2014 Haiti Journal #3 "No Skin"

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“Port au Prince is a city so naked it has no skin,” warns Jonathan Katz. 

True. We saw its raw body shaken to the bone four years ago with the historic earthquake then watched, literally, as those bones were sifted and lifted out of the rubble for burial and so that very rubble could be sold for scrap.

Now, people want to know what shape PAP is in. One third of the country’s population was swept into the capital city by manipulated foreign policies, hunger and desperation; she reels under the weight. 

Sickened and with still thousands homeless, she searches for relief. There is still no clean water running through her pipes and no sewage sanitation, though now nearly nine thousand dead from that condition combined with UN introduced cholera. Electricity is still a random-hours-a-day luxury. Her children are still being abandoned (two were offered to our team this week by blank-eyed and hopeless parents) and her remaining children are too often dependent on random acts of charity for a warm meal a day and hope for a chance at education.

Three days after the quake we carried hundreds of pounds of medicine and supplies that even Doctors Without Borders had run out of. A dozen trips later, we stare into PAPs face again. She is trying to pull herself together a bit. Some big new buildings are going up; now you don’t see garbage being burned on every street corner; and there are fewer UN troops with automatic weapons pointed at anyone with a camera. 

The Royal Oasis (Clinton/Bush) Hotel found it rather distasteful to have to stare across the city cavern at a hillside of impoverished shanties, so the only business savvy thing to do was to squander elusive Haitian dollars not on water, electricity or education, but on a fresh coat of paint for those crumbling shanties. 

PAP stands still - although mutedly - as her face is painted.

This week we helped patch up her hungry, sick and homeless a bit – as the following journals will tell, and though there are still too many struggling, we found strength in the resiliency of her people. 

Like the corn stalks we saw growing in the gutter, 

Haiti will find a way.

Her women, in particular, showed us their heart, shared their music and taught us the real meaning of solidarity and strength. 

peace all ways and always, Leisa

Children's Hope

3025A Cambridge Road

Cameron Park, CA 95682

Professor Leisa Faulkner, University of the Pacific; Folsom Lake College; Founder, Children’s Hope