UN: Unlmited Nonsense

June 5: For lack of transportation, my friends and I found ourselves stuck a dance club in Petionville until dawn last night. Dance clubs in Petionville are a somewhat sordid affair, it seemed to me. Inebriated middle-aged foreigners rub up against scantily clad young Haitian women, some of whom agree to have sex with them for money. There were some young Haitian couples, but not many. I talked to a few of the UN and NGO workers there. The most memorable was a young Indian man who after asking me to dance proceeded to tell me how he has become disgusted with the UN over the five years that he has worked for it. For three years he's been in Haiti, before that he was stationed in the Congo. If you wanna go somewhere even worse than Haiti, he advised, you really ought to spend time in Congo. The UN is really quite talented at spending money, but they have no idea how to actually use it. The monthly budget is two billion dollars, and yet there is nothing to show for it. With that kind of money you could really rebuild this city, but it's not going to happen. Instead they pay their employees ridiculous amounts money and they don't even get taxed (just saying what I heard here)! In India he might be very decent salary of around 2,000 a month to be a computer geek there, instead he comes to Haiti and gets paid several times that amount to do basically nothing. He's here only for the money. Most people in the UN is there for the money. And while on the public front they maintain a very diplomatic front, from within the organization is ramp with racism. Nothing has changed, nothing is going to change. Nothing has ever worked. Haiti is the same before and after the quake, except now people live in tents instead of houses. In fifteen years, maybe, things will be different, but all of this post-earthquake stuff, this is just for show. UN: Unlimited Nonsense.

I don't know what bothered me more: his complete lack of respect for Haitian dignity, or the possibility that he might be right. There is a general consensus that nothing has improved, and that for all the money that was donated to Haiti, no one can really account for where it has gone. But there is no one to hold the UN accountable for its action or inaction. They drive through the streets in white SUVs or armored tanks with machine guns mounted on top (who are you going to shoot?!? I cried), but what is it that they are actually doing here?