“Haiti doesn’t have a voice. It doesn’t have an identity. We, Haitians, need to take back the role of storytellers and tell our own history.” This was one of the reasons for filmmaker Raoul Peck to follow the reconstruction efforts in his home country after the earthquake in January 2010. Peck emphasizes that he was not planning on filming crying women and dead bodies in the streets. His goal was to challenge the country’s role of victim and turn the cameras on those who normally do the storytelling and the observing.

The result is the documentary “Fatal Assistance” (Assistance Mortelle), a painful 100-minute exposé on how international development and humanitarian aid have gone bad. It is a story about well-intentioned donors and aid organizations that have lost themselves in rituals of red tape, having become the inefficient players of a rudderless multinational aid-industry. Last week the documentary had its American premiere during the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in cooperation with the Margaret Mead Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival. Peck himself was available for questions after the screening and I had access to an earlier interview that Peck had given to a crew from Haiti Reporters before the film’s first screening in Haiti.

Peck has documented the efforts of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) that was created shortly after the earthquake. With the Haitian prime minister Jean Max Bellerive and Bill Clinton as its co-presidents, the IHRC was tasked to oversee the spending of billions of dollars of international assistance in a way that was in alignment with the concerns of Haitians and the Haitian government. It was not new to see that after more than two years of “reconstruction,” too many Haitians are still living in extremely poor living conditions. Or, to quote a man who has lost his house in the earthquake, “in houses that the donors wouldn’t even let their dog live in.” It was new to see a two-hour indictment of those who try to help. The main critiques are that the international organizations left the Haitians and its government out of equation and that subsequently, too much of the money has been spent in terribly inefficient and non-transparent ways.

Economic rules that have long been proven to work elsewhere have been ignored and turned on their head. One example is the problem of NGOs that keep prices and salaries artificially high because it is in the interest of their organizations and their donors, while it ruins the workings of the local market economy and destroys incentives. Another painful phenomenon is the urge and conviction of many do-gooders that this moment in history will be Haiti’s finest hour to start with a clean slate, and en passant can function as a laboratory for people’s craziest ideas. As Priscilla Phelps, an American adviser on housing and neighborhood reconstruction explains in the film, “We’re dealing with what people can think of in their wildest dreams. We had an offer for the development of plastic houses. Plastic houses? But it is not only houses but people come with all kinds of products and ideas!”

Media have long been reinforcing the frame of Haiti as the ultimate example of a failed country. Raoul Peck is tired of the endless refrain that the country is too corrupt, its government too weak and its citizens too helpless. In his film, Peck points the accusing finger at the international organizations, Clinton’s organization chiefly among them, but he lets the Haitian government easily get away without much critical questioning. Only one of the heroes in the film, the Head of Sanitation in Port-au-Prince, squarely puts blame on both the local government and foreign helpers for the overall lack of progress. It causes the film to lose some of its strength and begs the question if this was the trade-off for Peck after getting such extensive access to filming the former prime minister and President René Préval. Interestingly, after the showing in Port-au-Prince, many Haitians were critical of Peck for giving the former Haitian government carte blanche.

While not during the documentary, in interviews Peck admits that corruption in Haiti certainly is a problem, but he says it cannot be used as an excuse. In the meantime, the atmosphere in the streets of Port-au-Prince and among Haitians and the foreign visitors isn’t changing for the better. At a recent conference on investing in Haiti, the Haitian crowd answered a berating of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) practices with cheers and applause. During a walk in the neighborhood of Delmas in Haiti, you will hear young kids at the market place yell at foreigners, “go back to your own country,” and many a disillusioned aid worker is wondering if they have overstayed their welcome.

With his film, Peck wishes to start a discussion, which should have started years ago. And it is not only about Haiti. Of course, discussions about a better approach to foreign aid have been brewing for at least ten years. Economists Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly represent the two main camps between a more clinically planned strategy and a local market based approach to foreign assistance. Peck, clearly closer to Easterly, pleads for stronger involvement of the people for whom the assistance is organized in the first place. Peck: “If all these NGOs would have been private companies, they would long have been shut down, and their CEOs would have landed in prison. …We have sixty years of experience of development work. The current approach doesn’t work. It needs to stop.”

The school offers hands-on media training that gives students the skills to handle professional video- and photo cameras, and editing software. In addition, the curriculum offers courses in entrepreneurship, web design, writing, and media ethics. One of the goals is to prepare students to become community journalists, enabling them to tell the stories of the small communities around them. Ideally, the graduates would not only witness the development and reconstruction – or lack thereof – of their country, but also investigate and critically reflect upon it. Not only as community journalists, but also as civic journalists they could start making products that can function as forums for discussion and that can build up both their own as well as others’ social capital in the process.

In the daily practice of Haiti, this is all easier said than done. While it would be a challenge to give a similar 4-month crash course to any group of young people, trying to do it in Haiti exposes one to the country’s idiosyncratic trials.

Haitian media – they mainly exist in the form of radio and newspapers – have a long history of being mere tools to earn and secure political power. Only in the 1970s, still under Duvalier’s dictatorship, did one radio station start to air local and international news in Creole, the language of the majority of Haitians, instead of French, the language of the elite. It took until 1986, the year of Duvalier’s fall, before journalists enjoyed a meaningful freedom of the press and played a supporting role in the newly developing civil society. The military coup of 1991 that forced out Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first popularly chosen president, reintroduced the old repression of the media.

The return of Aristide and the rule of his successors have not necessarily laid the groundwork for a strong role for the media in the developing democracy. The damage to the media has endured. The well-known Haitian journalist Michele Montas-Dominique – widow of Jean Dominique who was murdered in 2000 – has lamented the “balkanization of the press.” In the 1990s, many frequencies on the FM band had been doled out to the military and the elite and many of these stations are still controlled by sponsors who do not support democratic rules of government. In addition, Montas-Dominique has long been worried about the lack of objectivity and professional ethics of Haitian journalists, many of whom are not bothered by working on the side for private and government employers.

Under the country’s ever demanding circumstances, Haiti Reporters is trying to work on the grassroots level. All the issues that have plagued Haitian journalism have been hampering speedy progress. Also, the school and its staff are significantly challenged by a lack of entrepreneurship in general and a struggle with the existing power relations – both between and among the different classes and groups. But even in these tough conditions, there is plenty of reason for optimism. Not in the least because of the highly motivated students, a few of whom have already shown that they can land jobs and internships.

So far, the school has attracted mainly students from the country’s tentatively developing middle class that, if they stay in Haiti – as opposed to fleeing or emigrating – can become a vital engine for development. For example, it has been an interesting experience for the students to make a short film about the Dance Company Tchaka Dance, that performs in the refugee camps or filming a project in Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil, one of the world’s biggest slums. It forced the students to be exposed to the difficult living conditions of many of their compatriots. Vriens, the school’s director, who has been traveling and working in Haiti for many years, has pointed out the apparent denial by the rich of the existence of the poor. It is one of the unsettling realities of Haitian society, which needs attention if a majority of the populations is ever going to be a meaningful participant in the political process.

The school’s goal is to give young people a practical education that gives them the tools to earn a living in Haiti. Although foreigners are currently in charge of the school, Haitian lecturers play an important role. Sooner rather than later, the Haitians themselves will have to take over the school’s management. In addition, a Haitian association has been created that can function as an independent production company for its alumni. The fact that it is a small-scale operation, located in a fairly poor but decent neighborhood, is working in its favor as compared to the slowly moving, bureaucratic multi-million dollar projects of the aid industry.

The loose network of big NGOs has grown into a powerful outside force that is not centrally organized, operating next to, instead of in tandem with, the weak Haitian government. As well intentioned as the aid may be, it contributes to a form of second-hand democracy that isn’t locally instigated. Since the end of 1990s, Haitians have spoken about their demokrasi pepe, or second-hand democracy, after the Creole description of the loads of used clothing from the United States that are resold on the streets. Haiti Reporters is trying to design a new boutique, owned and staffed by Haitians, addressing a pressing need in Haitian society.

As Philippe Girard has lamented in his history of Haiti writing about the country can be depressing. “One must consult the thesaurus regularly to find synonyms for cruelty, poverty, and thug, while looking in vain for an opportunity to mention hope and success unaccompanied by lack of.”

It is a mess here in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. Walking the streets of Port-au-Prince, one cannot ignore the squalor. The local market in the neighborhood where I am staying consists of mostly older women – marchandes – selling their produce and merchandise next to little piles of filth and omnipresent burning heaps of trash. Hens are running around, dogs are lying around. Pick up trucks honk their horns when passing through the small, unpaved streets, causing the sand and dust to sweep through the air. Sometimes, the women can only barely move their baskets with produce in time to avoid being hit by aggressively fast moving cars. Somewhere in a building that only has a few remaining standing walls, a religious service of some kind is going on. There is music, singing, clapping. Next to collapsed houses, one can spot impressive houses behind high fences that are rebuilt or seem untouched by natural disaster. The differences between rich and poor are stark. But everywhere, the air is hot, grimy, and dry.

Haiti’s recent history is a somber tale of man-made disasters and natural catastrophes: political ineptitude, economic collapse, racial strife,  hurricanes, tropical storms, and earthquakes. After the foreign interference of the past, in the form of colonialism and slavery, the modern day and well intended international aid-industry comes with its own list of drawbacks, encouraging a never ending dependency on foreign aid. Ills such as the plague of corruption and the enormous disparities between the large group of the poor and the small group of the rich, have been preventing Haitian society from evolving into a safe, transparent, and decent society.

Most intriguing for me is finding within the mess a certain level of organization. In a very different place and time, I remember a story of endurance, of the staying power by inhabitants of a small town. After a series of bombardments, men and women simply returned and lined up at a spot where a bus stop used to be. All that was left was a crater in a destroyed road, but the people figured that some vehicle would stop as had been the custom for years. They still needed transport from point A to point B. And indeed, every now and then a bus would appear seemingly out of nowhere, and stop to pick up commuters.

Now, in Port-au-Prince, I’m seeing how people have not deserted the space where once stood their house. Although a massive earthquake has destroyed the (often poor) construction of steel and cement, life has gone on in the same place that had been their home or their place of work. Home or work is now in a tent, or just under a tarpaulin sheet, without electricity or running water. But it surely beats living in one of the many camp villages that were put up after the January 2010 earthquake, where living conditions are considerably worse and chances of improvement are not encouraging. Of course, even  before the devastating earthquake, the lives of the majority of urban dwellers and, especially, of those out in the countryside, were lived in extreme poverty.

It is intriguing to see how the people here organize their lives against all odds, how they manage in a hopeless situation. It is interesting to observe the organization within the current state of disorder. Life has its own rhythm, not in the least slowed down by the dusty heat. Although the majority of people do not have jobs, or at least no steady ones, there are still tasks that need to be done during the course of the day, like cleaning, cooking, repairing, worshiping. People will come together, meet, talk and socialize. Kids will go to school, even though too many won’t. There is merchandise and food to be bought and sold. The day before my arrival a big soccer game attracted hundreds of people in the neighborhood who all surrounded one small television screen to pick up some glances of the game.

Given the sweeping differences between life in New York City and Port-au-Prince, my first impression is a realization that human beings are by far the most resilient creatures when it comes to making things work. The problem of course is that “making it work” is not good enough. People organize their lives, but in the absence of viable government and private Haitian institutions, and the lack of institutionalization of initiatives in general, life becomes dependent on chance, on luck. There is so much room for improvement on so many levels, but a solid structure to put the development in place seems eerily absent, as does an agreement among any possible interested parties on how to lift the country out of its current status.