KOMPA! MAGAZINE

[daphnee]

Learning From the Past


By Kevin Sites, Wed May 3, 7:58 PM ETEmail Story IM Story

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Under the 30-year dictatorship of the Duvaliers from 1956 to 1986, "Papa Doc" and his son "Baby Doc" imposed their will on Haiti through a widely feared and brutal militia called the Tonton Macoute.

Lionel Woolly, known as "Little Eye," was one of the militia's most notorious leaders. Woolly had a reputation for seizing homes he liked and evicting the inhabitants with no notice. When Baby Doc fled Haiti in 1986 in the face of mounting opposition, Woolly and other Macoutes also went into exile.


Left behind were the seized properties, which squatters quickly occupied. One of those properties was a large estate with a pool on a hillside in the swanky Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Petionville.



It took 15 years, but the house that Woolly had seized and reportedly used as a torture chamber for his political opponents was transformed into a vibrant community school, serving nearly 600 students from kindergarten through the 10th grade.


"When the house was finally given to us, there were 67 people, all living as squatters on the property. It was like a farm. There were pigs and chickens. It was filthy," says Rea Dol, the school's co-founder and a member of the organization known as Society of Providence United for the Development of Petionville (SOPUDEP).


Not only was the building in shambles, but there were psychological hurdles to transforming the property as well. Many in the neighborhood told the members of SOPUDEP that Woolly had used a dark, damp room under the swimming pool as his own private torture chamber, killing and dismembering those he deemed a threat to the Duvalier regime or to his own authority.


"The chamber below the swimming pool," Dol says, "is where the torture took place, but we had our groundskeeper fill in the pool with dirt as well as seal off that room."


When the city officially turned over the house to SOPUDEP in the summer of 2001, it took months to get the property in shape before students arrived that fall. There was also the matter of relocating the squatter families. As an incentive, Dol and co-founder Jean-Jacque Bataille decided to allow the children of the families to attend the school for free — giving an opportunity to those who might otherwise never have had a chance to get an education.



Visitors walking around the "campus" can see the progression of grades simply by climbing the stairs. Kindergarten and first grade students, dressed in pink shirts and jumpers, sing songs on the ground level of the house in classrooms separated by walls that rise only to chest level. Upstairs, older students, dressed in blue, study math and history.


Money at the SOPUDEP school is always tight, says Dol, with only 10 percent of the students paying the full tuition of $6 a month, 50 percent paying partial tuition and 40 percent paying no tuition at all. Some teachers haven't been paid in weeks.



"We're a private Christian school," says Dol, "but we don't want to turn students away."


For Michela Gestime, 15, and her 13-year-old sister Mooly, the SOPUDEP school is their only chance at an education. Their father is an unemployed mechanic; their mother, a street vendor. Since they can't afford the tuition, they are not required to pay anything. The sisters are several years behind the rest of their age group in school, but they say they are happy to be in school at all.


The school does have some support from international contributors, but the facilities are very basic. Even the water supply is suspect, with storage cisterns filled with floating refuse.


There is no cafeteria, so at lunchtime the children gather on the driveway and buy food like flavored ice or meat-filled pastries from street vendors.


The computer lab is a collection of mid-90s models, many of them in various states of disrepair. There is only one dial-up Internet connection for the whole school, and that is in Dol and Battaille's office.


"The computers are more of a reward," says Dol, "rather than a regular course of study. We're just not equipped for that right now."

But regardless of the challenges, Dol and Battaille see the school as a small sign of hope that even the most horrific aspects of Haiti's past can be turned around — not just as a history lesson, but as a place to learn.
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"Mwen di non, AYITI PAP KRAZE!!!!"

[AntilleanPrincess]

I was reading that article just last night. The pictures and videos were very interesting as well. I really applaud Kevin Sites in his mission to visit the world's "Hot Zones". You can keep track of his progress at http://hotzone.yahoo.com/ (where you can also see the pictures and videos accompanying daphnee's post above). I'm pasting the explanation for his mission below:
_____________________________________________________________

Our Mission
Declaration of Principles
Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone is news reporting for the new millennium - a nexus of backpack journalism, narrative story-telling techniques, and the Internet, designed to reach a global audience hungry for information.

Our Mission and Goals
To cover every armed conflict* in the world within one year, and in doing so to provide a clear idea of the combatants, victims, causes, and costs of each of these struggles - and their global impact. With honest, thoughtful reporting we'll strive to establish Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone as a forum for information and involvement. Users will not only learn about the scope of world conflict, but will find ways to be part of the solutions- through dialogue, debate, and avenues for action.

How We'll Do It
We will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and we will put a human face on them. We will not chase headlines nor adhere to pack journalism but vigorously pursue the stories in front of and behind the conflict, the small stories that when strung together illustrate a more complete picture.

Veteran war correspondent Kevin Sites will travel solo to these conflict zones, aided by a U.S.-based "mission control" team: Producer Robert Padavick (NBC News, CNN) and Researcher Lisa Liu (Radio Free Asia, International Medical Corps).

Using the latest technology, including high-definition digital cameras and satellite modems, Kevin will deliver stories via a five-fingered multimedia platform of text, photography, video, audio, and interactive chat - all available on one website (http://hotzone.yahoo.com).

We are professional journalists and will apply to our work the ethical code of conduct as outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists: http://www.spj.org/ethics_code.asp

To seek and report the truth.
To minimize harm.
To act independently.
To be accountable.

"We strongly believe, as stated in the preamble of this code, that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy."

We also will add four more criteria to our work that will take us above the journalistic code. We also pledge in our reporting and storytelling:

Transparency: an honest and authentic accounting of both our failure and successes, to pull back the curtain on our editorial and technological process. We refuse to propagate the myths of the omniscient, infallible correspondent.

Vulnerability: we will strive to live, breathe, and experience the lives of the people we are covering -including the daily dangers they're exposed to from combat, disease, and hardship.

Empathy: we may not always agree with our sources, but we will make every effort to understand their positions and report them with clarity, so that our audience may have context and perspective.

Solutions: our site will contain links to organizations and groups that are working to aid victims of these conflicts and assist in their peaceful resolutions.



*To define armed conflict we will apply the standards of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, which monitors these conflicts around the world. The Institute is not affiliated with any government and is a leading authority on political-military conflict.

It defines armed conflict as:

"International armed border and territorial conflict involving governments..."
"Internal armed conflicts taking place between government forces and organized groups, which control sufficient territory to sustain concerted military operations."
To this we've added our own criteria:

The conflict must have been active within the past three months.
We will cover issues relating to terrorism and the war on terror. We will not focus on acts of terrorism, which are random and borderless.
We will make exceptions if a location does not fit these criteria but we feel it important to highlight the conflict-related issues it has experienced.

[islandprincesse]

I am a big fan of Kevin Sites and have been following the stories covered on the site since last year. His stories along with matching videos, and pictures are always very engaging and enlightening.
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San manti