4 Reasons Caribbean Scholars Could Benefit from Blogging

The panel "Global Voices, Caribbean Accents" takes place today in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad at this year's 31st Annual Caribbean Studies Association Conference. The theme of this year's conference is: The Caribbean in the Age of Modernity, The Role of the Academy in Responding to the Challenges of the Region. When I originally thought up the panel, I didn't realize that the conference would coincide with a good friend's wedding and in the end, I am not in Trinidad today. But Georgia Popplewell and Nicholas Laughlin, bloggers extraordinaire who live in Trinidad have picked up the ball and run with it. They have asked me to participate through my blog and here is my contribution which they will showcase at the panel today:

1. Great Way to "Upload" Ideas (To quote Patricia Mohammed)

• At last year's Caribbean Studies Association Conference (CSA), we discussed a lot the challenges that Caribbean Scholars face in publishing theory that might cross the Caribbean Ocean. Patricia Mohammed called this challenges in "Uploading".
• Though publishing to a blog is not the same as publishing a book, some in the region and throughout the world are taking advantage of this new means of publishing. Here are some examples.
  
• From Haiti, the son of Marcel Salnave Jr. has started a blog, Parlons Peu, to publish his father's journalistic works from the 1930s. A book by the same name exists and has been published in print in Haiti since the 90s but it is safe to say that more people have read the works online than have bought the book which was published only in Haiti. Historians or other researchers on Haiti can now have access to the works through a simple Google search.
  
• Caribbean writers such as Nicholas Laughlin who is on the panel today already publish their fiction online. Nicholas recently wrote an article surveying other Caribbean authors who do so.
• Last year, after meeting Dr. Matthew Smith at CSA, I interviewed him for my blog. Matthew is a Jamaica-based historian who specializes in Haiti and studies an often neglected period of Haitian History, the post-1950s. The interview generated a lot of interest and Matthew has since "starred" in a couple of documentaries on this under-researched period. Since he is with you at CSA this year, you can press him directly for additional information on the interview. I recall him emailing me that a grandson of Daniel Fignole -- an important, highly controversial yet mysterious and under-researched post-1950s figure in Haitian History -- got in touch with him, wanting to talk about his grandpa.
• Dr. Marc Lamont Hill's Barbershop Notebooks blog is good example of a blog kept by a young "public intellectual" who is also an academic here in the US.
  

2. Great Way to Show Us as We Are

• Haiti often gets short-shrift in the mainstream media. Reporters looking for shocking images or a scoop know they can find them in Haiti and indeed come and indulge. Unfortunately, that kind of kamikaze reporting does nothing to showcase all the other facets of Haiti and does not do as much to help it as one might think.
  
• This year I started a Kevin Sites Watch (see posts 1, 2, 3)through my blog when Yahoo reporter Kevin Sites made Haiti one of his HotZones for a week. Post 3 of the watch about Kevin's one-sided photo journal of Haiti was one of the most referenced posts on kiskeyAcity, and some reporters and other media professionals referenced it on their blogs. In the post, I offered an alternative photo journal by another photoblogger as well as some recommendations for journalists covering Haiti. (To those of you who know Haiti, can you guess what the recommendations were?)
• Unlike websites most blogs have RSS or Atom feeds that can syndicate each post to subscribers. Individuals subscribe to blogs through blog readers such as Bloglines. In a way, you can become your own personal news and ideas feed through your blog. That ability can and has gone a long way in creating alternatives to overly simplistic mainstream media. Ways to make sure your content gets to the people who want it such as tagging through technorati are also available for free. (See examples of tags at the bottom of this post.)
  

3. Blogging is Free and Easy (Provided You Have Internet Access)

• Basic blogging software is available for free on the internet and if you can email, you can blog.
• I will not elaborate further because I know that Georgia (Popplewell) is presenting on the technicalities of blogging today.
  

4. Aggregators such as Global Voices Exist to Amplify Your Voice.

• Global Voices has regional and language editors whose job it is to let the world know what people from around the world are saying on their blogs and in several different languages. Take advantage of this and other aggregators and make your voice heard in the Global Information Highway.
  

Technorati Tags: Global Voices - Caribbean - Haiti - Jamaica - Trinidad -
Caribbean Studies Association - blogging - Global Voices, Caribbean Accents

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A Sunday Chock Full of (Caribbean) Festivals in Brooklyn, NY

Dance Africa 2006



See album
Every Memorial Day weekend, the Brooklyn Academy of Music holds Dance Africa, a three day festival part African Dance show, part street fair. Since I live a 10 minute walk away from BAM, I went over and took some shots that I thought I'd share with you.

Haitian Day Parade 2006



This is a newbie, I think. My friend over at Nightshift Chronicles was kind enough to put up a reminder that scheduled the event for 1PM. However, when I arrived around 3PM (having first made the stop at Dance Africa), things had ended. The only remnants of the parade were these signs found all along the parade route from the corner of Nostrand and Empire to that of Nostrand and Foster. And they say the parade was at 11:00 AM! Someway, somehow the times got jumbled. But a rara (a kind of mas) was playing at a little playground at Nostrand and Foster and I brought back these shots.

That's the West Atlantic Cosmos, for you, baby. Brooklyn NY, one of the hearts of the Caribbean, is for sure the most pan-caribbean of cities.



caribbean - caribbean-american - africa - dance - Dance Africa - fort greene - brooklyn - new york - brooklyn academy of music - haiti - haitian-american - haitian diaspora

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Digicel Revolution, The Global Voices Show & Mothers' Day

Cell Phone Costs Decrease in Haiti/ Could He Be Talking about Digicel?

• I came across this blog entry today on Moose's Adventures Abroad. Moose did not name his employer but could he be talking about Digicel, the new Caribbean Telecom Giant who recently made its grand entrance on the Haitian market, much to the chagrin of its competitors?
  

  The company I work for invested $130M into Haiti - this is the largest foreign investment ever into Haiti. People lined up for phones starting at 4am the night before our launch. Line-ups were hours long at EVERY store in the country. It is the first time affordable mobile phones have been available in Haiti. The current provider charges:
  i. $50 USD to activate
  ii. cheapest phone = $60
  iii. You pay to make and receive calls
  iv. Rates are per-minute
  
  Our charges:
  i. $0 to activate
  ii. Three phones available for under $20
  iii. You only pay to make calls
  iv. Rates are per-second
  
  People cannot afford mobile telephony at the current rates - they can afford it now. The number of mobile subscribers in the country could go from 3-4% to 60-80% (this is all speculation on my part). Honestly - it is a bit of a revolution - there is not landline phone network either so this is the first time many people in Haiti will have any phone!
  
  I know many people will argue that we are not in fact revolutionizing the country and that this is consumerism in its worst way. I disagree for a number of reasons -
  1. the phones we market and push are the phones under $20 USD.
  2. We don't accept credit and we don't reduce the price of phones and force them to take long contracts (in the mass market) like you see in North America. If a person wants to get an expensive phone they have to save up for it and in that case I think it is a legitimate spend.
  3. Phones are always a balance of style versus function. In developing countries the large portion of the selection is based on price and function with style lagging behind that.
  4. I have heard of a direct correlation between telecom growth and GDP growth in developing countries (not in the developed world). I can't find anything strong that correlates it... but telecom is an enabler. If teleco and technology improves communications improve which facilitates economic growth over all. Yes I realize this is very glossy, high-level and weak.

  
  

Mothers' Day in Haiti Today

• Happy Mothers' Day to all Haitian Manmies today. I got reminded of this by reading this entry at AyitiCherieConnexion. (Translation here.)
  

The Global Voices Show

• Georgia recycles podcasts from all over the world in the first edition of the podcast The Global Voices Show. The francophone world has barely caught on to blogging, let alone podcasting, so it is not really represented on this 1st 17-minute edition of the show. But there are some hilarious clips from the rest of the world my favorite being a skit of a South African mother coming to grips with her son's gayness.

Haitian Actor Jimmy Jean-Louis in Hollywood

• A Haitian film is forthcoming starring Haitian-born French-grown actor Jimmy Jean-Louis. The director is Arnold Antonin who did a great documentary on Haitian painter Tiga. The title? Does the President Have AIDS? (Whoa!) Anyway, in this interview of the actor by AlterPresse (Fr), he talks about growing up in a house without electricity in Petion-Ville, moving to France as a teen, becoming an actor whose worked with the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme and J-Lo and meeting Mandela. Nuff said. :-)

haiti - digicel - Mothers' Day - Jimmy Jean-Louis - caribbean

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New Haiti-Based Haitian Blogger Expresses Complex Emotions

So Yon Ayisyen has some competition now, and it's in English. Ayititoma (aka Alexandra) posted her first post this morning. It is superbly well written and leaves you with a complex set of emotions that might as well be the equivalent of a snapshot of my own brain sometimes: a mishmash of every emotion humanly possible all for this one place (or really its--errh my-- people). Much like Jamaican Francis Wade, she chose to return home against the tide and is particularly emotional today about the killing of former President Dumarsais Estime's wife last week:

I am from the Diaspora and have returned to Haiti to work, responding to that Haitian call, wanting to make a difference, sacrificed my family, my independence, my way of life, to living the difficulties of Haiti. I have myself fell in the hands of bandits but like the Estimé family, I stayed on. When will it be my turn? when will they ship my corpse to my mother? I ask myself. My mother with her daily calls constantly tell me Alexandra, you will not do that to me, YOU WILL NOT have them bring me your corpse, come back!

Also familiar is the blogger's annoyance at the one-dimensional image that just cannot begin to mirror the complexity of the Haitian mosaic:

When will our worlds stop colliding for the recognition of a Haitian society that is multifaceted and the acceptance that the real Haitian is composed of a mosaic of differences and not this homogeneous being that people want to portray us to be?

The post is obviously a rant and thank God for the blogging medium because it's obvious AyitiToma needed to vent. I just wish she'd read this article I saw in AlterPresse the other day about a group of Haitians from all over the world who got together in Miami to revive Haitian tourism having understood that Haiti's crime problem is not worse than its neighbors' with thriving tourism industries. (Ask Trinidad's The Initiative Against Crime Blog.)

haiti - caribbean - crime - tourism - trinidad - jamaica

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Emails That Make Me Smile

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Hello
Date: Tue, 23 May 2006
From: Patti Kolbjornsen
To:

Alice,

Hello. I just wanted to thank you for such a great blog. My father is from Haiti and my mother from Mexico. They met in Los Angeles circa 1972 (go figure?!) I spent many a summer in Haiti and have fond memories of trips to Les Cayes and the such.
I have been there recently and the memories of my childhood are so very different than the country I see now. I appreciate conscious Haitian Americans who put forth the effort to discuss and comment on the status of our dear "Haiti Cherie". Thank you for making me proud to be a Haitian woman.


Regards,

Patti
Patricia "Patti" Kolbjornsen
California



Tag: Haiti

How Unsafe is Haiti, Again?

How Unsafe is Haiti Exactly?

• An American missionary who just came back home from a trip to Haiti said this on his/her blog on May 5:

Everything that the media says about it being unsafe is a load of crap. Aside from seeing the UN soldiers at the airport we never saw or experienced any of these things that they have been saying about this struggling country. This little country has so much potential. So many times I have thought of my people and how there are many similarities between the two people groups and the situations that they are in. I have so much hope.

So, you ask, "Are you guys going to go back?". We sure are!

• They also post this slideshow.

Scenic Haiti

• Video from Haiti Innovation blog.
  

Montserrat Volcano Watch

• The latest at GV with a little cricket thrown in. (I know you Haitians will gloss over the cricket part but a little exposure is never a bad thing. )
  

Haiti - Caribbean - Montserrat - Volcano

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New Blog, Brain Drain and More Mangos

New Haitian Diaspora Blog CollectifHaitideProvence

• See the profile I wrote of them on GV here.

More Mango Talk: Haiti Among 10 Highest Producers of Mangos

• The article is from AlterPresse (Fr). I have a summary translation of it here. Basically, a study reveals that 20% of the mangos consumed in the DR come from Haiti. The article explains why Haiti needs to fight to maintain its global position in this industry. Apparently, worldwide consumers of mangos are quite demanding. Not that I blame them. I love mangos myself and although I consume loads of the Haitian kind sold here (Mango "Fransik", I believe) I often "cheat" with the yummy firmer red-skinned ones from Mexico. Sigh.

Francis Wade on The Missing Generation

• Superlative blogpost by Francis Wade (who brought us scents and flavors of mango season in Jamaica yesterday) on the pluses and minuses of returning home for the brains drained from the Caribbean. He concludes that middle-class Jamaicans who stayed behind did not necessarily do all that badly, especially when it came to raising and educating children, for example. (I think I know what he's talking about: I and my siblings who were raised in Haiti until college did just as well --and this may be an understatement--as our cousins raised here when it came to pursuing higher education degrees.)
  

haiti - caribbean - blog - mango - dominican republic - jamaica - caribbean diaspora

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New Orleans+Policy +Mangoes

From St-Domingue to New Orleans
• AyitiCherieConnexion posts and comments on an interesting article by Mary LaCoste on an Exhibit happening in Louisiana on those Haitians, black and white, free and slave, who left St-Domingue to take exile in Louisiana around the time of the Haitian revolution. From the article:

  Many locals have been amazed to find out how much the bloody revolution in Saint Domingue, now called Haiti, enriched New Orleans' culture and population. Refugees who left the island two centuries ago found new homes in South Louisiana, and their descendants are here today, sometimes unaware of their Haitian roots.
  
  And they came in large numbers, too. Between 1794 and 1810, rich and poor, black and white, free and enslaved flocked to the shores of South Louisiana from the wealthiest of the French colonies that maintained close ties to Paris. Among them were highly educated persons of color who became community leaders, teachers and writers.

• And yes, I too, AyitiCherieConnexion, was pleasantly shocked at how similar New Orleans traditional dishes were to everyday Haitian ones. I loved New Orleans during the summer I spent there and did indeed feel very much at home.
  

Policy and Solutions minded

• This interesting post on the Haiti Innovation blog outlines a set of recommendations for Preval. It is focused on policy and solutions rather than dwelling on the negative. Caught my attention but I know nothing about the organization and do not endorse it in anyway.

Mango Season in the Caribbean

• Memories, memories, brought back by this lovely post on Francis Wade's Moving back to Jamaica.
  

Haiti - Caribbean - Jamaica - Mango - New Orleans - Louisiana - St Domingue

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