Haitian Dreams

The brightly painted wooden booths selling lottery tickets, the proprietors’ hopes preying on hope – “Bank Lotto, New York.” The rubble by the side of the sides of the streets – old tires, trash, ragged chunks of concrete, skeletons of trucks and cars stripped clean as bones in a desert. Men sitting with shotguns on their knees outside every gas station. Dying men and women begging.

Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains (2011)

Don’t let these colourful, corrugated iron sheds fool you. These are not miniature banks to facilitate the Haitian economy or micro-financing to enable small business to flourish here as in other developing countries. This is the national lottery. Well, one of them. As well as Nono, there are St Joseph, Charlito, La Difference and more. And they are everywhere. Twice a day, three numbers are chalked up on results’ boards and winners collect. But like every lottery or any other sort of institutionalised gambling, the odds are you will lose. Still, this does not stop many Haitians dabbling in this national pastime because it offers hope of riches and a better life.

Haiti is poor and shows no great signs of ridding itself of the title of poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, which seems to be quoted at every opportunity when it is mentioned in the news. Of course, Haiti is not much in the news these days. Its moment in the media spotlight was back in 2010 following the massive earthquake when seemingly the whole world arrived to help. The disappointing reality of that aid effort is captured well in Jonathan M.Katz’s insightful and well-researched book written in 2013, The Big Truck That Went By: How The World Came To Save Haiti And Left Behind A Disaster. Well, the title pretty much says it all. Part of the disaster left behind, beyond the mismanagement, Haitian elite profiteering, western neo-colonial imperatives and the self-interested giving of donor governments seeking to “save” Haiti from any meaningful, self-determined recovery, was the arrival of Cholera, brought in by UN peacekeepers from Nepal whose poorly sanitised camp leaked out effluent into a nearby water source used for drinking water as well as washing dishes, bodies and clothes. Contrary to one of the pillars of contemporary aid, this intervention did harm. Of course some small good was done but writ large the relief effort failed.

There is a shortage of decent work for the majority in Haiti and with a depressed economy, corrupt government, poor infrastructure and devastated natural environment, the prospect of life changing for the better is unlikely if not non-existent. Some of my colleagues accept this and make the best of life here with a joyful stoicism because it is home. They love Haiti and stay because they belong. However, for many Haitians the goal is to flee this island for the continent of plenty, America. Beg, borrow, steal or work your ass off, you need money to get to the USA, and winning the lottery is one of the great hopes. However, most will never win the amount required for it to make a difference here or in the dreamed of suburbs of New York or Miami where much of the Haitian diaspora live. If I lived here I would want a better life. That’s what makes some of my friends here so impressive. They have all the papers needed to live in the States but have chosen to stay and work towards a better Haiti in spite of insurmountable odds. These include a geographical location threatened every year by major hurricanes and a legacy of slavery which permeates Haitian identity years after independence was fought for and gained in the hope of realising freedom and fullness of life.