Port-au-Prince - As I was going downtown the other day, I came across a highly organized food distribution by the NGO Catholic Relief Services, or CRS.

The CRS had hired a bunch of young people to distribute their aid in an organized manner, with backup from U.S. soldiers. The soldiers had cut all access to the street, Rue Magny, where the aid was being distributed.

Many people couldn’t get access to the street even though they weren’t looking for aid. You couldn’t pass the barriers unless you were media, an employee, or have a pre-distributed card; everyone else just heard that simple sentence, “Stay behind the line please!”, over and over.

Some of those people became angry, because they only wanted to go to their job at the “Ministère à la condition feminine” or go to the Digicel customer care office (Digicel is one of our local cell phone providers).

As food began to be distributed, many people left satisfied, while others were still complaining about not having enough for their family, or the lack of access cards.

Yolande Pierre is a 56 –year-old blind woman who was being guided by a ten year-old girl. I met her around the distribution point, sitting on a corner with two heavy sacks of food, plus a bucket and gallon of vegetable oil. She told me she was waiting on her three younger kids to come and help her with the loads.

But they had a problem: her family didn’t really have any real shelter since the earthquake collapsed their house in Christ-roi. She told me that she walks the street every day, hoping to find aid distributions, usually with no luck.
Today she was just passing by Rue Magny when she heard about the distribution.

The two rules of aid distributions are usually 1) you have to have a card to receive aid, and 2) you need to be a woman. Since she didn’t have a card from the previous assessments, she counted on being a woman to get her access, and used her blindness as a source of compassion.

She told me that the Haitians working for CRS didn’t care about the fact she was blind; they were following the rules of their job and told her: “no card, no food: that’s the rule”. Fortunately, she found some kind young people that helped her explain her case to the soldiers; they eventually took pity on her and granted her access to the line. Afterwards, they allowed her to stay in a safe spot right behind them to wait for her kids to come by and help her with her goods.

The rules of aid distribution are important, but sometimes making exceptions is the right thing to do.

Port-au-Prince student, fixer and researcher Emmanuel Midi is blogs weekly for Inside Disaster from Haiti. You can learn more about him in these blog posts, connect with him on Facebook or through his business, Haiti Fixers.

Emmanuel volunteers with the youth organization Fonds D’Actions pour le Développement (FAD), profiled by Nicolas Jolliet earlier this month.

In every disaster, in every desperate situation, you will see heroes at work. In Haiti, we got to see plenty. The most publicized ones were the different rescue teams pulling survivors out of the rubble, or the Canadian military landing on the beach in Jacmel to bring food and relief to the starving population.

But the lapse of time from when a disaster strikes to the arrival of international help and the media can be long. It can be days, even weeks. It is during these crucial hours that everyday civilians become heroes, that social classes are forgotten and altruistic behaviors remembered. We never hear much about the early hour “civilian” heroes, even when there is media present. There are “big” headlining stories to report first.

As I go through my footage and photographs, as I try to replay these most intense days in my head, a few forgotten heroes resurface in my memory.

On the 15th, I met Giselle, who had just come back to live in Haiti after years spent in the States. I hitched a ride with her as I was trying to get back to the Red Cross camp. She was driving her brand new car around town, picking up medical supplies from closed or collapsed pharmacies. You remember that car commercial where the driving mom avoids every danger on the road with her super safe SUV? That was her, zigzagging around the rubble and chaos of Port au Prince. At the end of the day she would deliver the supplies she had found to doctors and nurses.

On the 16th, a businessman (Lakay Distribution) on Delma simply let the people in the neighborhood stay in the warehouse and help themselves to the stock of food there.

On the 18th, I met doctor Gilbert Wilkins while visiting camp St. Therese. Dr. Gilbert’s house had collapsed, but luckily he was working outside of town at the time. When he came back, he salvaged whatever medical supplies he could find from the rubble of his house and went straight to work. You could see he hadn’t slept for days, trying to keep cuts from getting infected without antibiotics, doing amputations without anesthetics, working in camps holding more than 3000 people… There were many like him, working around the clock in the camps with barely any medical equipment.

Later on that week, I saw 3 frightened women unloading pots full of rice from their car. They had parked right by Petionville police station. With the help of a handful of local policemen, they were facing a full crowd coming out of the overpopulated camp set in the main town’s square. They managed to serve hundreds of meals without any security problems. The women were from Petionville’s upper class, and found enough rice to take on ready-made meals food distribution on their own.

But in the end, as I have now had some time to digest and better understand everything that I witnessed, obviously, the ones who have touched me the most are the vast majority of survivors who keep on fighting to survive, who still believe in the future and who are committed to rebuilding their devastated country. Every day, under the merciless sun, they stand for hours waiting in the food lines without losing an ounce of their dignity. They will get by and make it to better days. What a lesson.

This is a time lapse of 2 hours of a food line.

Port-au-Prince – As street life starts again, so is the oldest profession of the world. And there’s a lot of new apprentices coming up town to work.

The vultures and amateurs of young, clean flesh are having a good time. The street prices are at their lowest, and there are plenty of women to choose from.

I found some of the new girls in mini-brothels, set up in court yards that look just like any camp.

Away from the bustle of the main streets, I wouldn’t have guessed that behind this rusty galvanized fence, school girls were learning their new trade.

All I see is a dog chewing on some garbage, and an old lady selling Tafia (homemade, high-proof rum) by the entrance.

All is quiet, except for a few Johns doing their shopping in darker corners.

As I have to do is wait for the place to be less busy, to wait for the Johns to finish their glorious deeds, to find a girl willing to tell me her story. We join the “party” sitting by a Tafia stand, where we could chat with the “street bosses”.

Tafia is a high proof home made rum containing tree bark and leafs that will “make da man strong”.

Tafia will intently lobotomize the rotten parts of your brains containing these memories and images you don’t want to carry with you.

Tafia will sweat the smells of the earthquake right out of your skin.

Tafia will free you from this tenacious diarrhea constantly reminding you that you are just a white boy and should stop eating out of side street food stalls.

It is a perfect choice to accompany the suffocating smell of burning trash that fills the neighborhood.

This is not a street party, just a dark and gloomy reflection of one. As you walk these dark streets, you watch your step so as not to stumble on families trying to sleep on side steps and hidden corners. On these streets, it’s hard to differentiate the “working” mothers from the ones that haven’t given in yet.

As things slowed down, I got to talk to “Johanne”. She barely had the energy to understand my questions. Her scorched voice, red eyes and already fading youth made me question what I was doing here.

But she had to tell her story, even though I could write it just by looking at her.

As we started talking, it seemed like she was waking up from a bad dream. She told me her story like she was hearing it herself for the first time. Johanne became more and more emotional, as if her mind had shut down since the 12th and now the numbness was wearing off.

Her story is a classic. At 19 (older than the others), she was still at school and working from home by doing laundry and cooking for people. When her house collapsed her and her two babies found themselves sleeping on the streets (where she still is today).

She used to live with her brother and her cousin, but now she doesn’t know where they are.

After she kept failing getting food in the early line ups, she started to sell herself to get money for food.

She charges from $3 to $6, the higher price for the richer clients driving a car. To give you an idea of what that will buy – a beer or a bottle of water is $1.50; a meal is $4 to $8.

Johanne tells me this is just temporary, that working the streets will allow her to save a little money to maybe go back to school, feed and send her kids to school, get a job, build a new life. But even though she is very pretty, business has been tough until tonight. There is lots of competition on the street, and prices are dropping.

“Johanne”, I wish you all the strength you will need, and I hope the whack of dollar bills I gave you won’t go to your pimp.

I hope you and your girlfriends can get out of this very soon.

Port-au-Prince – While driving out of town, 15 minutes past the airport, it’s easy to miss Camp Marassa. Under the dust and fumes raised by the heavy traffic sit 2685 people trying to protect themselves from the merciless sun.

They barely have any materials to build these tents of fortune. They used wood sticks from the bushes surrounding them and a few pieces of cloth. I haven’t seen a camp like this until now, 17 days after the earthquake. Even in Cite Soleil people seemed to be better off than this.

People are half asleep, staring in oblivion, trying to forget their hunger and thirst. There are no coal stoves boiling water, no women washing clothes in buckets, no kids playing. It seems very quiet as the wind coming from the valley plays its eerie music with the tarps and makes the fragile tents dance.

These people barely have anything, the only house ware I saw was empty bottles of water and plastic buckets. They have to walk 35 minutes to the fire station where they can BUY a bucket of water in exchange for two Gourdes ($0.10).

I’m the first media guy they see, but the good news is that as I walk in, two Red Cross workers from Dominican Republic show up. This is also the first time this camp has seen help coming.

The Red Cross didn’t come with food or water though, yet. They came to assess the needs of the victims. The Red Cross has been doing this for a while now, they go from tent to tent filling out forms. They write down the names of the inhabitants, the number of children per family and so on. Once a tent has been registered they tie a little colored string on it.

They will bring materials, food and water for each family later on. It might feel a little strange to see starving, thirsty, and sometimes illiterate people filling out and signing surveys. It is a slow process but in the end every family will get its share of food.

Its a time-consuming process, but it must work better than having to go fight in the U.N food lines.

Altenor Yonald, the head of the camp, tells me he’s happy to see the Red Cross, but some how he doesn’t seem to believe food will actually come. Altenor is surrounded by men holding wood sticks in their hands. They are trying to ensure some security and order in the camp while the Red Cross workers do their assessment.

But his main worry for security is at night. Because the prisons broke open during the quake, there are rumors of people being pillaged, beaten and raped in remote camps. Altenor would like to get some help from the police to protect them at night.

I hope these people get help soon, they really, really need it.

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.

As we got in, I saw these women singing gospel, it’s beautiful after a day like this. You can say that the songs were heartfelt – check out the video.

The calm didn’t last long as an aid organization came to try and distribute some food.