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Beautiful pain in Haiti

Friday, March 24th, 2006

Geoff Cooper

Haiti

World’s poorest western country
9,000 UN troops
10 kidnappings everyday
Life expectancy at birth = 49 years

It was a full on trip to a country that few of my family wanted me to visit! The current political situation is “highly unstable” - to put it nicely. A two-week trip to a town called Petit-trou, a mere 7 hours (90km) from the capital city of Port-au-Prince, on roads that few of us would recognize as such.

The first question that I was asked on my arrival back in NZ was “were you surprised at the level of poverty?”

Now for those who are not aware, the poverty in Haiti is among the worst in the world (it is, in fact, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere). The poverty is BAD, of that there is no doubt. But having worked in the area of poverty reduction and education, this was one of the few areas that surprised me very little. In short I knew what to expect. And I was so glad that I did not get caught up in the poverty of Haiti, because it would have been easy to miss what is so very rich about Haiti . . . Community!

I have always believed that is more than a word . . . it is a concept, a way of life, a process of connectedness between the people whom you live beside.

The way the Haitians made each one of us feel like family was the heart of Haiti. Connecting with people in spite of the barrier of language and culture. Connecting because you see hope in one another, connecting because you understand that this is what humanity is about! This is what Haiti is so very rich in. If anything, it should make us question the word ‘poverty’ and why we associate it with a financial situation, rather than a communal one (who would be the third world if community was our measurement of development?)

My one fear from my trip to Haiti is that I got more out of it than the very people who I was suppose to be there to help. It is sad to see such vibrant people melting away in the face of our global world. Effectively being lost among our headlines of celebrity. The truth is they have so much to teach us about fulfillment, about what life is all about. This country makes me question the values that I hold so highly in my life, yet unconsciously refuse to extend to other parts of the world. The country and these people ask heavy questions of my convictions.

There is one last point I wish to make, surrounding the currently sexy topic of International Development. Haiti has taught me the important lesson of what international development is actually about. Let me first say what it is not.

International development is not about turning Lusaka into New York and Petit-trou will never be Taranaki . . . nor should it be! Our goal cannot be to reform these countries into our cultures so that they become bustling centers of economic activity. Our goal is to give these people options! Where they can make choices that agree with their values and their culture; and I imagine that would be one hell of a place to live in. They have the community, and the hope and the stamina . . . all we need to give them is a fair system in which to work. Jefferson called it justice.

The following poem was written by my good friend Leah Millis, an up and coming photographer (as you can tell) who was part of the medical team to Haiti- her words are much more real than anything I could convey about this situation.

Tags: beauty, community, cultures, development, Haiti, justice, language, poverty
Posted in Aid & Development, Articles, Culture & Society, Human Rights & Social Justice, Politics, Your Stories | No Comments »

Petitions

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Daniel Dearnley

Petitions writing
Petitions have been a tool for change for a very long time. This article looks at the basics of petitions: What are they? How to write them, effective ways to use them, and the rules of petitioning. This article also looks at how the internet can be used for petitioning.

What is a petition?
A petition is, in basic terms, similar to a complaint letter. It is a document containing a statement of views/concerns/grievances/etc. about an issue. It is addressed to a target person or organisation. The key difference is that petitions are signed by multiple people, rather than just the writer. More signatures, of course, means more impact and more chance for change.

How to write one
For a simple step by step guide:

1) Decide what the aim of the petition is — what do you want changed and how?
2) Decide who to petition — who is able to cause the changes you want and are they likely to respond? Or do you want to generally express views and raise awareness?
3) Write it — tips on this later.
4) Collect signatures — this can be either physically signing a piece of paper, hosting an online petition on a website for people to sign’ (often with email addresses etc), or providing documents or text that individuals can sign and then post or email. (See the take action guides on awareness campaigns for ideas on how to promote.)
5) Send it.

Here are some tips for writing effective petitions
Have a clear statement about your concerns and specific demands — PR people love vague and waffling language. If you have an unclear demand it is too easy for the petition target to simply make it seem like they’re moving in the right direction, while not doing anything significant.

Be polite (but firm). Being disrespectful or rude is unlikely to get people on your side. If you’re seen as extremist some people will be unlikely to listen to you or support the petition.
Make concise statements based on fact. If possible reference what you say. Concise, clear, intelligent, factual statements often have more impact than an extended rant.
The demands should be practical — otherwise they will likely get ignored.

Who to petition
This depends on what you hope to achieve with the petition. If the petition wants to create specific change then it probably needs to be sent to a person/organization with the ability to cause the change, and one that is likely to listen.

Common targets for petitions are:

Governments — Governments often have a lot of power and influence so they can be well worth petitioning. Democratic governments are answerable directly to public opinion, so they do have to respond to petitions in some way.

However, there is a very complex formal process to submit a petition to a government, which must be followed to validate the petition. This varies depending on which government is being petitioned.

To look at the process required for the NZ government go to their website and follow the petitioning the house of representatives’ link.

Petitioning individual politicians can also be effective and there are less strict rules. Sometimes it can also be effective to petition city councils.

Companies — Sometimes people petition companies/corporations asking them to change business practices, etc. This can be effective as companies often have a lot of influence on issues (e.g. McDonalds would have an ability to fight childhood obesity if it wanted to).

The trouble with petitioning companies is that their bottom line is profits, not popularity. Unless a company feels that loss of image will lead to loss of business, all that petitioning is likely to achieve is a nicely worded explanation by the companies PR staff.

Petitioning can be effective as companies generally consider public image important (think of all the money spent on advertising). If a petition to a company hints at a possible boycott, etc. it is likely to be more effective.

Individuals - In some (rarer) cases, individuals or non-corporate organizations can be petitioned. As with petitioning companies, petitions will probably be more effective if the target is given good reason to care about what you think.

Online petitions
The Internet has brought about a new trend of online petitions — a petition can be hosted as a website (googling online petition’ will likely bring up a million hosting sites), where people can sign it by entering email addresses (or other details) into an online form. Or people can be asked to sign and send a copy of an email individually to the target.

These can be very convenient ways to collect signatures, however there are some drawbacks:
Verifying identity is difficult on the Internet. This means online petitions are less trustworthy and generally have less impact.
If a formal process has to be followed for a petition to be accepted usually physical signatures are required, thus online petitions are invalid.
Serious petitions are often lost among silly ones. For instance a petition that Ashlee Simpson should shut up received over 50 times as many signatures as a petition to the music publishing association not to sue websites offering transcripts of modern songs for the purposes of teaching music.

So how effective are they?
There are some success stories advertised on the various petition hosting websites, but not many. Petitions can be an effective tool for drawing attention to an issue and awareness raising, but more often cause minimal change and are simply stating a viewpoint, which is essentially all a petition can do.

Tags: Activism, government, internet, language, petition
Posted in Activism, Articles, Media, Politics, Take Action | No Comments »

Viviendo en un mundo de “Spanglish” porque soy una Peru Zelandesa: living in a Spanglish world because I am a Peru Zealander

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

Hey everyone,

I am back, and I am well, confused. I keep telling people stuff in Spanish, including the people who cannot say anything except si… Anyway, I thought that maybe I should analyse my trip with a top 5’ format.

Things I will miss about Peru
1. The people… my families, the girls, my workmates, my friends, the randoms in the street who wanted to talk to me because of a reason other than the colour of my skin.
2. The fact that people do not have to get toasted to have a good night out dancing, and the fact that dancing is such a big and wonderful part of the culture.
3. The pride Peruvians have in their country and (against all odds) their soccer team.
4. Being tall
5. Eating rice with chicken, rice with potatoes, rice with beef, rice with turkey, rice with locro, rice with …..

Questions that need to be asked
1. Why can’t the Peruvians and Chileans start getting on and sending each other nice cards or something?
The war of the Pacific is a sorry history, but the English benefited more from this war than the Peruvians and the Chileans put together (through the deals that they made with the nitrate producing areas). Pisco ORIGINATED in Peru in a place called Pisco, but the Chileans also grow it because Chile was part of the viceroy of Peru which means that Chile also has a claim to it- it is a shared history thing, like Oz and NZ share rugby. The Chileans also have good grape growing land. It is the national drink of both countries and that is ok. Maybe a Chilean business owns the electricity in Peru but I bet that only a small percentage of them benefit from it. Lan said that Lima was dirty and dangerous, but I bet that there are parts of Santiago are as well. The shantytowns and poor areas are the subtext of all Latin-American towns regardless of their sizes.
2. How does wearing bare feet make you catch a cold? Does bacteria enter through the feet?
3. What does Coca Cola not cure? Why do doctors write prescriptions for it? I cannot wait to tell my dentist this!
4. What is sexy about a 30 year old who a) cannot wash his clothes b) has his mum clean his room c) thinks he is sexy? Why is being a female and single regarded as a terminal disease?
5. What’s with the rice addiction?
6. On the Rigi, they are trying to make it harder to pass by spending money on it. Why? Why don’t they do it the Peruvian way….? spend no money on it for years so that it gradually forms potholes, and cracks then it is harder to pass and costs no one a cent.

Main activities in Chincha
1. Walk around the Plaza de Armas and say hi to everyone.
2. Invent phrases that mock the Spanish accent… these do not need to make sense in any way shape of form. They only have to have lots of these letters: c, s, z.
3. Go out dancing at night… in one of the 2 discos only on Saturdays.
4. Learn to dance like a chicken…. the dances of the black people in Peru- the majority of whom live in Chincha!
5. Eat chicken with potato chips or Chinese food, or Willies Pizza or ice pudding.

Countries I am supposedly from
1. The United States… don’t all white people come from there? Is New Zealand a state close to Texas?
2. Germany… maybe it is for the colouring.
3. Chile… I do not have a Chilean accent. In fact my Peruvian slang makes the Chileans laugh lots because I speak like a Peruvian and Peruvians are supposed to have to have darker skin than Chileans… I don’t!
4. Argentina… Because I can speak Spanish so I must come from a Spanish speaking country and Argentines are ‘white’
5. England… well that is genetically true. And my surname is English.

Misconceptions
1. I voted for Bush (I have been abused for this. I always say my country has no president and they assume it is a dictatorship)
2. I am always carrying a lot of money. I had a plastic bag with toilet paper in it and some idiot grabbed it off me.
3. I always need to take a taxi… I cannot walk or catch buses.
4. There are heaps of them but I am not
5. Sharing them

Things that I did in Chincha
1. Learned heaps in my work
2. Made heaps of lifelong friendships
3. Learned some Spanish that only Chichanos say…asul madre….
4. Made a Pavlova
5. Got my shoe stuck in a hole in the street

What one can admire about my girls
1. Their shear resilience after they have had and are having such difficult times in their lives.
2. Their ability to trust and love someone who cannot understand much of the language that they talk.
3. Their beautiful smiles.
4. The fact that most of them are focused on educating themselves despite all that they have been through.
5. The way they dance.

Why I loved my work so much
1. I have enjoyed teaching the girls and getting to know and love them
2. Seeing the huge improvements in them after so little time
3. The free dancing lessons on Saturday mornings
4. My friendly workmates
5. Just the environment

Words that do not exist in Spanish
1. Now.
2. Cheesy.
3. I can’t think of any more.

Top Five Cities In Peru (not counting Chincha) in my highly biased opinion
1. Arequipa- beautiful, full of volcanoes, with good bookshops, and I have host family from Lima living there. I love it.
2. Ayacucho- Authentic, interesting and full of sites of the Huari culture and the first traces of human existance in South America were found here as well. The people are friendly.
3. Cuzco- Some people will disagree with the fact that this is not number one. It is not because it is too sold out to the tourists, and it is almost hardly Peruvian. People speak to you in English more than Spanish. It does have some amazing ruins, a great night life and some good Pisco sours.
4. Lima- Scared me at first. It is huge and when I got here I thought that I would never be able to take a bus around there by myself as there are bewildering amounts of buses of all sizes to catch. However, I can now. The city has grown on me. Each part has its own personality. Miraflores is like the spoilt teenage girl, the centre like the grandfather, La Molina like the snobby aunt, Santiago de Surco like the bookish uni student. I would now even say that I like it.
5. Huancayo- Stunning with heaps of beautiful sites and ruins. The people are very nice too.

New Crazes I have gained
1. For the music of South America… salsa, merengue, tradicional, and everything else.
2. Coffee.
3. Pisco (distilled clear alcohol made from grapes) that has its ORIGINS in PERU. Neh!!!
4. Manjar (caramel like stuff).
5. Herbal Tea.

Tags: Chile, cultures, dance, education and training, language, Peru, Politics
Posted in Articles, Culture & Society, Your Stories | No Comments »

Travellin around Peru

Tuesday, August 9th, 2005

Mariana Gledhill from Wellington, N.Z. spent 7 months, in 2005, in Peru doing voluntary work. She shares her experiences.

Sorry about the absence of messages. I have been travelling and I have not had much time to write, but I am back in Chincha now, so I have lots of time to write. I had better tell you about Chincha and what it’s like. Chincha is not exactly a city that is going to win beauty contests. Garbage litters all of its roads and there are pot holes everywhere. there are lots of dogs in the streets too, I think more than people. Some of them bark at you like they are going to bite you. I have learned that the best way to combat this is to lean down like you are going to pick up a stone, then they usually back away.

Activities in Chincha are limited. Walking around the plaza de armas is the only thing to do on weekdays. Then you buy food. Lots of exchange students who go to Chincha get much heavier as their time elapses. There are 2 discos in the weekend too. However, if you want to avoid anyone, walking in the plaza and going to the discos are not reccomended as everyone is usually there.

Yeah, Chincha is pretty boring, but I love my work. Seeing my girls after so long was wonderful. There are so many new girls that I am just getting to know as well. One of the Aurora is a 14 year old with a 2 month old baby. I help her out a bit with the baby. I cannot imagine having that responsibility at 14. She seems grounded though. We had Fiestas Patrias competitions as well…. there are 3 zones of Peru and everyone divided into these zones- coast, highlands and jungle. They did dances and singing related to these zones. It was fun helping them prepare and watching them.

I guess I should tell you all about my travels. I went alone, mainly because everyone left Lima before I could get to them. Email is not reliable for that. I went to Huancayo, a very beautiful place. I got free accommodation from friends in return for ‘teaching English.’ I really enjoyed staying with my friends, such nice people. As its in the highlands, I got a bit of altitude sickness but after drinking mate de coca, I was fine. The rio manon valle is just stunning as are the inca ruins at chupaca. It was wonderful.

After that I went to Ayacucho and saw the Wari capital. the wari civilisation was pre Inca and the capital is buried near Ayacucho. The walls are freakeshly high. They know more about construction than modern Peruvians. I also went to the battle of Ayacucho battle field. this battle was fought on my birthday, and the view from the field are stunning.

After that, I made my way to Arequipa to stay with lovely relatives of my family in Lima. They were so nice and I got to drink fresh milk for the first time in God knows how long. I also went to the caà±on del colca, an amazing caà±on that is the second highest in the world. I saw condors and some amazing views that I could just not capture on my camera.

Basically, I had a wonderful time travelling. I am half sorry to be back, but I am enjoying seeing my ‘hijas’ (daughters) again and spending time with them. I cannot believe that I have only 3 weeks left of being here with AFS. It seems like time has gone by so fast, despite the ups and downs. I am now dreaming in Spanish and my English is getting worse. I said ‘conversandering’ the other day. How much more Spanglish can you get? My spelling in English is going down the drain as I am learning the logical Spanish way. People here now say i speak Spansih well. It doesn’´t feel like it, but I know that I am better than I was.

I hope all of you are having a good time at home.

Love
Mariana

Photographer: Mariana Gledhill
Photo: the jungle settlement of Tarzan in the central jungle of Peru

Tags: cultures, dance, development, language, Latin America, Peru, poverty, projects, travel, volunteer, youth
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Visiting the Jungle

Thursday, July 7th, 2005

Mariana Gledhill from Wellington, N.Z spent 7 months, in 2005, in Peru doing voluntary work. She shares her experiences.

Hi all

I am travelling right now and I have so much to talk about but not much time to say it.

There have been a few questions recently:

When am I back in New Zealand? 14 October (I went into Miraflores today and changed the ticket all by myself. It was funny because I was speaking Spanish and all of the Lan staff were speaking English).

Have I met a gorgeous Latin spunky guy? No.

How is my Spanish? Better, but it still has room for improvement. Apparently I was dreaming in Spanish the other night, about cockroaches. But I do not remember this.

I have finally been to another zone of Peru (Peru has 3 zones, coast, mountain and jungle). The jungle was great… it’´s not rainforest. It could have been once, but I don’t know. The area I went to is used for growing coffee (really good coffee) and bananas. Bananas Someone told me that there are two varieties of banana and that bananas are going to die out because of lack of diversity. I don’t think so!!! I have encountered 6 types of bananas here. Some are huge… about as long as the length of my arm up to my elbow. Others are tiny and can fit in my hand. There are ones that are orange inside, and red ones too.

I will be going to the mountains soon…. I have not visited but I have already had altitude sickness from the trip to the jungle (it went over mountains you see!) I could not hear for half a day from it…. feo!

See you all later

Mariana

Tags: agriculture, biodiversity, coffee, cultures, forests, language, Peru, travel, volunteer
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Environment, Your Stories | No Comments »