Port Au Prince

I’ve talked a lot about life in rural Haiti, but much of Haiti’s most devastating poverty is in the larger cities. Haiti’s largest city is Port Au Prince, but Haiti has a number of large cities. I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Port Au Prince, but I’ve also spent some time in St. Marc, L’estere, and Gonaives, all of which are relatively close to La Croix. This past week I went down to Port Au Prince this past weekend and walked around it a little while we were waiting to pick up the group from Westminster.

Port Au Prince has a few nice places, but overall it is a not a happy city. I stayed there for a few days with Deborah Schmid (an American who lives there) and toured the city when I first arrived last September. Since then I’ve made a trip down every few weeks with the mission. It has, in great quantities, everything that makes a city miserable. The roads are littered with all types of pollution, and many of the roads are lined with canals bursting with trash. The gasoline is not unleaded, so the relatively few cars create more smog than I’ve experienced in any major US city. There are people running around everywhere, and there are motorcycle taxis zooming every which way, some with four or five people on them. The pavement is ripped with potholes, making a drive through the city feel a little like an off road adventure. There are no recognized traffic laws, so driving feels a little more like Mario Kart than I would like. The city is also scattered with dry waterways full of trash. There are even some goats and pigs hanging out in them, eating whatever scraps they can find. 

There are beggars everywhere and they crowd around any car with a white person in it. The beggars give are very trying and really wore me out this past visit. They’re not like beggars in the US with a cup and cardboard sign, they come right up to you and follow you. I feel just awful for them, but I know that giving out money will just make them worse off. All I can hope is that the work I do in La Croix will, in some way, help someone get off the street. The worst thing about the beggars is that the only way to get them out of your face is to be blatantly mean to them. They come up to you, get very close, and continuously ask for money; the only way to move forward and get past them is to say “deplase!” or “move!”. The only other time I had to shout at someone in the street was in Paris this past summer when a pickpocket came up to me. I pity these beggars with my whole heart, but they are so aggressive that I have to constantly be on my guard. I turn into someone who is hesitant of everything around me, and I hate being that person.

There are street boys at every traffic intersection and street light who wipe the dust off of your car. They are kind of like squeegee men in New York, except more aggressive and; if you don’t pay them they will put their faces right up against your window and stare into your car until the light turns green. They don’t take no for an answer, making them all that more intimidating. Sometimes they will lift the wipers off the windshield or smack the hood of the car. I saw something a little like this in poorer parts of Cape Town and Nairobi, except in Haiti there seem to be at least a dozen boys at each stop light. In Kenya, our driver would give a few small coins to anyone who came up to the car just to keep them from hurting the car. Here I thought the same strategy might work, but Deborah Schmid says that if you give one boy a coin the other boys will come over and fight him for it. Many of the boys are apart of gangs and have someone looking over them on the side of the road, forcing them to hustle. I can’t describe how intimidating and depressing seeing these boys is. They stare into your car with a look of desperation, and all you can do is try to focus on the street light ahead, hoping you get a green light at the next stop. They seem to be in such a terrible situation, and I feel awful because there is nothing I can do to alleviate the situation. If I give them money then they fight over it, and whoever wins the money won’t get it in the end, it will go toward some gang that will put more boys on the street.

The most intimidating part of Port Au Prince though is all of the UN conveys. The UN’s Haiti Mission has a bunch of troops stationed in Haiti, and their goal is to prevent election violence and generally keep the peace. There are some in Haiti who support the UN’s presence, and there are those who wish the UN would pack up and leave. I don’t know what their overall effect is in keeping the peace, but they make the city feel a little like a war zone. The troops are transported in large open convoys, usually a dozen in each truck. The trucks have canvas roves and the troops inside them are totally visible. Every soldier looks like a US Army Private, complete with heavy boots, a loaded rifle, and fatigues, the only difference being their powder blue UN helmet. The convoys are everywhere, and they dwarf every other car around them. I’ve never been to a city occupied by a military, but the UN convoys reminds me of the films of Vietnamese peasants milling around the convoys full of US soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Port Au Prince is not an easy place to visit. Between the armies of street boys and the UN soldiers, it feels like a war zone, making you feel unsecure in your own car. That said, I’m glad I’ve been there. Port Au Prince, for all its rough spots, has goodness shining into it. Right near the airport there is an NGO called Rebuild Globally that has an employment program for women and street boys. The program is a mix of education and vocational training, giving the poorest of the poor a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. The company Thread Inc., a Pittsburgh based recycling company, takes the plastic that litters so much of Haiti’s streets, and recycles it into cloth. Driving down this most recent time I saw a soccer game being played by two teams of amputees. Seeing the poorest parts of the world is certainly difficult, but coming back to them allows me to see the where the darkness is a little less dark. I can only hope what type of potential Port Au Prince will realize in years to come.