Collegiate Times

Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, speaks to the Virginia Tech community in Burruss Hall Thursday night.

Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, visited Virginia Tech yesterday to speak at Burruss Hall during Haiti Day, a day-long event to honor the resilience of Haiti and those at Tech who helped the country following January’s devastating earthquake.

Before his speech Thursday night, Joseph spoke to the Collegiate Times about his home country and reaching out to those in need.

COLLEGIATE TIMES: In your opinion, how is the country of Haiti doing right now?

RAYMOND JOSEPH: Haiti is just coming out of a bad situation.

We still have a few people to house before the real rainy season starts in
about two weeks. I would say about 95 percent of the people of the one million who were out in streets have been housed. The cleaning up has started
and the reconstruction has begun.

It has really begun with road building and road building away from the capital, which is a good thing because Haiti was too centralized, so I would say that we are not yet out of the woods, but we made some progress. The schools are open one week ago Monday.

But you have to know, it is not all Haiti that was struck, it was one-fifth of the landmass that was struck. However, in economic terms, the damages were 80 percent, and that is translated into revenues with the final figures came in at only 20 percent in the month of January, in February it was 35 percent.

The figures for March are not in, but you see, we are doing a little progress.

CT: What role do you see American universities such as Virginia Tech playing in the rebuilding process?

JOSEPH: I think that the United States universities and other universities around the world that have looked at Haiti have a big role to play, especially VT with it’s strong engineering department and strong “how to do things” will be quite helpful to us. Haiti’s universities have been very intellectual, philosophical, and I would say that they can talk about antiquities and Greek mythology and good Latin and all that, but sometimes they cannot nail a plank.
And I think universities like VT with its strong position in things like that and how to do things, engineering, agriculture, where we can need some help, will be a big help to Haiti.

CT: How are people’s attitudes in Haiti right now?

JOSEPH: I think that the attitudes of the people were exemplary. The first monthly anniversary on February 12, I was in Port-au-Prince and I saw the people on the streets with their instruments and there was no looting going on. CNN was the only one of the networks that showed a little problem downtown and they tried to make a big thing of it but there was nothing to make out of it.

Everything considered showed that Haiti people have been doing quite well, considering what they went through. More than 230,000 killed, more than 300,000 injured — they still have a smile on their face.

I think that the Haitian people have come through like shining stars.

CT: I understood that you were coming to talk about what is going on in Haiti but also in recognition of the April 16, 2007 events that happened on our campus — what does
it mean to you to speak in honor of the event and what happened here?

JOSEPH: I came here mainly to thank you, as I have done around the country where I have been speaking, for you to have given of yourself the way you have and to support the Haitian people in the hour of need.

At the same time, I want you to know that doing this at this juncture, coming in solidarity, is perhaps, without your knowing, helping Haiti for what Haiti did early on years ago. ... Now, in such distress, the quake has brought you all together for Haiti, I say thank you.

A version of this article appeared in the Apr 16 issue of the Collegiate Times.