the resilience

It is less than 2 months after the earthquake. Everybody living through such an experience would be devastated, no doubt, and so are the Haitians; you notice it when you talk to them about what happened, to a police man who is guarding the totally collapsed Ministry of Economic Affairs, or to the men who are clearing the rubble from another heavily damaged site; you notice it with the driver when you go downtown and see the enormous damage, and he becomes very quiet, talks very softly.

And yet, Haitian society is bouncing back incredibly fast. Markets are up and running again, Madam Sara's - the ubiquitous market women that dominate a whole commodities sector, whether charcoal or fruit or vegetables - have established themselves on the pavement and in the wooden stalls under colourful umbrellas along the road, the shops have opened where they can. Trade is brusque, multiple stands have emerged around the camps that have been established, and life is returning to what is called 'normalcy'. Now it will take a long time to return to real normalcy, as in what life was before the quake, but it is heartening to see the resilience of Haitian society.

I went shopping the other day, in Royal Market - no doubt recognizable for those who have been here before -, and outside I got to talk to some of the street sellers: a man with a beautiful bunch of flowers he wanted to trade with me for an extraordinary amount of cash and a woman who insisted on selling me mangos at a hugely inflated rate because I am a 'blanc' (the Haitian expression for foreigner no matter your skin colour, my Ethiopian colleague is just as 'blanc' as I am). In the end I didn't buy the flowers, the man understood that my wife was in The Netherlands ("Ah, Kulit et Rikar!!"), too far away to get them - the flowers, not Gullit and Rijkaard - to her in any reasonable time frame. I did buy some mangos, and a papaya, and some avocados, all together for significantly less than the original asking price for the mangos. And we all parted amicably, having enjoyed not so much the trading process but more the social interaction, sharing a joke and a good laugh, satisfying curiosity. The buildings may have been damaged, the spirit of the Haitian people seems to have survived, and as long as that is the case there is hope that this country will sooner or later get back onto its feet.

(1) new business opportunities on Champ de Mars, the largest tented camp in town.

(2) street markets are like before, colourful - albeit a little faded


(3) four quintessential Haitian businesses: shoe polisher, lotto operator, banana seller and, a new development, the mobile telephone operator

and (4) a trader - entrepreneur! - set up shop opposite the UN camp, where else to sell the booze at inflated prices?

the church

Yesterday I wrote about some of the damage to the cultural heritage of Haiti, and I also mentioned the Holy Trinity Church. This church was built in the 1920s, as an Episcopal church, in the center of Port-au-Prince. What makes the church unique is that in 1950 and 1951 a series of murals were painted by some of Haiti's greatest 'first generation' painters. A guy called Dewitt Peters had started the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince, an art school to encourage Haitian painters, in the late 1940s. The school doesn't exist anymore, I think, but painting has subsequently developed into a quite extraordinary art movement, and a successful export product. DeWitt Peters also guided some of the most talented, and now most famous painters with the murals in the church. Toussaint August, Wilson Bigaud, Philome Obin and Castera Bazile are some of the painters who have contributed.

The church is no more. The only mural I could find back today was one by Castera Bazile, and another, half hidden, by Philome Obin. Unlike in the past, when the church was dark and the murals not very well visible, now this one was lit by bright sunlight, not hampered by a roof, or an opposite wall. Very sad.

(1) the front of the Holy Trinity Church, with only one wall, the north transept, still standing.

(2, 3) Castera Bazile's "Baptism of the Lord", and part of Philome Obin's "Last Supper", even without a lot of Bible knowledge recognizable, I would say.

For good measure I also add some photos of the Cathedral - no further comments needed. Last time I was in here was in 2001, I think, during the installation (if not coronation) of president Aristide.

(4,5) Port-au-Prince Cathedral.

I promise that this will have been the last pictures of destruction on this blog.... probably.

the city

Long awaited..... I finally went downtown last week, to see what the city looks like now. This is not going to be a pretty picture.

Port-au-Prince has changed from how I remember it, of courses. Every city will be different after a massive earthquake. Some of the buildings that played a dominant role in our life when we were here 10 years ago, are no more. The Montana hotel, where we stayed the first 6 weeks, has collapsed. No one is allowed near it, it is guarded by American soldiers, to protect the remains of the people still burried under the rubble. The Caribbean Supermarket, the largest of its kind in the fancy suburb of Petionville, has collapsed. The presidential palace, many of the ministries, churches - including the Holy Trinity Church with its famous murals by Haitian painters -, the cathedral, many schools, hospitals: all have collapsed or are heavily damaged. The palace especially is for me the symbol of a broken country. Yet, somehow, I don't know how earthquakes go about their destructive powers, the devastation in Port-au-Prince is different from my post-tsunami experience, where everything, literally everything had been wasted. Here some houses have collapsed, sometimes in between other houses that are still standing. A corner building in the commercial district may have turned to rubble, whilst other shops of the street seem in tact. In some cases the edge of a building has given way, resulting in the whole building having been tilted, a really odd sight. And of course, it is still unclear how much damage has been done to buildings that appear OK from the outside.

(1) the palace, symbol of a broken nation

One thing that has largely been saved are the gingerbread houses that are all over town. Many (but not all) of these wonderful, mostly wooden structures, sometimes with brick walls in between, with red corrugated-iron roofs and intricate verandas and balconies, have survived the quake: at least some of the cultural heritage of Haiti has been preserved. So has the Olofsson Hotel, a famous old hotel in gingerbread style that stood model for the hotel described in The Comedians by Graham Greene, a brilliant book about Haiti under the Doc dynasty - although I don't think the weekly jam sessions of the rock band RAM have started again. Sadly, the Nader museum, containing probably the most extensive collection of Haitian art, has not survived, and most paintings appear to have been lost.

The city has also changed in other ways. There is less traffic then I remember, despite the influx of large, antenna-wielding 4x4 vehicles from aid agencies that accompany every emergency response. This is no doubt because many of the cars have been damaged, some 200,000 people, perhaps 10% of the population, have died, and another 500,000 have left the city to stay with friends or extended family elsewhere. But other changes, not earthquake related, are also obvious, and for the better. There are traffic light installed at many intersections - the only traffic light I remember from 10 years ago was one downtown, which was most of the time not working because of lack of electricity. Better even, people seem to respect the traffic lights! I have also seen several garbage trucks, including workers throwing garbage in them - unheard of in the past. Haitian police is more prominently present, and seems to be doing a reasonable job in maintaining order. Taptap drivers are sporting a bluetooth earpiece! Blue signs indicate where taptap's, the shared taxis, are supposed to stop: or good measure, these are being completely ignored. There are many more bars and restaurants around then 10 years ago. Some of the roads have been improved - although many others haven't, and I keep on telling my colleagues who are here for the first time that the huge potholes are not a result of the earthquake!

What remains the most visible change, though, is that every free space in the city, every piece of grass, whether a garden, a little square, the local football pitch or the national stadium, is occupied with tents and plastic sheets, with people living outdoors. Let's hope it is just a temporary change.

(2) the Caribbean Supermarket, or what remains,

(3, 4) the ministry of economic affairs, one of the oldest buildings of Port-au-Prince,

(5) Palais Justice, once a building with an attractive neo-Roman facade,

(6,7) what was once the Eglise Sacre Coeur, with stained windows,

(8) a 'tilted' building,

(9) a surviving gingerbread house - but the garden is full of tents!,

(10) and even the national stadium is full.

the aftershock

Yesterday night, at about 1.30, we had another cracking earthquake - the are called aftershocks, because they follow a bigger earhquake, even if they come 6 weeks later, but they are of course also earthquakes in their own right. This one was 4.7 on the Richter scale, not much, but apparently very shallow, and it did shake the entire house, badly. It woke up my flat mates, everybody in the neighbourhood and no doubt greater Port-au-Prince, Leogane, and other towns along the coast. My flat mates were up and ready to leave the apartment. Outside dogs were barking, people were screaming, many kept talking throughout the night, didn't go back to sleep anymore.

The quake was followed by a second one a short time later, and towards the end of that second one, I woke up, too. I decided that this was a lot milder than the aftershock the night before - which did wake me up, was also 4.7, but somehow not as dramatic as the one last night -, turned around, and fell asleep again.

I missed it all, my description above is second-hand. But I do believe every word of it, I could see it in the faces of our house staff, Molly and Legrand, who turned up in the morning, dazed, visibly shocked. There are still enormous traumas to be dealt with here.

the apartment

Having explained the shelter situation of the earthquake-affected population in Port-au-Prince, perhaps I should also pay some attention in this blog to my own living conditions. As always, some are better off than others. Upon my arrival two weeks ago I as immediately assigned an apartment, which I share with three colleagues. This despite the fact that quite a few staff members have been staying in tents for the past 4-5 weeks - remember the picture of the camping site I posted a week ago? I guess seniority has its advantages, or perhaps it is just consideration for old age that gave me preferential treatment. I am not complaining!

So I have my own room, with a comfortable bed. Not much light, but who needs light when you use the room predominantly to sleep, after working days of 12 hours or more? There is a large living room, with large sofas, and a balcony with a view, all very pleasant. The shared bathroom has hot water from a boiler most of the time. Also most of the time we have no town electricity, and we are depending on an inverter, a series of batteries. If there is town electricity, one can have a real power shower; otherwise it is just a dribble, with pressure dependent on how full the tank on the roof is, but generally sufficient. Power sometimes comes on at 7 in the morning, sometimes not, so one needs to balance the opportunity to have a power shower against the risk that, being last in the bathroom, all the hot water has been used up.

Two Haitian house staff come at 6 am to cook breakfast for us, which can be anything from fried eggs to boiled potatoes to spaghetti with spicy sausage, and fruit. Especially mangos, Haiti has the best mangos in the world, and is also the only country where mangos grow almost year round, everywhere. Somebody tried to set up a mango export business some time ago, but failed because the mangos were too big to undergo reliable fruitfly treatment, a requirement for import in the US. Apparently, the fruit needs to be treated with ultraviolet light, or something, but because of the enormous size of the Haitian mangos the light cannot penetrate deep enough into the fruit within the maximum exposure time, which otherwise damages the outside. Or something like that, I cannot remember the details, but the result is that there is no shortage of mangos here.

But I am drifting. After breakfast we depart for the office, at around 7.30 am, if we can get a car. Transport is often difficult because of lack of cars, lack of drivers, lack of planning or lack of communication, or a random combination of the four. In the time we are away from the house our staff clean, wash up, do laundry, buy food and cook us dinner, which we find ready to heat up when we come back home at around 8 pm, sometimes later. We have been blessed with an excellent cook, Miss Molly, who can even make tinned chicken taste nice, and with a friendly man, Legrand, whose name unfortunately is not a reference to his intellectual capacity. It took Legrand three days to have my mosquito net put up - after the first attempt the net was hovering about 5 cm above the mattress, 'genial' he found himself. But both of them are very nice, and they are only mildly ripping us off when we give them money to buy our food, so who cares?

For a while we had another occupant in the apartment, too. I had been finding droppings in the kitchen and in the bathroom, already for a few days, indicative of either a very big mouse, or a rat. One night one of my flat mates was woken up by persistent scratching sounds, which turned out to be our rodent trying to break down her bedroom door - the proof was on the floor in the form of wood shavings, and as toothmarks in the door post. The following evening when we came back to apartment we indeed found a sizable rat wandering around. It took us most of the following hour to try to get the animal out, opening doors, blocking other escape routes with boxes and painting frames, and chasing him with sticks towards the door opening. Somebody had told us that rats were extremely intelligent, well, ours was the exception, as he kept on running in the wrong direction. It was quite a scene - quite noisy as well, as it was accompanied by the appropriate screams every time our friend took an unexpected turn -, until we suddenly lost all trace of him. Last we saw was the rat shooting up into the curtains, and then he disappeared completely. Maybe he did, in the end, escape through the open door, unseen despite four adults paying keen attention, because since that evening we have seen no trace of him anymore. Or maybe he was intelligent after all, and decided to leave of his own account.

Bottom line: accommodation is quite comfortable, very close to Montaigne Noire, where we used to live 10 years ago, a little up in the mountains, which makes it pleasantly cool in the evenings, no need for air conditioners. We are well taken care of, well fed. I am writing this on a Sunday morning (our official day off), on the balcony, in shorts. Every hardship is relative.

photo: the view from my balcony on a Sunday morning, if it is not hazy (which it is on most other days, including Sundays)

the shelters (photos)

I did go out yesterday, and I did take some photos. More about that later, but some of the pictures, posted below, relate to the shelter issues I wrote about a few days ago.

(1) people staying in make-shift camps in their streets, not wanting to sleep inside - and thereby also blocking the traffic through their streets, of course.

(2, 3) the large, open and green park in the center of town, Champ de Mars, is now filled with an estimated 500,000 (!!!) people staying in tents and under plastic sheeting, not leaving an inch of green unused. (4) a row of portable latrines have been placed, there is obviously no space, and no wish, to dig them underground (apologies for the poor quality photo, taken from a driving car)

(5,6) military presence is required to avoid food distributions and the like turning into a free-for-all grab; here with a food distribution in Petionville - MINUSTHA troops, petty heavily armed, not a very inviting sight if you come to pick up your rations.

(7, 8) this is one af the main drains from Port-au-Prince, pretty full with rubbish in the best of times, but since the establishment of the camps filling up with a lot more, like plastic bottles and styrofoam boxes. Despite the fact that this is being burnt regularly, it will likely significantly affect drainage once the real rains start.

the shelters

One of the most pressing problems here is shelter. I already told you that many people live in tents outside their houses, or in small camp areas in their neighbourhood, because the houses have been destroyed, or are badly damaged. Often they are too afraid to go back inside, even if the house looks relatively OK (what does that mean, "relatively OK", when you live in an earthquake-prone area?). This has led to the establishment of many camps in the city, some very large, and relatively well managed, but many small, ad-hoc, makeshift shelters without any structure. The large camps have been provided with tents, and there is a regular supply of water, which is tankered in and used to fill rubber bladders or newly constructed storage tanks. Latrines are being built, washing space is being created, and with a bit of luck rubbish is centrally collected - not necessarily taken away, but at least put somewhere outside.

The immediate problem is with the smaller camps, especially the ones in densely populated neighbourhoods with little space in between the houses, collapsed, damaged or otherwise. There is no space to put up proper tents or plastic sheeting that give people better protection against the rain. Constructing a latrine in such a place would only create a further health risk. Besides, many of these places are on slopes, and as soon as it starts raining seriously, the whole camp will just wash away. In the mean time drains, already poorly maintained in better times, are now partly blocked with rubble, and are filling up further with waste generated in the camps.

And rain it will! We have had the first showers at night, yet many people haven't received the standard shelter pack - plastic sheeting, wooden poles, rope, and possibly jerrycans, a bucket and a hygiene kit. The rainy season is supposed to start end March, early April, but I think it is unlikely that all needs will have been addressed by then. Distributions are tricky, often require military protection to manage crowd control and to avoid a run on the goods, so need to be planned carefully, one reason for the often-mentioned delays. Having said this, there is also a sudden surge in availability of tarpaulins and all sizes of plastic sheets on the market.... and they look remarkably similar to the ones that are being distributed to the people in the camps. I suppose the market system is slowly restoring itself - which is a good thing, let there be no misunderstanding, people who receive something can either use it, or sell it and do something else with the money they get for it: it is, and it should be, their choice.

The longer term solution needs to come from the government, who must either allocate government-owned land to build temporary camps - this means camps that can house people for 6-18 months, at least -, or provide a legal framework for renting land for camps from private individuals. But of course, much of the government, whether infrastructure, systems or actual government officials at all levels, has been destroyed, and what has been left of government is acutely aware of the fact that this is an election year: elections, due this February, may have been postponed, but they will happen (later, perhaps, rather than sooner, in this case, but anyhow). Even if such land, and such camps, become available, it still needs to be seen whether people will relocate voluntarily, abandoning their belongings however deeply buried under the rubble, abandoning their neighbourhood, their source of income, their children's school, for an uncertain future in a camp. After all, if you are emotionally attached to a place it is a lot more difficult to see the logic of relocation than if you work for the government, the UN or for an NGO.

So, plenty of challenges ahead. The rainy season is only the beginning, after that comes the hurricane season. Tents actually don't work very well in such conditions, plastic sheeting is much better - but many people keep on pushing tents. There is not enough time, even if camp sites are swiftly identified and people are encouraged to relocate, to build more durable shelters in time. And with the shortage of architects, engineers and skilled construction labour, and the destruction of the institutions that teach them, rebuilding Port-au-Prince is going to take a lot longer than 18 months, or 5 years, or even 10 years. Sadly, we may see a lot more misery - and a lot less visible to the world than a sudden earthquake - before things get better.

no photos this time, I will try to find some suitable pictures to add tomorrow, but I just haven't got the time to get out and see for myself...