The OutsidersBy E.D. Cauchi
Mounds of mud, discarded waste and gaping holes made the streets of Port-au-Prince treacherous. Chunks of stone scattered around – the remnants of broken homes and toppled buildings. Walls had crumbled like sponge cake in a child’s grasp. We plodded ground, wrestled for sources, and documented life after the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in almost 250 years. Two years later, the country is still broken. When we arrived in Haiti, our first stop was the United Nations. We waited outside the gates of Delta Camp and watched men peddle gun holsters and warm bottles of Coca Cola. Foreign loiterers were quickly offered taxi rides. You never knew where they would take you or if you’d still have all your belongings when you got there. In small carrels opposite the UN’s razor wire gates, merchants sold painted wooden statuettes modeled after peacekeepers in their pastel blue-helmets. Last October, the UN reduced the military personnel of the international forces to 7,340. The troops that remain are convinced that the Haitians love them. But if you ask the Haitians, there’s a reason the soldiers wear flak jackets. |
“Most people in the city despise the troops,” one of the UN’s creole interpreters told us. “The people don’t understand what the United Nations is here to do.”
We traversed the city with the help of Alix, our middle-aged driver, fixer, translator. We scribbled in our Moleskines with slippery blunt pencils, our hands were sweaty in the 95° afternoons. Wherever we went we tried to look uninteresting, stowing dollars in the back jackets of notepads, the lining of our boots, zippered pant pockets. Black gaffer’s tape covered the bright white Canon logos on our DSLRs. We expected to stand out but instead blended in with the white foreign aid workers.
Walking through the tent cities, still home to half a million Haitians, we sought shaded refuge under tarpaulin awnings. There they sleep on concrete blocks, wooden boards and soiled sheets piled on the earth. From the cholera ridden camp of St. Therese to the gang-ridden neighborhood Cite Soleil, the kids shouted at us, “Hey you!” They were eager to smile for our cameras. They didn’t understand English but journalists, they knew.
The displaced, the powerless and the criminal exist side-by-side in the island nation. Their lives are knit together by polemic parliamentarians grasping for the reigns to steer the country back on track, on some track. The people feel they’ve been abused by their government, disappointed by NGOs and angered by United Nations. We interviewed U.N. Colonels, Haitian National Police officials, a local mayor, the street vendors, NGO workers, and camp residents.
Every night, we battened down in Coconut Villa under the spring’s monsoon skies. We cleaned our teeth with bottled water and fell asleep to the sound of the recycled water pumping into the unused pool. The pumping water sounded like someone drawing the world’s longest bath - moving water to minimize mosquitoes.
Each morning I discovered new bites. OFF insect repellent sat in our bags unused (the chemicals would damage our cameras). But incessant itching didn’t distract us from a lingering concern: we could not grasp what it was to be Haitian. The international contingent struggled with the same issue.
They were part of the 10,000-strong international occupation —the ex-pats, international officials, and activists— tasked with “making Haiti better.” They dined on 30-dollar dinner plates in the upscale Petionville region of Port-au-Prince. Local attendants parked, in neat rows, the vehicles of government officials, leaders of international organizations and the wealthiest Haitians.
Inside smokey bars, these elites enjoyed cheap highballs, strobe lights and North American music as they looked out over a city where half of the residents live without electricity.
This article was originally published Spring 2012 in a book by Columbia Journalism School. All photos by E.D. Cauchi
We traversed the city with the help of Alix, our middle-aged driver, fixer, translator. We scribbled in our Moleskines with slippery blunt pencils, our hands were sweaty in the 95° afternoons. Wherever we went we tried to look uninteresting, stowing dollars in the back jackets of notepads, the lining of our boots, zippered pant pockets. Black gaffer’s tape covered the bright white Canon logos on our DSLRs. We expected to stand out but instead blended in with the white foreign aid workers.
Walking through the tent cities, still home to half a million Haitians, we sought shaded refuge under tarpaulin awnings. There they sleep on concrete blocks, wooden boards and soiled sheets piled on the earth. From the cholera ridden camp of St. Therese to the gang-ridden neighborhood Cite Soleil, the kids shouted at us, “Hey you!” They were eager to smile for our cameras. They didn’t understand English but journalists, they knew.
The displaced, the powerless and the criminal exist side-by-side in the island nation. Their lives are knit together by polemic parliamentarians grasping for the reigns to steer the country back on track, on some track. The people feel they’ve been abused by their government, disappointed by NGOs and angered by United Nations. We interviewed U.N. Colonels, Haitian National Police officials, a local mayor, the street vendors, NGO workers, and camp residents.
Every night, we battened down in Coconut Villa under the spring’s monsoon skies. We cleaned our teeth with bottled water and fell asleep to the sound of the recycled water pumping into the unused pool. The pumping water sounded like someone drawing the world’s longest bath - moving water to minimize mosquitoes.
Each morning I discovered new bites. OFF insect repellent sat in our bags unused (the chemicals would damage our cameras). But incessant itching didn’t distract us from a lingering concern: we could not grasp what it was to be Haitian. The international contingent struggled with the same issue.
They were part of the 10,000-strong international occupation —the ex-pats, international officials, and activists— tasked with “making Haiti better.” They dined on 30-dollar dinner plates in the upscale Petionville region of Port-au-Prince. Local attendants parked, in neat rows, the vehicles of government officials, leaders of international organizations and the wealthiest Haitians.
Inside smokey bars, these elites enjoyed cheap highballs, strobe lights and North American music as they looked out over a city where half of the residents live without electricity.
This article was originally published Spring 2012 in a book by Columbia Journalism School. All photos by E.D. Cauchi