Mental Roadblocks

Part I in a series: What We Found - Haiti

While in Haiti, I witnessed a pervasive attitude of helplessness among many Haitians and have seen how this affects their involvement in and response to all development efforts. Some call this “learned helplessness,” a mentality that is born [in the Haitian context] of centuries of colonial oppression and subsequent dependence upon dominating Western powers for financial support. Haitians were made vulnerable to the political and economic agendas of the global North, having been occupied by the United States for twenty-two years in the early 1900s and crippled by France for post-colonial “reparations” to compensate them for property lost in the revolution. Two instances in during my Haiti semester served as striking examples of the pervasiveness of this negatively reinforcing state of helplessness.

My husband worked as an intern at a small international NGO (INGO) based in Haiti’s largest, most dangerous slum community – Cite Soleil. After four years of serving the Bwa Nef neighborhood of Cite Soleil with free basic health care and minimal legal services, the leaders of this INGO began holding meetings with community leaders. Their mission was to document the community’s perceptions of their work. After hearing the community’s complaints about the limitations of the INGO's services, the American Legal Director encouraged them to organize themselves to petition their government for more services, or to create change using their own abilities. Since this INGO is only one organization and cannot meet the totality of people’s needs, the community must recognize their own responsibility for their fate. One member’s response left my husband and the Legal Director deflated, “What you are saying is very, very discouraging to us,” the man continued, “If all blan [foreigners] thought the same way as you do, then we would have nothing. Everything that we have comes from them.” The community felt that the INGO was obligated to help them, because they certainly could not help themselves.

One experience during our third week in Haiti served as my first exposure to this depressing mentality. Our supervisor, Pastor W, invited us to accompany him to a Church Youth Conference on the island of La Gonave. Over 300 youth would be present, and he hoped we could give a short workshop on community development. After planning what we thought would be a fun, interactive, and motivating lesson, we were shocked when our presentation began to crumble after only five minutes. Our opening activity – the human knot, where groups of 5-10 youth try to collectively figure out how to "untangle" themselves from a large knot without breaking their grips on each other's hands– failed because the youth believed it to be impossible. Instead of having fun with the activity and relishing the challenge, they got upset with us! They kept shouting, “We’d like to see you do this!” 

Once we tried transitioning into a small group discussion on the needs and resources in their own communities, our plan completely broke down. We hoped that our presentation would encourage youth to see the assets in their community, and their special ability to affect change because of their “inside” knowledge of these strengths. However, the first participant to share simply said, “My community’s problem is that we do not have an NCM office." [This is an office operated by the Church denomination that funnels outside funds in for local development work.] "To solve this," the youth continued, pointing directly to us, "you need to come and build one.” The group cheered at the boldness of his response, which also seemed to be a critique of our lesson. We wanted the youth to see the strengths that their communities possess, but they seemed to dismiss our approach out of hand. Needless to say, we needed more than 1-hour to try to convey this paradigm-shifting approach.

             

What we found: Development work must be sensitive to the mental and emotional aspects of poverty. It will respond in creative ways to the real obstacles presented by people’s flawed perceptions of themselves and their environment instead of simply feeding into this perception with outside-led initiatives, needs-based projects, and/or free "handouts."

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In 2010 I spent 4 months in Haiti with my classmates Sarah and Gina. We were completing our graduate studies in International Development from Eastern University, and we embarked on a final semester as co-learners and, oddly enough, teachers in Port-Au-Prince and beyond. As part of our final assignment as interns, we reflected together on lessons learned from our time applying our practical and theoretical understandings of community development (especially international community development) within our Haitian context. This series called "What we Found" includes excerpts from my reflections made in 2010.