City of the Sun

I am usually awakened by our very own feral horny tomcat. He is not unlike a Tuvan throat singer is his ability to make all kinds of ridiculous noises. Between that and the fire ants I've been feeling very homely in the last few days. That's not to say that this place isn't absolutely amazing.

The rains have stayed away for now but that won't last long. There has been a mad dash by the NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) to house as many people as possible before hurricane season, and by mad dash I mean having meetings and talking about what needs to be done rather than actually doing anything. Hopefully our organization can help fix that bureaucratic crap, or at least work around it. I'll make an upcoming blog post about what we are up to in particular.

On Sundays we usually visit Cité Soleil which as it turns out is the largest and poorest slum in the western hemisphere. It was originally intended to house workers at American assembly plants but people from all over the countryside looking for work moved in and squatted before the factories were finished. In 1991 after a coup d'état deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the international community placed a boycott on Haitian goods. That in turn closed down the factories and forced the 300,000 people in the area into extreme poverty (not exactly what the sanctions were intended to do). Cité Soleil is now run by various armed gangs, there is a total lack of all goods and services and illiteracy, AIDS, and violence run rampant. Any ads on the TV that ask you to sponsor a child, well this is where they live.

When we arrived the kids were making dream kites, and flying them over the shacks. On each of the kites the kid would write a dream that they have for Haiti and by flying them they were lifting their hopes out of the slums and into the clean skies. One little boy in particular was rocking it pretty hard. His pants didn't fit him and he would run really fast trying to get the kite up until his ass would be hanging out, then he'd stop to adjust, the kite would dip, run like hell... Then rinse and repeat: scamper, kite, ass, adjust, kite dip, scamper, kite, etc...

A few minutes walk into the shacks is a waterway that is still used despite the fact that you can literally walk across at any point on top of the trash and filth that fills it. There were two people from Amnesty International filming a bit of the scene and we spoke for a few minutes about what we were all doing in Haiti. Just across the way a man stood in a doorway and started singing to us in broken English to 'give a chance' and 'one love'. It made me feel ashamed to be there despite the fact that it wasn't some kind of tourist trip. We were there to spend time with the kids not to be rich white folks at the Hatian zoo. It was such an intense uncomfortable feeling. These people must see random whitebread with their shiny cameras and healthy McDonalds potbellies take their pictures and say "oh my god, this is horrible", and just walk away like everyone else.

The kids would come up all shy and touch my arms and pinch and pick at my skin. I don't think they understood the whole freckly Irish complexion thing. There were a few teen-aged boys that were dressed rather nicely considering the conditions, and at first I thought they were affiliated with some religious organisation.

A boy named David approached me and was hoping that I'd help him with his English. We spoke for a while teaching each other Creole and English when he asked me what I thought of Haiti. At first I didn't know how to respond. I said a bit nonchalantly that it was cool. What I meant was that I was enjoying my presence in the country and I was trying not to make it seem like Haiti was beneath me. The language barrier made that unclear and he started talking about his experience in the earthquake. We were sitting on a concrete table surrounded by half clothed dirty smiling kids and he spoke about how he prayed for Jesus to keep him alive while he hid in his house as it collapsed around him. It was so humbling sitting with him, seeing the anguish and fear on his face as he re-lived the experience. His home was destroyed, and as far as I could tell he was the only survivor from his family. With nowhere to go, he had no choice but Cité Soleil. He was wearing a button down shirt and slacks so that he was visibly apart from the poverty that is now forced upon him. It seemed that the clothes gave him a bit of comfort while trying to understand what his life now meant, they are the only things he has.