The Sustainable Leadership Forum

James Dubreze Says:

26 February 2010 at 7:25 pm.

During the reconstruction of Haiti, built a community for those people outside the city. Set up an independent electrical grid for those communities as wind and solar energy are plentiful in Haiti. People of Haiti should not have to pay for electricity when the energy sources that produces it are plentiful in nature.

Haiti needs a lot but to begin, we can start with roads and bridges, hospitals, doctors, nurses, clean water, electricity, a good sewage system and more importantly a functioning government. These are the basics, but before any reconstruction can begin, an overview of Haiti’s infrastructure is necessary.

How do you set up sewage systems in a mountainous hill full of houses? This is a task that is nearly impossible, because before any construction can begin in any city, the sewage system and roads are already established.

In Haiti’s case, it is the opposite, in some areas houses are built before the roads and sewage systems are established. To accommodate, home owners dug holes in their back yard to use as a lavatory. This should never happen; Haiti has received lots of money from foreign countries in the past.

Why were these monies not invested in the infrastructure of the country? This is why I say if corruption is a transaction that occurred under the table, for Haiti it happens in plain sight, right over the table.

Haiti can become self-sufficient, the people just have to start planting again. At one time Haiti exported coffee beans, rice, sugar, cacao beans, tobacco and corn. Today we import almost everything we exported years ago, why? Well, because of embargo, United State at one time did impose an embargo on Haiti which ended in 1962. Now we have become so dependent on imported food that we’ve stopped our own plantation.

After all, it does cost the Haitian people cheaper now to purchase foreign goods than to buy their own. This has left the Haitian peasant struggling to compete, until they realized that they’re no match to big corporate.

When the peasants can no longer make a living from agriculture, they moved to the big cities in search for a better life. As a result you have population expansion of enormous capacity. And since there are no regulations as to how many people the city is capable of retained, no reinforcement is applied.

Haiti is now referred to as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But this was not always the case. There was a time when Haitians were self- sufficient and this was during the time of the La Negritude movement. This period dates back during the early 1800, right around the same time as the Harlem Renaissance.

As a matter fact, it was the La Negritude movement that influenced Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. How Haiti got this way is a question that troubles many, but those who understand politics knows why the History of the Haitian people went down this path.

One would think that a country that helped the United States gain their independence would be embraced by the American people, but this was not the case. Our skin color overshadows every good deed that we have done. We were too black to be accepted as free slaves, and plus our example threatens the livelihood of the slaves masters in the Americas.

Blacks were too valuable to whites during those times for them to have considered us free slaves. So in that sense, denouncing our effort for helping gain their independence, was the best logical and beneficial response they could have come up with.

Because if you think about it, had their embraced us for helping them, the history of black Americans in this country would have taken a different path. It would not have been in their interest, to liberate their slaves.

Update on Haiti – February 26, 2010 « A Sustainable Future for Haiti Says:

8 March 2010 at 10:16 pm.

[…] we are looking to ask on the conference call on February 28. The call-in information (currently here) will be posted again here, along with a proposed agenda for the […]