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Sorry we haven’t posted anything the past couple of days, we are udating there are gonna be alot of new features and MyAyiti.Com Presents – “L’Union Fait la Force” Unity Makes Strength Vol. 2 is coming out soon!
Thank you again for all the support, myayiti.com will be offline for a couple of days 
~ Pwa
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — U.S. Representatives Alcee L. Hastings (D-Miramar) and Robert Wexler (D-Boca Raton) issued the following statement in response to the decision made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to resume deportation flights to Haiti.
“Upon hearing from several groups in South Florida today that deportations would be starting again, our staff confirmed with ICE officials that, in fact, deportations to Haiti have already begun. We find this decision to be short-sighted and inhumane.
“Over the course of the past year, Haiti has been ravaged by a devastating food crisis and four back-to-back natural disasters.
Months later, Haiti’s economic and physical infrastructure remains practically obliterated. Haiti is certainly no stranger to crisis and despair.
Even more, many deported Haitians simply have no communities to return to. It is disappointing that the Bush Administration would even consider sending people back to this incredibly fragile nation. “Instead of pursuing this course of action, the United States should extend a helping hand to Haiti, as it has done for other nations in similar situations, by granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status. Haiti has long met the qualifications for TPS, and it is now more urgent than ever that the United States provides them with this much needed, long overdue, temporary assistance.”
GEORGETOWN, Guyana: Haiti is expected to participate in at least one component of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, (CSME) by the first quarter of 2009.
The fundamental components of the CSME are free movement of goods and services, free movement of people and skills, and the right of establishment of business entities within the Community. Haiti’s participation in the CSME will increase the size of CARICOM’s market under the CSME to an unprecedented 15 million people.
Ambassador Earl Stephen Huntley, Director of the CARICOM Representation Office in Haiti told the opening ceremony of the Third Meeting of the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development (CCYD) on Monday morning that Haiti was now in the process of revising and developing legislative frameworks to facilitate its participation in Free Trade in Goods under the CSME. He noted that by January 2009 bureau of standards would be established in Haiti as the country prepared to participate in its first segment of the CSME.
Approximately 40 delegates including Commissioners, consultants and representatives of the University of the West Indies, development agencies, Departments of youth affairs, and the CARICOM Youth Ambassador Corps are meeting at the Hotel Montana in Port au Prince, to discuss preliminary research findings and develop a plan of action to complete the Commission’s Report. The recommendations contained in the Final Report, will be discussed by the special Meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) in April 2009, prior to its submission to the CARICOM Conference of Heads of Government in July 2009.
Long before dozens of Haitian children died from severe malnutrition, their rural community was no stranger to hunger.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
BAIE D’ORANGE, Haiti — The slow road to death runs high above the scenic coastline, past the crumbled bridges and buried rivers. It traverses a jagged trail passing green slopes and red fertile dirt before arriving here: an isolated mountain village where little Haitian girls dream of eating rice and the doctor is a three-hour walk away.
This is the place where children, suffering from stunted growth, look half their age, where struggling mothers cry that their half-starved babies with the brittle orange hair — evidence of malnutrition — neither crawl nor walk.
‘He doesn’t cry, `Manman.’ Or `Papa,’ ” says Christmene Normilus, holding her visibly malnourished 2-year-old son, Jean-Roselle Tata.
In the last month, international aid workers and doctors have airlifted 46 children on the brink of death from this southeastern village and neighboring communities to hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere in the south. The emergency intervention came after it was reported that 26 children from the Baie d’Orange region had died from severe malnutrition in the wake of the four successive storms that devastated Haiti in less than a month this summer.
By Tequila Minsky
La Revolte Des Zombies” ( Zombies’ Revolt”), the seventh studio album by alternative Haitian Roots/Vodou group Boukman Eksperyans, is thought provoking and musically enriching.
Always a band of multiple influences, it’s obvious that on this album Boukman seek to include both literally and musically the new generation in its evolution.
Incorporating rock, jazz, funk, reggae, folk and more recently hip-hop and rap, their lyrics embody Haitian history, political upheavals and social changes. Zombie, the signature song on their new CD successfully combines current musical trends including some rap with musical licks people love and that they’re known for.
Boukman Eksperyans is known as introducing electric guitars and keyboard to traditional haitian roots. Followers of the religion were concerned about combining modern with the sacred but traditionalists realized that it was just the medium that was being changed.
Theodore “Lolo” Beaubrun and his wife Mimerose started Boukman Eksperyans, Haiti’s most well-known and oldest on-going rasin-roots bands; their first album Vodou Adjae was released in the late 80s. They won the Best Song at Carnival “Ke’ M Pa Sote (My Heart Doesn’t Leap/I’m Not Afraid)” and during the coup years in the early 90s their songs were banned from radio, though played on pirate radio and through illicit tape distribution. They spent some years in exile, too.
by Tequila Minsky
Vodou culture in photographs, sacred flags and presentation opens Dec. 6 to March 6.
Damballah et Aida Wedo
It is five hours by road, two hours by donkey, and a 45-minute walk to reach the southern Haiti isolated mountain Catholic Church in Anse-a-Veau. There, for four days, photographer Tony Savino, documented the private and sacred Vodou ceremonies to St. Yves, said to be a water spirit, amidst some 400 believers.
Savino made more than 45 trips to Haiti between 1987 and 1997 and has been to many religious ceremonies. In May 2008, he returned after a ten-year hiatus to go to Fete St. Yves. He notes that even along the walk up the mountain, practitioners would stop at crosses and pray to the Vodou spiritsÐthere were signs of Gede and St. Bridget.
At Fete St. Yves, which is particularly isolated, something really surprising struck him, “This is the first time I’ve seen an accordion used in a Vodou ceremony, recounting, “they played polka music. Drums were there but not central; it was the accordion that was central.”
Profoundly moved by the generosity of the Haitian population that allowed him to photograph such personal and spiritual moments, Savino commented,
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Guadeloupe drew 2-2 with Antigua and Barbuda to secure the last semifinals spot in the Caribbean Championship on Monday, while defending champion Haiti missed out despite beating Cuba 1-0.
Michel Jean Boucicaut scored Cuba’s lone goal for the victory at Jarrett Park, but the margin was not enough.
Cuba topped Group B with six points, two points ahead of Haiti and Guadeloupe, but the latter advanced with a superior goal-difference.
Mickael Antoine-Curier scored after just one minute and Gregory Gendrey found the net in the 63rd to give Guadeloupe the result it needed in the second match of the day.
Peter Byers scored both of Antigua and Barbuda’s goals in the 35th and 83rd minutes.
At the end of the preliminary round, Guadeloupe joined early qualifiers Cuba, Jamaica and Grenada in the semifinals starting Thursday. All four teams have also booked their spots in next year’s CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament to be held in the United States.
Source: AP - SportsIllustrated
Caribbean nations are feeling the sting of the U.S. recession but so far are weathering the storm, according to officials gathered in Miami for a regional conference.
BY JOSEPH A. MANN, JR. AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
The U.S. financial meltdown is starting to affect Caribbean nations, but the effects so far appear to be manageable, government and business officials attending a regional conference in Miami said Tuesday.
Still, much of the discussion at the Miami Conference on the Caribbean and Central America centered on ways to confront the global financial crisis that has started to ripple through the region.
Caribbean nations that rely heavily on tourism are already seeing sharp declines in bookings, while exporters in Central America are facing less demand for their products, said Anton Edmunds, executive director and chief executive of Caribbean-Central American Action, a private sector group that organized the annual conference, which is now in its 32nd year and attracted more than 370 participants.
By JACQUELINE CHARLES
As more severely malnourished children and their mothers trickled into Port-au-Prince Monday from Haiti’s southeastern region to obtain life-saving treatment, the Ministry of Health and an international anti-hunger aid organization launched a national survey of children’s nutritional health.
The door-to-door survey is the first of its kind since the 1970s, officials say, and is critical to answering the lingering question: How widespread and acute is malnutrition among children in hurricane-battered Haiti?
The survey also comes as the Ministry of Health seeks to open a clinic in Baie d’Orange, an isolated mountain village, where 26 children died from severe malnutrition and dozens more from the town and neighboring villages were hospitalized in recent weeks.
”The study is very important in the current situation, as it will give us a baseline . . . and it can guide the geographical priorities for the treatment sites,” Dr. Teresa de la Torre, the nutrition and health specialist for UNICEF Haiti, said in a telephone interview.
BY NADEGE CHARLES
Esperance Joseph wins the 4th annual Miss Notre Dame D'Haiti title at the Joseph Caleb Center in Miami. EMILY HARRIS / FOR THE MIAMI HERALD
Esperance Joseph was on stage at the Joseph Caleb Center, along with three other contestants competing for the title of Miss Notre Dame D’Haiti.
She was composed — until the emcee announced her as the winner.
”I’m very emotional right now,” said Esperance, 17, who burst into tears as she accepted the sparkly silver tiara.
Esperance, a senior at North Miami High, won the fourth annual pageant, which emphasizes community service and involvement in the Notre Dame D’Haiti Catholic Church in Little Haiti.
As Esperance accepted her crown from the former Miss Notre Dame, audience members chanted her nickname, “Espee! Espee!”
