Konbit Pou Ayiti

No kouran (electricity) in the foreseeable future. An engine caught on fire at Electricite d’Haiti (EdH) and they had to bring in the pompier (firefighters) to put it out. Joe is measuring how much cable we need to connect the generator to the inverter to charge the batteries to power the modem, my laptop and a light at night. We’ve already lost the contents of our refrigerator.

Our generator runs on gasoline that is cleaner than diesel, but still has more of an environmental impact that we’d like to make. We need about $1,000 to buy a solar panel system that would charge our batteries and power the four items mentioned above. It’s not in the budget for the cash we have in-hand, but it’s in the fundraising budget for the future.

How do average Haitians cope? I have asked myself this question many times in the last few weeks, in the face of some very expensive and unforeseen events:

• The brakes on the Land Rover failed the morning we took the boat to Ile-a-Vache.
• The alternator had to be repaired twice.
• We had to pay enormous fees and bribes to get the Pathfinder that was donated to KONPAY out of customs in St. Marc.
• We bought two batteries and an inverter cable when the blackouts first started.

I have been thankful each time that we had funding available, but what would the average Haitian have done?

The whole country, the whole planet it seems, is hurting these days, and that pain is in the stomach. I read yesterday about the soaring price of miso and how spaghetti has doubled in Haiti. Doubled! The price of doing business is skyrocketing because everyone is running their generator and paying double for basic food staples.

It’s insane and yet you can frequently hear Joe complaining about government offices that apparently do NOT want to make any money! He has been trying to retrieve the NIF (Haitian social security number) he got when KONPAY applied for legal status in 2004. However, each day this week he went and sat in DGI (Direction Generale des Impots), only to be told that there was “no signal” to retrieve his old NIF. Never mind the NIF he just bought in St. Marc when he went to get the Pathfinder because they had “no signal” in St. Marc that day, because we would need a signal here to find that one, too.

What bothers Joe even more is that no one at the DGI is even pretending. After boldly asking Joe for an “express money” bribe, no one has bothered to take his information. Couldn’t they take everyone’s information, type it up, and then send them all at once the next time they have a signal? The line is stretching out the door with people willing and ready to pay, but no one at the DGI will take their money.

Yesterday we sang, “Pa gen kouran, lapli ap vini” (there is no electricity, the rain is coming). It’s the rainy season so the mornings are alternately beautiful – cool and overcast – or searing – hot sun and humidity. Today is the beautiful kind so we dart around trying to be productive. The earth is fertile and the farmers are overturning the fields around our house, section by section. The mangoes are so heavy in the trees that they have begun to dominate the landscape.

In a couple of weeks, mango-anticipation will become mango-enjoyment. Our neighbors will finally be able to fill their tummies with the sweet fruit, at least temporarily displacing the hunger created by our oil-obsessed world economy. And maybe Joe will finally have that NIF in his hand.