(op-ed)
After 9-11 how much money did you have in your pocket? Could you have lived off of that for a week? What if you lived in LA and it was destroyed? The port gone, no airport, no electricity, no cellphones, no ATMs, no gas, banks closed, dozens of people you know are dead, over a million people making their way into the streets of your home town. How would you feel? How long until you would grow desperate? This is the current life in Haiti, in the big cities and the small towns, unaffected by the earth quake structurally but destroyed spiritually. Bit by bit, they are unraveling at a staggering rate. Without aid distribution points, without soldiers, and with supplies going to Port Au Prince and internally displaced people coming from Port Au Prince every day - this is life in Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city.
Port Au Prince was more than just the capital of Haiti - it was the logistic hub of a nation. In a nation heavily dependent on food imports, Port Au Prince moved goods to feed the nation. At the Port of Port Au Prince, the country's major port, damage repairs are slated to take 60-90 days before full operation. The supply lines from the DR border to Port Au Prince are clogged with aid traffic and the secondary port of Cap Haitien has been clogged with empty containers. Only the road from the DR in the north is bringing food, and even then, prices are increasing dramatically every day. The price situation will soon be worse than it was when food riots rocked Haiti.
The aid community here in Cap Haitien has no idea how many people are coming in. Accornding to Sunday's report, the city gymnasium was holding 400 people. The official report stated only 200. And when I went to visit Monday morning, closer to 1500 people had been removed from the gym and put on the streets. These 1500 people no longer have aid workers giving them food or water and are only a small portion of the thousands more living with relatives.
Cap Haitien is only starting to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with internally displaced people. But it lacks aid groups analyzing the traffic coming in bus after bus, taptap after taptap. Estimates range from thousands to above 10,000 a day. But as the country's second largest city with a population of 300,000, migration by even 10% of the 1.5 million homeless from Port Au Prince would strain already nearly nonexistent infrastructure to the breaking point. A more likely estimate would be 20%. In an already crowded city it is hard for an outsider to see the increases. But on certain routes you start to see it. Bit by bit there are more people, sitting around on the curb, walking around, trying to act as if they have some place to go.
The Haitian government has stated that the banks will open Wednesday and that displaced populations will be supported. Locals I have talked to say it will be at least another week before things open. The attitude towards displaced peoples locally is that they will just go to families and a plan can be developed after the triage in Port Au Prince.
Another week is too long. If the Government, MINUSTAH, the aid community, and Southcom do not move beyond the immediate situation in Port Au Prince and do not address the needs of a nation, there will be no nation to address. The only thing holding back the anger is the grief over what has happened. But eventually hunger will overcome even grief. The currency supply must indeed be returned by Wednesday and the internally displaced populations leaving Port au Prince must be addressed in a structured way or this country with no money and thousands of moving people will cease to be a country at all.
Peter Haas
