konbit

I don't know if this will get seen, but will give it a shot. My parents are Canadian, but I grew up in Haiti. They moved there to help out in the 80s but not as part of any NGO or company, just on their own. When my mom first moved there she lived in a tiny little room rented from a house with no furniture and barely enough to live on. My parents were very determined that I grow up as a Haitian culturally, I went to Haitian schools (most ex-pats would go to Americanized schools) I spent time in my neighbourhood with the kids there, not going to special ex-pat hangout spots or summer camps. I am culturally a Haitian and associate with Haiti more than any other culture. My mother has worked since with many aid organizations and now runs her own small scale, grass-roots, Haitian NGO focused on teacher training. I've seen everything there is to see with NGO's and their workers. From this perspective I've felt it's a shame that aid workers and ex-pats don't get enough exposure to Haitians. They see the worst because they interact with people who are in dire situations or deal with corrupt officials. Whereas there is so much joy and beauty there, and growing up there I don't have any familiarity with most of the situations OP has talked about (not that he's been bad mouthing Haiti or that these things don't exist, just that there's a dark side in any country, I'm sure aid/social workers in the US/Canada might have many similar stories, though probably not as publicly visible as in Haiti). So a question to OP is, do you think it would be beneficial to be more exposed to Haitian community life? Would it help with the depression and shock that many of you feel?

TL;DR; Grew up in Haiti as Haitian, parents involved in NGOs. I feel it would benefit NGO workers to be more involved in Haitian life, than just helping in the emergencies.

My background: I grew up in Haiti (1986 - 2004) and my family has been and continues to be very involved in grass roots NGOs focused on education. My mom still runs an organization there.

The situation with language is quite complex and statistics can make it a bit hard to understand. I write and speak Kreyòl and French fluently and I've met many Haitians who do as well, and I think 5% is probably not far from the truth. But I'd say it's measured based on full proficiency. However, I've never met a Haitian who couldn't use French functionally. And I don't mean speaking Kreyòl and trying to piece together the meaning, but actually speaking French. I think most people in Haiti could get by.

The issue is complex because Haiti didn't only inherit the French language, but many aspects of its culture; most prominently strong classism which was intensified by the history of slavery in the country. Just as it once was in France, today in Haiti language is used to identify those who aren't of the elite because they haven't had the opportunity to learn this absurdly complicated language. I have many friends and contacts in many circles in Haiti, there are for sure good and bad all over, but the higher class of Haiti don't seem to feel responsible for the country they live in, they make huge wealth off the work of the lower classes, yet they generally pay a few dollars a day for that work, then pay off politicians to keep the minimum wage absurdly low, and even have managed to get certain industries EXEMPT from minimum wage! You'd think that at least with all that wealth their taxes would go to the government and promote some social development programs, but most of them pay off government officials to avoid paying most of the taxes they owe. And the taxes the government does collect generally get slowly chipped away by greedy corrupt officials.

So there aren't many resources to help someone, even a very motivated someone, to better their situation, get educated and get themselves out of poverty. But even if someone were very clever, self-taught, motivated, ambitious and just pushed really hard from the very first years of their schooling, as soon as they started to make connections, contacts and potentially life-changing friendships, they would be discovered because their french would sound off, or they'd conjugate some verbs incorrectly. This is when the classism would kick in, they might still get offered a job as a driver, or to manage the servants at someone's house. But they'd never be considered as a business partner, or hired to manage people at a bank. And there is no practical reason, even if only 5% of Haitians speak french, 100% speak Kreyòl, the barrier is artificial. The elite have used french as the mote to their palace, they manage the vast majority of the wealth of the country and they control the government so that the cheap labour doesn't realize they're just as human as the fluent french speakers and should be allowed to have fair compensation for their work.

TL;DR: There are many forces in Haiti that keep the poor where they are, and language is purposefully used as a tool to maintain the balance of wealth and power. If Haiti could find solidarity and brotherhood between the classes, the language issues would quickly fade away.