* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
If a writer was looking to name the protagonist of a story set in post-quake Haiti, he or she could not have chosen better. Max Charitable is part of CARE’s health team in Léogâne, a town west of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince that suffered major damage from the January 12 earthquake. And the 46 year-old community worker wears his last name quite well.
Today, Max’s mission is all about making noise - a strange job for a man who despite his height speaks with a soft voice and does not look like someone who enjoys the spotlight. But Max’s business is serious, and the noise planned for a reason. On this sunny day, a group of four CARE cars will cruise around Léogâne to spread the word about GBV. In the humanitarian world, this type of acronym is omnipresent and often difficult for outsiders to understand. GBV stands for Gender-Based Violence, an all too frequent occurrence in regions that have suffered from a major disaster.
Ever since the earthquake, women and girls in Haiti are even more vulnerable to assaults and attacks. Many camps are pitch-black at night and instead of their neighbors, people live in crowded conditions among strangers. CARE is working with the communities to address these issues and find hands-on solutions. One of these is knowledge: Knowing that abuse is not just collateral damage but a crime, knowing where to report a case of rape, knowing how to protect one’s daughters.
Open mic in La Ferronay
Around noon, the caravan finds a shady spot at the camp La Ferronay. One of the trucks is blasting with music: Max and his team have set up a sound system on the back, the speaker boxes thoroughly attached to avoid them from falling down on the bumpy roads. A cable connects to a microphone. Quickly, a crowd gathers around the truck, many of them wearing the same blue t-shirt with Creole slogans against violence that the CARE staff has distributed.
Among the many women in the audience is 29-year-old Marie Michelle Chéry, who holds her little daughter in her lap. She listens carefully to the short presentation by the CARE team, but seems too timid to get involved in the discussion. Up front, a woman and a man are now leading a heated discussion about money, seduction and how to treat your partner with respect. The crowd cheers, and then Marie Michelle gets up, walks to the truck and takes a stand. “It is not okay to force your partner to have sex”, she says.
After her speech, Marie Michelle sits down on a creaking plastic chair with her one-year-old daughter Abigaelle. „I am most scared at night, when I walk past the gardens next to our camp. There is no light and I have heard that women have been attacked there.“ And what are her hopes for little Abigaelle? „I wish that she grows into a smart young girl who knows when to follow my advice. I want her to become a lady.“
As for her other lady, 12-year-old daughter Kimberley, Marie Michelle is very aware of the risks the young girl is already exposed to: "I am trying hard to explain to her how to protect herself. If a man talks to her on the street, she should come and see me right away. I need to know about it to be able to protect her", explains the mother. Kimberley is standing beside the chair, listening to her mother speak. Hopefully she will know how to follow her mother’s advice, even if her father does not always agree. "Sometimes my husband does not understand my fears and then he mocks me”, tells Marie Michelle. “But other times he is understanding and supportive. Not every man will understand these issues, but these debates are still very important."
“We need to talk”
After a long day of noise, CARE’s Max Charitable quietly reflects on the work accomplished and the road ahead. „We encourage the people to reflect about the issues and find solutions. The next step is to take action“, he says. The communities in the areas where the earthquake wreaked havoc are fragile; there is a lot of trauma underneath the surface. Much too often, violence, whether against women, children or even men, is a means of coping. “This is why we need to get the community members to talk to each other and understand the dynamics”, insists Max. “We address these issues using a multimedia approach: messages for radio stations, theatre pieces and sketches in the camps, flyers and T-shirts with slogans in Creole.” One of these slogans reads almost like a poem: "Fanm se manman lavi an pa fe vyolans sou yo" – Women are the mothers of life and you should not use violence against them.
The CARE team also organizes roundtables with representatives of each camp, inviting five young people, five mothers, five men et cetera to talk about the issues and to come up with solutions. The results of these discussions are then put to paper and handed over to the local authorities. Mostly, the communities require simple actions such as lights in the camps at night, or whistles to make noise in case of an attack. But these measures can only be a first step. “You know, men have a very possessive mentality here, they are very macho”, explains Max. “So they think it is their right to ‘own’ a woman and treat her as they like.” There has been some progress, he says, but it is not enough. “Ultimately, women need to be empowered to emancipate themselves economically from men, otherwise they will always be dependent and susceptible to abuse.”
There is still a long way to go for this caravan in Léogâne and elsewhere in Haiti.
