Sunday, August 26
The sun is finally out.
On the main streets of Petionville, you can’t even tell
there was a storm. The streets have been swept - are cleaner than usual, in
fact. Shoe and second-hand clothes vendors are out, the tap-tap station is
bumping, that annoying moto taxi driver on Rue Faubert that always whistles at
me… The street market is bustling and supermarkets and restaurants are open.
That post-storm, post-disaster greeting of neighbors and
acquaintances: “Nou pa gen anyen?”
(roughly: “Is anything wrong?”
meaning, of course, “Did anything happen
to you, your family, your house…?” ). Everyone is fine. Everything is
fine.
I’m looking for an extension cord, candles and a replacement globe
for our kerosene lamp – the only lasting impact of Isaac at our house is that
we still don’t have electricity. (Then again, we could be without electricity here on any given day).
It took me about an hour to clean up our yard today, and our
‘debris’ looked like pretty parade confetti:
Friday night was long, though. Even with windows shut tight
against 60-mph winds, I couldn’t sleep. Howling, slashing, shredding winds and
a little rain, that by early morning turned into a lot of rain. I stayed glued
to the news, to twitter, to try to find out what was happening out there. Of course the
people being most affected weren’t tweeting about it.
Ben spent the night in Canaran, the sprawling tent camp slum
that has mushroomed up on Route National One since the earthquake – in the past
year, really – as people evicted from camps in the city or simply looking for
space, for land, of their own move outwards to this publicly-owned desert that
they have appropriated. If government acknowledged its existence, it would be
the third largest city in Haiti.
At 1:30 am, the strongest wind yet. The roof blew off of the
friend’s tarp shelter where Ben was staying. By morning, half of the tents around them
had shredded.
The devastation of tent camps: this is the impact of Isaac. For the most part, the impact has been on those that already may as well be invisible.
Poor people made invisible by proclamations like the one made by the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance on Saturday, that the US Ambassador and USAID disaster experts had observed "no grave humanitarian conditions" after the storm.
Poor people made invisible by the allocation of reconstruction funds – 5 star hotels instead of public housing; by the government’s relocation program, pushing them out of visible camps, out of sight; by the re-imaging of the country as a hot tourist destination, never mind the fact that most ‘locals’ can’t afford a $5 meal, much less a $50 meal.
Except in Haiti, poverty can never truly be out of sight.
And a storm like this – when pictures of flooded tent camps are broadcast
around the world (even if only for a few hours before they’re replaced by
concern about the Republican National Convention) serve as a reminder that
those people exist, and that they’re living in desperate and vulnerable
conditions.
In Cite Soleil and other low-laying areas, camps flooded –
some with waist-high water. So far, seven people have been reported killed in
the storm. Mostly, though, people all over the city lost the tarps and tent
material that have been their shelter since the earthquake two and a half years
ago.
Channels simply do not exist for the majority of people to
talk to the government, to express what they want and need or to ask for help. 9
members of Camp Avik (near the old Teleco building) that tried to block the
street in front of their camp, tried to make some noise to get attention and,
ultimately, assistance were arrested on Saturday. The guys at Camp Avik are members of a housing rights coalition. They're
organized and active in trying to claim access to what they know is their right to safe and affordable housing. They still haven’t been released.
As much as you or I, their families deserve to have roofs to shelter them from rain and windows that they can shut against 60 mph winds.
