ICWA Letters

PAB-6 HAITI March 2009

Institute

of

C u r r e n t W o r l d A f fai r s

Jerrys World
By Pooja Bhatia

Pooja Bhatia attended Harvard Unversity

as an undergraduate,
and later worked for
the Wall Street Journal.
She graduated from
Harvard Law School.
In 2007, she was appointed Harvard Law
Schools first Satter
Human Rights Fellow
in Haiti and worked as
an attorney with the
Bureau des Avocats
Internationaux,
which advocates and
litigates on behalf of
Haitis poor.

y first Port-au-Prince infatuation was graffiti. Aba Satan! Viv Preval! We pa we, Aristide
ap tounen! screamed the walls. The graffiti was
everywhere, and I tried to decode it, not just to
improve my Kreyol, but also to read the citys
mood.
Last summer, while President Prval struggled to convince a recalcitrant Senate to confirm
his nominee for Prime Minister, unknown scribes
blanketed the tippy top of Petionville down to
the farthest reaches of the Grande Rue with a
single phrase: Bob Manuel=Skirite. Despite
variations on the spelling of security, the graffiti stayed obdurately on-message. It had all the
uniformity and ubiquity of Starbucks.
By then Id long known that Haitis graffiti is
sponsored. Politicians mostly, but also Haitians
nursing grudges or eyeing a prize, pay poor
young men to extol their names and slander
their nemeses. During the end of the Duvalier
dictatorship, Haitis walls bore marks of genuine
sentiment from the genuinely downtrodden. No
doubt some still do. But since then, Haitis pow-

Writing on the Wall:

Useful Graffiti Terms
Spre: Grafitti or the act of making it.
Aba: Down with
Viv: Long live
Moun fou: Crazy person
Vol: Thief
Dil dwog: Drug dealer
Masisi: Derogatory term for gay
Pa pipi la, SVP: Dont urinate here, please
We pa we, Aristide ap tounen: Keep watching,
Aristide is coming back
erbrokers have appropriated graffiti from the
masses, much as they co-opted political demonstrations by paying protestors. Therefore, graffiti
is a better indicator of the strength of a campaign
than of the poor majoritys disposition.
Against this backdrop of manufactured-but-

Institute of Current
World Affairs
The Crane-Rogers Foundation

4545 42nd St. NW, Ste 311

Washington, D.C. 20016
Tel: 202-364-4068
Fax: 202-364-0498
E-mail: icwa@icwa.org
Web: www.icwa.org

The Information
contained in this
publication may not
be reprinted or republished without the
express written consent of the Institute of
Current World Affairs.

Two men, two styles, one tag: Jerry.

2009 Institute of Current World Affairs, The Crane-Rogers Foundation

PAB-6

masquerading-as-authentic graffiti, Jerrys work is extraordinary. No one pays him. He doesnt shill for politicians
or extol a religion. Instead of scrawling exhortations, Jerry
draws pictures. In fact, words are nearly absent in Jerrys
world, save these: Spre pa la pou ekri ni aba ni vote. Graffiti
isnt here to write down with or vote.
But thats just one piece of his genius. His work func-

tions as social commentary and critique, and its by turns

haunting and hopeful, earnest and sarcastic, playful and
morose. In Jerrys world, illiterate seniors wear backpacks
and carry Mickey Mouse lunch pails. A man speaks into
his hand and bites a cement block, as though he had a cell
phone and something to eat. Overloaded buses weep at
their burdens. The face of a beautiful woman cries. All the
images attest to technical virtuosity.
I first saw Jerrys graffiti in January
from the terrace at Muncheez, a downtown
pizza parlor that sits on a busy thoroughfare called Bois Verna. Across the street
was a huge mans head: strong jaw, craggy
contours, a straw hat. His eyes seemed to
look into mine. Kitty-corner, a wizened,
wiry man hunched under a backpack. The
first man was startlingly realistic, while
the old student was cartoonish, but both
were tagged Jerry. My dining companion
and I asked passersby whether they knew
who had drawn them and were told it
was a young man who seemed crazy and
worked fast.
Throughout February, his images
slowly migrated uptown. One effort, on
Avenue Martin Luther King Jr., depicted
another wizened, backpacked man (Wi!
it said) and a man with a distended belly
falling back in pain (No! it said.). Within
weeks, it had been painted over.

On Martin Luther King, Jerrys graffiti projected a vision of a

better Haitino to starvation, yes to education.

Finding Jerry was easier

than I expected. On a Thursday afternoon I

distributed business cards at the Muncheez
corner, where variably employed men
hang out. They claimed to have seen Jerry
around and described him as in his mid
or late 20s and lacking bon sens, or good
sense. They didnt know him personally,
they said, but saw him sometimes. A small
fracas ensued as they fought over the business cards. The men behaved as though the
cards were money.
The next stop was near a park adjacent
to both the Palais National and General
Hospital. There, a patient with a crutch
and broken leg crawled, trying to get the
attention of a white-coated, imperious
doctor. At a bookstand on the edge of the
parkLHistoire deHaiti, Learn English in
60 Days!I asked the bookseller whether
he knew Jerry. A dozen students stopped
browsing to weigh in. One of them told me
that he knew Jerry, but refused to give me
his contact information. Youre a writer,
he said. Jerry doesnt want to be known.

INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS

I pressed my business card into his hand

anyway.
Turns out, its not hard to find almost
anyone in Haiti. By Monday afternoon,
Jerry had texted and was willing to meet
that night. I suggested Muncheez.
How will you be sure its Jerry? a
friend asked. You should make him draw
something to prove hes who he says he is.
I harbored fewer doubts about false identity
claims; in any case, within five minutes, I
knew the lumbering young man with the
concentrated manner was the brilliant wall
writer. When he listened, he listened. When
he talked, he talked. And when he atetwo
foot-long barbecue-chicken sandwiches
that nighthe couldnt talk or listen.
Jerry Moise Rosembert was born in
October 1984, in Port-au-Prince. Hes about 6 2, tall for a
Haitian, and he towers over his friends. He lives far downtown off an alley off Rue de la Reunion, in a neighborhood
that was once respectable working class and now is in an
advanced state of decay. More on this later. Most of the
time, though, Jerry sleeps at his friend Juniors house, a few
streets over. Jerrys father has worked for most of his life as a
clerk in a camping-supplies shop located incongruously on
Rue de La Reunion. His sister, Vicky, is 27. His mother died
when Jerry was six after a long illness. What illness, Jerry
wasnt sure. No one told him, and he never asked.
Jerry finished secondary school and spent several years

A doctor-patient relationship in Haiti.

studying painting at ENARTS, the Ecole National des Arts.
But he dropped out. ENARTS, the only university in this
arts-mad country devoted to art, is best known for its annual
teachers strikes, student protests, and shortened terms.
Jerry wasnt learning much. They dont pay the teachers
enough, or sometimes at all, so theyrenot weak, Id say,
but not very good, either.
But Jerry had an extracurricular mentor: Jean Walker
Senatus. Everyone called him Katafalk, which was the
name he adopted as leader of wildly popular Kreyol rap
group Barikad Crew. In contrast to the popular compas
bands, which produce love songs made for close dancing,
Barikad Crew created music of the
masses. It sounded militant, but
the lyrics usually contained some
social message: respect each other,
respect yourself, dont cut down
trees, kids should go to school.
The members of Barikad Crew
differed from most Haitian music
stars in another way, too. They
were dark-skinned and came
from underclass neighborhoods.

Jerry received a $100 kado, or gift, to paint this mural for Patizan, a band in
Carrefour Feuilles. Jerrys the best, the lead singer of Patizan explained.


Katafalk took Jerry under his

wing in 2001 or 2002. He commissioned huge, colorful murals
in Port-au-Princes kayte popil,
or popular quarters: Carrefour
Feuilles, Portail Leogane, and
Bas Peu de Choseswhich can be
translated as Below Hardly Anything. Other neighborhood bands
commissioned murals, too. Jerry
even appeared in a Barikad Crew
video. He sprayed a wall in the
background, a bandana covering
the lower half of his face. It faintly

PAB-6

bered Senatus urging him to

use his graffiti to promote
social change. By November,
Jerry had mounted his first
images, on a wall of the General Hospital. An imaginary
patient tried to escape from a
real window.
Throughout the winter,
his social-commentary graffiti multiplied exponentially,
creeping up toward the relatively salubrious environs of
Petionville. Just the weekend
before, his graffiti had landed
in Petionville proper, haunt
of the wealthy and the people
who provide their fruit, vegetables, drugs and sex. Smackdab on busy Rue Clerveaux, a
prostitute confronted a dilemma: at her right, a john offered
her money, and at her left, a
child offered a book. Some
Jerrys homage to his mentor Katafalk, painted after his death. (Photo courtesy: Jerry Moise)
blocks over a man munched
recalled the appearance of another Haitian graffiti artist, his cement block and spoke on an imaginary telephone.
Jean Michel Basquiat, in a 1982 Blondie video.
Jerry had limits. A friend of mine had suggested Jerry
Jerry knew of Basquiats brilliance and speedball-in- draw police officers standing around, oblivious to their
duced early death. Thats why I dont drink, I dont smoke, environs because they were all talking on their cell phones.
I dont do drugs, he said. Tet mwen la, he said pointing Jerry demurred; caricaturing the police would be dangerto his head. So my head remains here.
ous. Driving around one afternoon, we passed a Minustah
tank, and Jerry quickly sketched a soldier, a dead goat slung
Along with two other leaders of the band and a driver, around his neck. (Minustah soldiers in the countryside have
Jean Walker Senatus died
in June 2008 in a car wreck
on the way to the airport.
Jerry was devastated, as
was the rest of his neighborhood. The week afterward,
it was virtually shut down
as marchers filled the streets
in memoriam. Tap-taps, or
buses, blared Barikad Crew
songs incessantly. During
that week, Jerry sprayed
portraits of the dead band
members and the driver
on Rue St. Nicholas, which
bourgeois Le Nouvelliste saw
as the use of a tragic event
to make profound claims
of social exclusion. The
reporter didnt try to find
Jerry.
Then Jerry stopped
spraying. He was immobilized. In October, he remem-

Beleaguered patient escapes from a window of the General Hospital.

INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS

Prostitutes dilemma
been accused of stealing peasants goats.) He wouldnt spray fordable medicines, and generally manifest impatience,
paint that because, Minustah would definitely find me and rather than understanding, toward non-compliance. The
kill me. Jerry was serious. He wouldnt even let me keep patient escaping from a window testifies to the horrible
the sketch.
conditions that obtain in state-run hospitals. Since the
government pays doctors in public hospitals a pittance,
He planned a three-week trip to the United States. they are prone to strikeas they did in NovemberleavA group of former ENARTS classmates had arranged at- ing the sick poor without any hope of care.
tendance at an arts exposition in Florida, and Jerry had a
hard-won, three-week visa. But he couldnt get cash for
In January, the government proposed a tax of four
the ticket in time to attend. Jerry planned to go to the States
anyway while he had the visa, he said, probably in the next
few days. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with
him before he left. It turned out to be a week.

Jerry sees his graffiti as a kind of gift

to the poor majority. There are a lot of people suffering in
Haiti, and the government doesnt care, he said. When I
spre, its to show them that someone does care, that someone
notices. Thats one reason he does graffiti late at night.
Haitians get up early, you know, and when they see it first
thing in the morning, its like a surprise.
The pieces on the wall of the General Hospital express
sympathy toward Haitis poor majority. Recall the picture
of the imperious doctor, back turned to the prostrate patient grasping at his white coat. It sums up the attitude
of many Haitian doctors toward the poor; waiting and
examination rooms are microcosms of Haitis repressive
class structure. As physician-anthropologists Paul Farmer
and Catherine Maternowska have described, many doctors speak to their patients in French, prescribe unaf

A man fantasizes about food (Photo courtesy: Matthew Marek)

PAB-6

Jerrys portraits do that.

Friends surround Jerry. Theres gentle Junior, burly

Humans fight cell phones and vice versa. (Photo courtesy: Matthew Marek)

Manno, insouciant Wolf, seriouseyed Rodolph and his pretty siblings

James and Pierrina. There are others
I dont know as well. All of them are
from Jerrys neighborhood. You cant
get Jerry alone, and you wouldnt
want to. Theyre the air I breathe,
he told me privately when a few of
us dropped him off at the airport. I
would be nothing without them.
Jerry credited his friends not only
with driving and looking out for the
police during his graffiti sorties, but
also with giving him ideas. Junior,
one of the few in the group with a
decent job and a car, drives during
the outings and chips in for spray
paint. The day I met him, Wolf was
complaining about being sore from
hoisting Jerry on his shoulders the
night before to spre.
Jerry was on a spre spree that
week, trying to get some of his and
his friends ideas on the wall before
he left. One afternoon, Jerry, Junior,
Wolf, James, Rodolph and I drove
around Port-au-Prince, photographing the previous nights graffiti. They
took obvious pride in Jerry and projected a sense of ownership over the
graffiti. Wolf offered unceasing photographic advice: Zoom back! Youre
not getting it all in the frame!

gourdes, about 10 cents, on each cell phone calla lousy

idea and insult to the populace, half of whom live on less
than a dollar a day. After complaints from Haitis cell phone
companies, the government rescinded. In the meantime,
Jerry painted a cell phone beating a human being, and a
few meters farther down, a woman about to crush a phone
with a cement block.
But much as they sympathize, Jerrys images also entertain. A moun fou on the verge of killing himselftheres
a rope around his neckhas bulging eyes and features so
asymmetrical you want to laugh even as you recognize
the mans desperation. Even his portraits of womens
faces, their eyes leaking tears, humanize misery instead
of making it an object. A photographer friend who shoots
the poor, sick, and mad in Haiti once told me that he aimed
to make viewers curious about the people in his photos.
INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS

Yon ede lot is what we live, Jerry

told me, citing a Haitian peasant proverb that translates as One helps the
other and expresses an ethic of sharing everything, burdens
and bounty.
At a Total gas station eating sandwichesa few gas
stations in Port-au-Prince make the citys best sandwiches,
and for the equivalent of three US dollarsJerry, his friends,
and I chatted and looked over CDs filled with Jerrys graffiti
and paintings. Earlier I had asked Jerry what he wanted to
do in the future. He told me he wanted to go to art school
abroad, preferably in the United States, for a few years,
and find ways for his friends to come to the United States.
Then he wanted to come back to Haiti to work for change.
At the gas station he asked, But dont you want to ask nou
tout--all of us-- what you asked me, what we want to do
in the future?
The boys had a short debate and decided to give indi

vidual answers, not a collective one. We went around the

table. Rodolph wanted to build a business in Haiti. He had
dropped out after two years from a university specializing
in diplomacy, for lack of funds. His brother James intended
to be a millionaire by the time he reached 40. Junior, gainfully employed, had relatively sedate plans: he wanted to
continue to work here and to travel to the United States only
for vacation. But Wolf wanted to go to the States permanently, complaining (accurately) that Haitis jobless ratemore
than 70 percent lack formal employmentmeans that
nearly everyone depends on the Haitians in the United
States for money. After secondary school, I looked for a
job, Wolf said. Ive been looking for seven years!
Junior and Rodolph were murmuring to each other and
smiling as they looked behind me to the sandwich counter.
They had written notes to the uniformed sandwich maker.
This is just to say, nothing else, that I think you are very
pretty, Junior had written in French, in a careful cursive.
Hed put his phone number and email address below the
note. Rodolph wrote something similar on the other side of
the paper. I delivered the note to the girl, who accepted it with
seriousness. Later I teased Junior about his sandwich goddess. No, I gave up my claim. Rodolph can have her. He
paused and gave a cheeky smile: Yon ede lot, you know.
We had been sitting for hours. James and Junior announced they were going to buy drinks from the coolers.

Jerry grins during a stop on our city tour.

Thats Rodolph next to him.
What do you want? they asked me. I said I was fine and
didnt want anything. Not even ice cream? Junior asked.
(The gas station is truly a culinary wonder.) I demurred.
But you have to get something! Its not right if you dont.
At least water.
These young men with such precarious material existences had insisted on walking on the street side of the
sidewalk. They had called me after our gatherings to ensure
Id arrived safely home. So I asked for water.

Jerry and his friends called me at midnight one night to invite me to watch Jerry do more graffiti.
They were nearby, on Rue Capois, so I changed out of my
pajamas and went to watch.
For long bouts of graffiti-making, Jerry usually wears
a bandana over his nose and mouth, gloves, and glasses,
mostly to protect himself from the spray paints noxious
fumes. Hed prefer a full-on gas mask, but theyre expensive. That evening, though, he wore nothing.

Jerry and his friends pose in front of one of Jerrys murals in Bas
Peu de Choses Jerrys in back with a bandanna covering his face.
Wolf is on the far left, James with a bandanna-d head, Junior
squats, Manno wears a baseball cap, Pierrina is the girl, and
Rodolph, on the right, displays a Jerry-original t-shirt.


The wall was gray and blank one moment; almost the
next, two men appeared, fighting (with forks) over a roasted
chicken. Actually, it took Jerry about 10 minutes to spray the
image, including a break while a police car drove by. Jerrys
friends/helpers moved to the sidewalk and talked in a cluster or crossed their arms, feigning nonchalance, while Jerry
moved away from the image and pretended, like so many
men in Port-au-Prince, to be taking a long leak. The police
didnt stop. Junior surmised they were en route to a nearby
roadblock to monitor the late-night dancehall and drinking
PAB-6

activity. He revised: Or, probably to

go drinking themselves.
Next was a tableau James had
dreamed up. Jerry painted a person
standing up, his side toward the street.
Then he painted a person in front of
him, then another, then another, until
there were four. Then he set to work
on a desk and a woman sitting behind
it. Whats the woman doing? Jerry
asked his friends, who were standing
in the street, watching. Have her
filing her nails, James said. She filed
her nails. And now put up the sign,
Junior shouted. Jerry drew a rectangle:
Too low! came a chorus.
It was too late, but the signs
positioning looked perfect to me. Its
one of my favorites in Jerrys oeuvre:
a line of peopleincluding a pregnant
woman with sagging breasts, and
a man clutching his back in apparent painwaiting in front of a desk
marked Ijans, or Emergency, while a
smartly-dressed woman, legs crossed
under her desk, ignores them.

Jerry creates
a Haitian food fight

Bon, bon, bon, bon, bon teknik!

exclaimed the director of studies at
ENARTS, who claimed to remember
Jerry fondly. Jerry had organizedand
wona city-wide speed-drawing contest, Professor Policarpe recalled when
I visited him in his office a week later,
after Jerry left for the states. The school
was a block or two from Jerrys house,
on chaotic and dirty Rue de la Reunion,
and it looked small and wornunkempt courtyard, peeling paint. But
there was a bright, busy library across
the hall, as well as a large performance
space with a barre and wall mirror. A
drumming circle was having at it.
Professor Policarpe hadnt known
his former pupil was the brilliant
person behind the graffiti, which he
professed to love. Jerrys work was
unprecedented, he said. Jerry later seemed astonished that
the professor remembered him at all.

After Jerry left, I visited his father, to whom

Jerry had briefly introduced me at the Coleman shop. On a
Sunday morning, the slight, graying Mr. Moise met me on
Rue de La Reunion, and we walked together toward his
house. Sundays are calm in the Moise neighborhood. The
rest of the week, brightly colored tap-taps inch their way
INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS

down streets, nearly shaving the double-parked cars and

pedestrians. The sidewalks crowd with sellers sitting before
woven baskets of spaghetti, tomato paste and bouillon cubes;
students en route to their substandard university classes;
sick people begging at pharmacies; matted-haired moun
fou sitting on corners. Getting anywhere requires weaving,
bumping, stopping and occasional pushing. I always fear Ill
hit a pedestrian.
The two-room, tin-roofed house was in an alley off Rue


Rodolph becomes part of a freshly painted picture.

de la Reunion. The alley served as a communal kitchen,
and women were cooking big vats of the traditional Sunday-morning pumpkin soup, soup jumo. In the front room,
a curtain partition separated a bed from the parlor, which
contained a television, fans, a Coleman cooler, and a TV
stand stuffed with books and sheaves of paper. It was more
cramped and less furnished than Juniors house, where
Jerry slept. Mr. Moise and Jerrys sister, Vicky, found a
couple of chairs.
Mr. Moise conceded that he was a little opposed to
Jerrys graffiti. He didnt see it as defacementthey never
paint on private property, he maintained, incorrectlybut
he worried that the police would arrest or abuse Jerry. I
wish he could find a job drawing for a newspaper, said Mr.
Moise. Unlike graffiti, published cartoons could pay.
Mr. Moise had married Jerrys mother when she was
19. She had Jerry at 24, the same age as he is now. She had
worked at a factory hand-stitching baseballs: Haiti was once
a prime destination for baseball manufacturing, thanks to
its proximity to the United States and the willingness of
its workers to accept meager wages for painstaking work.
It was a typically Haitian job. She died a typically Haitian
death, tootuberculosis, when she was 30. She died on the
eve of Mardi Gras, and Mr. Moise didnt tell his children
10

of their mothers death until after Carnival was over. He

wanted them to enjoy the holiday festivities.
Mr. Moise showed me photographs of her, some taken
after the disease had set in. She looked like a female version
of Jerry. He has her eyes and upright bearing. The plastic
sheets covering the photos had long ago lost their stick, and
the photos were now shoved between pages. Most were
of Jerry. Jerry at his baptism. Jerry with a basketball team.
Jerry posing against a space-age backdrop with a friend.
Jerry escorting a girl to a dance. Maybe there was another
album devoted to Vicky.
It was hot. The houses tin roof and cement walls
trapped heat, Mr. Moise explained. The neighborhoods
only perk was its proximity to the huge alabaster Palais
National, which meant that the public electricity company
usually provided electricity. Not that day, he apologized;
otherwise hed start the fan. Vicky grabbed a couple of
pieces of thin wood and started fanning herself with one.
On the other side of mine was an impressionistic picture of
a red horse, painted by Jerry.
Situating Jerrys family on the spectrum of economic
class was difficult. Eighty percent of Haitians survive on
less than two dollars a day and one percent are filthy rich.
PAB-6

Jerrys family wasnt in the bottom 80 percentMr. Moise

had a stable job and a sister who sent money from West Palm
Beachbut calling them middle-class would mislead.
Lower middle class? Working poor? Jerrys father had good
way to put it. Sa a se mize, men pa mize enfer, he said. This
is misery, but not the misery of hell. Vicky wanted to show
me the misery of hell, just a few blocks toward the sea.
While we walked, 27-year-old Vicky explained that
she had graduated from the hotel school and found work
making pastries at the Hotel Montana. When V.I.Ps come
to Haiti, they stay at the Montana. Bill Clinton recently did.
Vicky worked seven days a week and earned $80 per month
at a place whose smallest room, Vicky knew, cost $120. She
quit, feeling cheated. The family had paid for her education,
even sending her to post-secondary school, but she found
few returns.
We walked along the Grande Rue. Vicky pointed out
the fat Dominican prostitutes, flies on meat, people buying the festering meat, a man fishing through a streaming
gutter for scraps of food. She hadnt seen Jerrys prostitute
deciding between school and her john but, she disagreed
with the idea that prostitutes had a choice. This, she said
sweeping her arm, is not a choice.

Jerry overstayed his visa by about a week.

I dont know why: some combination, perhaps, of a desire
to see more of the United States, a cheaper return ticket, and

INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS

Jerry and his father pose at the campingsupplies store where Mr. Moise works.
his 24-year-old recklessness. He asked me to write a letter
for him explaining that he delayed his return to help me
with this newsletter. Not wanting to lie to the Department of
Homeland Security, I refused. His dossier is now smudged.
Studying in the United States, emigrating, and even visiting
will be more difficult. So I worry about him. Ive promised to
take him to an information session on Fulbright scholarships,
but applicants need a bachelors degree, and Jerry dropped
out of awful ENARTS. Maybe I am overly optimistic, but I
think hell find something else.
o

11

Current Fellows
Elena Agarkova RUSSIA
May 2008 - 2010
Elena is living in Siberia, studying management of
natural resources and the relationship between Siberias natural riches and its people. Previously, Elena
was a Legal Fellow at the University of Washingtons
School of Law, at the Berman Environmental Law
Clinic. She has clerked for Honorable Cynthia M. Rufe
of the federal district court in Philadelphia, and has
practiced commercial litigation at the New York office of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP. Elena
was born in Moscow, Russia, and has volunteered for
environmental non-profits in the Lake Baikal region
of Siberia. She graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 2001, and has received a bachelors
degree in political science from Barnard College.
Pooja Bhatia HAITI
September 2008 - 2010
Pooja attended Harvard as an undergraduate, and
then worked for the Wall Street Journal for a few
years. She graduated from Harvard Law School. She
was appointed Harvard Law School Satter Human
Rights Fellow in 2007 and worked as an attorney
with the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, which
advocates and litigates on behalf of Haitis poor.
Eve Fairbanks SOUTH AFRICA
May 2009 - 2011
Eve is a New Republic staff writer interested in character and in how individuals fit themselves into
new or changing societies. Through that lens, she
will be writing about medicine and politics in the
new South Africa. At the New Republic, she covered
the first Democratic Congress since 1992 and the
2008 presidential race; her book reviews have also
appeared the New York Times. She graduated with a
degree in political science from Yale, where she also
studied music.
Ezra Fieser GUATEMALA
January 2008 - 2010
Ezra is interested in economic and political changes in
Central America. He is an ICWA fellow living in Guatemala where he will write about the countrys rapidly
changing economic structure and the effects on its
politics, culture and people. He was formerly the
deputy city editor for The News Journal (Wilmington,
DE), a staff writer for Springfield Republican (Springfield, MA) and a Pulliam Fellow at The Arizona Republic.

He is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston.

Suzy Hansen TURKEY
April 2007 - 2009
A John O. Crane Memorial Fellow, Suzy will be writing about politics and religion in Turkey. A former
editor at the New York Observer, her work has also
appeared in Salon, the New York Times Book Review,
the Nation, and other publications. She graduated
from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999.
Cecilia Kline CENTRAL AMERICA
January 2009 - 2011
Cecilia is a graduate of Georgetown University,
Loyola University Chicago School of Law, and the
University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. In 2007 she began with Casa Alianza in
Tegucigalpa, Honduras providing outreach for youth
living on the street. As an ICWA Fellow she will write
about youth-service programs from several Central
American cities as a participant observer.
Derek Mitchell INDIA
September 2007 - 2009
As a Phillips Talbot Fellow, Derek will explore the
impact of global trade and economic growth on
Indians living in poverty. He has served for the past
year as a volunteer for Swaraj Peeth, an institute in
New Delhi dedicated to nonviolent conflict resolution
and Mahatma Gandhis thought. Previously he was a
Fulbright scholar in India at the Gandhi Peace Foundation. He has coordinated foreign policy research
at George Washington Universitys Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies and worked as a political
organizer in New Hampshire. Derek graduated with
a degree in religion from Columbia University.
Raphael Soifer BRAZIL
April 2007-2009
Raphi is a Donors Fellow studying, as a participant
and observer, the relationship between the arts and
social change in communities throughout Brazil.
An actor, director, playwright, musician and theatre
educator, he has worked in the United States and
Brazil, and has taught performance to prisoners
and underprivileged youth through Peoples Palace
Projects in Rio de Janeiro and Community Works
in San Francisco. He holds a bachelors degree
in Theatre Studies and Anthropology from Yale
University.

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