Labryinthine Society
Twisting-turning, up-down, constantly weaving-moving here and there from one turn to the next. Opportunistically taking step after step in a maze to nowhere. Always looking for, believing for, the exit around the next corner - an exit that doesn't exist. A labryinth of lunacy. A labryinthine society. A tent city on every corner. Port au Prince 7 months after the January 12 earthquake.
We travelled around Port au Prince and neighboring areas all day Saturday. I wanted to share what we saw in detail and run my usual opinionated commentary on the shame of it all. As we drove around I was formulating the dialogue in my head. However, as can sometimes happen in Haiti with the gargantuan level of unbelievable conditions you see, by the end of the day one can move past the state of anger and need to vent and slide protectively into numbness. I didn't write anything Satureday because there were just no words in me adequate enough to bear witness to the sea of sadness ebbing and flowing over Port au Prince. Like a tide, humanity washing forward in the morning out of their tents in search of life, flooding the streets that are now called "home". Retreating into those same tents in the evening to fight their way through the violence of the night that has now malevolently morphed from a "time to rest" to the "toughtst battle of the day." Like a tide, it is out of human control and relentlessly rhythmic.
Visiting in one of these camps I was stared down into shame by the eyes of the children who mobbed me with their pitifully teeny hands tearing at me, squishing their runny noses onto my pant legs as more pressed in just to touch - or, perhaps, just to be touched. Before, this mob scene was always replete with smiling faces and the untamed beauty of little children unleashed and shining through their dirty faces with bubbly requests for "siret" (candy), "dola" (one dollar) or "chiklet" (gum). Saturday the mob, still with the need to grab, clutch, fight for a piece of the "blan's" (foreigner's) arm to hang on to was reverberating with one request only, "dlo" (water). The ages would be from about 2-8 yrs. and they were desperate for water. It tore me up to know that these little kids had lost their desire for the typical things Haitian kids ask for because their thirst for a staple of life was so far out of their reach for most of the day they were frenzied in their quest for it.
I felt like they thought if they could just keep hanging on to my arms, my pant legs, my t-shirt that I somehow could magically whisk them all up into the back of the truck with me and drive them away from their situation to something more humane - something with at least a drink of water. I wanted to. I couldn't. And, it seems the International Community with the billions ("yes, BILLIONS!") of dollars in aid money, 7 months after the quake can't either. Everyone is still homeless living in tents the size of a dining room table averaging 7 people per dwelling. The rubble is still lining the streets and buildings remain in a collapsed state refusing their owners. Rebar sticks up everywhere like abandoned arteries periscoping the landscape in search of the thing they used to be connected to . It is one big, giant, convoluted mess.
I didn't write because after the whole day of moving my eyes through this tragedy I had left the initial flurry of anger that would have whirled into words and landed on a blog page to not knowing what to say at all. I am admittedly stalemated.
Posted on Thursday, August 26 2010, at 9:11 AM.