I Own the Rain (And Other Delusions of White Ownership in Haiti)
I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth enough times in Haiti that I’ve learned, especially when I’m upset, to play out conversations in my head and anticipate where potential arguments might lead before I ever open up my mouth. Nine times out of ten when I perform this mental exercise, I discover that the discussion is likely to lead someplace undesirable, and usually with me apologizing and begging forgiveness for what I said in the first place, so then I just keep my mouth shut. I’d like to share an example, but first, some background.
I’ve got this cistern. It’s a nice, big, cistern that collects rainwater off of my rooftop for myself and my roommates to use for the necessities of bathing, laundry, and washing paintbrushes. It can hold tons of water, but is very rarely full, so when it does fill up, it is one of the greatest possible joys I know. I get stupid excited about having a full cistern of water. When the cistern is dry (it’s dry far more often than it is full) it’s miserable because we have very few public water sources in our community to get water at otherwise. At the moment, it’s full, and that brings me great joy because it’s the first time in over two years that it’s been full. Also, when it gets full, I get very protective of the water because I know how precious of a resource it is.
I also, however, have very close neighbors, who all depend on one another in a multitude of ways all of the time. I consistently benefit from my relationships with them just as much as they do from me. Most of my neighbors don’t have cisterns of their own and the ones that do, have cisterns that are much smaller than mine or are old and leaky. So, when my cistern is full, and especially when it looks like rains will continue for weeks to come to keep it full, my neighbors like to access my cistern for water as well, which I certainly don’t mind, on occasion. I know that when the cistern’s dry, I can ask any one of these neighbors and they would gladly give me a gallon of water from their own that they carried from the well if I needed it. But, like I said, I get protective. And when I say protective, I really mean possessive. As long as I don’t feel like my neighbors are abusing their privilege at my cistern, I usually don’t have any problem. But recently I found myself getting very annoyed when I saw the girlfriend of one of my neighbor’s sons out by my cistern getting water and washing her underwear. This is the point where I took a deep breath and had the mental conversation with myself before deciding whether or not to say anything. It went something like this:
I would approach my neighbor’s son with something like, “Does your girl really need to use my water to wash her panties? You couldn’t take your motorcycle to go get her a gallon of water at the well to do her laundry?”
He’d respond, “Oh, it’s no big deal, she’s just washing a few little things. It won’t take much water. Besides, it’s still raining, the cistern will replenish.”
Personally offended at his lack of respect I’d say, “You didn’t even ask if she could. I mean, I don’t even know this girl’s name and she’s just back there washing her unmentionables like she owns the place. Well she doesn’t own the place. I own the place.”
With a very cool head and charming smile he’d reason, “How do you not know her name? We’ve been together for months now. Besides, God will send you more rain. It’ll be fine.”
That’s when I would reach peak whiteness, throw my fists in the air and shout, “I own the place! I own the cistern! AND I OWN THE RAIN!!!!”
That’s as far as I needed to get in my imaginary conversation to decide to keep my mouth shut and let the girl wash her drawers.
You may read that and think that I was absolutely reasonable in wanting to claim ownership over the water in the cistern and set boundaries on who can and can’t use it. After all, I am the one who paid to build the cistern years ago and paid for the property on which the cistern is built, and paid for the roof that collects the rainwater that drains into the cistern, so that makes the cistern mine and the water inside of it mine and that means that I have a right to choose what is done with it, right? If we were living in an American context, then yes, that would completely make legitimate sense. But we Americans, and white people especially, have been made to believe the lie that paying money for something buys us ownership of that thing. That’s how capitalism works. I pay you money for something and then you give me that thing and then I own the thing and I get to make decisions regarding that thing.
But that’s not how it works in Haiti. In Haiti, I pay money for a thing because I’m the one who has money to pay for the thing, but then the thing isn’t mine, it’s everybody’s, but least of all mine, because, reparations. We white folk make a big mistake when we believe that we own anything in Haiti no matter how much money we give for something or how personal of a thing it may be. We don’t get to own anything in this country because the country itself is not ours so nothing in it can be ours either. We can trade money for items, but that doesn’t mean that we ever truly have ownership of the items. We’re just paying the original owner money to allow other people to use those items, but that doesn’t make them ours.
I have land that I’ve paid for in Haiti. I bought the land back in 2009 to build my house on. I paid the money for the land and had all of the paperwork done in my name, but that doesn’t mean that I own the land. The idea that I could own the land is almost as preposterous as me thinking that I could own the rain. I may have paid money for the right to use the land, but the ancestors of my neighbors paid for this land with their blood, their freedom, and their lives. Their roots are penetrated so deeply into the land that no size of transaction could ever change their rightful claim to it. No matter how much money I paid for it, I can never really presume that I have true ownership of it, no matter what the deed says. My ancestors thought that they could take this land to do with what they want and my neighbors ancestors fought and died to take this land back from them so that they could live independently. And now we think that just because we hand over some money we can change all of that. We can’t. We need to stop pretending that we can.
It’s not just the land and it’s not just the water, but white people need to quit thinking that their money can also buy them ownership of Haitian lives and Haitian communities. Foreign organizations and foreign donors allow this same mindset to infect their interactions with the Haitians that they claim to help. They think that just because they gave some money for some cement, now they own the rain! When we donate money to Haitians we often like to dictate how that money can be used but we forget that the consequences of how the money is used only affects the Haitians and their lives remain their own. Donating money doesn’t buy us ownership of the decisions that will impact their lives. This is a hard concept for donors from Western capitalist societies to accept because we are used to getting ownership of the things that we pay money for. But donating money to help someone’s life does not buy us ownership of that person’s life. I don’t think I need to point out why it is problematic when white people approach their donations this way. Haitians fought too hard to defeat slavery for us to reinvent it under the guise of charity and sponsorship and nonprofit projects.
This happens on an institutional basis as well as on an individual one. Organizations in Haiti are often implementing projects that are intended to help communities but they are taking the decision making power away from the communities because their institutions are the ones raising the funds so they think they get to make all of the decisions. But again, the communities are the ones who have to live with the consequences of these projects, yet the decisions are too frequently made by staff and boards of directors in offices or skype meetings completely isolated from the communities that they claim to serve. They delude themselves into concepts of fiscal responsibility and financial stewardship as they attach as many strings as possible to what their funds are intended to accomplish almost always ignoring the priorities of the community in the process. Just because these organizations raise the funds and have the institutional structure, that doesn’t buy them ownership of the fabric of the communities that are always irrevocably changed by their projects.
You can build a cistern but you can’t own the rain. You can buy a plot of land but you can’t own the earth. You can donate money but you can’t own people’s decisions. You can contribute to development but you can’t own communities. Haitians may not always have the financial means to make the changes in their lives and their communities on their own, but that also doesn’t mean that they’ll ever sell their ownership of those lives or communities in the name of charity either. We who like to claim that we are trying to help Haiti must stop pretending like we can buy those rights from them through paying with good intentions.
