Response to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129024449
Marjorie Valbrun, you don’t know me. We have fleetingly met once in the old NY/DC Haiti circles but I don’t remember the details. Wyclef and I have met once, too. He serenaded my toddler on the family piano about 7 years ago in a random encounter at my mother’s house. You are both great souls with a connection to Haiti. I wish we had more. I wish we had more Haitians who cared to teach their children the language and the culture. I wish many more of us went back to Haiti every summer to steep our kids in rural and real culture. And to contribute resources and the real world experience of being outside of Haiti. Not many of us do that. Haiti is not more than the place our parents came from. We write from abroad, from the comfort of some home or office with running water and 24 hour electricity and infallible internet. Haiti is a cloth we wear when it suits us. Wyclef, like some others, did not have to be in Haiti. He made it. He came to the US and succeeded. Yet, he went back often and long before the earthquake. Long before Hollywood remembered after having forgotten and remembered so many times. Wyclef was there. Let us not doubt neither the significance of him making it in NY nor the fact that he stayed connected to Haiti. In an era when so many of the most fortunate Haitian families birth their kids in Miami for the benefit of US citizenship, Wyclef holds a Haitian passport. Lest we question how deep and long is his commitment.
There is a ridiculously high number candidates, 19 as far as I can tell. One of them happens to be my uncle. Being in Haiti, I have recongnized some of the names of the perennial candidates and the party leaders among them. None of them bring what Wyclef brings. Haiti needs the light of the world to get past the complete disaster that is Haiti. Haiti was broken before January 12, 2010. All that has happened is that someone turned on the lights with the worst know natural disaster in recorded time. Without Wyclef in the race, who will keep those lights on? Most Haitians haven’t heard of one single other candidate with the exception of Sweet Mickey. Non-Haitians haven’t heard of any of them at all. Who will keep the focus on Haiti? Who, besides Wyclef, will be able to call a press conference and have any one care at all?
The technocrats: You call for technocrats, Marjorie. Haiti is full of them and look where she is now. The next president, who will not be running the country on his own, will have plenty of work for the good ones. Your technocrat argument is extremely weak. No one person runs any government, and it takes a driven soul to lead the capable lieutenants who do. Wyclef and those talented Haitians can turn Haiti around with a focused and determined program. It will take local electricity generation to unlock the potential of the hardest working people on Earth; widespread, cheap internet to give the people access to the education they crave and to keep information moving throughout Haiti and the world; and a leader to lead them. Wyclef knows what it means to have resources to support your dreams and goals more so than any other candidate running. He knows what it means to go from no power to ubiquitous power. Bad roads to 100mph roads. Most of the candidates are way too close to the status quo. A bad road is OK because they have a 4X4. The have dealt with the heat of Haiti, power outages and fuel shortages and don’t really have the context of something different. If they are rich, they might live in a big house in the middle of a slum oblivious to their surroundings.
This single most important thing Wyclef brings to Haiti is his last 29 years in the US and the success brought by the tools available to him there. Basically, Wyclef has had a vision of the future, indeed he has lived in the future and is time traveling to a backward, dysfunctional and corrupt place with all the knowledge of the future and the wisdom to know whats wrong in Haiti and how to fix it.
Marjorie Valbrun, you don’t know me. We have fleetingly met once in the old NY/DC Haiti circles but I don’t remember the details. Wyclef and I have met once, too. He serenaded my toddler on the family piano about 7 years ago in a random encounter at my mother’s house. You are both great souls with a connection to Haiti. I wish we had more. I wish we had more Haitians who cared to teach their children the language and the culture. I wish many more of us went back to Haiti every summer to steep our kids in rural and real culture. And to contribute resources and the real world experience of being outside of Haiti. Not many of us do that. Haiti is not more than the place our parents came from. We write from abroad, from the comfort of some home or office with running water and 24 hour electricity and infallible internet. Haiti is a cloth we wear when it suits us. Wyclef, like some others, did not have to be in Haiti. He made it. He came to the US and succeeded. Yet, he went back often and long before the earthquake. Long before Hollywood remembered after having forgotten and remembered so many times. Wyclef was there. Let us not doubt neither the significance of him making it in NY nor the fact that he stayed connected to Haiti. In an era when so many of the most fortunate Haitian families birth their kids in Miami for the benefit of US citizenship, Wyclef holds a Haitian passport. Lest we question how deep and long is his commitment.
There is a ridiculously high number candidates, 19 as far as I can tell. One of them happens to be my uncle. Being in Haiti, I have recongnized some of the names of the perennial candidates and the party leaders among them. None of them bring what Wyclef brings. Haiti needs the light of the world to get past the complete disaster that is Haiti. Haiti was broken before January 12, 2010. All that has happened is that someone turned on the lights with the worst know natural disaster in recorded time. Without Wyclef in the race, who will keep those lights on? Most Haitians haven’t heard of one single other candidate with the exception of Sweet Mickey. Non-Haitians haven’t heard of any of them at all. Who will keep the focus on Haiti? Who, besides Wyclef, will be able to call a press conference and have any one care at all?
The technocrats: You call for technocrats, Marjorie. Haiti is full of them and look where she is now. The next president, who will not be running the country on his own, will have plenty of work for the good ones. Your technocrat argument is extremely weak. No one person runs any government, and it takes a driven soul to lead the capable lieutenants who do. Wyclef and those talented Haitians can turn Haiti around with a focused and determined program. It will take local electricity generation to unlock the potential of the hardest working people on Earth; widespread, cheap internet to give the people access to the education they crave and to keep information moving throughout Haiti and the world; and a leader to lead them. Wyclef knows what it means to have resources to support your dreams and goals more so than any other candidate running. He knows what it means to go from no power to ubiquitous power. Bad roads to 100mph roads. Most of the candidates are way too close to the status quo. A bad road is OK because they have a 4X4. The have dealt with the heat of Haiti, power outages and fuel shortages and don’t really have the context of something different. If they are rich, they might live in a big house in the middle of a slum oblivious to their surroundings.
This single most important thing Wyclef brings to Haiti is his last 29 years in the US and the success brought by the tools available to him there. Basically, Wyclef has had a vision of the future, indeed he has lived in the future and is time traveling to a backward, dysfunctional and corrupt place with all the knowledge of the future and the wisdom to know whats wrong in Haiti and how to fix it.
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