Beyond the mountains, more mountains

"Beyond the mountains, more mountains" is a Haitian proverb. It is also the title of a book by Tracy Kidder about Paul Farmer, who, since last August, holds the unenviable post of UN deputy special envoy for Haiti.

According to an article by Jennifer Wells in the Toronto Star, Mr. Farmer has serious doubts about whether Haiti will ever rise from its position in the economic basement of the western hemisphere. Appearing before the UN Committee on Foreign Relations a couple of weeks ago, he asked "Does this catastrophe create a chance for all of us to have a sounder, more solidarity-based relationship with Haiti? Or is to to be yet another chapter in a jeremiad of suffering and abuse of power?"

My bet is on the latter. First of all, I don't understand what a "solidarity-based relationship" means. It sounds to me like yet another example of foreignaidspeak.

Secondly, as I wrote a couple of days ago, Haiti is fundamentally an African state which, by an accident of geography, just happens to have drifted into the Caribbean. As several writers have pointed out (see Walt, passim, ad nauseam), guilt-ridden white western nations have for decades been pouring aid into Africa, writing off debt and generally trying to be helpful. And their efforts have done more harm than good.

In his testimony, Farmer remarked that 85 per cent of donor monies gathered after the serial storms and hurricanes of 2008 remains undistributed. That's right! The Haitian government and NGOs already had more than enough financial resources to cope with the recent disaster.

Yet the majority of the Haiti's population still had to live on less than $2 a day. More than 70 per cent of the workforce remained unemployed. The 2010 earthquake has made things only a little worse. The additional money now being collected and the bales of clothing and containers of food being sent to that wretched nation will make things only a little better for a little time.

Then Haiti will be forgotten. It's yesterday's news. We've had the concert, passed the hat, wept on TV and said how much our thoughts and prayers go out to those poor suffering, people. The show's over; nothing more to see there.

How about if we just leave Haiti alone? Our well-meaning ministrations over the years have reduced the Haitians to a nation of beggars. But as a Ugandan proverb says, "Begged water does not quench the thirst."

What Haiti...and Africa...need is to develop a sense of self-reliance, a pull-ourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps will to work and will to live. The resources are there. Food aid is starting to rot on the docks. Instead of helping each other, Haitians are fighting with each other over the loot.

Let them look after each other, without our do-good intervention, and they will be better off for it. Perhaps they will even start to see opportunity in scaling the next mountain.