The Tents of Belleville

I've discovered that my favorite time of day is the midnight bucket shower. There's a little platform out back of the HRC compound with a blue tarp for a curtain. I'll stand there under the banana and palm trees and pour water over myself while looking up at the palm fronds and stars. It helps wash away the craziness of the day.

Across the street is Matthew 25, a NGO guest house of sorts. Run by Sister Mary, a hilarious lady that allows herself a beer every afternoon and only allows people over 74 to use her bathroom (naturally she's 75). She along with the Lions Club set up a camp next to Matthew 25 that shelters 1,400 people. The kids had a dance party the other evening and went completely nuts. It nice to see them have something to do rather than just sitting around bored.

Someone brought out an ancient looking laptop and like a typical DJ played ten seconds of each song while talking unintelligibly into the mic with a few sporadic air raid sirens mixed in (and by sporadic I mean constant). You'd constantly hear the kids say "blanc, blanc (white, white)", while running up and grabbing your arms and dancing with you. Running in big lines to a Ragga remix of 'Barbie Girl' until they'd topple over (hard) onto the concrete, and get up with a smile on their faces... Cue the siren.

The next day I was asked to help in some tent set-ups at a camp in Belvil that we've been working in. I met up with the cargo at the Medishare hospital tent near the Airport. A few weeks previous there had been two hundred tents flown in and in-between unloading and customs they were stolen by Airport security. Can't say that I blame them but it was hard for those that spent so much time raising funds and organizing the supplies to have it all for naught.

In the grand scheme of things the Belvil camp is in decent shape. There are some areas that still have not received aid at all, and for completely asinine reasons. The NGO that is in charge of it won't enter the area because it's considered a 'Red Zone', but it is only unsafe because they won't go in and help stabilize it with food and aid. Completely ridiculous.

I jumped up on the truck and sat on some tent boxes while we drove out of town past armed UN checkpoints and shattered buildings. About halfway to the area a flashy new Hummer with a giant American flag flapping off the back was swerving through traffic blaring the horn, mostly driving into oncoming traffic. This was Irene, the self proclaimed 'Godmother' of Haiti. She is pure makeup and jewelry, power-posture condescension. We roll up on the camp and she proceeds to try and prevent us from handing out the tents. I think the photo-op is the only reason that she's there. I just grabbed two tents and walked away from her babbling.

The camp in Belvil is home to 2,500 people only a third of which have any shelter. I was immediately mobbed by people yelling at each other about who was getting the tents. It was really unsettling to be in a position of choosing who gets a tent and who doesn't. Unfortunately I was told that we had enough tents for everyone which was not the case. I started setting up the first tent and some of the men gathered around. In broken French and Creyol I showed them how to set it up and tried to get a bit of a workforce together. I got a system going where I'd bring out two tents to places where the people were sleeping under sheets held up by broken tree branches. We would take down the hut and get them set up in a tent, but only after a huge yelling match between the various people involved. I was doing well with the guys helping me and getting the tents to those that needed them most.

On the other side of the camp however Irene's boyfriend was acting like the people's personal lord and savior. Screaming at them and taking swings at those that didn't cooperate, it was so frustrating to see the way they were treated. There are some aspects of humanity that I will never understand. How you could take advantage of another person when they are in such a desperate state is beyond me.

I went back for another set of tents and found that we were down to the last one. With 6-8 people per tent there were still another six hundred people that needed shelter. I walked around the back of the camp with a huge group of people while I tried to decide who was getting the final tent. Things started getting heated and I had to stand back and until the mayhem settled. I set up the tent for a woman with a family of nine and went back to the truck where they were getting ready to distribute some clothing.

Many of the children in the camp have no clothes and walk around naked. The only possessions of some of the families have is a cooking pot and the tent that our donors were able to provide. Distributions can be very dangerous, sometimes things get desperate and people start trampling each other for access to the food or clothing. In this case we tried to form a line and things went well until the donor brought out a box of toys for the kids and placed them down beside the line to hand them out. The kids swarmed around and then all of a sudden the adults were piling on top of the kids and there was a mob of people pushing each other and trampling those around them for a crappy G.I. Joe. I hope that isn't portraying these resilient people as animals, I have just never experienced how harsh life can be for people in these countries that our corporations exploit.

We helped as many as we could.