Amy Wilentz

A week after the Haitian earthquake of 2010, I came across this American guy setting up relief packs on a little folding table, by what used to be a street corner in a levelled part of Port-au-Prince. He'd come on behalf of some church group back in I think Murfreesboro, TN, and he was putting together these little packs made up of bottled water, pasta, iodine tablets, dried fruit. Laying them out on the table. A line of Haitians was starting to form in front of him, waiting for the packs to be distributed.

As I stood there watching, a huge USAID truck suddenly drove up and parked just over the street from him. From the back of the truck, a man in uniform started throwing these enormous aid sacks out to the crowd, full of rice and fruit concentrates and painkillers and chocolate bars. And all the Haitians that had been queueing in front of the little folding table now all crossed the street to the truck instead. And I watched this guy from Tennessee look down at his little relief packs, and then look over at the big USAID sacks. And he just looked utterly crestfallen.

And I thought, who the fuck is organising this?

Of course no one was organising anything, as soon became very obvious. Amy Wilentz had already been travelling in and writing about Haiti for some twenty-five years when the earthquake happened; she was, therefore, unusually qualified among outsiders to talk about how Haiti reacted, and to contextualise the gigantic but inefficient response from the international community of journalists, aid groups and political leaders.

She was not impressed, but nor was she surprised in the way that I constantly was during my time there. Indeed one way of describing this book is to say that it's an explanation of why all the other outsiders who talk about Haiti or try to help Haiti can fuck right off. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, is supposed to have said, Blan bon lè li san tet – roughly, ‘the only good foreigner is a headless foreigner’ – and at times Wilentz seems broadly to share this view. ‘You can feel their résumés growing,’ she says, surveying the reporters and cameramen swarming around the rubble of Port-au-Prince, ‘against the backdrop of the earthquake's destruction.’

Yes, I suppose the experience didn't do my CV any harm. I take her sarcasm in the spirit in which it's meant, which is to say I share many of her concerns. That said, not all of us were Christiane Amanpour in her vast suite at the Plaza, with a balcony overlooking the remains of the presidential palace. In my experience, most correspondents – believe it or not – are thoughtful and empathetic and care about what they're trying to explain, and they live and work in shitty, unsafe conditions which they do not talk about because to do so, given the context of their visit, would be grossly distasteful and unprofessional.

Wilentz is quick to stress that individual reporters and aid workers she knows are intelligent and sensitive and so forth – but as an aggregate group, their work in Haiti is nevertheless rooted in ‘the objectification of the Haitians' victimization’. (Yes, I suppose it is, though this does raise the question of whether the alternative to objectivising it would be to ignore it.) She is equally disparaging of the public reading or watching at home. She imagines a young guy in the US leafing through portraits of survivors in a photojournalist picture-book, a ‘safe and unembarrassing’ experience for him, and concludes that overall, ‘he's enjoying their misfortune’. I sympathise with Wilentz's cynicism over disaster response, but this does seem a little unfair, particularly since she's made the guy up.

She is critical, and I understand why, of the kind of video material that I was getting at the time.

Look at this! the footage shouted. Yo, the morgue is just a scene of damnation! it went on. Look how bad this is over here! it said.

Rather as though all the cameramen are jocky adrenaline junkies, chewing gum and muttering ‘fuck yeah’ under their breath as they watch another injured local bleed out.

Two hundred and fifty pages later, though, her own descriptions of the scene are not exactly a model of sober understatement:

Try walking through the concentration camps of the Balkans, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, the excavated mass graves of El Mozote, downtown Dresden, the outer circles of Hiroshima. That's what it was like in Port-au-Prince in those days.

I can't help thinking that she's trying to have her cake and eat it. More to the point – and with the greatest respect to Amy Wilentz, who knows Haiti infinitely better than I ever will – what she says here is just not true. Port-au-Prince was nothing like a concentration camp or a mass grave. In those places, what you feel is not just the suffering, but an overwhelming sense of evil, of man's inhumanity to man. That was not the case in Haiti; quite the reverse. There was a lot of suffering, but everyone was in it together. No one had done this to them. The desire to overcome it was shared by all races, religions and social classes within the country and without. It was not the result of some idiotic conflict whose divisions would continue to fester. There was no sense of evil. And instead of man's inhumanity to man, it was rather man's humanity to man that was in evidence, most obviously and, yes, brashly, with those clumsy convoys from Wilentz's hated NGOs.

Part of the problem – and despite my argumentative tone, this is one of the book’s strengths, not a weakness – is that she can’t really make up her mind what the appropriate response should be. She criticises those groups who simply throw money and resources at short-term problems, arguing that a more considered and sustainable approach is necessary which involves the Haitians themselves. Fair enough. But the next moment, she is deriding a project that specifically tries to involve all levels of Haitian society in a ‘national conversation’ about relief, because, she says angrily, ‘what [Haitians] want is not a national conversation—which is an outsider idea—but simply, please, to get their damn problem fixed’.

All of her objections are valid – more than that, they’re convincing – but after chapter upon chapter of them, you do start to feel that there is no possible response from any group that could satisfy Amy Wilentz. What this comes down to, of course, is the awareness floating under the skin of the whole book that she herself is not very different from any of the outsiders she is writing about, and a good deal less helpful than many. She’s probably made more money by capitalising on Haitians than most of the journalists or volunteers that responded to the earthquake, after all. ‘This very book that you have in your hands is one example,’ she says. ‘No share of its proceeds will directly benefit Haitian relief efforts.’

Farewell, Fred Voodoo is a fascinating study in sublimated guilt, which is the emotion that gives Wilentz’s writing its particular power and bite here. She’s a great writer, and her unsentimental, clear-eyed assessments are absolutely necessary in an area too often dominated by histrionics or wishful thinking. And many of her _targets deserve everything they get (it was a particular pleasure to read the calm, chapter-long demolition of Mac Mclelland’s grotesque article about how she got PTSD from covering the anniversary of the quake, which she solved by some rape roleplay with her boyfriend, an article that outraged me at the time and still does). Despite my instinctive, perhaps over-defensive, problems with her arguments, I would heartily recommend this to anyone trying to understand what happens after a natural disaster in general, and to understand Haiti in particular.

Still, I do wish she could have found a little more room to acknowledge the extraordinary things that were done, however clumsily or unsustainably, in those early days. ‘The victims of a disaster like the Haitian quake become a moneymaking tool for these groups,’ she says, talking about the big NGOs. (Certainly, on the ground a lot of the money seemed to be going on branded clothing and vehicles.)

However, without those donations and whatever filtered down to them from those monies, would Haitians have survived the initial days and weeks after the earthquake?

She offers this up as though it's a rhetorical question, but it isn't. The answer's a clear No.… (more)

I had started Farewell, Fred Voodoo before the trip, so it was the only book I took with me in physical book format.

I finished it shortly after we landed, despite having watched a stupid Hollywood film on the plane, a long-standing flight policy of mine that goes something like this: I will never pay to watch this horrendous film that has nothing to do with reality and has molded some "true" story under the iron hammer of Hollywood formula into a hollow nothing, unless I am on a plane and it is right there and it's free. Clearly, it is a policy that I need to quit, but, alas, not this time.

The flight, being a February flight taking off in the middle of a snow storm at JFK to the Caribbean, was full of well-to-do white people, except, of course, one of the flight attendants, who had an accent that placed her somewhere in the Caribbean, but not exactly our destination. So there we were, on an almost-all-white flight with a super-large carbon footprint (the de-icing took an hour, and I do not even want to try to calculate the amount of environment we murdered during that time, let alone the flight, the stay, and the flight back) headed for a tropical paradise with a poor, mostly black population, of whom over 80% depend on tourism for their livelihood... A very good time to read Amy Wilentz's masochistic farewell to Fred Voodoo.

Incidentally, the film I chose to watch on our way to the islands was Captain Philips, whose commercial ship gets taken hostage by Somalian pirates, and who is eventually rescued by the brave US Navy. But, Captain Philips is a conscientious man, and he lets us understand some things during his painful stay with the Somalian criminals. (I will paraphrase the dialog based on notes I took on the plane, on the cardboard box of the Beef Up meal JetBlue was offering at a price equal to what a villager would earn in a month in the islands, I wager):

Philips: We're taking food to starving people in Africa... including some Somalians.
(an "Ah!" moment)

Inevitably, I am thinking of the Crisis Caravan and the foreign aid groups and religious missions...

Later, we learn something about why the pirates might be doing what they are doing:
Somalian pirate: I'm a fisherman. They came and took all our fish. What is left for us to fish?
(an "Aha!" moment)

Inevitably, I am thinking of Miami rice that flooded the Haitian market, and inadvertently took away the income of rice farmers in Haiti.

The crew of the captured vessel lay out a trap for one of the pirates, who cuts his foot on the glass shards they had hoped he would step on. Later, good Captain Philips bandages the pirate's foot. A bandaid solution, but a well intentioned one nevertheless, for a wound caused by the ship's crew, though one can easily argue the pirate brought it upon himself.

Meanwhile, the Somalian Pirate keep reassuring Captain Philips: "Everything will be OK." He smiles. I think, this would make a good shot for the photojournalists.

And he reveals his dream, of going to America, to New York.

Inevitably, I am thinking of Amy Wilentz's acquaintances, the Aristide boys, who now and then describe their dreams for the future, of which the most incredulous one is going to America.

And the semi-naive Captain Philips, like the missionaries and do-gooders in Wilentz's book, eventually realizes, and allows himself to pass a judgement on his captors: "You're not just a fisherman." He repeats this twice, unable to process, perhaps, how he had missed this fact in the beginning. He understands, truly understands, that he was their "white man." And the Captain seems to arrive at the conclusion that there is something wrong with the Somali pirate, something wrong beyond the fact that the is a jobless fisherman, rendered impotent by the colonial powers that be.

Inevitably, I am thinking of the foreign aid that is promised to Haiti, none of which is directly trusted in the hands of the Haitian government or Haitians, because, well, there is something wrong with them, isn't there? We want to help them, but all they want is to take take take and waste and never improve. This is, I presume, is how Captain Philips must be feeling.

Before Philips is rescued, he tries to understand and reason: "There's gotta be a better way than being a fisherman or kidnapping people."
Somalian pirate: "Maybe in America."

And the Somalian pirate does, in the end, go to America. He is told he will go to jail in America. And we now understand that the only way for him to really have gone to America was like this. What other way could there be for this unskilled ex-fisherman, who wasn't really a well-trained fisherman to begin with? We are left shaking our heads and feeling sorry for Captain Philips, and maybe, a little for the pirate, though rationally, we do not think he deserves much of our sympathy.

When we landed in our tropical paradise, we are very white. And everyone who is servicing us, cabbies, restaurant people, policemen... are black locals. The hotel owners are white, though they grew up on the islands, we are told. And we hire local businessmen for our excursions, all of whom were born and grew up on the very island we are vacationing away from the annoying crowds on the main island. For the most part, the locals we deal with are well educated. Some have worked in the US before. We do not feel out of place much, because we know, as racial as the divide seems, it is very much a class divide, the same class divide that we find vacationing in Turkey, where everyone is Caucasian to some degree, but those who serve and those who vacation clearly belong to different socioeconomic classes.

There is one incident that puts me right back into Amy Wilentz's book: I usually over-tip when on vacation in places like this, aware that this is very much appreciated by the people who work there. I tip the local guide who takes us around the caves more than 50%. I know, he is also getting 66% of the tour price to himself, the remaining portion goes to the island, presumably, for the maintenance of the protected area. But this is not enough; he asks me to pay the cab driver, too. Our hotel owners are very detailed in their directions and they have never mentioned this fee, and I know, I just know because I have been in similar situations before, that I am now officially the tour guide's "white man." I pay and smile. I sincerely hope he enjoys his earnings. But I can easily see how this can become a source of resentment very quickly.

When we are flying back, I count the number of non-white people in the airport (not just our flight, but a good 8 flights!): Four. We are at the airport for over 4 hours, and a total of four black people are among the ocean of white people with pink children are flying today.

In Farewell, Fred Voodoo Amy Wilentz reports not only the state of Haiti and its people, but on the complicated and often contradictory state of foreignness in this seemingly cursed, yet beautiful land. Wilentz's observations and experiences, which she dissects with relentless self-criticism and journalistic vigor, are very much the blueprint of the experiences of the privileged and lucky in the world, who may intend to help struggling nations and peoples, who may vacation in places that suffer from chronic poverty, who may do business in such developing countries.

Wilentz sets out to answer many questions, but one is very difficult to pin down an answer for: Why does she keep coming to Haiti? Why is she still there? What is she doing there? And the answer seems to be: to be useful. But even this is unsatisfactory, as she questions just how useful she is, or her book is, or how selfless, as she will put it on her resume, and earn something from the book sales, just like the doctors who rush to disaster areas and become celebrities based on their sacrifices, and the religious missions, who are, undoubtedly, doing good to be good in their God's eyes.

We met a couple during vacation. I told them about the book. The woman said she had been to Haiti several years ago. On a mission trip. I recommended she read Farewell, Fred Voodoo. I tried not to smile too widely.… (more)

As always seems to be the case, I received this book courtesy of a GoodReads giveaway. Despite that kind consideration my candid thoughts reside comfortably below.

The first thing to make absolutely clear about this book is that I was rather surprised to find it in the 'Travel Guides' section of Amazon. I imagine a travel guide as a book that suggests "you absolutely MUST see X but don't go to Y or you won't come back" but that's clearly not the focus of this book. There are no lavish photographs of tourist attractions or lists of grand local restaurants. This is a book about the heart, soul and sometimes viscera of a country in turmoil from the viewpoint of someone who has spent quite a bit of time there. The author's view of the nation of Haiti is one you get after years there, not the one you see in a two-week vacation.

Through our author's eyes we see the nuts and bolts history of the country, some of its people and a peek into its future. The writing is superb and enthralling and paints a wonderfully vivid picture. Highly recommended for those who want to know more about a little-known part of the world. Expertly and eruditely constructed it's a biography of the country written around the memoir of the author.… (more)