Friday, June 4th: The truck was supposed to come at eleven. People started milling about around ten, perched on the rubble or sitting in the shade of the tree. When I was wandering through the camp a woman approached to ask if I was there to bring the aid to help them. No, I'm not able to bring you aid right now. Those are the other blans. The camp was full of life that afternoon, since many stayed in to wait for the aid rather than go into the street with their plastic goods and pots of oil to try and make a bit of money in the street. The sun beat down harder as the hours passed: noon, one, two. The people waited patiently, listening to the radio while drinking sips of water out of small plastic sacks. Around 2:30 Darly got the news: the truck with aid that they had been expecting for days wasn't coming. The group had poorly planned their day and now they didn't have time to go to the depot, fill the truck, and return to distribute it at the camp before nightfall. The people would have to wait until Monday to get food. Darly reluctantly picked up the megaphone and began announcing to people that food wasn't coming that day. There wasn't much of a public reaction. People picked up their things and dispersed, some back to the camp, others into the street, maybe to try to make some money before the day was through. "That's just fucked up," Hence said. Hence used to live in Brooklyn before he was deported, pretty close to where my apartment is now. "Why they do that? In the US, if you say you come, you gotta come!" Haitians are a calm people, someone told me. Are they calm or are they patient? Well, to be patient you have to have hope, and there's no hope here.
Really, what is a truck full of food really going to change? It will fill people's bellies, but then they will be empty again and waiting for the next truck, if there is one. How long will there be trucks? I met a member of the Mexican embassy last night who said they are withdrawing aid next week. One by one most of the NGOs will leave, and the people will still be living under tarp. Congratulations, you help keep these people alive for a few months, but in the end you are still leaving them to die. Not directly, of course, but most of the money seems to be going to the metaphorical bandage, while no one seems to addressing the more endemic problems that perpetuate poverty here. The general consensus, from what I gather, is that no one is fit to address it either. While waiting for the truck I had a long converation with a young man named Billy who lived in the camp. He studied psychology in school and wanted to leave Haiti to work as a psychologist, but at the moment his plan is to buy cases of beer in Port-au-Prince and go to his hometown of Port-au-Paix to sell it during the World Cup. The only way to get a good job is to leave the country or work for an NGO. For him, there is a vast crisis of leadership in the country, since the elite classes are thieves and the government is corrupt. It's our own fault, really, he said. We were the ones who elected Preval a second time. It's because everyone can vote in Haiti, even if they can't read, so canidiates with means can buy votes with a couple of dollars or a bag of rice. One of the most important things is to raise the basic level of education in the country so that people are so easily bought by the government. "We are suffering the consequences of our inconsequence."
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