Lorin Mallorie in Haiti: If you are Haitian, Wyclef Jean, prove it now!

When I heard the whispers of a Wyclef Jean presidential bid, I simply dismissed them. It seemed like an impossible concept, water-cooler talk — something fun to debate: Could he, would he run, this 37-year-old Haitian musician, and of late, politician, who moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 9 years old. After the announcement was official, Deva Krishna, the unemployed musician in the video spoke to me of his concerns, worries of corruption in Wyclef’s organization…

UNCA alumna Amber Munger founds nonprofit Article 29 for Haiti

UNCA alumna and Oregon Law School graduate Amber Munger captivated Asheville after the Jan. 12 earthquake, when her plea-for-help ran on the front page of the Asheville Citizen-Times.  Now, Munger has founded her own nonprofit, the Article 29 Organization, working with Haitian peasantry in Commune Anse Rouge, five hours north of Haiti’s capital. 

Lorin Mallorie in Haiti: From voodoo priests to Christians­, thousands celebrate, mourn life at Sodo

Descending into the waterfall’s basin, the mass of bodies becomes its own living, breathing entity. Moving together in one vibration, in exuberant celebration of all life’s glories and defeats, the drums, horns and songs rise above the waterfall’s massive force.
So starts Asheville journalist Lorin Mallorie’s report from last week’s Sodo celebration.

The Haiti-Asheville connection continues: A panel discussion (updated with photos)


Haiti’s recovery from the devastating January earthquake is far from complete. And the Asheville connection with recovery efforts remains strong. Mountain Xpress publisher Jeff Fobes attended a UN Association panel discussion on Tuesday, June 22: Haiti: Past, present and future. Here are Fobes’ collected messages (Tweets) from the session.

Surviving Port-au-Prince

Editor's note: Shortly before Christmas, UNCA senior Lorin Mallorie traveled to Haiti at the invitation of UNCA alumna Amber Munger, who gave a lecture on her work there last fall (see "Gratitude, Hugs and Tears," March 3 Xpress). Wanting to dig deeper, Mallorie returned to Haiti last month, using the contacts she'd made during her […]

Digital lifeline to Haiti

Tuesday, Jan. 12: just another day in Asheville until my cell phone rumbled to life with the news of the earthquake in Haiti. By hook or by taxi In the midst of all of the tweeting, we still had staff unaccounted for, five days post-quake — not at all encouraging. E-mails weren't being returned, phones […]

How Haiti has suffered so long and so deeply

As is most often the case, America again turns her attention to the people of Haiti because of profoundly tragic events. The massive earthquake … has devastated an entire community. Complete families have been lost outright. The whole infrastructure of the Haitian government, ordinarily fragile, has been decimated. Once more Haiti, one of our closest […]

Americans fiddle while Haiti falls

When the global-warming hoax is finally exposed, there will lay the roots: acid rain, and all its illegitimate junk-science children. But the most recent announcement, that the glaciers in the Himalayas are really not melting away nearly as fast as reported earlier, should remind those of us who are still not completely politically correct that […]