The Harsh World of Being an Aid Worker

It’s March 21st, two months and nine days after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I’m seated at a table surrounded by five other diners, in a crowded outdoor restaurant, trying to work a legally undersized lobster tail out of its shell. The town in which this restaurant is located is called Jacmel. It’s a special place.Read More

BROKEN PROMISE: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE HUMANITARIAN AID SECTOR

To explain, one has to understand the evolution of anthropology and humanitarian aid industry. The two are—or at least once were– intricately intertwined.

Madam Sara vs. Komèsan: Subsidizing Self Destruction

Originally published in January 2012 on Open Salon Madan Sara The madam sara (or phonetically madan sara) is the itinerant female Haitian market woman. She is the principal accumulator, mover, and distributor of domestic produce in Haiti and as such represents the most critical component in what anthropologists have long called the internal Haitian marketing system, the one upon whichRead More

Haiti Earthquake Media Exaggerations: Violence, Murder & Mayhem

This is a chapter from a book that I am wrote, the Great Haiti Humanitarian Aid Swindle (2017). I originally published as it is here on Open Salon in 2011. I think it’s important because it summarizes the role that the mainstream media played inciting panic over insecurity after the earthquake. Anyone interested inRead More

OCHA Clusters in Haiti: Bureaucratic Path to Extinction

It is one month after the earthquake and I am sitting in the restaurant of a chic colonial era hotel using the wireless. There are two other men nearby. They are seated several tables apart having a loud cross-restaurant conversation about their respective attempts to help Haiti. They are a special kind of missionary/aid workerRead More

Justice System in the Dominican Republic

Originally posted on Open Salon in 2012 The research and inspiration for this blog began when I was arrested and imprisoned for four months in a Dominican Penitentiary (I was falsely accused of organizing illegal boat voyages; subsequently tried and acquitted). The experience—not all bad–gave me an inside look at the Dominican penal system. WhenRead More

FOOD AID PART I: Food Security, USAID, WFP and Destruction of Haitian Ag Economy

Orinally published on Open Salon, August 2012, Port-au-Prince I’ve recently been eliminated as a candidate for consultant work in the US Food for Peace Office in Haiti . The reason has nothing to do with the death count report on which I was lead researcher and that has garnered a lot of media attention. ThatRead More

Travesty