Vandals attacked a midtown Toronto neighbourhood this weekend, cutting off phone and cable lines, spray-painting property and cutting brake lines on a number of vehicles.

Although there were reports the vandalism appeared to be linked to Liberal party supporters, Staff Sgt. Glenn Gray refused to confirm a motive behind the attacks, telling CTV.ca it was too early in the investigation to comment.

The guest house served golden rice the other night. I looked at it and asked, "is that golden rice?" It was the right gold colour. P and V were, like, "yeah, sometimes they have this gold-coloured rice."

"But is it, like, golden rice?" It's a fairly recent invention -- a genetically modified rice that produces beta-carotene, which metabolizes to pro-Vitamin A. Beta-carotene (as in "carrot") produces an orange hue, which is what makes the rice gold-coloured. (Beta-carotene is also abundant in sweet potato)

Haiti has clinical levels of Vitimin A deficiency, and earlier in my trip, Sister Mary Alban was telling me about a young boy that had gone blind from Vitimin A deficiency. This is the big down-side of countries where rice is the primary food staple: it lacks Vitamin A, and unless you get meat or sweet potatoes or spinach or something like that, Vitimin A deficiency is a real risk.

Golden rice, unfortunately, is patented, although the scientists who "invented" it (while under grants that required them to transfer the ownership of the results) did a lot of good work negotiating for relatively cheap offerings to be available to the parts of the world that need it the most. Unfortunately, I'm sure that, with food price increases, people probably won't naturally gravitate toward a more expensive rice unless they have a lot of eduction. (But maybe just getting more carrots into people's diets is important).

I still don't know if the rice we had was actual golden rice, but I'm unaware of any other gold-coloured rice.

Here's a CBC Radio programme about Haiti (wow, the mainstream media is talking about Haiti! Hell freezes over!)

The salient part is part two, which includes talks with people like Patrick Elie and Peter Hallward. This quotation, from Elie, regarding the Haitian "brain drain", is interesting:

We have more Haitian doctors in North American than we have in Haiti

This speech, by a union leader, talks about the role of racism in the current US presidential election. I got it from nex0s, who commented, "This is one of those instances where I feel that it's time for white people to stand up and say this sort of thing out loud, and loudly." And, yeah.

I'm also very fond of this article about the effects of racism.

We watched the French language debate from Haiti. CTV was the only place I could find that wasn't streaming Windows Media format, but they choked. So we watched a CBC feed on P's Windows box.

I'm not crazy about the format. I think the short time for answering questions leads to useless statements like, "As Prime Minister, my government will do good things. We'll work hard, and we'll also work closely with the other leaders, because we're cooperative." I mean, really, that was pretty much every question. Get in to some details. I think Duceppe did best in terms of specific, focused details. Unsurprisingly, Harper got attacked on arts programmes and the environment. I like that the group managed to plant the message that Harper is autocratic and ignores the rules he doesn't like. I also think that Dion did a pretty good job.

Both Layton and Harper seemed more proficient in French, compared to the last French debate I saw. But Harper still reminds me of a used car salesman.

I think I was most disappointed by Elizabeth May. I expected better from her. She wasn't terrible; I just had higher hopes, I guess. (But I loved her tremendously faint praise when asked to say something nice about Harper).

I'll be interested to see the news reports.

I get in a lot of conversations on the street. The other day, some woman took a disliking to me, and ranted at me for several blocks in very fast kreyòl. I don't know what she was saying, but I think she was a little irrational because some guys in a gas station nearby were watching us, snickering.

And I get hit on. A lot. In Canada, I'm too old and too fat to be randomly hit on these days, but here, it seems like every other day some guy professes his love to me.

But I like some of the other conversations I have. A few days ago, one fellow was headed in the same direction as me, and we started chatting. His English vocabulary was good, but he had a heavy accent. He was studying law, and wanted to be a lawyer. He told me that his greatest hero was Malcolm X. And then we were talking about Obama and about how Obama's DNC speech was on the anniversary of King's "I have a dream" speech (even in Haiti, I'm having conversations about Obama). And that while he thought that MLK and Obama are powerful speakers, he still likes Malcolm X better.

I talked about some of the Malcolm X stuff that I really like, and agreed that he'd done some very important things. Then he asks, almost as if the possibility just occurred to him, "You're not a racist, are you?"

Me, I say, "What? No."

And he says, "But really, everybody's a bit racist." I nodded and said that I agreed with that.

And just about then, our paths diverged and we said our goodbyes.

( Reposting a picture from a few years ago... )

We had a little bit of excitement tonight. I was sitting at the kitchen table talking to V, the wife of the couple who work here at the guest house. Both of them have been coming to Haiti for years, and they've done a lot of stuff. So she's telling me stories of things that they've seen, and people from the history of Lavalas. It's an interesting conversation. And then Te showed up. Te is one of the guards who works here. P and V know even less kreyòl than I know, and the guards have about the same amount of English, so it's always an interesting thing having a bit of a conversation. Te says he's looking for the "flash", which P and V recognize as wanting P's good flashlight.

P goes off to find the flashlight, and Te mentions something about a vòlè. Me, I recognize this word. It's from the French: voleur. Thief.

Now, I've been awakened once or twice by flashlights going by my window: the guards do keep a good eye out at night, and they check nooks and crannies looking for things that shouldn't be there. So I figured that they probably saw some movement and just wanted to check it out.

But P went out with Te, and it became clear that something more was up.

Beside the guest house, there's a soccer field -- the land belongs to the Izméry family (the same family that owns the guest house building), and it's run as a local recreation centre for the neighbourhood. Apparently someone saw a stranger in the park, and quickly a crowd of people confronted him.

So, some things about this were interesting because they're so different than they'd be back home. First up, this guy was a stranger, and everyone in the neighbourhood knew it because everyone in the neighbourhood knows everyone else in the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood was concerned that he might be a thief. Since it was one guy versus a growing crowd of people, they instructed him to lie on the ground until they could figure out who he was and he (probably wisely) complied. So by the time we showed up, there were about twenty-five people surrounding this one guy lying on the ground.

Now, at some level, it sounds like this could be a real mob situation. Twenty-five people jumping to the conclusion that this guy was a thief. But they were really orderly and organized about things. They asked the guy his story, and he claimed that he used to live in the neighbourhood (which is how he knew the soccer field), and that he was supposed to meet a friend around there, but he had to go to the bathroom, which is why he was in the field at night.

So the mob asked for his friend's phone number to check on this story, and the mob started phoning on their cell phones. Unfortunately, his friend tended to hang up the phone. (Perhaps the guy on the other end of the phone was afraid that there was some trouble, or perhaps it was all a lie. I don't know.) They also got numbers for the guy's brother and mother. Nobody seemed to be able to really mollify the crowd.

They weren't perfect; when they couldn't get answers, a couple of people slapped the guy. But mostly I was amazed at how orderly this mob was. In Toronto, either nobody would get involved, or it'd be a really bad scene with shouting or something.

Eventually the police came, and the guy was taken off to the police station; his mother and brother were going to meet him there. And the mob dispensed. But it was definitely a moment that was very different than anything I'd ever seen in Toronto.

Last night, we watched the US Presidential Debate via the CNN web site. Who knows of a source to watch Wednesday's Federal Leaders debate online?

(I'm really feeling the absence of Sister Mary Alban. I have no one to talk Canadian politics with. I can carry my own talking about the key beats of the US presidential election, but the couple that's running the place, here, know nothing about Canadian politics. I want to talk about what's going on with the NDP. They don't understand who the NDP even are. Le sigh.)

From a presentation by Anne Hastings, the director of Fonkoze:

According to the World Bank, people who live on two dollars (US) a day are considered to be living in poverty. Those who live on one dollar a day are considered to be living in extreme poverty. In Haiti, over 80% of population is poor, and over 50% live in extreme poverty.

In a place like the U.S. or Canada, we typically spend something like 10% or less of our income on food, but the poor spend 50% (or even as much as 80%) of their income on food. As the cost of food increases, the poor are forced to make concerning choices to keep food on the table. They sell assets, they cut back on spending for things like health and they use up any savings they've accumulated. But also, they just eat less.

This table is pretty scary:

Prices in Haitian Gourdes (goud).

(When I first travelled to Haiti in 2002, the exchange rate was closer to 27 HTG/USD).

The scary part is that this is not seen as a blip. Most analysts agree that this is a permanent adjustment in food prices.

I've posted, in the past, about how Haiti used to be fairly self-sufficient, agriculturally. In 1986, it imported only 7000 tons of rice from the US. In the late 1980s, Haiti was forced by the international lending agencies to lift tariffs on the import of rice and cheaper US rice flooded the market and put Haitian farmers out of business. (It's worth mentioning that agriculture is one of the few areas that free trade people seem to think that it's okay to subsidize. This is great for agriculture-heavy countries like the US and Canada). By 1996, Haiti was importing 196,000 tons of rice.

And we can't even say we didn't predict this. Professor Yasmine Shamsie testified before a Foreign Affairs committee:

What I mean is that it was clear to donors in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s that the liberalization of Haiti's markets and the lowering of protective tariffs on rice, for instance—the country's most basic staple—would devastate Haitian rice producers. This was well known. USAID came out with two reports, one in 1987 and another one in 1995, that said that if they lowered their tariffs, it would basically bring a loss of about $15 million a year to rice-growing peasants, further reducing their already poor standard of living. That was in a USAID report. In other words, we are advancing macro-economic policies that we know will impoverish these sectors.

This is the result of neoliberalism. And this is the stated objective of organizations such as the World Bank.

Today is a perfect Haitian day. No rain. Warm, but not muggy. Dry enough that you don't really feel yourself sweating. The evening has a slight cool breeze. This is perfect.

Every day, I take three or four tap-tap rides to get to and from Fonkoze. Tap-taps are public transportation, here. They're all privately owned and operated, but they run on fixed routes, and have fixed prices.

The first picture on the Wikipedia page shows what a typical tap-tap looks like. It's a pick-up truck with a raised cover on the back. There's usually a bit of an extension at the back (with something of a metal step built into it). On the inside, there are benches on the two sides, and each of these benches typically seats about six people, but I've seen seven people per bench fairly often. Often one or two people can sit beside the driver in the front of the cab, and more often than not, someone will be standing on the back step, holding on to the back for much of the trip. People can also stand in the area between the two benches, but it's rare as you'd spend the whole trip hunched over.

There seems to be three systems for calling for a stop. Several of the tap-taps have an opening between the driver's cab and the back area, and you can shout out "mesi, chofè!" and the tap-tap will pull over to the side of the road. They you hafta squeeze your way past people to get off of the tap-tap, and wander over to the driver's cab to give the driver your money. A lot of tap-taps cost 7 gourdes, although I take one that costs 8 gourdes as well. A tap-tap that goes up to Petyonvil costs 10 gourdes.

But some tap-taps have a glass window between the driver's cab and the back compartment, and in those cases, you call out to the person closest to the front of the vehicle to tap on the glass window (I suspect that this is where the term "tap-tap" originates). There are some weird cases where there's a metal grill between the back compartment and the window, and the vehicle will usually have a pen or a stick tied to the grill so you can poke it through the grill and tap on the glass. Some tap-taps have gone high-tech, and they have a buzzer installed, but more often than not these set-ups are broken. And you still hafta call out to the person nearest the buzzer button to get them to push it.

More often than not, recently, the driver has a buddy who collects money. During most of the trip, the money-taker sits beside the driver, receiving the money from passengers and making change (if possible). When the tap-tap is nearing the end of the route, the money-taker gets into the back of the vehicle and collects everyone's money just before the end of the ride (I guess when you have a lot of people getting off at a busy corner, it's easy for someone to sneak away without paying). I've usually been able to get change when I haven't had exact change, but there's no guarantee of this. And while they can usually change a twenty gourdes note (the 20 is new, actually) or a fifty gourdes note, anything much larger is really pushing it.

There's usually good airflow in tap-taps, so I don't find them hot or stuffy. They're crowded, but not horribly. (Despite the joke: "How many Haitians can you fit in a tap-tap?" "One more!") And I confess that I find them a lot of fun.

Okay. I'm not a Green. But my local Green candidate has a good policy on Haiti, and he has a good page reminding us that viewing the world as "Conservative Bad : Liberal Good" is a bit naive.

Me, I'm rolling my eyes at this section of the GOP platform:

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.

Seen via electoral-vote.com.

And now the weather has turned really peculiar. It feels like it's going to pour, soon, but right now, the sky is glowing the weirdest golden colour. It's completely overcast, but somehow the setting sun is lighting up all of the clouds in the most surreal sky I've ever seen.

On Sunday, I got invited to go north to a suburb/town called Kwadèbouke. Our reason for going to Kwadèbouke is that it's an area where a lot of metalwork artists live. One of the common artforms in Haiti is metal-working. Haitian artists get metal sheets -- often from oil drums -- and they cut it and stamp it and make some really beautiful art pieces.

The guest house operates at little souvenir shop for all the missionaries who come through. The stuff they sell is mostly made by local artists (other stuff includes things like locally-produced honey and vanilla and some spicy sauces). With few exceptions, the house buys the pieces and then resells them in the shop.

I confess that I'm weirded out when "art dealers" come to Haiti, pay a pittance for the art, here, and then sell it at an exaggerated price back in the States or Canada. I feel like the guest house manages to be reasonable, paying the artists a good price, and not marking it up enormously. Kwadèbouke is pretty far off the beaten path, and it must be hard for the artists to get much exposure to foreigners.

There were some really wonderful pieces, too. I'm especially fond of the big round pieces (which I assume are from the lids of the drums). One artist had some especially good pieces. One member of our party bought a really inspired fish riding a bicycle (I wondered if the Haitians had ever heard that quotation). It had a real bicycle chain and there were other fish jumping around near the wheels. There were a number of pretty large djab images, looking like little devils. Surprisingly, the Catholic guest house didn't get any of those, but one of the members of our party did.

Me, I fell for a big Ezili veve (I was a bit surprised that there weren't many veves -- but there were a lot of images of Lasiren). It was a more silver metal than most of the other pieces, but was beautifully done. The fellow pulled it off of the wall. I glanced up and it seemed like the piece was still on the wall. But no. It was a whole family of cockroaches that were hiding out behind the veve. The artist didn't say anything about the cockroaches and I didn't either. But I checked out the piece very carefully before he wrapped it up in newspaper. Hm.

And then, while we were waiting for one person to make their last purchases, we made out a funeral procession coming down the road. I can't say that I've seen a Haitian funeral before, but this one was very New Orleans in style. There was a sombre jazz band leading a bit white hearse. Sister Mary Alban mentioned that at fancy-schmancy funerals like this one, it was customary to hire mourners to weep and wail and howl. That was a new thing.

( So what am I doing in Haiti? )

Part of the problem in Haiti is that the American managed coup against President Aristide was a coup against democratic community organisations as well. The Haiti Democracy Project, USAID and John McCain’s International Republican Institute calculated that they would fatally undermine Aristide by destroying the grassroots organisations. What they did was to destroy the Haitians’ capacity to help themselves.

— "The Children of Prometheus" by John Maxwell

Harper, in turn, assured a large partisan crowd that he feels for people making the transition from one job to another. "We know that some Canadian workers are transitioning between jobs. that's never easy and I don't want to minimize it, but we should never lose sight of how solid our fundamentals are and more importantly how fortunate we are to live in this country," he said.

He then talked about how he travelled to a desperately impoverished slum in Haiti and how the people there looked hopeless, in stark contrast to Canada, which he described as "a land of above all else, boundless hope."

— Canadian Press

What are these "fundamentals"? Is that language to obfuscate "our oil companies are doing well"?

This document is pretty surprising. It shows which areas of Haiti are being served by various NGOs (Non-government organizations). The sheer number is pretty stunning.

In an email that I saw this link in, this point was raised:

here is a development mystery about Haiti, perhaps not unique in the Third World, we should solve without delay. namely, with all the apparent intervention, what accounts for the continuing and seemingly worsening situation? which factors are most influential, which less so, etc.? what posture and departure from history should the Haitians and intervenors now take to change course?

Certainly, there's been a lot of writing about the role of NGOs in Haiti and how they've often been very partisan actors. Groups like "Rights and Democracy" and "NCHR-Haiti" appear to have been funded to perpetuate stories of human rights abuses under the Aristide government (and were silent about human rights abuses under the Latortue government). The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade has an issue of their zine, Press for Change that talks about this role of NGOs in Haiti.

One of the reasons that I like Médecins Sans Frontières is that they engage in a political evaluation of a country before beginning their aid operations. For Haiti, they have declined CIDA funding. (I can't speak for why, but I'm inclined to think that the money is tied to partisan objectives).