Other Articles on the Pèpè Connection

Power Over Pèpè
At first glance, giving away our surplus food and our used clothes looks beneficial. BB Board Member, Todd Saddler, takes another look.

Pèpè Economy You buy the package of boneless chicken breasts & Haitians get the wings and drum sticks left over. Find out how what you decide to eat for dinner can limit what Haitians get to eat.

Words for a New World: Beyond Borders is supporting liberating alternatives to traditional education in Haiti.

Clay for a New Model Beyond Borders Associates Jeff & Beth Rogers & Haitian jewelry maker, Milouse Josnere, discover how help offered as a respectful exchange can liberate people on both sides of the economic divide.

Seeing Lazarus by David Diggs
"As I stood on the corner at an intersection waiting for a break in the traffic, I felt a sharp poke in my backside."

Pèpè Education
An interview with Eddy Sterling, coordinator for adult education programs for Beyond Borders' partner organization, the Limyè Lavi Foundation.

BB: What connection is there between pèpè clothing and formal education in Haiti?
ES: Much of Haiti's education tradition emerged not from our own culture or our way of life, but from abroad. The books and teaching materials and pedagogical approach we use in most schools were essentially developed in Europe for Europeans. More recently the Protestant churches and missions have taken a larger role in education in Haiti. But they have mostly followed the tradition already established long ago that is based on the memorization irrelevant information in a foreign language. Like pèpè clothes, we have accepted this approach to education because it was offered to us freely; but it isn't our own, and instead of freeing us to be who we are meant to be, it constrains us and impoverishes us.

BB: So language is part of the problem with education in Haiti.
ES: Language is an essential element of culture, and in probably about 90% of our schools we are still not really free to use our own language. Students are forced to use French, the language imposed on us by our former colonial slave masters. The fact that we are trying to teach and learn in a language that is not our own has a big impact on the quality of education. Most teachers speak French so poorly themselves that they can't converse with their students in French and don't allow them to ask questions or participate in discussions. This approach handicaps the whole educational process. For example, during a math lesson where word problems are presented, students may be able to easily do the math involved, but because they can't make sense of the French in which the problem is presented, they are lost.

BB: Has there been any progress establishing native-language education in Haiti?
ES: There has been some progress. The government recently offered students the opportunity to take the national exams in either French or Creole, for example. However, the attitude of many teachers and parents toward this kind of change is very negative. They've learned to discredit their own language, to think that it is worthless. Students are reluctant to take their tests in Creole because they know that the teachers hired to grade the exams still hold on to these old attitudes and will grade them low even if they have mastered the material.

BB: In your work you focus on adult literacy training and education. How does your work respond to this problem of pèpè education?
ES: This old education system we inherited has left most adults illiterate and believing that Creole isn't even a real language, just a deformed version of French. As a result, most Haitians not only have to bear the stigma of being illiterate, they are made to believe that they can't even speak a "real" language. They end up feeling like they aren't even human. Training adults to read and write in their own language liberates them. It is a way for people who have always been excluded to be integrated into society and to feel for the first time like they are of value. Even if they are still very poor, the fact that they can now read and write in their own language has liberated them and made them feel like they are human beings.

Comment on this interview in the Beyond Borders Discussion Forum.

Links to More Info on Pèpè in Haiti & Worldwide

The Dumping Ground: The Washington Post on the impact of donated clothes on Africa's economy.

Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: See a summary of a Grassroots Internat'l report on how donated US food is undermining Haiti's ability to feed its people and determine its future.

Are Your Clothes Clean? Take this online tour to see where your clothes came from and where they go.

Don't Take the Pith: The Observer's Sheryl Garratt explores how unfair trade and labor practices fatten profits for the rich and contribute to hunger in Haiti.

Participate in an Online Discussion of Pèpè, economic globalization, and its consequences for the poor worldwide.