Stuart Clark reports from Haiti: Day two

Photo credit: Niall Carson Words: Stuart Clark


I thought I’d seen the worst of what Haiti has to offer, but then yesterday we drove through Port Au Prince’s Carrefour district where over a million people are crammed into an area not a whole lot bigger than Ranelagh.

The first thing that hits you is the smell – a gag-inducing mix of raw sewage, rubbish and stagnant water, which gathers in small lakes and is a breeding ground for the cholera which has claimed almost 7,000 lives since the earthquake. There are kids splashing around in the water, climbing on top of the rubbish piles and playing giddy-up with the giant Creole pigs and goats that feed from the toxic pavement mulch.

This is one of the areas where street gangs reign supreme, with Haiti’s police force either too afraid or under-resourced to keep a lid on the gun crime that’s commonplace. We wanted to stop and talk to some of the locals about their situation, but it was too dangerous.

Wednesday started with a face to face with the magnificently named M’Zou Naya B. Jn. Baptiste, a newly elected Deputy from President Michel Martelly’s equally magnificently named Parti Politique Paysan – or for the non-French speakers among you, the Party of the Peasant Response. We were taking bets as to whether he’d be the Irish Jackie Healy-Rae or worse still Gay Mitchell, but he turned out to be a bit of a smooth Leo Varadkar character.

Having heard about the plan Sweet Micky - we’re not being disrespectful, that’s his pre-Presidential pop star name – has hatched to introduce free education, we headed to L’Ecole Fort Mercredi on the outskirts of the capital. Fees at the Concern Worldwide-supported school are just $12 a year, but that’s still too expensive for a lot of parents living in the neighbouring shanty-town, which looks like a stiff breeze would bring it all tumbling down.

The principal, Directeur Jean-Roosevelt Pompee, is fulsome in his praise of Concern who’ve provided equipment, teacher training and, perhaps most importantly, water stations and soap to help curb the spread of killer cholera. The government’s part of the deal is to pay the staff their wages, but there’s been no money for Pompee and his 19 teachers since October. The last thing they want to do is abandon the 1,350 secondary school kids in their care but they’ve got families to feed and may have no alternative but to seek other work.

After that it’s off to Caroussel to see one of the five Temporary Learning Spaces Projects, which Concern maintains in camps where there’s no access to other education. A functioning school for 283 kids has been fashioned MacGyver-like out of five marquee-sized tents bearing the UNICEF logo. The kids look fit, well and happy as they spend their afternoon break skipping (the girls) and recreating El Clasico (the boys). The likes of Ronaldo and Messi are gods round these parts, with Port Au Prince grinding to a virtual standstill during La Liga games. We’ve also met a foreman working on an earthquake-proof petrol station who’s an Ally McCoist and Rangers diehard and a gentleman from the Camp Oscar Sporting Committee who rates young Seamus Coleman very highly and, take note Trap, feels he absolutely must start for Ireland at Euro 2012.

We also got to visit the Nutrition Unit at Port Au Prince’s General Hospital where Concern are working to promote breast feeding in a country where culturally it’s not the norm. The babies getting their meals from mum are as fat as Kerrygold – happy, full of life kids who can’t keep their wide eyes off their ghostly pale English and Irish visitors.

It’s a different story across the tented ward where a 4-year-old boy suffering from malnutrition and TB stares vacantly into space. Only recently able to walk, none of the staff can remember him ever smiling or talking. There’s virtually no interaction between him and his mother who’s mourning the loss of another child she took to a voodoo doctor.

Again, the smell is overwhelming with a skip outside filled to the brim with discarded needles and other medical waste. I’m not sure what to expect from today, the second anniversary of the 2010 earthquake, which killed 230,000 Haitians and left 1.5 million homeless. It’ll be sad I’m sure, but also full of the hope that despite everything still springs eternal in this wonderful country.

Please visit [link]www.concern.net/where-we-work/caribbean/haiti[/link] and see what you can do to help. For more updates keep an eye on @stuartclark66