During a famine in France, when the poor were rioting over a shortage of bread, Marie Antoinette is rumored to have said, “Let them eat cake.” 

I am reminded of these words when I read news commentators pontificate on solutions for Haiti. When I lived in Haiti from 1985 to 1987, Haiti wasn’t just poor, it was grindingly, abysmally, horrifically poor. It’s worse now. Poverty influenced the all decisions people made, the way they perceived life. Most Americans just don’t get it. 

Mango trees are large, beautiful and prolific. Mangos are delicious and nutritious. Mango wood makes lousy charcoal. So if a Haitian cuts down a mango tree for charcoal, he’s a fool, right? He’s giving up years of much-needed shade and generous mango harvests for short term cash. This is typical of what is wrong with Haitian culture, right? Subtext: If we can just change the culture, they’ll all happily eat cake. 

When a Haitian cuts down a mango tree for charcoal, it’s because he’s desperate. Because he had a choice between starving today and starving in the future. He chose to eat today. The average per capita income is two dollars a day. That’s the average of the rich and the poor. Needless to say, the poor have to get by on less. 

Some pundits blame voodoo. David Brooks said, “The voodoo religion . . .spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile.”  Subtext: They’d eat cake if they ditched their religion.

Life is capricious in Haiti. It’s not voodoo. Medical care is so bad and disease so prevalent that one quarter of the population dies before reaching age 40. Virtually every Haitian has seen a close relative -- parent, child, sibling -- die too young.  

The majority of the population are subsistence farmers, dependent on the weather to grow their crops.  if the rain doesn’t fall, disaster follows.  Why don’t they just irrigate? (Eat cake?)  If the soil is dry, corn needs between 2-4 inches of water. One inch of water per acre is about 27,000 gallons. Assuming a 1/4 acre plot, that’s between 28 and 56 tons of water.  It is not humanly possible to deliver 28 TONS of water to a plot bucket by bucket. So, crops fail. 

Religion doesn’t deliver the message that life is capricious, life does. 

Christopher Hitchens says in addition to “liberating Haiti's people from fear of witch doctors,” we need “. . .  to educate them in the family planning that their country so urgently needs.” Subtext: Let’s teach them to eat cake. 

My neighbors in Sources Chaudes in the Artibonite department of Haiti had no electricity, no TV, no books or magazines. The kids had no toys. No one smoked because no one could afford cigarettes. Sex was their only pleasure. 

Every six months or so, a family planning campaign might make it to Sources Chaudes and give out free condoms. Two or three per family, which works out to four or six per year -- and this was when there was little political turmoil and the country’s services and aid agencies were working smoothly.

The rhythm method only works, to the extent it works at all, for women whose cycles are regular. Again, something we healthy, well-fed Americans take for granted and not true of many, many Haitian women. 

Haitians don’t need to be taught about family planning, they need birth control that a dirt-poor, subsistence farmer with malnourished children can afford. 

The all time prize-winner of the Marie Antoinette Let Them Eat Cake award is David Brooks. He said, “It’s time to find local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.” Subtext: They don’t eat cake because they have the wrong attitude.  

One of my friends in Sources Chaudes, the town I lived in for a year, was an intelligent, hard-working man with plenty of drive. He worked hard in school, learned despite poor teaching in a language foreign to him. When he finished the last grade the town’s school offered, he found a scholarship to further schooling. He arranged with relatives at place to live while attending school and found a job for some income to pay for his living expenses. He was pulling himself up by his bootstraps, right?   

The reality of Haiti is no one has boots. The town’s school didn’t get beyond a rudimentary level. The lousy high school Dieuseul fought to attend closed before he graduated. He finished 9 to 10 years of schooling without ever having heard of Darwin, Newton, or their theories. I’m not sure he was ever taught long division. In his town, there were no libraries or bookstores. A few people had a bible. There were no other books. His high school had no library. I’m not sure the city -- one of the country’s bigger cities -- where he attended high school had a bookstore or a library. Maybe a general store had a few books for sale on one small shelf. Dieuseul had not read more than a handful of books in his life -- which was every book he could get his hands on. 

Dieuseul, an intelligent man with a thirst for knowledge and the drive to pursue it, attained something equivalent to a 6th grade education. In Sources Chaudes, Dieuseul was one of the most highly educated and learned men in the town. Being smart and full of drive to achieve and build a better life for himself and his family, he eventually took a boat to the US and became an illegal immigrant.

The local leaders Brooks thinks will create ‘No Excuses countercultures,’ are the people Dieuseul left behind. However, even a whole town of Dieuseuls --- a whole country of Dieuseuls --- are not going to create a school system that meets any standard worth having.   

Once the aftershocks of the earthquake are over; the dead buried, the homeless housed, the hungry fed, Haiti is still going to need a huge amount of help. 

Please, don’t send cake.