Tiba, sometimes I wish that I could meet some of the people on...

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Reply to Msg 12966

Tiba, sometimes I wish that I could meet some of the people on this blog in person.You and Larry Mulligan are certainly worth knowing (and a few other bloggers who have not been online lately).

People who actually seem to have a clue, and who genuinely care. In Haiti that's a rare breed.

As you know from many of my previous post, although I live in the US, as a professor I have lots of flexibility in my schedule; so I am in Haiti every year and sometimes twice or three times a year. I mentioned before how I am trying, at a personal level, to make a difference, by doing various things down there (I wont go into it again here).

My mother is also very involve (unlike most of her friends who do nothing but gossip and spend money while the people starve).

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that if people like us could find a way to get together, I think we would become a tremendous force for progressive action in Haiti.

It is sad that, thanks to this blog, we have gotten to know each other, but also because it is a blog we don't really have a way of meeting in person.

As for what you said about there not being many people like Paul Farmer in Haiti, you have to remember that extreme poverty breeds extreme selfishness.

When resources are scarce, it is a normal animal/human condition to become overly aggressive about the limited resources.

In Haiti, the bulk of the population is fighting for very few resources.

The other big group of Haitians still living in Haiti are those who have money but are parasites and live of those who are fighting for the few resources.

All of my study of this group shows that most of them are of the newly rich group.

Members of that social class, regardless of what country you find them, tend to be even more vicious than the ones from below.

The reason is that at some subconscious level their greatest desire is to distinguish themselves from the struggling masses.

True elites don't usually go around trying to prove that they are of the upper class, as this fact had already been established by their ancestors.

This newly rich group (newly rich means that the person is only first to third generation member of an upper class group) will do everything in their power to protect their new status in the society.

They will not mix with people from the lower social group because, 1) they see them as constant reminders of who they used to be, 2) their status is so relatively new that they are afraid that helping the masses to move up the social hierarchy is a threat to their own social wealth, so instead of helping the masses they will do everything they can to suppress them. There are two more groups of people in Haiti; they are much smaller groups, but they are in fact the two groups that could make a difference.

One is the group with real elites.

Those are the people who have both old money and status.

They tend to be very well educated and have an amazing sense of "nation." There are very few of these people left in Haiti.

In that group, you sometimes get heroes who have died for Haiti, but by far most of them seem to be resigned, as if nothing can be done. The last group is the best group.

It is usually the group that is the backbone of every country.

If you read history, the revolutionary leaders from most nations came from that social group.

It is the upper middle class.

This is the social group where you get your intellectuals (this does not necessarily mean a person who went to college, it can mean just a person who reads a lot and is open to discussion).

They are different from the very wealthy because their money is not enough to have separated them from the nation's realities, but they are financially OK enough not to be part of the class that is fighting for every scrap.

The problem is that most of Haiti's upper middle class group is in other countries.

There are a few left in Haiti, but they are two few to actually mobilize and make a difference.

There is one more group; the nonHaitian-Haitians.

It is those people like the Paul Farmers of the world, who go to Haiti and try to make a difference.

In Haitian history there has always been nonHaitian-Haitians who give their all to Haiti.

At an individual level, we can say thank you to them. However, at a national level they are not able to make a difference.

It is not that their work is not making a difference, it is that it is too localize.

We can be grateful to them and like them, but they cannot make enough of a dent in the national landscape to really matter.

Unless they can mobilize one of the upper social groups to help them, their work remains permanently localized.

What would be nice would be to have the few Haitians like us get together with the few nonHaitian-Haitians.

As a team, we could find a way to do something more nationally substantive.

However, the nonHaitian-Haitians and the people like us tend to do our own little thing to help the nation.

That is fine and all, but the fact is that it does not solve the national problems.

Hence, the reason I wish we could all meet.

Linda, February 4 2009, 11:00 AM

Topic: Is Haiti's Current Government Ready?

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There's nothing wrong with being Jewish, but not being one is OK too. I use the word "cio" or "sayonara" sometimes. I... read more >
Linda, 3-Feb-09 1:37 pm
Linda, As you know, Paul Farmer is a Harvard M.D. graduate who could have made a lot of money practicing medicine in... read more >
Tiba, 3-Feb-09 7:26 pm
Tiba, sometimes I wish that I could meet some of the people on this blog in person.You and Larry Mulligan are... read more >
Linda, 4-Feb-09 11:00 am
Linda, I say "Amen e Insiswatil" for that well written piece. It is unfortunate that this blog doesn't offer a... read more >
Tiba, 4-Feb-09 6:19 pm
Hey! Small world...I use to live upstate New York when I was a teenager. We had a house on ten acres of land in... read more >
Linda, 4-Feb-09 8:44 pm
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