Missing the bottom

In our Intro to International Development class, we find a sort of disdain for development workers who work in poor countries and communities but who find their friendship in the elite or professional classes. We assert that you can’t internalize the needs of your average Joe (or Jean, in Haiti) when your friends are nowhere near average. My expectations are starting to change. As much as I’d like to tell you that I’m forging deep friendships with the people in the slums and the orphans down the street, it’s simply not true.

I hope to further cultivate the few Haitian friendships I’ve managed (They’re the only reason I’ve survived a month here.), but I’m not worried about finding new ones. For a number of social and language reasons, it’s hard to meet women, and the process of weeding through sexually-aggressive males is quite taxing. Now that I’m staying at the Haitian Health Foundation, I’ve made a few American girlfriends, and I’m thrilled. We also spend some time with a number of Cuban doctors and a small team of dentists from Port au Prince working on an NYU study of the effect of malnutrition on oral health. My Haitian friends are all educated professionals- accountants, agronomists, translators, and teachers. And I work with professors.

In the beginning it really bothered me that I was primarily interacting with foreigners and professionals- the small middle class- but now I’m starting to think that you become friends with the people who understand you best, and with people with whom the level of need/dependence is able equal in both directions. It’s hard to form a strong connection with a person when the conversation consistently returns to the types of cadeaux (gifts) they feel I can provide (anything from five goudes to a computer or trip to the US) or my evident need of a Haitian boyfriend. I think the problem arises when you base your assumptions of the needs of the country and your loyalties primarily on your experience with those friends. I can think of plenty of times when this philosophy might not hold well, especially if your work targets the lowest socioeconomic groups, but for now I’m working on measuring teacher development, so this is how I’m managing.