The Mountains of Haiti

In one of my interviews yesterday, somebody commented on how this land used to be the "Pearl of the Antilles" and now it is the "Capital of Garbage". I have to admit, this last slogan is rather apt. At least for Port-au-Prince. There are parts of Port-au-Prince, particularly in Centre Ville, which have mountain ranges of garbage cutting through the streets. Some of this mountains are smoldering or on fire, since burning trash seems to be the only way to reduce its mass. I was walking down a road yesterday that was tiled several layers thick with flattened plastic bottles grayed with mud. I hopped an archipelago of trash to keep my flip-flops out of the fetid water. Bottles, plastic bags, styrofoam cartons, food scraps, rubble, plastic water sacks, wrappers are several feet thick in the canals, several feet high in the major intersections of the markets. This shit adds up. Some people (mostly foreigners I have talked to but some Haitians too) take the filth of the city to reflect the nature of the people. What kind of people would accept to live like this? Why do they have so little respect for themselves and their land that they denigrate their city like this? The problem of perception here is multifold, but my brief opinion would be that the people who share this opinion don't spend much time in Haitian homes, or in the camps, or simply aren't very observant. Individual Haitians have no control over the streets: those are public spaces that in many societies are claimed by the state. Also, at least in the States and in France, the state or the municipality concerns it self with the regular collection and disposal of garbage, in order to avoid exactly the situation we witness in Port-au-Prince. Individual Haitians have very little control or influence over large public spaces, since there are no channels for them to express a collective voice. But over the spaces that Haitians do have control (the body, the home) most exercise a great deal of concern with beauty, cleanliness, and order. The streets may be full of rotting garbage, but you will not find a spec of trash in most households. Even in the refugee camps, where people live under tarps on fields of mud, most tents are swept out, (even if the floor is rocks), garbage removed, things placed in order. For the most part, Haitians keep themselves remarkably groomed, an many dress much much better than me or my friends in the States. They might not have a roof, but shirts are spotless, children uniforms pressed, women's nails and hair are perfect. That's the thing: everyone is aware of the degrading state of the city, but they don't accept it (even if their waste-disposal practices help create it). No one thinks living like this is okay. People carry handkerchiefs in their sacks to wipe mud off their shoes. Even if they are obliged to live in mountain ranges of garbage because their is no force that cares for the healthy of people as a whole, many Haitians choose to define themselves in contrast to their surroundings by their personal comportment and their domestic spaces. While they can't control much, what little they can control reflects a great deal of personal dignity. You need dignity to live in a place like this (although as I have written about before, dignity on a national level is another thing). Obviously, I am not speaking for every single Haitian, like the man naked and covered in dirt that was walking through the electronics market the other day,but I am talking about most. Often when people on the outside think about Haiti, they speak and write as if you would have to be not fully human to tolerate these dehumanizing circumstances. But in the camp there are people who have planted rows of flowers and put up picket fences outside their tarp tents because if they have to live there, at least its going to be beautiful.

Addendum: After spending an afternoon in the Champs de Mars camp doing interviews, I think most of what I wrote here needs to be qualified. There is a certain level economic class associated with the nice hair and the clean shirts, even if it's not a very elevated class. There are many people who don't have the means to reach this level, and they aren't able to or aren't concerned with defining themselves against the poverty of the city.