If malnutrition is not enough to kill babies, flooding tents, dirt floors and little to no bedding aids and abets the stalking Grim Reaper. Moms report increasing fevers and coughing, eagerly positioning a pair of obviously sick twins on a piece of cardboard for us. It was their idea. Why? They wanted us to take a photo and get it back to America. Take a look and see what you will.
What is unconscionable is that most of the tents are still tattered and have no prayer of keeping out the rain. Light gauge blue tarps made in China have shredded to lace. There are sturdier tarps that have been donated through USAID and other charitable organizations, but the only way for residents of Camp Canaan to procure these tarps is to go to the black market and purchase them.
Here is one example.
So we went to the nearest market and it took us minutes to locate the donated Buddhist tarps that now had price tags of 500 Gourdes or about $12 US. The vendors were eager to unfurl the quality tarps but would not offer up how they came by them. Two stalls down we spied some USAID tarps, but every time we tried to take a photo the vendor angrily turned them over so the logo was not visible. We did not want to press our luck.
As serendipity would have it, Al Jazeera must have been on the trail of the pilfered tarps at the same time we were, because this video surfaced in the last day and corroborates what we found, and more.
The USAID tarps were a bargain at $7.50 and of similar quality as the Buddhist tents. We found one of the USAID tarps covering a Volkswagon on the side streets of Port-au-Prince.
The bigger question still haunts us. Why is it acceptable for Haitians to live in tents, tattered or not? World Vision has received at least $19 million for housing.
Having seen more than enough, we moved up the road about two minutes by car to Camp Corail. Remember the story of Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the late eighteenth century, who was also the lover of Catherine the Great? Potemkin had elaborate fake villages constructed for Catherine's tours of the Ukraine and the Crimea. "Aid" has now created a similar city of illusion within sight of the shredded blue tarps of Camp Canaan. It is only the color of the tents and the strength of the plastic and nylon tents that delineates the two camps.
America's sudden love affair with Haiti has helped to create this city of illusion within sight of the "tents" of Camp Canaan --and all anyone wants is to "go home."
USAID, the International Office of Migration (IOM), Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the US Army's 82nd Airborne division, the Haitian government, OXFAM, and World Vision erected approximately 1300 bright white tents that shimmer on the hot barren plain just a stone's throw from forgotten Camp Canaan. The gravel that serves as the "foundation" for the tents is as white as the tents, and the whole effect is like that of a gleaming desert. The American flag adds a surreal touch.
USAID figures report that 4,921 people have been moved to Camp Corail from Petionville. Talk to the people here and all they want is to get out from underneath the sweltering nylon that makes it impossible to stay inside the tents from noon until 3 pm. They may have escaped the mud, but now they are hungry and their tents are still flooding. To compound matters, they are absolutely as isolated as their hapless neighbors in Camp Canaan on a desert-like plain that floods at night.
Residents report that they were promised a three-month supply of food. One month after relocation, they say they are out of food and the small amounts of rice they have cannot be cooked because there is no charcoal to do so. We were lucky to get the interviews because the UN usually keeps visitors at bay. After Save the Children spotted us, a UN patrol appeared, but by that time we were well on our way out of the camp.
USAID reports that the WFP maintains 35,000 metric tons (MT) of mixed food commodities in stock in Haiti. Why warehouse it if these two camps and several more we visited are going hungry?
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