away the business of the local tailoring industry. Now having lost their jobs, the farmers and tailors will need food and cloths provided for them. On the international level these problems are magnified. We have talked to several Haitians who have said in the mid 1980s, rice was still a special meal, usually eaten for their Sunday dinner. Their eating habits were far more diversified relying more on vegetables, plantains, as well as locally raised pig, goat, and chicken. However, in order to receive international aid from the World Bank and International Monetary fund, Haiti was pressured to reduce their tariffs on imported products, particularly rice. Throughout the 1990s tariffs were reduced from 35% to 3%, the lowest in the region. Suddenly rice from the United States (produced with heavy machinery, acres upon acres of land, fertilizers, and government subsidies) began to pour into Haiti, undercutting the price of locally produced rice by as much as five times. No longer able to sustain themselves, farmers and their family move to the urban centers, only to amplify the population in the slums, and put more of a strain on the already poor quality of education and healthcare. In order to improve their education and healthcare, the Haitian government needs to rely on more international donors who make more demands… and the cycle continues.

Are you still with me? Trying to explain what we as North Americans can do to help remedy these problems is even more difficult. But I think I have found a simple answer: Remember to be Mennonites.

We have an expatriate friend here in Haiti who has spent over two decades in the country and has really become disillusioned with how his church and his government have interfered in the “development” of Haiti. One time, sitting on his rickety wooden balcony overlooking the Cul-de-Sac plains where Haitian slaves once produced unimaginable riches for their French colonists, he said, “You know, I think the Mennonites were on the right track.” He explained that there is something to be said for a group of people who want to be distinguished as Christians by separating themselves from the norms of society- people who follow the example of Jesus by living in this world, but not of this world. I don’t mean to restart theological debates concerning what kind of cloths we wear or what color of car we drive, but rather reconnect with the idea that living like Jesus means living against the grain of the world.

Let me give you an example: You can see fried chicken on just about any street in Port-au-Prince. Unfortunately all of it is imported from the United States. Chicken in the grocery stores is shrink-wrapped in the US or the Dominican Republic. The only chicken that appears to be Haitian is the chicken that is squawking in the street market. Therefore, we decided to reconnect with our Mennonite roots, and take a stand against this globalized food market. Marylynn went to the market, bought some live chickens, and we had a Haitian MCCer teach us the lost art of slaughtering a chicken. What kind of development workers are we, we thought, when we don’t even know how to prepare chicken? Canadian thanksgiving was wonderful.

Yet, on a day-to-day basis, it is not easy to disengage from the world system, or as biblical scholar Walter Wink would say, the Domination System. We have to think hard about the kind of lifestyle we are living, and constantly ask ourselves if we are following the norms of the world, or the path of Jesus. As Mennonites, this should be our strength. This should be what we can really offer the world, whether we are in Ontario or Haiti. We just need to keep on being Mennonites.

Peace and Blessings,

Joshua (and Marylynn) Steckley
MCC Haiti