"I was also surprised, because I was doing the filming. The standups are the last thing we do. We write it out and I was holding the card, but it did not say "I am a feminist.'"
Regan translated her response for Salomon, who laughed and offered an important observation. "In Haiti it is not so simple to be in a public space and say that I am a feminist."
In Haiti it is not so simple to be a woman, period.
Amnesty International has spoken about the increase in gender-based violence since the January 2010 earthquake that left up to 300,000 dead and more than one million living in reprehensible conditions. Women are constantly at serious risk of sexual attack by armed men who roam the camps at night.
"There is a need for us to show how we see things," Salomon says. "But how do we get the Haitian perspective out to the world?"
It is a perspective that you cannot possibly understand unless you have spent time in the camps, especially at night, where the passageways between shelters take on an almost medieval ambience, and there are many places for evil to hide.
Salomon has spent a good part of the last year visiting and working with rape groups in the camps. After the wave of violence began, Salomon and others set up "a listening center to receive victims and support women and young girls."
"There seem to be less people in the camps than before, but the question of violence has different aspects," Salomon explained. "In the camps, people do not live as families; there might be a single parent who has three young girls. They try to get more aid and assistance when it is available, so they split up. There is no control and the children end up on their own practically."
Sound familiar? It might be a scenario in New Orleans post Katrina in the Superdome. In the wake of natural disaster, societal collapse will inevitably follow, tearing the tenuous and fragile fabric of morality. The poor, the dispossessed, have little protection and no shelter. Their world collapses and decency is buried in the rubble.
It is at this juncture of the untold story and the moral imperative to present truth that the collaboration between Regan and Salomon finds form. The two met in 1996 when Salomon was 15 and just beginning to work in Community radio in Les Cayes through SAKS radio. Radio is an important conduit for news in Haiti's remote and mountainous communities, operating with low transmissions between 10 and 500 watts.
The SAKS office was destroyed in the earthquake. Regan, who also blogs at the Huffington Post, filmed and posted this YouTube:
"Even though Jane is not Haitian, she has always been interested in Haiti," Salomon says.
REFRAKA's offices were also destroyed, but Salomon endured a profound personal and professional loss--a loss that cannot be measured or chronicled on videotape or explained fully in conversation.
Myriam Merlet, a huge force in the formation of Salomon's work ethic, was the Chief of Staff of the Haitian Ministry of Women. She perished in the rubble of her collapsed home. This was a defining moment for Saloman and many Haitian women who had come to depend upon the guidance of Merlet, a woman who is recognized as one of the most influential feminists in the world. Merlot brought international attention to the use of rape as a political weapon.
The quake may have cost women an important leader, among many women activists lost, but that did not stop Salomon, who continues to challenge herself. She is taking a class from Regan at the State University of Haiti, where Regan has developed a curriculum in investigative journalism. This offering, through the faculty of Human Sciences, is the first time investigative journalism has been offered in the history of Haiti. Currently, there are 26 students in the class doing real-world investigative reporting as they learn the ins and outs of newspaper and broadcast journalism. Regan is teaching them the rudiments of film editing using the Mac iMovie program.
Post-earthquake, in what is known as the "reconstruction" phase, there is plenty to investigate. Salomon's guest shot in the cholera video was one of a series that examines aid and reconstruction from the point of view of Haiti's poor--poor that make up the majority of the population and speak Creole. The producers and writers know the language, the culture, and the history. They translate the content into French, English and Spanish for audiences in Haiti, in the Haitian diaspora (in Creole and English), as well as in North America, Latin America and throughout the world.
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