Currents Summer 2024 (1) - Flipbook - Page 44
But let9s get back to you. How did your relationship with Haiti continue to develop?
MA: So coming back to Haiti after 2012 I really was just staying with friends of mine; I was
staying with them and I would just go and hang out with my Haitian friends, I would go and
just have a life here that wasn't you know directly tied to some sort of humanitarian aid or
faith-based organization. Essentially I looked at it like summer vacation with friends and
family. But the more that I spoke with people, predominantly my Haitian friends, the more I
began to understand what kind of context they were living in, and what type of illusion
essentially I had been living in.
I was here about two months after the 2010 earthquake. I saw how chaotic it was. I saw how
NGOs were much more concerned with competing with each other for millions of dollars than
how they wanted to distribute and give aid and what type of aid they wanted to give.
I saw during the 2018 demonstrations, where an entire country rebelled, and which was really
the turning point for what we're seeing now. I was here and saw an entire nation respond to
that that said we're not going to put up with this anymore. The narrative that I think a lot of
Haitians receive is what's being told to them by the international community, which is like
glitter-covered shit, but it9s still shit and they're tired of eating shit to be honest they're over
that.
45
