PLATFORM : Haiti Awaits the Dawning of a Day Without Despair

Each day when I arrive at work, the neighborhood rooster calls out its greeting in response to the sound of the car door closing. I am reminded daily by that greeting of the days that I spent in Haiti in April. My memories are of the stench of poverty and corruption. My memories also include the signs of hope I met in Haiti. One of those signs of hope is Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

My first meeting with him was at a shelter for street children that he had opened as a priest dedicated to serving poor youths.

Since Aristide declared his candidacy for the presidency of Haiti, I have read articles that describe him as a radical, leftist revolutionary, even a cross between the Ayatollah Khomeini and Fidel Castro. The Jean-Bertrand Aristide I met is certainly radical, but he bears no resemblance to any dictator.

The Aristide who has survived assassination attempts defies these glib attempts at character assassination. The real Aristide believes in the people of Haiti and they believe in him. His campaign slogan, “Lavalas” (the flood), came from one of his early sermons: “Alone, we are weak. Together, we are strong. Together, we are the flood.”

U.S. Ambassador Alvin Adams used a Haitian proverb to warn that although Aristide might be elected, he probably could not govern: “After the dance, the drums are heavy.” Aristide responded with another Haitian proverb: “Where there are many hands, nothing is heavy.”

This is the Aristide who today, exactly five years after Baby Doc Duvalier fled Haiti, will be inaugurated as president after the country’s first free and fair election, in which his party, the National Front for Change and Democracy, used the rooster as its logo.

When the rooster crows today, a new day will dawn for Haiti.

Aristide, in his recent book, “In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti,” refers to a village that he calls Esperancia (hope):

“The day is coming when that village will exist, though now it is called Despair, and its residents wear rags and never laugh. Yet when we look around what I call Esperancia, we see that not very much has changed since it was called Despair. Everyone now eats a decent breakfast. Here is a new road. The children now have books. The women have shoes. There is water, and running water. There is an irrigation project. This is not very much to change. Yet just those few changes can change Despair into Hope.”