Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle by Annan Kent;

Author:Annan, Kent; [Annan, Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780830867004
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

We’re out of sand. We’re way over budget. The money I gave Jean Louis as a final installment is spent. It’s Tuesday, November 18, and everything stops. The walls are almost done. Down the center of the house runs a small cement canal that will catch rainwater on our tin roof (which will be shaped like a V) and send it out one side into our old, red and black Texaco oil barrels. We didn’t want this canal, but our vote isn’t binding. Several workers just spent three days making archlike curves (instead of just leaving them at ninety-degree angles) where the columns on the porch meet the concrete crossbeams—an unnecessary decorative flourish.

I ask Jean Louis how much sand we need to finish the house. We calculate. We trim some of his ideas. My approach, with newfound and expensive cultural insight, is, “Okay, maybe we can do that eventually, but let’s not do any of that till we first finish these few things. Then we’ll see if we have leftover materials.” Sounds good, he says, and then admits the materials might not quite stretch that far. I feel proud of myself. Prioritizing might work better than just saying no—or trying to calculate parallel expenses. Our compromised priorities are (1) finish the roof, (2) cement the floor, (3) cement the inside walls and (4) finish the outhouse. (We’re now going to enclose the outhouse with tin, which will be cheaper than cement.) Finally Jean Louis says, “You know I didn’t have the outside of my house cemented before I moved in; almost nobody does. Maybe after a couple years you can do the extras. But we’ve done a great first stage of construction!”

Progress, however, is not being made toward political compromise. Quite the opposite. A recent political study of Haiti by Robert Fatton Jr., a University of Virginia professor from Haiti, is titled Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy. The way things are playing out seem consistent with his analysis. The current clash is over who holds power in the National Palace, but the underlying instability is chronic, seemingly intractable and much deeper: “Haiti’s predatory democracy is thus the result of . . . the persisting legacy of a dictatorial habitus, and . . . the fragility and indeed virtual absence of both a productive bourgeoisie and a large working class.” Then later, “While material want and the ugly struggle for necessity are not absolute obstacles to democratic rule and effective collective action, they tend to favor the emergence of tyrants and populist demagogues.” The predators are those who hold power, as they go after the nation’s scarce resources. The prey? Well, they’re the same people as always.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.