bill clinton came along, and not only did he claim victory in the cold war, his annual address to congress, january 1992, but at the republican party convention in houston which i also attended because i was a white house correspondent. he went out to the crowd shouting u.s.a., u.s.a., which prompted bill clinton said that's like a rooster claiming present for the dog because there other factors. >> host: thank you, conor o'clery. it's been a real pleasure to talk to today. and congratulations on your book. it's an extranet almost historical thriller i would say, that we know the outcome really keeps you turning the pages. thank you. >> guest: thank you very much, tom. >> that was "after words," booktv signature program in which authors of the less

nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and legislators and others familiar with the material. .. >> well, thank you so much for inviting me and i'm honored to be here leaving up my patien

patients -- it's having done the prep without the procedure. that's what that i have going to be really irritated with. [laughter] >> no, they all know. they all know. i'm keenly aware that you are -- we have about 30 minutes and that you're here -- you're here to listen to paul and not me and i'm going to be a facilitator of paul talking. and arlington personal note i want to thank you for one thing which is entitling chapter 2 and politics, what that taught me if you highlight a word in the kindle, the dickary pops up. [laughter] >> and you can learn what it means. >> the fly wrote the book. [laughter] >> it's okay.

let's start off and so that's going to be the arc of today into 30 minutes. we'll consider haiti like a patient. let's talk -- start with the past medical history, okay? you start off with a country in 1804 had a successful revolution and rewarded in 1825 with france imposing a $21 billion reparations bill on them which took them over 100 years to repay with interest. and it got worse from there. so you say the collapse was economic and politically. can you explain about that in 30 minutes. >> that's his revenge for me canceling his endoscopy. i said on the way here i can't imagine that there would be anyone here on a monday morning so thank you all for making an

effort to be here. it's not a convenient i'm sure for any of you. and thank you, john, for doing this. by way of thanks and as a segue to the question, i also want to express at the outset my deep gratitude to the haitian people. and that sounds like a grandstanding move but let me be specific. and those of you here today who are haitian will know exactly what i'm talking about. the revolution that john lafook mentioned. i'm going to say john even though it's dr. lapook. john was the only time that in recorded history that a slave revolt has led to the founding of a nation. and when we heard about the french revolution in 1789 and it's promise of liberty and fraternity, how could that be true if there were slaves,

right? how could that be a real human rights revolution? and the answer is, of course, the haitians said it couldn't be true. it wasn't -- it wasn't real. no offense to anybody here who is from france, especially, 'cause i really love french food. [laughter] >> but it could not be meaningful without the haitian revolution. and the haitians will tell you -- and, again, this is across all spectrums of haitian society. and most of my experience has been in the rural regions, places you've now visited as a physician and my knowledge of the haitian urban elites is actually quite limited. it's mostly through books, reading books that they've written. but across that spectrum, haitians will tell you that no small amount of their current problems are related to the haitian revolution. and the price they paid for actually pushing forward these

ideas. now, i said, well, how can you say that in a more concise way? and that's why i took this medical metaphor and for those of you who are not in medicine, we talk about the history of the present illness, someone comes in with a complaint, different sort of complaints usually for john's patients than mine. >> i'm an internist here. >> we're both internists and here and they say i've been coughing for, you know -- in my case, usually are talking about coughing for weeks and losing weight, whatever it might be. and then you gather the history of the present illness. you find out when this started. and one of the things we like to do -- and i put this in the book, maybe pushing a little bit. in my work infectious disease work we always go chronologically. and the patient may or may not have an idea about when a certain illness started. they always do have an idea. they don't always say they may or may not have an idea but going back in time to when that patient was well and then moving

forward, now, haiti was never well because it was a slave colony prior to the revolution. and then it was this pariah nation that was being punished by the great powers of the time. >> and frightening to the united states, right? >> and very frightening to the united states. i always quote in books about haiti that on the senate floor, the senator from one of our states -- i won't mention which, but it's a little bit south of north carolina. [laughter] >> saying, you know, the safety of our country forbids that we even talk about haiti. >> right. >> this is on the senate floor. >> and obviously there were still slaves in the u.s. >> exactly. and the first envoy we sent was when lincoln sent the first ambassador. so the united states and haiti have this very complicated history that goes back actually to -- before the revolution when we sided with the slave owners as the only other independent nation in the hemisphere, the only independent nation in the

hemisphere. and so we have this history, i think, also as two countries. and as an american, writing about haiti, that's always on my mind, too. what about our country in haiti? >> so that sets the stage because people say haiti is a lost cause. i mean, they just can't get their act together. look at all the aid coming in but really without knowing the history and how they've been up against it, you really can't even start to talk about it and that's one part of the book that's terrific. he's done another book just to sort of set the stage to even think about haiti because just coming into it raw, i think it's very hard for people to just get it, okay? let's talk about the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which is ngos, okay? i've been to haiti several times now. and i've seen the amazing work that ngos, including partners in health -- i was there the day the cholera outbreak started in st. mark and i saw the man who interviewed him.

he was astounding as were the colleagues from doctors without borders and other organizations. and i went up north, and i saw the difference between the care -- the health care that people got in a mission, an ngo, and then just going about several miles down the road to the public hospital which is astounding. i've never seen anything like that in my life. you walk in -- there were literally no doctors there when i walked in. >> yeah. >> there were three guys who didn't have their md yet who were sitting there and they were in training and they were going to call other doctors. and the patients were on the right and the left. they had to bring their own sheets and their own -- their family brought the food and there was no electricity. i mean, you cannot imagine it. so you have this big difference between the public and the private. but there have been -- the critics would say that there is this codependency between the ngos and the public government. and you talk about friction

between taking care of the patient who's right in front of you, that's the doctor. that's dr. farmer. you're always dr. farmer. you can't resist and they are sick and you're going to reach out to them. and you take care of the public health experts and you talk about this the chief tension in your life. so say something about that and this whole controversy? >> well, the tension and the controversy -- i'll try to give, you know, a -- i'll attack both of those. you know, and i'm here with some friends who perry met, who just came in from new york who -- we've been working on some policy projects, well, that sounds -- boy, that sounds like -- if it were 9:00 at night, everybody would just, you know, pitch forward in their seats and snoozing. and i don't find policy discussions that interesting. but they are crucial to getting this right. when we talk about bill back

better, we're not talking about the destroyed infrastructure. we're talking about aid back better. for example, you were in -- where the cholera outbreak started, and, again, there's an entire history to where cholera came from and where it's going and i'm very interested in that, too, and i hope we have a chance to discuss it. but that area was actually not touched by the earthquake. >> right. >> so what you saw -- there's no electricity, no doctors, you know, and a terribly underfunded public sector and then some pretty good ngo -- what you saw was part of what needs to be built back better. and the tension between policy -- okay, you know what? i shouldn't have used the word praxis. it was a smarty pants. it's an old school marxist. let it go. [laughter] >> i'll let it go. i'm past it. >> some of my friends here and some i trained with, they would do you've that. >> that was the long take that i've ever seen and the guy pulled off the masking tape and

he said ow, didn't i make that comment like 20 minutes ago. >> unlike gast roincidentologists, we have long memories. so it's come to this, paul. [laughter] >> so the practice or praxis -- >> it sounds like a neurological term to me. >> but that tension between, you know, taking care of someone right in front of you and thinking about the right policy is really what we should be thinking about when we think of building back better. it's not our own personal dliekz. i like seeing patients but if i were sitting there -- i mean, cholera is a great example, you know, you can have as many patients as you want because the epidemic is out of control. so you have 425,000 patients already. >> and by the way, that translates -- if we were the united states, to 12 million people, 12 million people for the united states. 6,000 dead is 180,000 dead in

the united states, just to put it in perspective. >> and we're not even sure -- it could be an undercount as you all know because supporting capacity is so weak. so this tension is in our lives. and it should be in our lives. again, regardless of what our own druthers. in your own life, for example, you see patients but you're also -- every time you go on the air or go to haiti or go to somalia, you're also taking on the big picture. i think that it's the same sort of thing when i write a book. of course, you know, you're seen by millions of viewers and four people read book. i'm not bitter about it. [laughter] >> i know jamie from public affairs is here. so she's fighting to -- you didn't let me finish the second part of the question. >> you remembered it. >> of course, i remembered it. >> go for the second part. the 800-pound gorilla in the room and the codependency, just to jog your memory.

[laughter] >> speaking of neurologicst, we have a ct scan set up for you. [laughter] >> what we wanted to bring in the book -- and here's my chance also to say thank you to abby gardenuar gardner and jeanine who contributed to the book and helped to bring it into existence because, you know, it takes a village, as you said. [laughter] >> and by the way, when you read this book, you should read -- read the end -- the part at the end that jenny wrote, didi his wife wrote and the witnesses from right down there in rural haiti. don't just don't with his last words. read the parts at the end. >> well, the 800-pound gorilla -- the idea behind this book is i'm from an ngo. i'm a volunteer. but i am an ngo creature.

you know, my real job is being a medical school professor. but i've always believed in the work of partners in health and there are other great ngos working in haiti. at the same time, what's your long-term strategy to build aid back better? now, our strategy with partners in health has been hire local people, do local procurement whenever possible and work to rebuild the internal sector, the public health institutions but it wasn't always that way. it was always a community-based organization with haitian employees but it's really been the last 10 years or so where we said, wait, what are we doing wrong? everybody says, thank you for building a hospital in the middle of a squatter settlement. or thank you for helping get our kids back to school. we get a lot of thanks from the people we serve. but we said, well, what are we doing wrong? we decide what we're doing wrong is to allow the continued degradation and collapse of the public sector which is after all haitian -- you know, our employees are haitian, too. but this is the institutions of

that country. their public institution allows them to collapse even as we grow, that's not the way to build haiti back better. and the earthquake was a chance, we hoped, not only to improve our own practice but also the improve the dialog with our other ngo partners. >> how does that translate to real life. i stood in the rubble in the ministry of health, literally, in one of these shots, you know, we did for one of our pieces. it was rubble. i was literally on a pile of rubble and i thought, rebuilding this is the easy part. but rebuilding -- not only rebuilding, but creating for the very first time a public health system, that's the tough thing. and you have all these -- how many billions have been pledged and however much has actually reached haiti, which is another question -- it's more efficient for tomorrow to give that money to the ngo. they're going to help that person who's dying right there, but really -- and you've

written, it needs to go to the -- to rebuilding the public health system, right? >> it does. and i'll give you an example that i find uplifting, and i haven't cleared this with the -- i'll just say it, the american red cross, but they'll forgive me because i hope it's a positive story. they haven't told me i can't tell it. >> do you have the keys here? >> no, they're here. this is their hometown. take the international red cross or the international federation of the red cross, when there's a disaster, people will give to the red cross. it has, as they say in business parlance, it has a good brand. i watched -- of course, i only worked i don't take breaks and i didn't watch contagion with matt damon but if i had watched it -- by the way, pretty compelling outbreak moving. >> when he says he watched it with matt damon, he literally

watched it with matt damon. [laughter] >> somebody else was in the movie. >> anything with him in it is good. so there's the red -- it's about an outbreak, as you might imagine. and there's the red cross. and i was thinking, oh, i'm going to -- well, had i been at the movie theater, i would have thought -- if i'm going to washington tomorrow, maybe i'll get to see my pals at the red cross. ngo, right, it's a nongovernmental organization. is raised a lot of money with hurricane katrina. any visible, you know, disaster, whether we call them natural or unnatural doesn't matter. but they're going to have people saying, i want to help. more than half of all american households donated to haiti. and that says something very good about everybody in this room and in just country. and the red cross is an ngo and they are used to working with ngos. they work with partners in health, doctors without borders.

and here's my chance to anybody apologize to doctors in the borders who i called doctors who sometimes need borders. [laughter] >> having worked with them -- it was just kind of a joke, okay? but we can move like this. we were move very quickly, the ngos. doctors without borders very, very quickly and so can partners in health. but what -- and thank you, red cross, for supporting us to respond to the suffering of cholera patients and reduce what's called case fatality rate, the number of patients with the disease from 10 to 15% to almost zero. that's already done. if someone gets into one of these cholera treatment centers, they're not going to die of cholera. but that does not replace a public water system. it does not replace a public hospital. it does not replace a public reporting system like the cdc which does a lot more than reporting. as you can see, i'm told about this movie i didn't see, but that's an example of -- so the

red cross, we said to them, you know, help us keep the general hospital going. and you were there in the general hospital, haiti's largest hospital. and that's going to require finding a way to get salaries paid for workers. >> how does that logistically happen? >> it logistically happens by convincing them to do it and then saying, okay, maybe you want other groups to accompany. that's the word that we're trumpeting in this book, accompaniment as an alternative development strategy. so the red cross accompanies us financially and we accompany the general hospital or the public sector. and that's the idea behind it and there are other -- my colleagues who are here from new york could tell me if i did a good job from talking about this. but that's a models of moving resources from the generous who have resources to the unfortunate who don't. and let me just give one last number. there is a health ngo which i

won't mention their name. it's not partners in health but partners in health is way up there, too, that it raised $134 million for earthquake relief, an international ngo and the ministry of health which you know was completely leveled by the earthquake and probably lost 20% of its -- or, you know, death or injured. the ministry of health, which is still in a temporary shelter and so now if you go back to that lot, which i hope you will, there's not a stone standing there which is good because that means they cleared out the rubble. their budget is a third i have have of that. that's the modern world distortion that we have going on in haiti. and all over the world. you've got one country -- this one, for example, where there would be tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars raised out of generosity going in to a country where the public

sector budget is for help for the country is not a third of one health ngo raises for the earthquake. a few years ago in a book i sent you but i bet you didn't read -- i just compared the budget of the republic of haiti which is going through tough times, cynical management of money which gets picked apart in this book, this is in 2003. i said what's the budget of the republic of haiti? well, the budget of the republic of haiti was less than the budget of the city of cambridge with 100,000 people in it. those distort the work we do and the 800-pound door he said going back to the question and wrapping it up neatly -- the 800-pound gorilla, which is more in capita -- >> sorry, there's 1 ngo for

every 1,000 haitians. so think about that. >> 10 million people, right? >> and there may be more because we're not counting all the little bitty ones as president clinton would say, little bitty ones. everything he says sounds good, i find. [laughter] >> we have like 7 minutes left and i want to get because like the patients have not even undressed and we have to take them through the physical exam and we have to get a diagnosis and prognosis in 7 minutes. i know -- >> tom, we know you don't examine the patients. you just use endo scopy. >> you may know -- everybody here wants to know what's happened to the money? >> yeah. well, in the way in here, one of my colleagues reminded me, it's not just about the pledges. it's obviously about, do the pledges get delivered? and the answer is a very

substantial majority of them do not. >> i think people to know -- they want to know the numbers and they want to know the percentage goes to the public -- >> i'm self-conscious because katherine gilbert is here and she should correct me. but $5 billion or more were pledged and then there are some long-term pledges that were made as well. for 2010/2011 was 6.2 billion in your book but the next page -- >> and you have to pick these apart. that's why we have a website that really is just devoted to looking, where are these pledges? are they recycled old pledges? are they really new. >> what percentages -- >> i think we're pushing 30%. >> okay. >> which is not bad. so that means the majority is not delivered yet. >> of that, how much went to the government? >> a vanishingly small amount. i'll tell you the number i do know, which is the acute relief. you've already given us a picture of why it's difficult to

put acute relief money into the public sector because it was destroyed. i mean, 28 of 29 federal buildings in haiti were destroyed in the quake. imagine washington which, you know, this is one city -- we have, you know, los angeles and chicago and new york. it's all one city in haiti. and that city -- the nerve center was destroyed. from the palace to the ministry to our equivalent of even a building like this flattened. so it was hard to put money. i get that. this is humility. we understand why it was hard for the big ngos and the so-called bilateral means -- like cuba, haiti, united states, haiti, those are bilateral relations and like the multilaterals and like the world bank and we understand it was hard. and to have -- >> 1% and that gives you some idea. i have to -- i'm going to reel you in a little bit, if that's

okay because we talked beforehand that we could go on an hour on each one of these topics but i do want to just very correctly -- i have to ask you the cue question, since we're doing the patient and metaphor, what is haiti allergic to? >> haiti is allergic to heavy-handed meddling and any assault on its -- real or perceived on its sovereignty. that's what haiti is allergic to. i'm sure all of us read the newspapers today and reflected on 9/11. i read the "new york times" and just read a piece by a pakistani who i had the privilege of meeting actually in this city and this building, i think, and he writes about the impact about some of the things that have happened since then on his own country and the popular perception of the united states. but in haiti, it's deeper. you know, and it's much less fraud. there's no -- there's never

been -- there's been the american occupation of haiti, which is a dark chapter for them. 1915 to 1934. but if we want to find out how to proceed, we have to be aware of that allergy. and that's a great metaphor. i hadn't thought about it. if i would choose one, it would be perceived attack on the sovereignty. and it doesn't have to be real. it's very hard to -- you know, to inform all one's work with that awareness of an allergy. >> we have 3 minutes. i wanted to talk about the diagnosis. i wanted to talk about rwanda, how it's a role model and what it can teach us following the 1994 genocide. and i want to talk about the role of the haitian diaspora, about the need to decentralize haiti. i want to talk about deforestation. i wanted to talk about the plight of women in haiti. i was there when katie couric

interviewed -- this was back in 2010 a woman who had been raped and we know in the big camps and all around there, there is that problem. but since there's only 2 minutes left -- and then i loved the end where you're imagining all the different scenarios for reconstruction. if you were king of the jungle, what it would look like. so you're going to have to read the book for that. since we only have 2 minutes, i thought the delicious part of the book, although, your parts were very tasty, but for me the most delicious part was the woman who took the histories from the people -- from the haitians themselves. and i want you to talk about that and what the haitians themselves are saying. >> yeah. >> 'cause those are the people as you point out beautifully, who weren't at the table. they couldn't afford it. they get to fly up to the u.n. talk about that. and that's how we'll end it and then we'll toss it to some questions. >> again, if the allergy -- if i'm right about the allergy and i'm going to use this metaphor as if i didn't overuse metaphors already, you know, to write a

book about the earthquake -- even though i was there and working as a physician, it needed to have haitian voices. and a friend of mine -- and as michelle montass and some of you will have seen jonathan demme's film about a martyred journalist who was killed in haiti. he was murdered maybe 10 or 11 years ago. anyway, she -- they're both radio journalists and prodemocracy radio journalists. i asked her if she would help on a project, not this book -- and other people got together and they decided to go out to all -- what is it, jenny, 9 or 10 departments -- i'm looking at jenny block because she bought

the tape-recorders. you got to do that because you have to have the infrastructure of inquiry. and a group of haitians and a couple of non-haitians but who spoke fluent creole and they asked people who were market fishermen or displaced people in the camps, street vendors, schools, farmers -- not farmers like me, but farmers with -- you know. you know, what do you want for your country? and the thing that was inspiring and as you said "delicious," they didn't say -- the theme that came back was not, we don't believe in the future of our country. none of that. they were actually optimistic about the possibility of reforming a state and working with people and getting their kids back to school and rebuilding the country the way that would make it easier for them to live in haiti. ..

>> how to do that? >> you know, students were with you and knew their teacher, are willing to shoulder some of the burden, you know, fathers, i know, after all -- [inaudible] >> and haiti. and that's a very difficult role. i've done it all my life, is to be -- you end up being a choke point, as well, right, because -- i told you half of american households donated to haitian earthquake relief and on the other need there's great need so it's hard to be in the middle because you don't want to -- i want you -- [inaudible] >> he's already working -- and my advice to you if you get

involved in food insecurity -- [inaudible] >> in new york, they're actually all ladies in smart suits but we're working on this because we're not trying to say you need to do your food programs better and only procure local food, right? what we're saying is you need to think about local food procurement in a very humble -- and this is how we've done it. haiti is the most food insecure country in the hemisphere. it is the ranking problem for many problems. you said 25%. it doesn't surprise me. and, unfortunately, what's happened with food aid -- if you go back to the history of food aid in history, it's largely surplus grain from the united states or canada or elsewhere -- i'm not going to say dumped. but it's being moved to haiti

which can then increase this cycle of dependency because it undercuts the value of local food production, right? so we did this for years. you know, you have a school lunch program, you know, we still -- probably still doing it. we're trying to move away from that and not use those food sources but buy produce locally and we're not -- we're not there yet. ideally, that's where we're going because you then support local farmers. you make sure gets a nutritious meal and a studies show kids who do not get a nutritious it's true in haiti and it's especially true when the best meal of the day is coming from school. that's one thing. help take the burdens on his shoulders and don't impose anything on him but don't have that maybe be a pilot project for the schools. so that's one bit of advice.

for the health workers, very specific advice, find a way to allow them to make a living being health workers. and we've worked actually back to the world bank, we've worked with the world bank here in washington because a lot of international financial institutions are so obsessed with what they call sustainability that they recommend that that cadre of health care providers cannot be paid at all. how can you be a health care worker -- it's got the w word in it, work, as my daughter would say, work -- how can you be a health care work if you're a volunteer? people like me should be volunteers. people working for the world bank should be volunteers. the women and men who are doing that work cannot afford to be substantial, you know, interveners in their home villages if they can't -- if they have to be volunteers or charge poor people for their

services. we're headed towards going a little long. it's like 3 to 10 or something like that? >> my colleague jenny block happened to be a professor. she just said we'll help. so meet with my coworkers when you're done. >> somebody tell me -- since i'm supposedly moderator -- moderating what time we really -- yeah. >> he's got to fly to -- >> no. i'm fine. i can stay 10, 15 minutes long. i know people want to ask questions. here's your chance. >> dr. farmer -- >> where are you? >> i'm here on your right, about halfway back. my name is bob abernathy, i'm

with religion and ethics news weekly. whenever there's a disaster, there's just such an outpouring for a desire to help. >> yeah. >> and over the years -- and especially in haiti, a great many religious groups have gone to haiti. since the earthquake, how do you assess the effectiveness, usefulness, the problems that need to be learned or people who go there with a strong religious motivation to try to help police these? >> it's a hard question. it's a morally hard question to ask. i'm glad you did. i think that i don't doubt the motivations. and even if i did, i wouldn't mention it. [laughter] >> so i'm not interested in that. the motivations -- i assume the best. it's not about that. these are people -- in my experience, people of good will.

one of the contributors to the book wrote a very grim book about this called "travesty in haiti" and i invited him to participate in the book because i think we need -- he has a much worse experience than i do. and his name is timothy schwartz and he's a very learned person. he speaks learned creole and he has worked in haiti for years. and you can read his take on this but i have a lot of experience with people like this. i've worked with a lot of good people including people of faith working with church-based groups. a lot of good experience. now, the question -- you didn't ask did i meet a lot of them or what was your motivations? it was how effective has it been? let's not say let's give ourselves more than a c grade. i'm inspired by the school kids, the high schoolers. you know, we shouldn't, right? because if you look at all the good will and you look -- i just told you haiti is the most food

insecure country in the hemisphere. i can also tell you -- before the earthquake half of all school age children in haiti were not in school. and so we can't be patting ourselves on the back a little more. we should be patting ourselves a little lower. [laughter] >> it goes back to this business, though, right, of having to empower -- and everybody talks about this really who's thought about this for 14 seconds is you need a strong central organization, public health system and then maybe these ngos -- right now, the ngos will go back to the patient metaphor, it's like having one patient with 100 doctors. you know something is going to go wrong. something is going to get lost in the saw there. but if you could somehow coordinate those and have them facilitating the work of a central organization that then was able -- you know, what? we don't need 5 buildings within 100 yards of each other. why don't we spread them out. the decentral days of haiti.

all -- decentralization of haiti. >> well, mr. abernathy, let me just say another thing. this book is aimed to -- it's a loyal critique? right? an inside critique of the ngos, of the u.n. ..

>> different from the public education and public health. i'm talking about those two areas largely, although we got to talk about agriculture and food security. your mission can be complimentary to the goals of the public health and public education and public water system. let me put it even more -- with mow humility. don't forget that cholera -- i'm pointing at him because he was there, not because i'm obsesses -- cholera spread like wildfire through the very part of haiti where we had been working for 25 years. imagine how that felt? it's a disease, it's a waterborne disease, and there we are for 25 years to ten years, and it's been along that river system. so we should feel, gee, we didn't do everything right. or, you know, what we did do right was build the infrastructure that can save lives. it's not only about saving lives.

it's about preventing cholera. church-related groups, it's not necessarily their mission to go and promote water security, but if it's their mission to help their neighbors, which it always is, then we're going to have to think -- rethink and think hard about how we can work together. the clinton foundation -- i'm assuming this is a general interest as well, in addition to of interest to mr. abner bath the. the clinton foundation but together a list of health-related ngos, for the ministry of health, and it's really the first time that we have really registered as health-related ngos. these are larger health ngos. >> like doctors without borders, partners in health, save the children, et cetera. it was the first time this had been done, and using a platform, technology platform that everybody should be using. i think it's going to be good to

do they've with church groups as well. >> one of the things that is the theme of the book is trying to think correctly, even if it's painful, and it its painful sometimes. you have the best intentions. i saw real magic cal -- magical thinking when officials said it's going to be contained, and i said this this magical thinking. there's no possibility it's not going to spread, among every a reason, you have an incue base period of five days. people can be fine go to other parts of the country and then get their kole. a -- get their cholera. so there's a need in tough times to just think correctly, even if it's not what you want to really hear. >> well said. >> do we have time for one more question? >> my name is emily, and i'm

pursuing masters in international development in american university, and i was reading pathologies of power when the earthquake -- >> see, someone read it. >> it was a present for christmas. >> can you comment on how the earthquake influenced disease that you express in that book, particularly about the u.s. ambivalence towards haiti? >> you know, my views of the hoyt -- history of the united states and haiti are not subject to revision unless they're -- there's some new carb of droves. i'm older, and i hope wiser, i already knew there were good people in both -- i knew there

were generous people. i think partners in health has grown into a very large concern. mostly because of the generous support of -- so i knew all that. what -- the question i would ask and have been trying to ask publicly -- i don't do that much of this, but i have done a lot of it -- do we need to have a mean-spirited foreign policy today haiti? the answer is, of course we don't. i don't think we're snuck the same pattern necessarily. there are people of good will -- the difference, of course, from 1804, when there were two independent countries hemisphere. there were only two, united states and haiti. now is probably one of the most powerful countries in the world and one has become very trampled upon and poor. it had those origins as well in one sense, and glorious origins. so that historic trajectory has really pulled these two peoples

apart when they should have been allied as the haitians were with the independence movements in south america, with bolivar. so my hans to that question, which is as usual -- someone said to me, paul conciseness is not your strong suit. we don't have to be stuck in that. we can change our policy. i think there are anymore the u.s. government right now who are committed to changing those policies and making them better, and having them be based on, again, knowledge of the allergy. >> i have a perfect way to end this. you had your imagining at the eastbound and -- at the end where you were fantasizing about the possibility of -- give me a good one. everything goes right, everything is perfect in the year 2015. >> well, unfortunately -- i hate not being able to -- i hate having to say this. unfortunately the good ones can't really happen.

the really good ones. because you need to have -- for that you need to have full inclusion of all of the haitian adults, and there's a saying, that means including them in the democratic process, voting, all the parties and groups and schools need to be engaged. so that hasn't happened. that doesn't mean we can't hope for a really good performance from the ngos. >> the church groups that were mentioned already, the haitian government. the international players. so if everything goes forward now as best we can -- this is something people of good will should be committed to -- we need to find ways to help the haitian government. it has to be formed. there's still no government in place. you need a prime minister. so let's hope maybe there will be a prime minister. i want haiti to have a government just like i want my own country to have a government. and let's hope it's formed, that

good people are in it and they find real solidarity. what will haiti look like? a major series of public works programs for reforestation. this time our link to infrastructure -- one tiny example. how can you reenforce haiti without an alternative fuel sores for cooking. >> they grow the trees and then the cut it down as a sapling for firewood, and when you fly over, you cannot imagine what it looks like. on the right is the dominican republic and it's all green, and on the left, no for rest. >> the medical care is the main doing, not that we're biased. the book -- the hospital that is described in the book, which is in central haiti -- first of all, not in the capital. at it built to rigorous earthquake standards and it will be done, or openable on the

second year anniversary, and my experience in working in haiti is you can get stuff done. just this past month, our group, including they haitian public, says they opened a new residency training program in san marcos, a city you visited. we checked on progress in the hospital, and the -- our foundation re-opened the medical school with cuban faculty. there's 1500 cuban doctors and health profession glasses haiti. they've been great and they're unsung heroes. i put them in the book. they really helped us a lot with cholera and with teaching, and there's a lot happening in health care and medicine. that's my area and yours. but people also need to know these positive stories, and then we, again, let's all be committed to helping the haitian people, and regardless of our

own personal leanings or inclination. that's not the point. can we help the leaders? i think we can. i'm gearing myself up for optimism, like we heard from those people being interviewed. if they can have optimism and life -- belief in the future, we're not subjected to these -- if those people can have optimism, we can, too. thank you all for having me here. [applause] >> here's a short author interview from the 201 bus as it travels the country.

>> mr. waterman, set the stage for this book. what is it based on and take us through what readers can expect? >> the book is based on my time in the navy on active duty, from 1964 to about halfway through, 1977. the reason i wrote the book was i was speaking to my cousin one day about how i hadn't done anything in my life, and blah blah blah. he looked at me with this funny look and he said, done anything? you've done stuff people just get to read about. i went, huh. maybe that's an idea. and i said, so i went home and i talked to my wife. she is now deceased. she said, yeah. you've done a lot of stuff. i says, well, like what? she says, just start writing. write it up. little chapters, and she said,

each wright each event like a chapter, and then figure out the time frame, and then clean it up and somebody will buy it. i went -- so i did. and as i wrote it, i mentioned to some people that i was writing about my experiences, and they said, oh, yeah, i remember doing things like that. so what turned out, once it was published, i got feedback over the internet, and guys were saying, boy, this reminded me a lot of the stuff i did and got away with and didn't -- lived through. so, it had an appeal for most any young kid who joined the military. i was 18 when i went in, and i was 31 or something like that when i got out off active duty. and i still meet people that have read it and said, boy, that was agreed. i loved it. just reminded me of some of the things that went on when i was in the service. so i said, well, maybe i got a winner. >> you write in detail about the circumstances which led you to

serve in the branch of the armed forces. can you explain how you ended up serving in the navy in the capacity you served? >> i was interested in scuba diving but i put it aside by the time i graduated from high school. and i had gotten into photography and working at the newspaper and working in the dark room when somebody went on vacation. i learned a lot of things from that. but i decided my only option, due to my situation, was to join the military if i want to get out of rockland, maine, and do something interesting. one day i was at the post office where the recruiters were, and i was going to see the recruiters. the only one that was there was the navy recruiter. and i spoke to him for a while. real nice guy. and boatswain's first mate,

allen is his name. i said i'm going quit shoal get out of town. he said, don't quit high school. stay in and i guarantee you'll get a school. i went, okay. so i stayed the extra two or three months, whatever it was, and graduated, and went into the navy and the rest is history. but i did choose to be a photographer's mate, which is kind of the closest thing i could think of that it was doing on the outside, and ended up later becoming a diver. >> you talk about what people thought about military service in the 1960s. can you explain how you feel it was viewed then and how you talk about it in your book? >> it was actually worse than what i talk about in the book. after i got back from vietnam in -- '69 i got back but i went back to the east coast, and a

friend of mine and i used to go to washington and tick pictures of the dem e demonstrations. we didn't have an opinion about them. i cooperate believe the stuff that was being said about vietnam veterans. and they were portrayed as drugies and nut cases and people who couldn't make it on the outside and things of that nature, and later on i found out that this was basically a bunch of garbage. they had a better chance of getting a job, less suicide, less drug addiction than in the general population and so on. so, i didn't think too much of the way that we were treated. and i never had anybody spit on me, as can be proven by the fact i'm not still in prison. and we sort of didn't pay a lot of attention to that. we hung around with people who were of our same way of thinking, and we didn't pay any attention to it for the most part. >> there