Food and Interviews

On Monday the food distribution truck from CARINTAS arrived. For this small community of people, it was a momentous event. Food! Lot's of it! Food for each family! There were concerns about security, since last time a supply truck came to the camp people were so disorderly that it left without distributing anything. The chefs de camp brought in a few policemen to help keep things orderly. First they gathered everyone behind a rope well away from the truck. Then they called all the women over fifty to the front, and let them line up first. These little old ladies were loading 50 kilo sacks of rice on their heads! I don't think I could even pick one up without a struggle! There was some shouting from the rest of the group that it wasn't fair for the women to go first, but I guess the thinking was they are the ones with the most family responsibilities, and the least likely to sell it on the street. AftOer the older women, they let the younger mothers line up, and finally, the men. In the end there was enough for one sack for each family. There were a few sacks left on the ground at the end, Darly told me they were for the families from the camp that weren't able to come that day, but later I saw them loading the sacks along with flats of water into the policemen's cars. Payment rendered, I suppose.

Today I start my interviews. The questions I have come up with are meant to find out how people interpret the earthquake of January 12 and to document the living conditions in the camps. Obviously for people outside the camps the questions will be different, but I am starting in camp Trezelie with Darly. When I asked a few people what they thought the most important questions I should be asking were, they all recommended those dealing with practical life in the camp. How do people eat? Can they stay healthy? Is their shelter sufficient? Are they safe? They want people to pay attention to the miserable living conditions, to try to do something about it.  What I am going to do with this information? Who am I going to share it with so that action can be taken? Talking about the earthquake will be hard. I've already met one person who said he nearly committed suicide after the quake. When the earthquake happened, people thought the world was ending. And why not? A city falls down around you, people dead and dying, mutilated limbs hanging at odd-angles. Even though the news says this is an earthquake prone area, no one in alive in Port-au-Prince now had ever lived through an earthquake before. The last one major one was over two-hundred years ago. And now it is six months later, and the earthquake hasn't stopped. Longest earthquake ever.