We would be we, $28 billion et al.

A friend shared the video of a young woman explaining how the world got it all wrong: Europe and the United States are actually poor; it is Africa that is rich. She spoke deliberately, with the self-assurance of an intellectual who had conducted research and collected evidence. She argued the West spent years destabilizing the continent, the more easily to plunder its wealth. 

My reaction was as lightning. In an élan of Afro-loyalty, I rejected that narrative, reasoning it portrayed Africans as acted upon, wholly incapable of acting in their best interests. That cannot be true. After all, the speaker’s analysis has become commonplace. Africans now know they have been and continue to be played. Where are the leaders? Where is the counter offensive?

In truth, Africa is too broad and too far for me to address. I will speak instead of a place I know. Haiti.

After winning our independence, we had to pay the French to leave us alone. Our very good newspaper Le Nouvelliste has estimated that sum at $28 billion by today's equivalent. It took us 67 years to pay it.  

It's become trendy in academic circles to morph that absurdity into "a debt" and link it to our under-development. The average Haitian, however, does not believe the country’s poverty is due to a lack of money. We had $4 billion from Venezuela in a program called Petrocaribe. Two guesses as to where those billions did not go.

Our southern region has just taken twin blows: an earthquake and a hurricane-like storm. Unlike the earthquake, hurricanes are for us a quasi-annual ritual. Yet, the Civil Protection office, tabbed with disaster preparedness, had nothing in storage: no tents, no water bottles, no aspirin packets, no toothpaste, no boxes of spaghetti and bottles of oil. No baby blankets. 

The French debt was not the cause.

I have not spoken with the Civil Protection director, but I imagine he could say, “you know, we drafted a disaster plan. Indeed we have local, departmental, and national plans. I submitted them three months ago to my minister de tutelle and was awaiting his approval.” He did his job.  

If I were to go to that minister, he would likely explain, “yes, yes. I did receive the disaster plan but Civil Protection had failed to update the statistics from last year. So I asked my technical director to revise it. We were supposed to have a meeting about it this week. As you may know, I am new to this position.”

Or he might answer, “yes, I did receive the plan. And my ministry validated it. Then I sent it to the Prime Minister's Office. They have the authority to send it to the executive secretary of the National Palace. That's the person who prepares the agenda for ministers' meetings, where we would vote to adopt it."

Breathe.

What could have been done? 

The Civil Protection director could have, in fact, prepared the hurricane season. Besides the Executive, he could have gone to the locals. Les Cayes, for one, is Haiti’s third or fourth largest city. It is not without resources! The mayor’s office, businesses, churches, universities, NGOs, they all could have pitched in. But that would have required initiative and personal industry. That would have demanded an urgent sense of results and responsibility. Leadership.

None of which is prevented by international debt, real or imagined.