peace*love*HAITI: FALL 2019 trip to PANYOL (also known as peyi lok locks you up)

The political scene in Haiti was pretty sketchy this fall, and it was not possible to travel up to Lacoma due to the road blocks and manifestations. President Jovenel Moise was asked repeatedly by Haitian citizens to resign, and he would not. According to Haiti's National Network for the Defense of Human Rights at least 59 people killed and 189 injured in the many, many protests that took place all over the country. The country was locked down. It was called "peyi lok", and things went from bad to worse.
Why were people protesting? Why was "peyi lok" a thing? Government corruption is nothing new, but things were worse than ever after the collapse of PetroCaribe. PetroCaribe was an oil program offered by Venezuela. Starting in 2006 Venezuela offered aid and cheap financing for Haiti (and other impoverished Caribbean countries) to buy gasoline and diesel and other petrol products. Basically the government bought oil from Venezuela at 60% of the price, then deferred the rest at a 1% interest rate, and then was to use the funds generated by this to provide the country with infrastructure, healthcare, educational programs, agricultural programs, sanitation, and electricity.
Few of these programs were ever started, none were ever completed, and the debt to Venezuela grew to over 2 billions dollars before the program collapsed. After the collapse, the price of fuel skyrocketed, massive fuel shortages began, and protests became a daily event.
When we first started coming to Haiti in 2010 after the earthquake, one US dollar was worth about 42 Gourde. Now one US dollar is worth 100.24 Gourde. Schools were closed for months, no one could get to work, banks were not open, the country was frozen, "locked down".
We decided to go anyway. We wanted to help, but we needed to be safe, so we headed straight up to the remote mountain village of Panyol.
There can't be any road blocks because there aren't any roads!
We hired Dr Aquis (the dentist) and Nurse Derise to work with us, and we saw many patients.
Dr Laura came with and cared for the hairy beasts as well, and of course Nurse Fabienne helped with all the logistics and saw patients too!

If you want to read more about the situation in Haiti, check out this article from fall 2019 in the New York Times. It is written by Edwidge Danticat.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/demonstrators-in-haiti-are-fighting-for-an-uncertain-future?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker