Four years in the life of NPR’s Latin America correspondent
There are a handful of podcasts I listen to, though one of my very favorites isn’t even a podcast per se. Rather, NPR allows you to subscribe to Latin America news stories -- three to five minutes each, more or less -- and then listen to them without interruption. Because I don’t listen to them every day or even every week, they tend to add up, so sometimes while cleaning up the kitchen or doing something else around the apartment I’ll just listen to a string of them. Last year in Pennsylvania, when Katie and I lived 45 minutes apart, I’d often listen to these snippets on the drive back and forth between Reading and Lancaster.
And invariably I’d wonder what the life of an NPR Latin America correspondent must be like.
Then I came across Gerry Hadden’s Never The Hope Itself: Love and Ghosts in Latin America and Haiti (Harper), and I got my answer. Though he’s since moved to Europe and has switched over to PRI, Hadden was based in Mexico City from 2000 to 2004, covering stories for NPR in Mexico, Haiti and Central America.
First off, Hadden’s a great writer, so even if you’re not up on all the ins and outs of Latin American politics, economics and social issues, it’s lively and fast-paced and reads like a novel. Except, of course, unlike a novel it’s true. Well, most of it is anyway.
The “love” and “ghosts” in the subtitle refer to his personal life during that chapter of his life. There’s a love story woven throughout, and the house where Hadden lives -- which doubles as NPR’s Mexico City bureau -- is also apparently haunted by ghosts. These storylines add personal, humorous and at times downright odd aspects to the book, but that’s part of what keeps it so interesting and enjoyable.
The story begins when Hadden, who had been all set to go off and become a Buddhist monk, received a call from NPR and accepted this dream job. He arrived in Latin America the year before 9/11, and the story of how that fateful September day changed the course of events south of the border is fascinating in its own right, as it’s a story that has too seldom been told.
From covering Haiti’s tumultuous presidential elections, to interviewing some of the few coffee farmers who remain in El Salvador, to following others north, into Guatemala, through Mexico and on up across the Rio Grande, we learn that the life of an NPR correspondent is at times precarious, and certainly not nearly as glamorous as one might think while listening to the radio in the kitchen or on the freeway. But for Hadden, for a time at least, it was a dream job. And with this book, we’re given some great stories, as well as some difficult, frustrating, saddening ones. And, of course, we have the ghosts.
[Photo credit: Allianz.com]
My review of Paul Farmer’s “Haiti After The Earthquake” for PRISM Magazine
Like many in the field of international relief and development, January 12, 2010 is a date I will not soon forget. That's of course when that devastating earthquake struck Haiti.
The news from Haiti has been sobering these past two years, but good, dedicated people -- Haitian and otherwise -- continue to help Haiti build back better. It’s been a learning experience for a lot of us, and I know we’ll hold on to what we’ve learned for a long time.
One person who has much to teach us about Haiti is Dr. Paul Farmer, a medical doctor and anthropologist who has split his time over the past few decades between pioneering community health initiatives in rural Haiti and teaching at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is also the founding director of Partners in Health and has written numerous books.
Because of all this, I’m grateful for Dr. Paul Farmer’s latest book, Haiti After The Earthquake (PublicAffairs). I read it last fall, and I’m pleased to say my review appears in the new issue of PRISM magazine, and for now you can preview the new issue below. My review is on pp. 43-4 (pp. 45-6 using Issuu).
I'd encourage you to read the rest of the great content in the magazine as well, and consider subscribing. I'm a regular contributor (see the rest of my stuff here), and as a little FYI, my next piece is slated to be the May/June cover story, focusing on farmworkers here in the US and the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
[Photo credit: The Daily Beast]
Spiritual aftershocks in Haiti
When the earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, a Tuesday afternoon, I was wrapping up work at the office in DC where I was interning at the time. I was part of the media relations team at one of the NGOs that was quick to spring into action, and over the next several weeks our team worked long hours in support of our organization’s response. During this time I had stories from Haiti fresh in my heart and mind, stories connected to names like Frefre and Madam Sylvanie and Gardinal.
That’s because in the week right before the earthquake (by chance?) I’d read a book by a guy named Kent Annan, who co-directs Haiti Partners, an education-focused nonprofit. The book was Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle, and I remember it as a really honest, challenging spiritual memoir about living fully and loving dangerously, as the subtitle puts it.
I just read Annan’s new book, After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World is Shaken. It’s a quick read, but it packs a punch. Like Annan’s first book, this one is brutally honest and at times rather uncomfortable, reading more like the kind of personal journal most of us would keep to ourselves. The theme of theodicy runs throughout, coupled with the problem of suffering and all the questions left unanswered after a tragedy of the magnitude of the Haiti quake with its 230,001 dead (the figure he cites throughout as a reminder that every life lost counts). In other words, why did this “act of God” have to happen in the first place, considering the orthodox Christian belief in an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God?
It’s something that’s confounded many down through the ages, so I hope it’s not a plot-spoiler to say that Annan doesn’t resolve the issue in these 120-odd pages. And as I said, some of the questions he asks and the ways he describes his own spiritual wrestling -- including doubt and anger -- are uncomfortable to read. On the other hand, he tells stories of remarkable hope and faith and joy emerging from Haiti’s rubble among his friends there. He describes the scene as night fell on an open square later that Tuesday, where hundreds camped out for fear of returning to their homes, or what was left of them. It wasn’t chaos or anger, at least then, according to his friend Enel:
They sang church hymns together. Other times people improvised their own hymns in response to what they’d just survived. And they prayed. Angry prayers? Questioning prayers? No, mostly prayers of gratitude because we were spared, Enel tells me, and prayers for those who weren’t. All night long. An evening of suffering and faith passed in that square and city that was worthy of being recorded in the book of Acts. It doesn’t seem an exaggeration to say Enel took part in one of the more remarkable nights of faith in the world’s history.
There are encouraging vignettes like this interspersed throughout the book, and Annan even works in some humor to keep all the questioning from making the book an all-around downer. But the book is inescapably weighty, and while some might construe it as dangerous ground for a Christian to tread, it’s in keeping with scriptures of lament, like Psalm 13, which asks, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?”
In the face of suffering on an incomprehensible scale, like what Haiti endured in the quake and continues to endure day after day, I’m also reminded of the man who said to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” That's a prayer worth praying, I think, and one God honors.
Check out Kent Annan’s blog and the work of Haiti Partners, and if you’re so inclined, give his books a read.
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