April 2013
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Kung Fu Pand-Aid
It’s an age-old conundrum: People are hungry. We spend millions on food aid. They’re still hungry. What went wrong?
We wonder. Is there some sort of secret ingredient missing, something that when added to the mix would make it possible to feed the world? Some kind of especially nutritious grain? Controls to make sure the food doesn’t get stolen along the way? More aid workers to...
March 2013
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MINUSTAH: Not going anywhere
Two of the most-asked questions I’ve gotten lately concern UN peacekeepers in Haiti. Namely: Why are they there, and how long are they staying?
The first is hard to answer precisely. Despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, the troops did not arrive in response to the 2010 earthquake, or close to it. Rather they came six years earlier, in the aftermath of the 2004 coup against...
WatchSpeech at the Clinton School on Haiti, aid, and ‘The Big Truck That Went By’
January 2013
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WatchThe first part of my interview this month with Democracy Now. Part 2 is on their site.
I did a whole spate of interviews around the book’s release and the third anniversary of the earthquake. You can see more over at facebook.com/thebigtruckthatwentby
November 2012
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Migration (Or, HEY LOOK OVER THERE.)
Queridos Tumblreros,
While I intend to keep posting on this site from time to time, I’ve increasingly been putting Big Truck-related news and posts on the new Facebook page. As we near publication on January 8 and the first readings and such get announced, expect to see them over there (and Twitter) more often than here.
If you haven’t been checking them out already, here’s a...
October 2012
4 posts
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On disaster planning
“But it’s now, in the ample time between emergencies, when the heaviest lifting has to be done. The issue is less with some organizations having more know-how than others; it’s that the whole system needs to be overhauled, and not just when it comes to aid. Poverty and a lack of local institutions create the shoddy conditions that make disasters deadlier than they have to be. Few...
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On 'economic statecraft,' or how to put a shine on...
An interesting pair of tweets yesterday from the State Department:
1yr ago #SecClinton laid out our vision of economic statecraft-ow.ly/esIXK America’s econ strength & global leadrshp a package deal
— Tara Sonenshine (@TSonenshine) October 14, 2012
#SecClinton: @statedept’s core diplomatic mission to enhance our economic leadership in the world and to drive domestic economic...
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Liv la nan figi →
Go see the book’s new Facebook page, which you can like, and where you can like other things. And who knows? The things might like you back.
http://facebook.com/TheBigTruckThatWentBy
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Gwo Machin
With publication approaching in January, people have been asking me about the title: What exactly was The Big Truck That Went By?
It refers to three things: Haiti’s weak state before the earthquake (when even basic utilities had to be delivered by truck), the massive international response, and the quake itself. There is more about those ideas, and what connects them, in the...
September 2012
2 posts
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289 dead at Pakistani garment factory where owners... →
This story is getting lost this week amid developments in the Middle East, but an enormous tragedy has befallen low-paid, unprotected garment workers producing for export.
The workers were locked inside to “protect the clothes” bound for Europe, according to a worker interviewed in this article by the New York Times. Locking the exits is a common practice in the industry: In a recent...
August 2012
2 posts
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My interview about the UN and cholera with... →
On the epidemic, the “Maryland” report, and the outlook for the future.
July 2012
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WatchCheck out this New York Times video on Caracol, the new factory zone being constructed in the north of Haiti with heavy U.S. support.
June 2012
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Epidemiologist vs. Epidemiologist
Here’s some reaction to that new study from Maryland, which says a second, environmental strain of cholera contributed to the epidemic that started in Haiti two years ago.
Renaud Piarroux, a French epidemiologist whose studies showed the UN base was the likely source of the epidemic, writes in to say he’s not sold:
“The contamination of the Artibonite River by human fecal waste...
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New (non-UN) cholera evidence?
NPR’s Richard Knox reports on a new wrinkle in the story of how cholera got to Haiti. A team based in Maryland has published a study that found 21 percent of cholera patients in Haiti were infected with a non-Nepalese strain of the disease.
Dr. Rita Colwell says her team’s findings support a hypothesis that the epidemic was caused, at least in part, by environmental factors other than...
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May 2012
2 posts
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Worst Logic of the Year, Cholera Division
Nigel Fisher, United Nations Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator, January 2012:
“As you know, more than 6,700* Haitians have succumbed to the cholera epidemic so far and almost 500,000* have been infected. If we can take any encouragement, it is that: National cholera response and alert systems are now in place in a country that had no such infrastructure before the cholera...
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Clinton's Statement on the Political Situation in...
Some people are having trouble finding Bill Clinton’s statement calling for the quick ratification of Haiti’s new prime minister, which came hours before the new prime minister was ratified. So I’ve pasted the text below.
The new prime minister, Laurent Lamothe, is an old friend of President Martelly who set aside his business providing telecom services to African governments to...
April 2012
4 posts
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Today in Haiti
So today the president of Haiti was hospitalized in Miami with a pulmonary embolism — a blood clot in the lung. (AP story.)
While he was away, armed paramilitaries who consider themselves the restored Haitian Army stormed parliament to forestall action against them by the police and/or, according to the Miami Herald, demand the quick ratification of Prime Minister-designate Laurent...
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WatchMSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry interviews me, Jon Lascher of Partners in Health and Haitian-American blogger Alice Backer about Haiti, cholera and the U.N.
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The Big Truck @ Daily Beast: "United Nations Still... →
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Cholera: Back to the Source
I took a road trip to the Haitian countryside yesterday to visit my old friends at Annapurna Camp, the U.N. installation of Nepalese soldiers that I’ve reported was the probable source of the country’s horrible (and still ongoing) cholera epidemic. It had been nearly a year and a half since my first visits there in those early days of the outbreak, and as long as I’m here working...
March 2012
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Book news: "Big Truck" wins big (early) prize →
I’m honored to tumbl that The Big Truck That Went By has been named the winner of the 2012 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard (link above). It’s a very cool and unique prize given while a book is still a pile of notes and rambling scenes, with the aim of giving the author the money and time...
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Under the SOFA
Reuters reports that “two U.N. peacekeepers from Pakistan have been sentenced to a year in prison for raping a 14-year-old Haitian boy.” That wire says, and I have no information otherwise, that this is the first time U.N. soldiers have been tried and sentenced in Haiti.
That doesn’t mean that they were tried in a Haitian court, of course*. That would be, by all accounts, a...
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#KonyKoniKone
There’s a fascinating time suck of a debate raging today about aid, donors and foreign intervention across boundaries of power. You’ve probably seen it or one of its backlash iterations: a half-hour video posted on your freshman year roommate’s Facebook page, or the Twitter hashtags #Kony2012, #StopKony2012, #StopStopKony2012 — or, as I expect soon,...
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Event: "Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?" →
Monday, March 12, in New York, there will be a showing of the above-named documentary, followed by a panel featuring filmmaker Michele Mitchell, Manolia Charlotin of the Boston Haitian Reporter and some guy called Jonathan M. Katz. The documentary’s description:
In January 2010, when an 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti, people across the world gave more generously than to any disaster in...
February 2012
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Event: Tuesday @ Columbia
I’ll be on a panel this Tuesday in New York at the Columbia Journalism School. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is screening a Ciné Institute documentary called “Haiti Rebuilds: A Journey of Hope.” Right after there’s a panel with one of the filmmakers, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, Haiti’s permanent representative to the UN and … me.
Should be a good...
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1937 LIFE magazine on Haiti →
One of the best things about writing a book is that you get to spend hours geeking out and stumbling across ridiculous things.
This LIFE magazine spread on Haiti from 1937 is like doing mushrooms in a time machine. There are pictures and stories from the then-recent Dominican massacre. (The DR and Haiti are described as the “only two sovereign Negro states in the world (save...
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AP: Plaintiffs say new Haiti president helped... →
“Haiti Papers Over the Past: The Re-Branding of Baby Doc Duvalier:...”
– http://bit.ly/xl2txs (via thepublicarchive)
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Earlyquakes
I’ve been reading the last few days about the earthquakes that destroyed colonial Port-au-Prince in 1751 and 1770. Did not know: The 1751 disaster was apparently a series of quakes that went on for over two weeks.
It goes without saying that the 2010 quake caught everyone by surprise. But had anyone heard stories about earlier big quakes in Haiti — whether those old ones, or the 1842...
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No, there wasn't cholera in Haiti in 1960. How...
There has been confusion since the beginning of the cholera epidemic about exactly how long it had been since Haiti’s last outbreak. Some sources referred to supposed cholera cases there around 1960, but those are victims of a transcription error from an early CDC report. We tended to go with a 100-year estimate in our articles, assuming along with researchers that some variation of the...
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Yo.
Welcome to the new tumblr for my upcoming book about Haiti, the earthquake and what’s happened since. You can stay tuned for updates about the book’s progress. You can use the comment fields, email and other buttons to share your own ideas, experiences and reflections. Or, hell, why not do both? Like it says above, stick around and share your thoughts. Na pale.
January 2012
2 posts
AP: US scientists say Haiti, Dominican Republic... →
Good thing that housing problem’s taken care of.
