Post-Earthquake Haiti

Posted on March 30, 2010 by townsend

• Rebuilding Haiti, By Kenneth Kidd, March 28, 2010, Toronto Star: “The rows of mounded, soggy earth stand nearly a metre tall, all of them fashioned by hand and hoe. By one row, his knee braced against the side, a farm worker is plunging long green shoots into the soil, sweet potatoes in the making. He’ll toil like this for six days a week, six hours per, and take home the equivalent of roughly $14 (U.S.). Next week, or maybe the week after, he’ll tend to his own little plots of land, his other role in the complicated agricultural system that reigns in the Artibonite region, about halfway between Port-au-Prince and Cap Haïtien to the north. The Artibonite is laced with winding rivers and irrigation canals, like strands of leftover spagetti on a dinner plate. Sweet potatoes, bananas, mangoes, rice and corn all flourish, the rich soil yielding three full crops annually. But apart from a few mangoes, scarcely any of this horticultural largesse makes its way south along Rue nationale #1 to Port-au-Prince – a three-hour journey over a dusty, heavily potholed road whose hazards sometimes reduce speeds to 10 km/h. After such a trip, most Artibonite produce simply can’t compete with crops grown closer to the capital in poorer soil, much less against imported, subsidized food from the United States…”
• Quake accentuated chasm that has defined Haiti, By Simon Romero, March 27, 2010, New York Times: “The lights of the casino above this wrecked city beckoned as gamblers in freshly pressed clothes streamed to the roulette table and slot machines. In a restaurant nearby, diners quaffed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne and ate New Zealand lamb chops at prices rivaling those in Manhattan. A few yards away, hundreds of families displaced by the earthquake languished under tents and tarps, bathing themselves from buckets and relieving themselves in the street as barefoot children frolicked on pavement strewn with garbage. This is the Pétionville district of Port-au-Prince, a hillside bastion of Haiti’s well-heeled where a mangled sense of normalcy has taken hold after the earthquake in January. Business is bustling at the lavish boutiques, restaurants and nightclubs that have reopened in the breezy hills above the capital, while thousands of homeless and hungry people camp in the streets around them, sometimes literally on their doorstep…”