In Haiti, the zo reken (shark bone, in Creole) first designated an alcohol, in which shark bones had been soaked, and which was reputed to give men virility. More recently, this is the name given to Toyota Land Cruiser 4X4 vehicles used by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but also by government militias and by Haitian oligarchs, to travel the country’s roads.
Zo Reken, is the name Emanuel Licha gave to his latest documentary. This time, however, he gave the wheel to a driver, and used it to interview various personalities on the affairs of the country. For one of them, whether he belongs to an NGO or a government militia, the Zo Reken, this luxury vehicle, is synonymous with power, in a country where a large part of the population is under twenty. -five cents to pay for something to eat.
Zo Reken was filmed while President Jovenel Moïse was still alive and in power, but a strong protest movement was stirring the country. This is how the driver of the Zo Reken in the documentary has to avoid many demonstrations and several roadblocks to take his passengers to the right port, when he gets there.
But it is rather the NGOs, which swarmed the country after the 2010 earthquake, which are pilloried here by the Haitians encountered. At the time of filming, in 2019, it was estimated that there were still a thousand in operation.
These NGOs, therefore, introduced by a discourse of good intentions, put the country in a state of assistance from which it can no longer extricate itself.
In the field of health, for example, NGOs have, according to one of the participants, moved, at a high price, all the nursing staff to temporary clinics, which are now closed, leaving the existing services in disuse.
For the Haitians crossed on the road, if international solidarity is necessary to a certain extent, it is mainly used to pay the salaries of whites (as foreigners are in fact designated) and to buy their products.
In an interview, Emanuel Licha admits having experienced considerable disillusionment with international cooperation during a master’s degree he was doing in the field in Burkina Faso. “For me, it was a real shock,” he says. “It caused a real questioning, which made it pretty clear that these privileges that I had access to — I was getting invited to all kinds of poolside cocktail parties —” were because he was a foreigner.
Confinement to addiction
This awareness caused him to completely abandon his ambitions for international cooperation. “I didn’t want to be part of this practice,” he says, although he now admits that a “more mature” approach would have enabled him to end up joining people involved in international cooperation closer to her values.
He admits that international cooperation, or solidarity, is a positive phenomenon, as would be, for example, the help of Haitian firefighters in the event of an earthquake shaking Quebec. What is less so, he qualifies, is when international aid confines the country to complete dependence, depriving it of the resources necessary for its own reconstruction.
Haitian misery is felt throughout the film, especially when the Zo Reken arrives at the time of a raid by a government militia, which killed fourteen young people who had to pass the hat to organize a funeral. It is a rare incursion into daily Haitian life. Nothing to reassure the self-righteous.