But really it's just a posting of some articles that I've had published in or have submitted to the Charleston Post & Courier, so really, if you've read those, this won't be that interesting. Sorry.
To be honest, I am having a hard time keeping up with the blog. There is the obvious excuse of being completely overwhelmed by my real humdinger of a job, but to be honest, the bigger obstacle is somewhat less tangible, a little more insidious and creeping. Firstly, I really hate my job. For so many reasons. But I am trying to mind my Ps and Qs, so I don't really want to go into details here, which cuts out a lot of what I could talk about. Further, said discontent with the job is making me a generally miserable person, a person who goes home, eats dinner, and falls asleep on the couch at an hour so early that even an 80 year old would object, all so that I can stop thinking about the horrible day that just was and avoid having to think about the horrible day yet to come. In effect, I am a person who can't be motivated to sit down and write, whose brain is tired and sad.
But wait, there's more! Whereas I previously loved Haiti, I increasingly see only the bad things. This probably stems largely from the whole crap job situation, but it is also associated with the fact that this is not the same Haiti I was living in before. This is to be expected after after a major earthquake, but what I am struggling with more than the rubble and masses huddled under tarps and tents is the change in atmosphere, in attitude, in...life. Where Haiti was a deeply troubled nation with a strong positive spirit and reason to hope for good changes in the near future, now there is shock, resignation, and an exaggerated inability to envision positive change.
And that is the short version of what runs through my head daily, the albatross around my neck that becomes increasingly heavy, pulling me down and down.
Thanks for joining the pity party, I hope to be able to overcome this, but I make no promises. Below are articles from the P&C for those who have not yet read them.
MAY
Flying into Port-au-Prince last month, I was somewhat perplexed to hear other passengers – mostly relief workers – comment after looking out of their windows at the city below, that ‘it doesn’t look so bad.’ Later, this perception was repeated by other people I encountered, people now working in Haiti but who had no previous experience here. To me, and many others who were here before the earthquake, the changes are obvious and painful.
While others on the plane were looking out of their windows and remarking on the number of buildings still standing and the traffic in the streets, I was looking at the large patches of blue and gray tarps that have cropped up between the remainders of neighborhoods, places where thousands of people who have no other choice now live. I was remembering the giant cracks, unseen from our altitude, that run through many of those still-standing buildings, rendering them unsafe for inhabitants and passers-by alike, tottering vestiges of the poorly constructed city that once was. I was looking at piles of fallen concrete that were once city blocks easily recognizable to those of us who passed them every day before the earthquake.
Upon landing, I was momentarily transported back to the last time I had been at that airport, consumed by feelings of fear and uncertainty as I stood on the tarmac for ten hours waiting for an evacuation flight. That was three days after the earthquake and the airport was busier than it had ever been with planes of various national armies and aid groups in a near-constant parade of take-off and landing. I spent ten hours there not entirely sure if I wanted to get on a plane and leave, but not sure either if I wanted to go back through the streets filled with rubble, refugees, and the oppressive smell of the dead. For ten hours I had stood in front of a section of the damaged airport, the wall ominously scarred by a 10-foot crack in the shape of an X. When my return flight landed last month, that same crack was still easily visible and I felt my chest tighten and breathing become shallow as my body responded to the thoughts and feelings my brain was frantically recalling upon seeing that spot.
Driving through the city with the chauffeur was almost surreal – the streets are full of action and life, almost as much as before, with women selling produce and clothing on the sidewalks, the ubiquitous tap-taps trawling for passengers, and children tapping at the window asking to wipe down your car for some spare change. But behind many of these women were piles of broken concrete, homes and businesses reduced to rubble. Some streets are blocked by the spontaneous encampments that now house tens of thousands, exacerbating Port-au-Prince’s already infuriating traffic conditions. A few days later, we drove by a lot that had recently been cleared, its pile of debris neatly arranged by the roadside for pickup by a UN or government dump truck; sitting on top was a human skull, completely bare, its jaw missing.
The mountainsides around Port-au-Prince are covered with the collapsed houses of Haiti’s poorest residents, people who constructed their homes out of the cheapest possible materials on steep hillsides prone to mudslides. From a distance or if one does not look too closely, these places give the impression that someone paved the mountain. For those of us who know that thousands of families were buried under that wreckage, it is impossible to pass by without considering the people missing. For those who did not know the city before, it is easy to mistake the haphazard structures that remain for just another slum, not understanding that what they are seeing is a mere fraction of what was there before. For those not familiar with Port-au-Prince before, for those not able to detect the smallest differences between what is here now and what once was, for those who saw media images of ruined streets and expected to find only that level of destruction, perhaps for these people things here truly don’t seem ‘that bad.’ For the rest of us, or for anyone able to look at the buildings that have collapsed and mentally calculate the probable number of people inside at 4:53pm on Tuesday, January 12th, for us things are that bad – and worse. Grappling daily with the number of lives lost and the amount of work that must be done before even a hint of progress can emerge – that struggle is almost unimaginable for all but those who know what was here before.
JUNE
‘Kouman ou ye?’ – ‘How are you?’I asked in Creole of the small child planted in front of me.
‘Pa pi mal.’ – ‘Not too bad,’ was his response, a funnily adult turn of phrase emanating from the three year old who had taken a wide stance across from me, his arms crossed, his lower lip slightly jutting and twisted, his eyes taking me in with some skepticism.
This child is an orphan, his parents were killed in the earthquake. He was taken in by neighbors, who assured us that they look after his needs as best as they can, and indeed, there seemed to be a close rapport between the adult man in his late 30s speaking to me, and the mini-man standing firmly by his side, still eyeing me somewhat warily.
I was speaking to the pair after having been led to their makeshift camp by a resident of a nearby neighborhood. We were evaluating the area to see if there was a need for an early childhood development center and when we had asked if there were any children between three and five years of age who did not attend school, our guide had nodded vigorously and led us down a path that crossed a cornfield just outside of Jacmel, a small city in southern Haiti.
The path led to a small promontory, where we were greeted first by the sight of three young adolescents, barely clothed, cooking over an open fire in front of a stand of banana trees. They were evidently somewhat surprised to see us – me a white woman and my colleague, an ebullient Haitian woman obviously ‘not from around there’ – and responded shyly when we greeted them. We asked if there was an adult we could talk to and if there were any other children, and as we were asking, several other residents emerged from the banana trees.
Introductions were made and we were given a brief tour of their very small camp. It was not my first camp tour; since returning to Haiti I have seen many camps, in greater and lesser states of disorder and inadequacy. But this camp was easily the most wrenching I have yet encountered. There were no tents, not even the self-made kinds consisting of blankets or tarps stretched over misshapen sticks and broom handles. These people were literally living under banana leaves. The only structures to be found were very small (one-person), triangular lean-tos whose frames were made of twigs, the ‘roofs’ of banana leaves layered on top. Our guide pulled aside the leafy curtain that served as a door for one of these hovels and revealed an elderly woman napping inside, nestled on a bed of leaves, her few belongings (a brush, a small sack of herbs, some scraps of material) ranged neatly around the edges.
Our group had grown steadily as we progressed through the camp, and by the end we numbered around 30 people, mostly children and many of them quite young – our target demographic for the ECD program. I asked how many people lived in the camp, the answer was around 20 families. Twenty families can be as many as one hundred people, as the average Haitian family size is five, but it seemed that there were perhaps less in this case. This number is certainly not enough to attract the attention of most agencies working in post-earthquake Haiti, despite the fact that these families are living in conditions that are appalling even by the currently prevailing standards. Residents reported that they had received no assistance whatsoever since the quake, despite requests for a water pump and latrine, and that we were in fact the first visitors they had received.
We explained our program, that it is not a school, but more like a pre-school for the youngest children, and that it is free; we then asked if residents would be interested in this service. The answer was a resounding, unanimous Yes. A number of parents said that they wanted desperately for their children to go to school, that they thought this was the only way they could have a better future, but that they simply could not afford the fees. Looking at their banana shacks, one could easily believe it.
When I asked if there were any orphans in the camp, the initial answer was no. When I clarified to ask if there were any children who had lost their parents during the earthquake, a number of children were pointed out, including the tiny child that had installed himself across from me and next to his guardian, the three-year-old with the eyes of an eighty-year-old. I asked how the community takes care of these children and the man shrugged, saying, ‘We find ways. We have to. These are our children now.’
JULY
Recently, I met with representatives of a certain multinational donor who had come to Haiti to evaluate how and where their funding has been used. In town for only a few days, the delegation had made a whirlwind tour of several cities and numerous camps, and had met with government and non-governmental officials. After, they met with a few of the agencies who had received funding for various initiatives in the immediate aftermath of the quake to ask questions and share their general impressions after these visits. They were, in a word, overwhelmed.
Their questions and observations were largely reasonable: They asked about how agencies are responding to issues such as trafficking of women and children, and what is being done to look after orphans and separated children. They pointed out the difficulty presented by the slow, corrupt customs process when shipping in aid and supplies. Unemployment and lack of education were listed as two large problems observed during the visit. There were questions about agencies’ contingency plans for hurricane season, as well as questions about how the hundreds of NGOs in Haiti do (or don’t) communicate and coordinate their efforts. Essentially, the delegation felt that the number obstacles or problems they had encountered were far greater than the examples of progress they were able to see.
They are not entirely wrong; the obstacles and problems are numerous and they, by definition, impede the amount of progress it is possible to make. However, there are positive things worth noting. To begin with, in defiance of most people’s expectations, there has not been any sort of epidemic or public health crisis, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in very close quarters in camps throughout southern Haiti. This has been avoided through the efforts of aid organizations who launched huge campaigns to install clean water points, latrines, and to educate people on the connection between hygiene and health.
Nor has there been a sharp uptick in malnutrition cases, as was portended just after the quake. It goes without saying that malnutrition continues to be a problem in Haiti, but the situation has not been made significantly worse by the earthquake. This is once again thanks to aid agencies, who have worked to ensure at least a minimum level of general nutrition, and who have targeted particularly vulnerable groups, including children and pregnant/nursing women, to ensure that they receive the nutritional support they need.
Additionally, many children are either back in school or are attending school for the first time, through programs established by various agencies. Many strategies have been used, ranging from building new schools to subsidizing tuition fees to incorporating informal education into other child-focused activities. In a country where the literacy rate is only around 50%, even informal education and alphabetization opportunities are vital to development efforts.
But these small victories are often lost amidst the myriad problems whose magnitude and breadth make it hard to recognize anything else. Perhaps one reason it is difficult to see progress here is that aid agencies are not facing only the fall-out of a massive natural disaster. In fact, they are facing problems that existed long before the earthquake, problems that have haunted and hobbled Haiti almost since its inception. Human trafficking, corruption, unemployment, exclusion from education, inadequate disaster preparation – all of these things were around long before the earthquake, preserved and perpetuated through various social systems and mechanisms that shape the lives of most Haitians, generally in an unfavorable way. To grapple with a disaster of this size and come out on top in six months is a challenge. To grapple with well-entrenched systems of poverty and exclusion and come out on top in six months is, frankly, impossible.
July 12th marks six months since the earthquake. The fight to rebuild Haiti will be a long one and while it is fair for donors to come here and ask what has happened to their money (indeed, they should do so), it is also important that they and their constituents understand that what happened to Haiti six months ago was not just a natural disaster, it was the breaking of a dam that held back centuries of social injustice. The consequences of this system – trafficking, corruption, poverty, violence – were well known before the earthquake. The only difference is that now they are fully laid bare for the world to see, and their enormity is impossible to ignore.
But it is a mistake to allow these difficulties to take center stage all the time. It is worth knowing what good is being done, particularly since these good things can often be measured in very human terms. Even the smallest amount of good can make a huge difference in a single person’s life. And since it is not possible to change an entire system in six months, it is important to remember that it is possible to change lives.
AUGUST
Plying the wet streets of Martissant one recent morning, I chuckled to see a young pig snuffling about next to a garbage-strewn canal, closely followed by a very pregnant goat happily munching some rotten fruit skin. This unlikely pair were located not in the countryside, but rather in one of the most densely populated quarters of the Port-au-Prince area.
Around the animals, thousands of Haitians hustled on foot through the streets, over piles of refuse, between the many cars wending their way slowly through morning traffic. This area is known for its violence and poverty, its shabby neighborhoods criss-crossed by canals that are meant to efficiently carry out to the adjacent ocean the rainwater that rushes down the surrounding mountainsides into this sea-level quartier. Instead, the canals are filled with refuse – Styrofoam boxes, plastic bottles, and larger detritus like tires or even cars – and so the streets in this area flood with even a passing storm. The streets here flood so quickly and so completely that people sometimes die, are swept away or are caught up in the torrents and drown. During the earthquake, whole blocks in this neighborhood collapsed, the ruins still sit, almost exactly as they have since 12 January, a constant reminder of yet another threat to this already besieged population.
Cruising in air-conditioned comfort through this scene of filth and deprivation, there were occasional peeks of the Caribbean just beyond, its water the color of heaven and clear as fine crystal, despite the quantities of trash pumped into it each day. Its quiet waters made incongruous background to the ramshackle houses and tent camps immediately before us, the dirty child with the expressionless face knocking on the window of our stereotypical NGO Land Cruiser, begging for change. I indicated that I had none, which was true, but must have seemed like a mean joke to this child looking through the windows of our very expensive car.
My chauffeur had heard me chuckle looking at the pig and goat, these two country creatures in the middle of a capital city, and he had gestured to the broader scene – the streets still semi-inundated from the previous night’s rain, the mounds of rubbish, the dirt and mud that coated everything. He gestured to this and said, ‘It’s been like this since I came here from the provinces in 1998. It’s a little worse now, but it’s been like this for a long time.’ Earlier he had confessed that he would like to see Haiti return to dictatorship, that this was the only way he felt things would ever improve. He isn’t the first person to have said so. ‘Haitians need someone to tell them when to go left and when to go right,’ another chauffeur had told me vehemently earlier in the week. He had continued, saying, ‘Haiti will never rebuild without someone telling people to get it done or they go to jail.’
As my chauffeur and I continued on our journey, the clutter and trash of the city gradually gave way to the greener countryside, stands of banana trees and sugar cane fields abutting the turquoise sea. The southern mountains began to loom, their jagged beauty beckoning us toward our destination. At the same time, we passed encampments and half-dressed children, a man with one leg begging for change in the middle of the road. I began to think that this contrast between beauty and suffering, long a part of living in Haiti, was now more cruel than wondrous. Once I had reveled in this beauty, now it made me tearful and angry.
I pointed this out to the chauffeur, pointed out how Haiti’s beauty exists amidst so much affliction. He paused, considering, seemingly for the first time. He then replied that he had never really thought about the two things at the same moment. Maybe that’s what one has to do – keep the beauty separate from the suffering.
To be honest, I am having a hard time keeping up with the blog. There is the obvious excuse of being completely overwhelmed by my real humdinger of a job, but to be honest, the bigger obstacle is somewhat less tangible, a little more insidious and creeping. Firstly, I really hate my job. For so many reasons. But I am trying to mind my Ps and Qs, so I don't really want to go into details here, which cuts out a lot of what I could talk about. Further, said discontent with the job is making me a generally miserable person, a person who goes home, eats dinner, and falls asleep on the couch at an hour so early that even an 80 year old would object, all so that I can stop thinking about the horrible day that just was and avoid having to think about the horrible day yet to come. In effect, I am a person who can't be motivated to sit down and write, whose brain is tired and sad.
But wait, there's more! Whereas I previously loved Haiti, I increasingly see only the bad things. This probably stems largely from the whole crap job situation, but it is also associated with the fact that this is not the same Haiti I was living in before. This is to be expected after after a major earthquake, but what I am struggling with more than the rubble and masses huddled under tarps and tents is the change in atmosphere, in attitude, in...life. Where Haiti was a deeply troubled nation with a strong positive spirit and reason to hope for good changes in the near future, now there is shock, resignation, and an exaggerated inability to envision positive change.
And that is the short version of what runs through my head daily, the albatross around my neck that becomes increasingly heavy, pulling me down and down.
Thanks for joining the pity party, I hope to be able to overcome this, but I make no promises. Below are articles from the P&C for those who have not yet read them.
MAY
Flying into Port-au-Prince last month, I was somewhat perplexed to hear other passengers – mostly relief workers – comment after looking out of their windows at the city below, that ‘it doesn’t look so bad.’ Later, this perception was repeated by other people I encountered, people now working in Haiti but who had no previous experience here. To me, and many others who were here before the earthquake, the changes are obvious and painful.
While others on the plane were looking out of their windows and remarking on the number of buildings still standing and the traffic in the streets, I was looking at the large patches of blue and gray tarps that have cropped up between the remainders of neighborhoods, places where thousands of people who have no other choice now live. I was remembering the giant cracks, unseen from our altitude, that run through many of those still-standing buildings, rendering them unsafe for inhabitants and passers-by alike, tottering vestiges of the poorly constructed city that once was. I was looking at piles of fallen concrete that were once city blocks easily recognizable to those of us who passed them every day before the earthquake.
Upon landing, I was momentarily transported back to the last time I had been at that airport, consumed by feelings of fear and uncertainty as I stood on the tarmac for ten hours waiting for an evacuation flight. That was three days after the earthquake and the airport was busier than it had ever been with planes of various national armies and aid groups in a near-constant parade of take-off and landing. I spent ten hours there not entirely sure if I wanted to get on a plane and leave, but not sure either if I wanted to go back through the streets filled with rubble, refugees, and the oppressive smell of the dead. For ten hours I had stood in front of a section of the damaged airport, the wall ominously scarred by a 10-foot crack in the shape of an X. When my return flight landed last month, that same crack was still easily visible and I felt my chest tighten and breathing become shallow as my body responded to the thoughts and feelings my brain was frantically recalling upon seeing that spot.
Driving through the city with the chauffeur was almost surreal – the streets are full of action and life, almost as much as before, with women selling produce and clothing on the sidewalks, the ubiquitous tap-taps trawling for passengers, and children tapping at the window asking to wipe down your car for some spare change. But behind many of these women were piles of broken concrete, homes and businesses reduced to rubble. Some streets are blocked by the spontaneous encampments that now house tens of thousands, exacerbating Port-au-Prince’s already infuriating traffic conditions. A few days later, we drove by a lot that had recently been cleared, its pile of debris neatly arranged by the roadside for pickup by a UN or government dump truck; sitting on top was a human skull, completely bare, its jaw missing.
The mountainsides around Port-au-Prince are covered with the collapsed houses of Haiti’s poorest residents, people who constructed their homes out of the cheapest possible materials on steep hillsides prone to mudslides. From a distance or if one does not look too closely, these places give the impression that someone paved the mountain. For those of us who know that thousands of families were buried under that wreckage, it is impossible to pass by without considering the people missing. For those who did not know the city before, it is easy to mistake the haphazard structures that remain for just another slum, not understanding that what they are seeing is a mere fraction of what was there before. For those not familiar with Port-au-Prince before, for those not able to detect the smallest differences between what is here now and what once was, for those who saw media images of ruined streets and expected to find only that level of destruction, perhaps for these people things here truly don’t seem ‘that bad.’ For the rest of us, or for anyone able to look at the buildings that have collapsed and mentally calculate the probable number of people inside at 4:53pm on Tuesday, January 12th, for us things are that bad – and worse. Grappling daily with the number of lives lost and the amount of work that must be done before even a hint of progress can emerge – that struggle is almost unimaginable for all but those who know what was here before.
JUNE
‘Kouman ou ye?’ – ‘How are you?’I asked in Creole of the small child planted in front of me.
‘Pa pi mal.’ – ‘Not too bad,’ was his response, a funnily adult turn of phrase emanating from the three year old who had taken a wide stance across from me, his arms crossed, his lower lip slightly jutting and twisted, his eyes taking me in with some skepticism.
This child is an orphan, his parents were killed in the earthquake. He was taken in by neighbors, who assured us that they look after his needs as best as they can, and indeed, there seemed to be a close rapport between the adult man in his late 30s speaking to me, and the mini-man standing firmly by his side, still eyeing me somewhat warily.
I was speaking to the pair after having been led to their makeshift camp by a resident of a nearby neighborhood. We were evaluating the area to see if there was a need for an early childhood development center and when we had asked if there were any children between three and five years of age who did not attend school, our guide had nodded vigorously and led us down a path that crossed a cornfield just outside of Jacmel, a small city in southern Haiti.
The path led to a small promontory, where we were greeted first by the sight of three young adolescents, barely clothed, cooking over an open fire in front of a stand of banana trees. They were evidently somewhat surprised to see us – me a white woman and my colleague, an ebullient Haitian woman obviously ‘not from around there’ – and responded shyly when we greeted them. We asked if there was an adult we could talk to and if there were any other children, and as we were asking, several other residents emerged from the banana trees.
Introductions were made and we were given a brief tour of their very small camp. It was not my first camp tour; since returning to Haiti I have seen many camps, in greater and lesser states of disorder and inadequacy. But this camp was easily the most wrenching I have yet encountered. There were no tents, not even the self-made kinds consisting of blankets or tarps stretched over misshapen sticks and broom handles. These people were literally living under banana leaves. The only structures to be found were very small (one-person), triangular lean-tos whose frames were made of twigs, the ‘roofs’ of banana leaves layered on top. Our guide pulled aside the leafy curtain that served as a door for one of these hovels and revealed an elderly woman napping inside, nestled on a bed of leaves, her few belongings (a brush, a small sack of herbs, some scraps of material) ranged neatly around the edges.
Our group had grown steadily as we progressed through the camp, and by the end we numbered around 30 people, mostly children and many of them quite young – our target demographic for the ECD program. I asked how many people lived in the camp, the answer was around 20 families. Twenty families can be as many as one hundred people, as the average Haitian family size is five, but it seemed that there were perhaps less in this case. This number is certainly not enough to attract the attention of most agencies working in post-earthquake Haiti, despite the fact that these families are living in conditions that are appalling even by the currently prevailing standards. Residents reported that they had received no assistance whatsoever since the quake, despite requests for a water pump and latrine, and that we were in fact the first visitors they had received.
We explained our program, that it is not a school, but more like a pre-school for the youngest children, and that it is free; we then asked if residents would be interested in this service. The answer was a resounding, unanimous Yes. A number of parents said that they wanted desperately for their children to go to school, that they thought this was the only way they could have a better future, but that they simply could not afford the fees. Looking at their banana shacks, one could easily believe it.
When I asked if there were any orphans in the camp, the initial answer was no. When I clarified to ask if there were any children who had lost their parents during the earthquake, a number of children were pointed out, including the tiny child that had installed himself across from me and next to his guardian, the three-year-old with the eyes of an eighty-year-old. I asked how the community takes care of these children and the man shrugged, saying, ‘We find ways. We have to. These are our children now.’
JULY
Recently, I met with representatives of a certain multinational donor who had come to Haiti to evaluate how and where their funding has been used. In town for only a few days, the delegation had made a whirlwind tour of several cities and numerous camps, and had met with government and non-governmental officials. After, they met with a few of the agencies who had received funding for various initiatives in the immediate aftermath of the quake to ask questions and share their general impressions after these visits. They were, in a word, overwhelmed.
Their questions and observations were largely reasonable: They asked about how agencies are responding to issues such as trafficking of women and children, and what is being done to look after orphans and separated children. They pointed out the difficulty presented by the slow, corrupt customs process when shipping in aid and supplies. Unemployment and lack of education were listed as two large problems observed during the visit. There were questions about agencies’ contingency plans for hurricane season, as well as questions about how the hundreds of NGOs in Haiti do (or don’t) communicate and coordinate their efforts. Essentially, the delegation felt that the number obstacles or problems they had encountered were far greater than the examples of progress they were able to see.
They are not entirely wrong; the obstacles and problems are numerous and they, by definition, impede the amount of progress it is possible to make. However, there are positive things worth noting. To begin with, in defiance of most people’s expectations, there has not been any sort of epidemic or public health crisis, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in very close quarters in camps throughout southern Haiti. This has been avoided through the efforts of aid organizations who launched huge campaigns to install clean water points, latrines, and to educate people on the connection between hygiene and health.
Nor has there been a sharp uptick in malnutrition cases, as was portended just after the quake. It goes without saying that malnutrition continues to be a problem in Haiti, but the situation has not been made significantly worse by the earthquake. This is once again thanks to aid agencies, who have worked to ensure at least a minimum level of general nutrition, and who have targeted particularly vulnerable groups, including children and pregnant/nursing women, to ensure that they receive the nutritional support they need.
Additionally, many children are either back in school or are attending school for the first time, through programs established by various agencies. Many strategies have been used, ranging from building new schools to subsidizing tuition fees to incorporating informal education into other child-focused activities. In a country where the literacy rate is only around 50%, even informal education and alphabetization opportunities are vital to development efforts.
But these small victories are often lost amidst the myriad problems whose magnitude and breadth make it hard to recognize anything else. Perhaps one reason it is difficult to see progress here is that aid agencies are not facing only the fall-out of a massive natural disaster. In fact, they are facing problems that existed long before the earthquake, problems that have haunted and hobbled Haiti almost since its inception. Human trafficking, corruption, unemployment, exclusion from education, inadequate disaster preparation – all of these things were around long before the earthquake, preserved and perpetuated through various social systems and mechanisms that shape the lives of most Haitians, generally in an unfavorable way. To grapple with a disaster of this size and come out on top in six months is a challenge. To grapple with well-entrenched systems of poverty and exclusion and come out on top in six months is, frankly, impossible.
July 12th marks six months since the earthquake. The fight to rebuild Haiti will be a long one and while it is fair for donors to come here and ask what has happened to their money (indeed, they should do so), it is also important that they and their constituents understand that what happened to Haiti six months ago was not just a natural disaster, it was the breaking of a dam that held back centuries of social injustice. The consequences of this system – trafficking, corruption, poverty, violence – were well known before the earthquake. The only difference is that now they are fully laid bare for the world to see, and their enormity is impossible to ignore.
But it is a mistake to allow these difficulties to take center stage all the time. It is worth knowing what good is being done, particularly since these good things can often be measured in very human terms. Even the smallest amount of good can make a huge difference in a single person’s life. And since it is not possible to change an entire system in six months, it is important to remember that it is possible to change lives.
AUGUST
Plying the wet streets of Martissant one recent morning, I chuckled to see a young pig snuffling about next to a garbage-strewn canal, closely followed by a very pregnant goat happily munching some rotten fruit skin. This unlikely pair were located not in the countryside, but rather in one of the most densely populated quarters of the Port-au-Prince area.
Around the animals, thousands of Haitians hustled on foot through the streets, over piles of refuse, between the many cars wending their way slowly through morning traffic. This area is known for its violence and poverty, its shabby neighborhoods criss-crossed by canals that are meant to efficiently carry out to the adjacent ocean the rainwater that rushes down the surrounding mountainsides into this sea-level quartier. Instead, the canals are filled with refuse – Styrofoam boxes, plastic bottles, and larger detritus like tires or even cars – and so the streets in this area flood with even a passing storm. The streets here flood so quickly and so completely that people sometimes die, are swept away or are caught up in the torrents and drown. During the earthquake, whole blocks in this neighborhood collapsed, the ruins still sit, almost exactly as they have since 12 January, a constant reminder of yet another threat to this already besieged population.
Cruising in air-conditioned comfort through this scene of filth and deprivation, there were occasional peeks of the Caribbean just beyond, its water the color of heaven and clear as fine crystal, despite the quantities of trash pumped into it each day. Its quiet waters made incongruous background to the ramshackle houses and tent camps immediately before us, the dirty child with the expressionless face knocking on the window of our stereotypical NGO Land Cruiser, begging for change. I indicated that I had none, which was true, but must have seemed like a mean joke to this child looking through the windows of our very expensive car.
My chauffeur had heard me chuckle looking at the pig and goat, these two country creatures in the middle of a capital city, and he had gestured to the broader scene – the streets still semi-inundated from the previous night’s rain, the mounds of rubbish, the dirt and mud that coated everything. He gestured to this and said, ‘It’s been like this since I came here from the provinces in 1998. It’s a little worse now, but it’s been like this for a long time.’ Earlier he had confessed that he would like to see Haiti return to dictatorship, that this was the only way he felt things would ever improve. He isn’t the first person to have said so. ‘Haitians need someone to tell them when to go left and when to go right,’ another chauffeur had told me vehemently earlier in the week. He had continued, saying, ‘Haiti will never rebuild without someone telling people to get it done or they go to jail.’
As my chauffeur and I continued on our journey, the clutter and trash of the city gradually gave way to the greener countryside, stands of banana trees and sugar cane fields abutting the turquoise sea. The southern mountains began to loom, their jagged beauty beckoning us toward our destination. At the same time, we passed encampments and half-dressed children, a man with one leg begging for change in the middle of the road. I began to think that this contrast between beauty and suffering, long a part of living in Haiti, was now more cruel than wondrous. Once I had reveled in this beauty, now it made me tearful and angry.
I pointed this out to the chauffeur, pointed out how Haiti’s beauty exists amidst so much affliction. He paused, considering, seemingly for the first time. He then replied that he had never really thought about the two things at the same moment. Maybe that’s what one has to do – keep the beauty separate from the suffering.
