FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
I'm Farai Chideya, and this is News & Notes. In Somalia and Haiti, residents have taken to the streets in protest of food prices. It's just part of a global problem. A few have even died for the cause.
We see the plight on the news, but what does it feel like when those people are your people? What do Americans of African and Caribbean descent do when they see suffering in the countries that they or their parents hail from?
Well, today we're speaking with Marjorie Valbrun. She's a Haitian-American living in Washington, D.C., and she's written about the issue for the online magazine TheRoot.com. Hey, Marjorie.
Ms. MARJORIE VALBRUN (Haitian-American Journalist): Hello.
CHIDEYA: So you're Haitian-born, you've been in America for about 40 years now, and you still have family back in Haiti. So when you talk to family, what do they make of the crisis, and how are they dealing with it?
Ms. VALBRUN: Well, I think they're dealing as best as they can. But they feel, like us, overwhelmed by it. And they rely on us to help them.
CHIDEYA: Remittances.
Ms. VALBRUN: Yeah. You could also send food - not really send food, but order food through these online organizations that deliver the food to them, but mostly remittances, yes.
CHIDEYA: I have family in Zimbabwe, and I have to say that I'm dealing with some of the same issues on a personal level. But when you send money, do you think that you are - there's the whole thing of, you know, giving a man a fish, teaching a man to fish. Do you have hope that what you're doing will have a long-term impact?
Ms. VALBRUN: I don't think it has a long-term impact, but I think it has an immediate impact, and that is to keep my relatives alive and, you know, and safe. And so, you know, the long-term impact would be if I were able to bring them all out of Haiti or, you know, to help them all find jobs, or to pay for every single one of them to have an education that would give them a livelihood. But there's not much jobs in Haiti.
You know, the country is in very bad shape. So it's a very kind of - a circle that just keeps going. There's not a lot you can do to change things overnight other than really try to help your family and try to help even those who aren't your family through organizations and non-profits that are down there.
CHIDEYA: In your piece, you talk very - in very concrete visual terms about what it's like to walk the streets.
Ms. VALBRUN: Yeah.
CHIDEYA: Tell me about that.
Ms. VALBRUN: It's extremely difficult. I mean, you can not walk down a street in the capital, which is Port-Au-Prince, and not be bombarded by beggars everywhere. They're everywhere. From the minute you step off an airplane at the airport outside Haiti, they have now put up barriers to keep the beggars from, you know, just rushing you.
And just the need is just overwhelming and saddening. And you just feel, from the moment that you're there that, you just can't do enough, that you're just - no matter how much you do, it's never enough.
CHIDEYA: There's the phrase survivor's guilt, which is when, you know, you have a comfortable life, but people you know don't.
Ms. VALBRUN: Yeah.
CHIDEYA: How do you deal with that?
Ms. VALBRUN: It's very hard, and I have acute survivor's guilt. But what I - like I said, I just, I really try to help. I mean, my siblings, my parents, my cousins, we all make ourselves responsible for a certain portion of family. I'll take care of this family, you take care of that one, and, you know, we send money consistently. We know that they can not survive without what we send.
And, you know, OK, I'm going to pay for this one to go to Catholic school because, you know, there's no free public education in Haiti. And if this one is sick, I'm going to pay the doctor's bill.
And a lot of my relatives, they've brought cousins here and siblings. Or they just adopt some of their cousins' children to bring them here. Because, you know, that's the only way to really save them.
CHIDEYA: When you think about the history of Haiti, where Haiti actually, after it got its freedom, paid...
Ms. VALBRUN: Dearly.
CHIDEYA: Millions of dollars to the French. Basically, in this weird move to buy their freedom, because they were forced to.
Ms. VALBRUN: Yeah.
CHIDEYA: What do think the international community owes Haiti?
Ms. VALBRUN: I don't know. I mean, what they owe Haiti, I think that, you know, there's a saying among Haitian-Americans that Haiti has never been forgiven for having the audacity to get their freedom in 1804, because, you know, it kind of gave rise to other revolutionary freedom movements in the Caribbean. And, you know, it was a model for American slaves.
You know, I think the international community, the policies are not consistent in Haiti. You know, U.S. policy especially, which is, you know, the leader in terms of the foreign governments that are involved in Haiti, the U.S., the French, the Canadians, is not consistent.
You know, we - there have been times where we have supported dictatorships and other times where we've helped get rid of dictators. You know, U.S. policies in terms of farm policy is not beneficial to Haiti, it's beneficial to, you know, American farming. So it depends on, you know, which administration is in power.
I think that, you know Haiti is important because it's close to the U.S., you know, and because it's in the U.S.'s backyard, I think it would be important for the U.S. to make sure that things don't continue to become so unstable because every time that happens, you have refugee flows to Florida which is what the U.S. doesn't want.
I just think that a more consistent foreign policy, a more fair policy, would help, but I do think that Haiti, because it is so poor, does get a lot of international aid. A lot, and it's not always used wisely once it's there. There's just so many, you know, outside forces playing into this and also internal forces that have a lot of corruption and, you know, that's something that, you know, I have to be honest about. There's a lot of corruption so sometimes the money doesn't get to the people who need it.
And then we have an unstable governments. We have lots of coups. We have, you know, just a revolving door of leaders, and so, that's not good for the country. And at the bottom is the people. You know, you have 10 million people. You know, most of them are, you know, poor, dirt poor, live on less than two dollars a day.
They are illiterate. We don't have an education system. We don't have a civic education campaign. And so, there's just like a perfect storm of just so many things that makes Haiti so hard to govern. And I think for outsiders, it's very hard for people to understand why it seems to be in a perpetual state of chaos and crisis. But, you know...
CHIDEYA: So, where's the hope? I mean, you know, you must have hope, some flicker of it?
Ms. VALBRUN: I do have hope. The hope, I think, is that, you know - the hope comes from people like myself. We have 1.5 million Haitians living outside of Haiti, and a million of them are in the U.S., the rest are in Canada and France. And, you know, we love the country. We care about what happens there. We are pushing for better policy.
You know, there are a couple of people in Congress who are very good friends of Haiti. Kendrick Meek, for instance, in the U.S. House, he's from Florida, and before that, his mother was also a congresswoman. So, you know, the Black Caucus is involved.
I think that we have to be more engaged in U.S. policy, Haitian Americans who are here, you know, in terms of U.S. policy in Haiti. And for a long time, a lot of Haitian Americans always dreamed about going back to Haiti, but, as, you know, the country continued to be so unstable, a lot of them will not go back. They have their lives here. And so they're trying to have some influence there. And there's a lot of Haitian American organizations that are doing that.
And the hope also comes from the Haitian people themselves. You know, they're a very sturdy group. I mean, if it wasn't for the kind of Haitian mentality of just survival, you know, the island would have just, you know, sunk into the ocean. But they're very industrious people. They're very hardworking people. And, you know, they are starting to push their government as well.
And we have now a democratic government. And it's still young. It's still fledgling. It still has a lot of challenges. But it was the Haitian food riots that really made the government take notice, like, oh my goodness, these people are not going to take this anymore.
And, you know, I said in the piece that they weren't just hungering for food in these riots, they were hungering for change. And I think the Haitian population is saying, we want things to be different, and we're going to push for that.
And so, I'm optimistic about some of that.
CHIDEYA: Marjorie, thanks for sharing your story.
Ms. VALBRUN: Thank you.
CHIDEYA: Marjorie Valbrun is a Washington, D.C. based journalist, and she joined us from our NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.
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