L'Union Fait La Force
("Unity Makes us Strong")
Thursday. Dust rising through the early afternoon heat, dumptrucks honking that the crossroads where the pavement ends. On the highway, the only north-south road, the local merchants cut trenches or build speed bumps to slow the traffic: keep down the dust, and allow passer-by to see the things for sale on both sides of the bridge. Moped taxis gather, their young male drivers chatting casually in a cluster just off the pavement, clean shoes and new jeans, waiting for a passing top-top to trop off someone heading somewhere along the dirt roads or paths that wind away from the bridge along the river, its canals, through the flood plain that was nearly leveled by the flood that swept through less than a year ago.
When I go for a walk, everyone calls out "Blanc!", and everywhere there are signs of what happened: Walls tilted over, foundations with topcoat slab floors scattered across the open spaces of sand, gravel, and river cobble, where houses and trees and people once stood. The trees largely survived, like the people that climbed them; bananas are sending up new shoots through the thick mud left behind. And the people, too, are springing up again, building houses in the exact same places.
Yesterday, we walked to a dry, chalky hill, covered sparsely with cactus and thorny shrubs, and looked out across the plain to the mountains beyond where the water and mud originated. Do those who live here understand the relation between this abused hill, where even goats are hard pressed to find forage, and what happened to their homes? I wonder if I do. From that height, it was hard to see the damage, mango trees and coconut palms, banana and mapou and breadfruit hiding under their leaves the residue of what was erased, holding on with their roots to what they have left. Bodies float, at least until they sink, so none are left here; they all went out to sea or were put to rest on land in the weeks after.
There is a congeniality among the people here, perhaps different than among the city dwellers. But it doesn't seem to translate into collective action. FEnce posts are being set no more than 10meters from the river, apparently to enclose as private what is now a well-used (albiet in no way planned or constructed) road, forcing that need even closer to the river, which shows no sign of having its steep banks replanted or otherwise stabilized.
At the school where I spend the morning taking measurements, the pump which is shared by the surrounding population has been dug out just enough to make a basin of dirty water underneath, which fills up throughout the day with the water that missed the mouths of the bottles that kids put underneath. The pump's opening is at least 5cm diameter, while the soda bottles are maybe 2cm; when a kid uses it alone, water runs out before they can run from the pump handle to the spout. By midday, the space between the fresh water sand the puddle with grease and dust and garbage floating on top is hardly enough to get a bottle between; a little girl trying dunks her bottle accidentally under the surface, sucking in a few ml of the top scum. She looks inside, and decides that it is still ok; tipps it back to take a drink, before scurrying back to her classroom. Does she know yet about germ theory, that there are things that can effect us that we cannot see?
There are 24 political parties listed in the CIA factbook on Haiti; only three are in a formal coalition. The people by the river are angry because the rainy season has started again, and the reconstruction is not finished. They stand around and complain about what the government isn't doing to help.
Thursday. Dust rising through the early afternoon heat, dumptrucks honking that the crossroads where the pavement ends. On the highway, the only north-south road, the local merchants cut trenches or build speed bumps to slow the traffic: keep down the dust, and allow passer-by to see the things for sale on both sides of the bridge. Moped taxis gather, their young male drivers chatting casually in a cluster just off the pavement, clean shoes and new jeans, waiting for a passing top-top to trop off someone heading somewhere along the dirt roads or paths that wind away from the bridge along the river, its canals, through the flood plain that was nearly leveled by the flood that swept through less than a year ago.
When I go for a walk, everyone calls out "Blanc!", and everywhere there are signs of what happened: Walls tilted over, foundations with topcoat slab floors scattered across the open spaces of sand, gravel, and river cobble, where houses and trees and people once stood. The trees largely survived, like the people that climbed them; bananas are sending up new shoots through the thick mud left behind. And the people, too, are springing up again, building houses in the exact same places.
Yesterday, we walked to a dry, chalky hill, covered sparsely with cactus and thorny shrubs, and looked out across the plain to the mountains beyond where the water and mud originated. Do those who live here understand the relation between this abused hill, where even goats are hard pressed to find forage, and what happened to their homes? I wonder if I do. From that height, it was hard to see the damage, mango trees and coconut palms, banana and mapou and breadfruit hiding under their leaves the residue of what was erased, holding on with their roots to what they have left. Bodies float, at least until they sink, so none are left here; they all went out to sea or were put to rest on land in the weeks after.
There is a congeniality among the people here, perhaps different than among the city dwellers. But it doesn't seem to translate into collective action. FEnce posts are being set no more than 10meters from the river, apparently to enclose as private what is now a well-used (albiet in no way planned or constructed) road, forcing that need even closer to the river, which shows no sign of having its steep banks replanted or otherwise stabilized.
At the school where I spend the morning taking measurements, the pump which is shared by the surrounding population has been dug out just enough to make a basin of dirty water underneath, which fills up throughout the day with the water that missed the mouths of the bottles that kids put underneath. The pump's opening is at least 5cm diameter, while the soda bottles are maybe 2cm; when a kid uses it alone, water runs out before they can run from the pump handle to the spout. By midday, the space between the fresh water sand the puddle with grease and dust and garbage floating on top is hardly enough to get a bottle between; a little girl trying dunks her bottle accidentally under the surface, sucking in a few ml of the top scum. She looks inside, and decides that it is still ok; tipps it back to take a drink, before scurrying back to her classroom. Does she know yet about germ theory, that there are things that can effect us that we cannot see?
There are 24 political parties listed in the CIA factbook on Haiti; only three are in a formal coalition. The people by the river are angry because the rainy season has started again, and the reconstruction is not finished. They stand around and complain about what the government isn't doing to help.
posted by ddgregory at 1:27 PM
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