Port-au-Prince is crowded. It always has been but since the earthquake its bursting at the seams. Traveling a mile through the city streets can take more than an hour. There are so many aid and construction workers in town that the hotels are full, and on this trip we have had to squat in the home of a Haitian friend. Where we are staying there is very little electricity, and no running water. The mosquitos coming thru the open windows at night are murder. But we have it better than almost every other resident of this city. Maybe millions are sleeping in the streets. For many their homes were destroyed by the earthquake or no longer stable, for others who still may have homes the trauma of seeing their neighbors crushed under concrete blocks and flimsy construction, has made it impossible for them to sleep indoors at night. As a result Port-au-Prince looks like a giant, never ending refugee camp with every available spot of land in the cities parks, along highway medians, and even in the middle of the road taken up with makeshift ‘tent cities’.
Many of the tent cities are built on dirt hillslides and are likely to come crashing down when the heavy rains come in April. Some of the families have managed to acquire high tech tents with logos printed on them like USAID, Shelter Box, or WorldVision, but most are nothing more than a few bedsheets, and if they are lucky a plastic tarp to keep out the rain. But amidst all this, there is order. Families help each other erect their living structures, volunteers come into the camps to tutor kids who have been out of school since the earthquake, and families cook and eat together the rice and beans they manage to acquire from aid stations. Many have predicted mass chaos and social instability as a result of this disaster, but so far we are not seeing it. Everyone seems to understand we are in this together.
