Haiti Photos and Flickr Slideshows
by Mac McKinney
by Mac McKinney
**NOTE**: For best slide show viewing, once you click on the arrow to start the show, then click on the four arrow icon, bottom right, to go full screen, and note the other Flickr controls, top and bottom too.
May 2010 Investigative Trip to Haiti
Part 1, Text and Slideshow:
My colleague and I, Georgianne Nienaber, accompanied by our "Fixer", Andre, spent four days investigating conditions in Haiti in whirlwind fashion four months after the great January 12, 2010 earthquake. We drove east and west from Port-au-Prince, when not in Port-au-Prince itself investigating matters and conducting interviews.
As soon as we landed on Monday morning, May 10th, and had fought our way out of hectic and crowded Toussaint Louverture International Airport, we started heading for Highway One and the mountains to the east. At the foot of one mountain, Goat Mountain (in English) to be exact, we would find two adjoining camps, Camp Canaan, a self-created refugee camp with little government or NGO support, and Camp Corail, an NGO-created camp. But first we had to take a good jaunt through the countryside near the coast in our Dodge Raider, which is built to handle the very bumpy, dusty ride which ensued.
One can get a good sense of life in Haiti just by seeing the sights along Highway One, as one passes by Haitians of various type and persuasion standing in front of roadside open markets or trudging down the oft-times muddy road edges, often carrying or wheel-barreling produce or materials. We rambled by businesses, a military bivouac, smaller refugee camps identifiable by the iconic blue tarp tent constructions signifying temporary (or not so temporary) shelters, as well as past collapsed or semi-collapsed buildings and landmarks, grim reminders of the horrific January 12th earthquake, all set against the backdrop of lush, verdant tropical growth rising pronounceably as the rainy season increases.
As the three of us (Georgianne Nienaber, Andre Paultre our "Fixer/driver" and myself) sped east along Highway One we suddenly began to see white and blue dots blanketing the lower reaches of a low-lying mountain in the distance. This was Mon Cabrit (Goat Mountain in English), and the dots we were gazing at eventually grew in size and shape into the contours of colored tents and shelters that had begun to aggregate several months ago as thousands of now homeless Haitian earthquake victims searched for viable places to live beyond catastrophically damaged Port-au-Prince. One such locale soon grew into what was now looming larger and larger before us, Camp Canaan, named after, of course, that Land of Canaan in the Bible that now comprises Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Originally the name "Camp Obama" had been applied in a bid for attention, but somehow that choice drew flak from forces beyond the camp.
The senior leader is a priest, Father Joseph Michel, an elderly, white-haired fellow of pleasant demeanor and disarming smile, who was dressed casually in sky-blue slacks and a white pin-striped short-sleeve shirt.
This was another largely "blue tarp" camp, meaning that the most prevalent kind of "tent" was a blue tarp stretched and secured across wooden poles. Since this is often enough not a really adequate shelter in and of itself, other pieces of tarp, plastic, sheets, cardboard, or whatever else one can find, will be added until often the end result is a rather jerry-rigged patchwork.
The majority of blue tarps, if not all, were 1) either made by the Chinese and distributed by American NGOs or 2) donated by the global Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, a generous gesture indeed. However, the sad truth is that the former, Chinese models are fairly thin-gauged, and tend to rip or crack easily in Haiti's rugged environment, while the Buddhist version has held up better. Sturdier, light gray tarps have also been provided by USAID, although they too will take a beating from the elements.
Intense sunlight beats down on the camp during the day, coupled, usually, with high humidity, which literally turns most shelters into the equivalent of microwave ovens during the hottest hours, while high winds often kick in or heavy rain deluges come cascading down the mountainside, or simply begin to saturate the ground, all this taking a toll on plastic materials, not to mention humans.
Camp Canaan offers only a rugged struggle for survival to its inhabitants, lacking in most necessities such as food, money and medicine, leaving it to each family or group of friends to fend for itself. NGOs have only been providing the barest of needs, such as potable water and latrines. But Haitians, I have learned, are a strong-willed and resilient lot, so let us now go on a general tour of the camp and the people within it via this slideshow :
Part 2, onto Camp Canaan
By mid-Monday morning, May 10th, we had completed our tour and inspection of helter-skelter Camp Canaan and were now winding around the bumpy and dusty dirt and gravel side road leading to the joint Haitian government/NGO project adjacent to Canaan called Camp Corail. It had looked as orderly in the distance as an army bivouac, and now, as we grew closer and closer, even invoked poetic associations in my mind such as "glimmering city on the hill", for you see, the tents, which are white with metal grommets, are laid out in long and neat rows and columns that well reflect the bright and searing Haitian sun.
En route to the camp we happened across a small herd of horses grazing next to large puddles of muddy rainwater from the most recent deluges that occur rather frequently in Haiti. The horses, whose colors ranged from several shades of brown to gray-brown and a dirty white, were oblivious to us and our own horse-power driven engine, their nostrils pressed toward the ground as they nibbled on vegetation or lapped up rainwater. What was notable about each was the general lack of plumpness and solid muscle. They were all rather skinny, several with their ribs protruding pronouncedly, a reminder that even the animals are suffering from scarcity and malnutrition in Haiti. Stray dogs we saw often looked worse.
Finally the camp was in full view and we could see the sea change in accommodations between this camp and Camp Canaan, the former fraught with a myriad of jury-rigged, patchwork tents, tarps and shelters, while Camp Corail was an oasis of spacious uniformity in comparison, with white nylon mobile Quonset huts, not mere tents, with real ribbed frames and securing ropes drawn taut against stakes driven into the ground. USAID had, through partnership with World Vision and OXFAM, Catholic Relief Services, the Haitian government, IOM (International Office of Migration) and even the US Army, set up some 1300 of these huts as well as some larger "big-top tents" run by NGOs such as Save the Children and Plan (International) in Haiti to run something akin to day-care centers for the children.
One corner of Camp Corail, sparkling with white nylon Quonset huts. Note the trench or ditch in the foreground. These have been built all around the perimeter of the camp and even through the camp to serve as drain-offs for the recurring rains, which can easily flood everything, although inhabitants have told us that flooding is going on anyway when heavy rainfall hits.
A typical mobile Quonset hut donated by World Vision.
And, as a constant reminder of the poverty of the "tent city" we had just left behind, all one had to do was look upward toward Goat Mountain behind us to see the scattered, rough and tumble sprawl of Camp Canaan stretching across the slope:
Compared to Canaan though, this camp seemed half-devoid of people, with
only a few adults or children wandering in and out of view as we
proceeded, some walking down the main roadway or disappearing into huts,
while a boy or two flying a kite in the brisk, warm breeze would
suddenly emerge to catch our eyes.However, according to USAID, close to 5,000 people had been relocated here from Petionville, a large suburb of Port-au-Prince actually situated above it. So apparently many people were just hunkering down in their huts to escape the sun before the latter in turn began to "microwave" these huts by high noon and force them out into the pitiless sun once again.
Be that as it may, it is time to explore Camp Corail more now, so click on my slideshow to take a tour. Remember to click on the full-screen icon for best viewing.
Part 3, Cruisin' Cite Soleil
After visiting the above camps, we began heading back to Port-au-Prince, but first we wanted to drive through the slum suburb of the capitol, Cité Soleil, one of the least cared for urban centers in Haiti. To quote from Wikipedia:
Cité Soleil (Kreyol: Site Solèy, English: Sun City) is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty.[1] The area is generally regarded as one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the Western Hemisphere and it is one of the biggest slums in the Northern Hemisphere. The area has virtually no sewers and has a poorly maintained open canal system that serves as its sewage system, few formal businesses but many local commercial activities and enterprises, sporadic but largely free electricity, a few hospitals, and a single government school, Lycee Nationale de Cite Soleil. For several years until 2007, the area was ruled by a number of gangs, each controlling their own sectors. But government control was reestablished after a series of operations in early 2007 by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).[2] with the participation of the local population. (Wiki article)There is considerable argument about the last few lines above, because some Haitians considered the MINUSTAH operations to be largely repressive crackdowns on the pro-Aristide populist political party Lavalas, which had become stridently antagonistic to the new Haitian government after the coup against Bertrande Aristide in 2004. In one afternoon, however, we were not going to be able to investigate all that. What we did do was check out the main drag, all the way to the end of the fishing piers, as you can see in this slideshow:
Part 4, On Highway 1 Back to Port-au-Prince
It's still Feb 10, 2010. After leaving Cite Soleil we took the hot, slow, long and winding drive through backed-up traffic jams of cars, Tap-Taps and all manner of trucks, not to mentions streams of motor-scooters weaving in and out while young men with bags of ice on their heads approached drivers in their stalled vehicles trying to sell them ice in the blazing heat, as we crawled on and on towards downtown Port-au-Prince, catching, as we went, the roadside marketplaces where every conceivable item was sold, including pilfered NGO supplies meant for earthquake victims and IDP camps, then past earthquake-collapsed buildings and crushed cars, finally ending up at the collapsed Haitian "White House", the Haitian National Palace, an ill symbol for the state of the country if ever there was one. And nearby was our hotel. Enjoy the slideshow (watch full-screen for best viewing):
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Part 5: A Special Report Photo-Essay First Posted on the Night of May 10, 2011 on OpEdNews: Across from Haiti's White House, Les Miserables on a Rainy Night
There are hundreds of thousands of Haitian earthquake refugees still in tent cities and camps throughout Haiti. Things are bad enough in the hot sun and humidity, but how bad does it get when it rains?
::::::::
Georgianne Nienaber and I are on assignment in Haiti this week. We flew into Port-au-Prince early Monday morning, May 10, 2010, quickly emerging into the hot tropical sun as we walked out of the small terminal our plane had been assigned to, past a band of "greeter" musicians playing a loud and rhythmic Creole-style tune, and onto the waiting shuttle bus that transported us to the customs hangar. Once through customs, we plunged intoa sea of impatient arrivees awaiting their rides like we would soon be, Haitian police officers, French military police, Haitian airport workers and heavily armed and armored SWAT Team personnel, not to mention an array of neatly badged and attired cab drivers, all sporting white short-sleeve shirts and black slacks, both men and women.
It wasn't long before our "Fixer", Andre, showed up to lead us to the Dodge Raider he had just parked nearby, commencing our still-being-formulated Haitian road adventures for the day as soon as he turned on the ignition. We were quickly onto famous Highway One and heading east toward two refugee camps in the nearby mountains (more on that later) where we investigated all morning into the early afternoon before doubling back, driving through Cité Soleil and the giant open marketplace route through Port-au-Prince.
After checking into our hotel, unpacking and beginning to plan our next itinerary, a not uncommon late afternoon rainstorm struck, often in heavy deluges, which led us to ask ourselves, "How badly are the myriad tent cties in and around Port-au-Prince being impacted by these heavy downpours?" We had already seen how flimsily strung together, not to mention thin many of the famous "blue tarp tents" were, so our concern and curiosity eventually led us to grab our raingear and drive off to the nearest tent city, Champs de Mars (Field of Mars) an area right next to the White House (the Presidential Palace).
It was already dark and still raining when we parked our car on the sidewalk at a big intersection that fell below the large and imposing statue of Haitian revolutionary leader Henri Christophe.
Surrounding the statue and extending back for blocks in haphazard and chaoticmanner was row after row of strung, tied, taped, sown or otherwise joined together tents and shelters.
As soon as Andre began to explain to the suddenly curious citizens of Champs de Mars why we were there, both Georgianne and myself suddenlyfound ourselves each being grabbed by the wrist by competing parents, all of whom wanted us to see the kind of living conditions they and their families were endurng in the rain, or even in the sunlight for that matter. The first few tents I entered rather shocked me, the floors made of dirt now transforming to mud, usually at least several children trying to sleep, if they were lucky, on a hopefully dry mattress, some even on the floor, while their parents moved about trying to deflect water, each small space crowded with cooking utensilsand buckets, some to catch the rainwater, others to hold drinking water, as well as clothing, boxes and various and sundry other personal items.
The only lights permeating this sea of tarps, blankets and plastic were those from high and powerful street floodlights externally, while internally, either dimly glowing bulbs hooked up to car batteries or small candles provided any kind of luminance. And what little light there was revealed, in the larger picture, a country still living close to the edge of the precipice, still walking a tightrope between social collapse and survival some four months after the horrific earthquake of January 12th struck, as you will see in these photos.
The point where we would enter the Champs de Mars tent city during the day:
That same point on the evening of April 10th as it poured down rain:
Some of the tarp "walls" creating this tent city:
An elderly Haitian woman concerned with the leaking tarps all around her:
Inside one tent, a man and a woman try to stay warm and dry:
Buckets are used both to catch the rainwater as best they can and hold what becomes family drinking water. Rain in this instance is leaking right on this family bed.
Closeup of rain drops across the ceiling tarp in a tent:
The floors are made of dirt, so dripping rain will produce this inside a tent, and all you can do is throw something over it if you can:
This tottler moves around while a bucket catches water an arms length away on his bed.
Despite it all, this family is staying upbeat, making the best of a bad situation. The Haitian people are incredibly resillient, one finds out, as one sees how they react everywhere under dire conditions:
Inside another tent that is slowly flooding:
Yet another jury-rigged tent that is hanging together by a thread:
A family describes their hardships to us:
A young man in his tent:
This woman, rainwater dripping down her face, gave Georgianne a lengthy video interview:
Another huge problem in Champs de Mars is garbage, which despite the best efforts of individuals I have seen trying to sweep it up, is infringing on the tents, the situation made considerably worse when soaked with rain, and then baked by the sun the next day, an extremely unhygienic situation in these crowded conditions.
A canal of garbage has formed from the rains:
A brother and sister trry to sleep on their cramped bed:
Two small children of a large family sleep on the floor, the only free space left:
Closeup of the children:
On the outside of one shelter with a corrugated metal wall, rainwater is collected:
Families must cook inside each of these confined spaces, with the potential of starting a fire:
Back out in the intersection, garbage is also getting soaked all over the streets:
A wet and lonely puppy searches for food:
A young woman peers out at me from behind a shelter, perhaps wondering if our efforts here tonight, letting you, the reader, know of her plight, will do some good:
Obviously, just throwing money at Haiti hasn't solved glaring problems like this yet, and perhaps never will. What is needed, some of us feel, is the empowerment of the Haitian people to take over the destiny of their country. Too many obsolete and corrupt obstacles, including many patronizing and exploitative foreign influences that clash with or undermine the positive goodwill of the international community have to be swept away.
Despite all their hardships, you can see in the Haitian people's faces the quality of tempered steel, forged by decades and centuries of harshness and suffering. Haitians are poised and ready to build a new and dynamic country and society that can rise above the pain of the past.
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Part 6, Touring Haiti's University and Educational Hospital Post-Earthquake
On Tuesday, May 11th, Georgianne, Andre and I spent all morning at Port-au-Prince's sprawling general hospital, Hôpital Universitaire de l'État d'Haïti (HUEH), known in loose English as Haiti's University and Educational Hospital, for it is a training institution as well as a medical hospital.
The great earthquake of January 12th all but wiped out or shut down the private hospitals in Port-au-Prince, but State-run HUEH, which itself suffered considerable damage, still managed to keep functioning as masses of injured Haitians began pouring in. Tents had to be erected to substitute for departments destroyed or condemned, and an influx of foreign medical teams also helped stabilize the situation. This was a Godsend, with some caveats, while HUEH was still reeling from the collapse of the nursing school with a hundred students and teachers inside, the collapse of the pediatrics building and the offices of the health ministry, with damage to many other departments as well. Moreover, HUEH's regular emergency room was too small, damaged and ill-equipped to deal with the huge influx of critically wounded Haitians, necessitating setting up field tents on the campus.
Various NGOs, some already with a presence in Haiti, also got involved in the emergency medical relief efforts, for example, Partners in Health. To quote from their website:
Immediately after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12th, 2010, Partners in Health established a Stand With Haiti campaign, raising funds and recruiting qualified medical personnel to serve relief efforts in the disaster zone. On January 16 the PIH/Zanmi Lasante team was
designated by the World Health Organization to serve alongside Haitian Ministry
of Health as coordinators of the public University Hospital (HUEH) in Port-au-Prince, supporting the administration and staff in restoring services at the city's central
hospital.
The influx of foreign
medical volunteers and organizations, usually with much better high-tech equipment, medicines and rapid-response capabilities in triage and catastrophic emergency care, created new problems by often squeezing out, when not offending, Haitian medical professionals from their daily operations, leading to a loss of valuable indigenous Haitian medical personnel during the most traumatic period of the earthquake rescue
efforts. My partner Georgianne wrote extensively about this and other fallout from NGO presence in Haiti in her OpEdNews article, How Foreign Aid Is Ruining Haiti's Health Care
System.But on the other hand, HUEH personnel, reflecting upon all the advanced technology and methodology that outside medical teams and organizations brought with them, also saw how much they needed to modernize the hospital. We spoke at length to both the hospital director, Dr. Alix Lassegue, and to Dr. Louis-Franck Telemaque, head of surgery at HUEH, and they both volunteered how much they needed to not merely rebuild, but upgrade their hospital complex. Plans and efforts are now underway to do so, but of course much money is needed, not to mention much freedom from negative NGO and disaster capitalism political influences as well.
Here, then, is my tour for you, the reader, of the sprawling, crowded campus of the Hôpital Universitaire de l'État d'Haïti as it was in mid-May, operating on a show-string budget, attempting to clear rubble and begin rebuilding while treating Haitians in every innovative, make-do way they can conjure up under incredibly challenging circumstances:
Walking through the crowded streets of HUEH
Georgianne and Andre enter the building where the hospital director's office is housed.
Meet head-honcho Dr. Alix Lassegue, a pleasant man who answered our questions about the hospital and then took us on his cook's tour of the campus.
The door to HUEH's main surgical operating room
Only two operating tables were functional, the original surgery wing being heavily damaged. Heavy traffic ER operations ended up in tents outside to keep pace with the thousands of injured.
Peering inside SOP. They are short on almost every supply imaginable, from sterile wipes to sheets and towels.
Volunteers are helping by serving lunch trays to patients in surrounding tents.
Inside one emergency services tent
The orthopedic trauma department
A solar panel is generating electricity. In the background is part of the water purification system.
Some of the tents erected to substitute for departments or buildings destroyed or condemned.
Entering Radiology
Patients awaiting x-rays
A Haitian woman dressed in traditional garb waits patiently.
Outside another tent, scores of patients, some with their families present, are waiting or recuperating.
The diagnostic lab was put out of commission, so UNICEF donated a mobile tent unit.
This lab has to process specimens for thousands of Haitians with limited equipment, some of it supplied by the American CDC (Center for Disease Control).
Haitian lab technicians at work.
The blood transfusion department
The Haitian Red Cross van for mobile blood donation activities
An injured young boy with a nurse or nurse's aid holding his IV drip as they walk down another bustling hospital campus side street.
A heavily damaged building
Pediatric tents. Pediatrics was also destroyed.
A young baby being treated in a bed that seems to be doubling as a desk for want of room
What I call angels of mercy, a group of spiritually-minded men and women dressed in white shirts and white dresses, are in this pediatric tent praying for critically ill babies and their anguished mothers. Georgianne, in her orange shirt, is taking photos and videos of their uplifting work.
Although hard to make out, on the right in this photo you can see the head of one such mother, her head bowed on the bed as the angels recite a prayer for her child.
Back on the tour with Dr. Lassegue.
This artistically impressive HUEH building and garden is off-limits for repairs.
Clinique externes chirugie or outpatient clinical surgery I believe the sign means.
One of the hospital ambulances.
International Medical Corps, a global, humanitarian medical NGO, has a very strong presence at HUEH, in fact their own building staffed both with Haitians and rotating teams of volunteer, largely American doctors and nurses who change over every two weeks or so. They not only treat patients, but train personnel to empower local healthcare givers.
This is one of IMC's volunteer doctors in the foreground. The IMC teams actually stay at the same hotel we were in, the Plaza, so we had actually talked to him the night before. A busy guy on the job.
Inside the IMC clinic
Their supply room, nothing to brag about, but better off than most if not all of HUEH's other clinics.
Meet Englishman Andy Gleadle, local coordinator for the IMC. This shot was actually taken over drinks back at the Plaza Hotel this same evening after he had agreed to meet with us. He explained the IMC operations in Haiti, how they not only want to treat Haitians, but to also empower and train Haitians in the medical field. IMC was not only intimately involved with HUEH, he pointed out, but is running mobile clinics throughout earthquake ravaged areas. As NGOs go, IMC is definitely one of the better ones, professional with a clear humanitarian vision. For Georgianne's account on cheerful Andy, see Voices from Haiti: "Americans Can See Exactly the Way We Live"
Back on campus, here is Emergency Room No. 3, yet another large tent, subject to the heat, noise and car fumes of the immediate environment, but at least functioning.
Meet rather suave, yet reserved Dr. Louis-Franck Telemaque, Chief of Surgery. He spoke at length to us about the problems and possibilities for his surgery department. Again, let me recommend Georgianne's first-mentioned article for details of the conversation.
In summation, HUEH is, like everyone and thing in Haiti it seems, a survivor, constrained by the limitations of the past, but struggling to meet the challenges of the future with focus, creativity and optimism.
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