In rural Haiti, before entering anyone’s yard, one calls out : “Onè! (Honor!), waiting to hear the welcome, “Respe!” (Respect) before entering. Cultural anthropologist Jennie Smith-Paríolá did long term fieldwork with “peasant” groups in Haiti’s Northeast, Central Plateau, and Grand Anse regions. She learned much about the values of honor/respect and how they infuse Haitians ideas of right and wrong and the kind of life that humans ought to be able to have.

Many countries and organizations are committed to helping Haiti recover from the devastation of the earthquake and to move ahead to build a stronger country than existed before. The shock of the earthquake’s toll in terms of mortality, loss of family and loved ones, and physical destruction is serving as a wake-up call to the Haitian government and to other countries and institutions that something, now and onwards, seriously, must be done to help the Haitian people achieve a better future.

Typically, countries and organizations tend to give the kind of aid that they tend to give…regardless of the context of the place and people in need. Among other forms of help, the US has sent in the military. In fact, as of today’s newspaper accounts, the US is in charge of the airport and the majority of planes landing carry US military. Planes bringing food and water are being held back.

Patterns of giving are entrenched and hard to change. But they must be. While the US military no doubt  serves an important role in helping to retrieve bodies and maintain order in what is an increasingly desperate situation, aid efforts should not ever be dominated by “military aid.”

Smith-Paríolá worked with and learned from the poor and disempowered of rural Haiti, many of whom have formed small-scale community organizations to provide services and to organize production and trade. From them, she heard incisive critiques of outsiders’ concepts of progress, democracy, and development. She listened to their aspirations and their views of how outsiders need to change. Read her book, When the Hands Are Many: Community Organization and Social Change in Rural Haiti. It conveys the voices, aspirations, and even songs of the people.

Here is what poor Haitians define as elements of a good society:

1. relative economic parity
2. strong political leaders with a sense of service who “care for” and “stand for” the poor
3. respe (respect)
4. religious pluralism to allow room for ancestral and spiritual beliefs
5. cooperative work
6. access of citizens to basic social services
7. personal and collective security

Smith-Paríolá notes that aid organizations have contested the first two of these: the first is seen as counter-productive to economic progress and the second as counter-productive to democratic principles.

In terms of respe, David Brooks’ editorial (see Samuel Martínez’s response here) in the New York Times on January 14 is a good example of the lack thereof among many outsiders.

The fourth point, from the local people’s viewpoint, can be achieved even though many people are affiliated with Protestant or Catholic missions. They feel that religious/spiritual pluralism is viable and that different belief systems are mutually informing.
Working in groups is part of rural life. It is accompanied by laughter, songs, jokes, games, and sometimes drinking. Collective play and performance “heat up” labor. Aid agencies often look down on what they perceive as rowdy and undisciplined behavior.
The sixth point is currently beyond the reach of most rural Haitians. It includes adequate schooling (primary and secondary schools with teachers and regular hours of operation), literacy training for adults, decent transportation (just a nearby road), farming equipment (hoes, machetes, plows, fertilizers, pesticides), “Western” health care (an adequate clinic within walking distance), a fair judicial system (providing equal justice to the poor), enough land to live on (land redistribution), and a healthier environment.

As the government is increasingly unable to provide for people’s livelihoods and other forms of basic needs, unrest has also increased. Crime rates have risen steeply in Port-au-Prince and also, to some extent, in rural areas. More and more often, Haitians voice concerns about feeling safe.

The lessons are clear: major changes are required in the culture of big aid organization, in how they define need, what kinds of help they provide and how they provide it. They must form coalitions with Haitian community groups based on a practiced respe that honors differences and similarities in values. They must reframe their thinking to look at the shortcoming of the powerful and wealthy rather than of the poor. Most importantly, following the values of poor Haitians, economic inequality must be reduced to the extent that if one person is eating, everyone is eating.

How to do this? A first step is that big aid givers  have to abandon their authoritative knowledge of what’s best for Haiti and listen to the Haitians. This strategy means that the typical architecture of big aid will come crumbling down just like so many buildings struck by the earthquake. A different kind of reconstruction is in order: collaborative, culturally-informed aid must replace the age-old top-down kind of aid.

The people of Haiti need help, but on their terms. Let’s start with respe and move on from there.

Image: “Map of Haiti,” from Flickr user DrGulas, licensed with Creative Commons.