En Haiti

I arrived to Port-au-Prince around 12:25, Friday, May 25, in the afternoon and met up with J.P., Conner, Tamara, Dr. Cadet and Dane. After waiting for Conner’s bags to show up (and they never did), we got into an “ambulance” and set off for Fond des Blancs.

The ambulance is a Toyota 4×4, a much needed all-terain vehicle that got us to FdB in just over 6 hours. It doesn’t sound that impressive when you know that FdB is only 90 miles away from PAP, but consider there are no roads and the trip involves driving through ditches and even a river or two.

When we arrived, J.P. and the St. Boniface people set us up in rooms next to the Presbyterian church connected to St. Boniface. Tired, we went to sleep in short order.

The days since then have been full and we have been running around interviewing several hours each day. Saturday, the very day after our arrival, there was a RATRAP meeting which we went to film. RATRAP is the local community organization that partially serves as the local government since there really is no government in force in the area. A good portion of the meeting was about the restavek issue and J.P. and Briell — a local leader — talked about their trip the U.S. in which they discussed the problem with groups around the northeast.

We have already shot over 20 tapes, mostly trying to focus on the restavek phenomenon, but finding other potential stories as well. We talked to a woman with 10 children whose husband is in prison and who will send two of her children to live with other families in Port-au-Prince. And then another family with 13 children in which the father said he would NEVER send his children away because of what might happen to them.

We also talked to a woman who has a tumor the size of a baby in her stomach but can’t get it cared for and another family whose house caved in but don’t have the money to do anything about it.

I know I don’t have to say much about the poverty, but it is impressive. It’s amazing that people survive. I’ve seen gross poverty before, but this kind really seems to offer no hope. Some of the children here are so hungry they have taken to eating dirt. According to J.P. – our “guide” of sorts – most of the families in the area are lucky to have one meal a day. There are few sources of employment beyond cutting down trees and making charcoal and selling mangoes which are plentiful in Haiti and, therefore, don’t fetch much on the market.

Or there’s the drug trade. We hiked up a mountain today to get B-Roll of the countryside. While Dane got footage of the landscape, a plane appeared and J.P. said it was making drops of cocaine on the shore to be taken to Port-au-Prince for delivery to the States. Naturally, I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. They must have seen me because they turned around and came right at us and J.P. started saying “This is bad news. We really should get out of here.” So, we quickly packed up and started back down the mountain.

We will leave FdB on Sunday and head to Jacmel where we are in contact with some former restaveks. Later, we will go to Jeremy where some parents have lost contact with their children who have entered the restavek system.