Michaelyn Baur, Head of Americas for Producer Services and Relations (PSR) and Julie Francoeur, interim Regional Coordinator for the West Indies, Haiti and Paraguay are on a short visit to Haiti to support PSR’s in-country Liaison Officer Jean-Marc Vital in his work. They will visit different producer groups with the objective of better understanding the Haitian reality and finding ways in which the Fairtrade system can better adapt to the very particular national circumstances and help the empowerment of Fairtrade producers.

As the PSR Americas team of Regional Coordinators was meeting in Dominican Republic for a workshop on workers’ rights on banana plantations, we decided to also pay a visit to neighbouring Haiti. After very eye-opening discussions on migrant haitian workers’ rights in dominican Fairtrade banana plantations in the DR, we didn’t quite know what to expect of our first visit to the Western part of Hispaniola. As we took off from Santiago in the heart of Dominican Republic, the last thing we saw was a green, lush, banana plantation.

Twenty minutes later, entering the Haitian territory, we were flying over dry, brown, deforested mountains. Even from above, the difference was remarkable.

We had both prepared our hearts and our eyes for what we were going to see, expecting devastation, destruction and a tense political climate. As we were making our way with Jean-Marc through the thick Port-au-Prince mid-day traffic, what surprised us more wasn’t the pancaked houses, the piles of rubble unmoved nor the overabundance of NGO vehicles; it was the beauty behind it all – wonderfully intricate and brightly-colored taptaps (local buses), beautiful grafiti art, the rolling mountains in and out of the capital city.

Reaching our hotel, we are reminded of the harsh reality that up to 1 million Haitians still sleep in tent cities that sprung up in every available space of the city. From our comfortable and pretty gingerbread hotel room we look onto a peaceful courtyard, but across the street, not even 20 meters away, a large tent city sprawls through Petionville’s public park with very limited sanitary facilities.

Though the images of the day might run in our heads, we better sleep tight as a heavy programme awaits us with a lot of travel to the country side to visit mango producers and coffee producers who, on top of earthquakes, cholera and political tensions have been dealing with difficult certification and commercial relations issues. This already sounds like an interesting adventure.