HAITI: from Port au Prince to Grande Goave

We arrive in early afternoon on Saturday, September 4 at Toussaint Louverture International Airport, greeted by a live band playing upbeat Haitian music, an unexpectedly festive touch, and ensuing luggage chaos, not entirely unexpected.  We walk out into the sunshine and are greeted by our driver pretending to be an eager porter sneaking in between us and grabbing at our bags -- he's just clowning around with us. 

As we drive from the airport through Port au Prince and into the countryside, the look and feel is similar to other underdeveloped tropical countries where I have been, such as Cambodia or Indonesia.  It's dusty, dirty and chaotic, there are no traffic lights and no traffic rules, pigs and goats roam garbage on the side of the road, buildings are mostly one and two story rudimentary cement structures in decaying condition.  What is different is here we pass loads of UN trucks and soldiers, including one tank situated in a crossroads surrounded by barbed wire as if imprisoning itself.  Massive tent camps line the road and there are piles of rubble everywhere.   We even pass tents erected in the middle of the road, in the median section between two lanes (something I had read about and, indeed, there they were).  People are desperate to stay in Port au Prince to receive help and to find work, although it is hard to get either.  I don't see as many damaged buildings as I had thought I would, but we are not driving through the worst-hit areas of Port au Prince -- this is only some extent of it.

[Click on image to view larger]

Our destination is Grand Goave, a town (a small village, I would say) in the countryside about 2 1/2 hours drive from Port au Prince, just past the town of Leogane, which is situated in the epicenter of the earthquake.  80% of buildings were destroyed or damaged here.  There were less casualties in this area, however, because people were able to run away to safety, being the countryside with so much more space around.  The destruction was so massive in parts of Port au Prince because there people lived crowded together in badly constructed shacks with only tiny alley-ways in between and there were no means of escape, it all collapsed right upon them.

 In Grand Goave, there are several large tent camps for displaced families, both those who have lost homes in the local area and for the many who have fled Port au Prince to take refuge here.  Many others live in tent or tarp structures outside of their destroyed homes.  Terre des Hommes, our partner organization, encourages people to go back to where their homes are, because the risk is that people will end up staying in the tent camps for several years.
We also pass one camp which is referred to as a "ghost camp", that is, people have created a camp to draw attention and receive help from international aid organizations but no one is actually staying there!