So: I'm back. And I have to say, going to Haiti was one of the most different things I have ever done. I have never felt so white or so privileged or so awkward or so uncomfortable or interested or satisfied or scared in my whole life. I have lots of pictures, and I have finally uploaded them. I'll be sorting out the crap ones and uploading the decent ones. Mostly decent. I'm not a great photographer, especially when moving vehicles are involved. Oh, and
my favorite Haitian primer.
The shock-and-awe of Haiti began early, at the airport. I have seen a lot of planes. This is the biggest plane I've ever seen.
For scale, a smaller plane. The terminal was full of planes. The volunteer sitting next to me on the plane said she'd never seen so many planes at PAP airport. Two, at the most.
It's not a great picture, but that's the US Military in the background.
It appeared that though we've turned the airport back over to the Haitians, security and coordination is still handled by others.
A UN guard below the walkway to customs.
This plane, which we passed on the way to customs, was filling up with Haitian orphans and their new families.
Another plane unloading medical supplies. Another layer of problems for relief workers:
the shakedown of supplies brought into the country.
For some reason, I thought that air traffic would have slowed down. Wrong.
That enormous plane? Russian. When Russia's sending relief supplies, you know you're in deep shit. (No offense, Minister Putin!)
I'm going to try and get some more pictures of the tent cities from my friends' albums later. There were a lot of them. And they are
not safe places to be.
And this was where we, the blanches, stayed.
Standing between us and a tent city: an enormous gate and a man with a twelve-gauge shotgun.
Demand was up, since this was one of the only hotels stills standing. The hotel had set up several tents, equipped with mattresses, lamps, and fans. The difference between our tents and the tents outside cannot be exaggerated.
A tent city bordering on destroyed buildings.
It reminded me of tornadoes, where some houses stand and some get their rooms torn off and some just get torn to the ground.
People must be clearing rubble from inside the property.
Pigs and goats eat out of mounds of garbage around the city.
The garbage, actually, is everywhere. This is the side of a busy road.
A standing house, a crushed station wagon.
A funeral home left standing.
To me, Port au Prince looks like a city built inside of a disaster zone. My uncle says that, before the quake, the city was finally making progress. Now, it's worse than he's ever seen it.
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