Life and death in Cite Soleil

By Nico — January 26, 2010 | 9 comments

This morning I went to Cite Soleil, the infamous “dangerous” part of town where most of Port-au-Prince’s “bidons villes” (slums) are located. Since these residents were already living in poverty before the earthquake, I wanted to see how they are coping now. I wanted to find out if life had become even harder for them.

It has.

Since the prices of water and food have doubled, the poor of the poor have no chance to get by. As I find my way in the maze of galvanized shacks and “tents” that make up Cite Soleil, I’m surprised to see many people carrying water buckets. It takes them an hour of walking per trip, in order to get water that only makes them sick.

I met Gedane Massean sitting down beside her tent. She is desperate, and shouts her pain at me. We begin to talk, and she tells me that she doesn’t have the strength to go find food. That she doesn’t have it in her to take care of her kids anymore.

Like many people, she is afraid to go to the food lines. She says it is too dangerous, and most of the time you don’t get to the front of the line before the truck is empty. I was about to see what she meant.

Since Cite Soleil is off limits for Red Cross workers (because of security), I didn’t expect to see any foreign help or food distribution. But as I came out of the slum I saw a contingent of U.N soldiers in front of the big police station on the main road.

The soldiers were about to distribute food and were trying nervously to organize the crowd of about 5000 people. They were very cautious – the line was about 1km long, and they broke it into sections with fences. At each fence they let people in 10 by 10 to go into the next line, and so on.

They were distributing 50kg bags of rice with oil (two liter bottles), and beans. At the end of the line, a policeman from Montreal was telling people to share the bags amongst the entire group of 10, and not to fight. The groups were not families and would open the bags right in the street to try and share it in panic and fear.

I asked a soldier if it wouldn’t be possible to take the grandma with a bad leg out of the line and straight to the food. He told me it wasn’t possible, because there was a lot of wounded and old people in the line already.

When the crowds would get restless, they would fire alarm guns and spray gas – as if the sun and dust wasn’t torture enough for these dehydrated, desperate people. Even though it looks bad, in order for people not to get hurt, the soldiers have to be tough and keep the line under control.

Unfortunately, they failed.

One line got out of control and started to push against the “fence” (metal frame holding barbwire). The soldiers held the fence to contain the hungry behind it. But people were getting crushed against it – a boy had the fence bar crushing his belly and was crying in the soldier’s face. The soldiers saw the kid and knew what was happening. If they don’t let go of the fence, someone will choke, If they do let it go, the crowd behind will walk all over them. They let it go.

I kept filming as the crowd rushed towards me. I watched the people that were in the front row get their legs caught in the barbwire as the crowd walked over them. A good video journalist would have kept filming, instead I went to help the women untangle their legs and dresses out of the barbwire.

5 minutes after all this, it was the end of the distribution. After spending 4 or 5 hours in the burning sun, only a few got rice, and most are exhausted and thirsty.

I understand now what Gedane was telling me.

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