Six Weeks After

Plumes of tiny gnats hover over the green fringes of the water, frantically darting in circles and figure-eights. The water no longer surrounds the “Haiti Hilton,” a long cement building where hundreds of flood victims have been living for the past six weeks. However, stepping stones are still necessary to enter the next building over. From the roof of this building, one can see that the water stretches across the valley to the edge of the mountains, forming a vast lake where formerly there were houses, fields, and roads. At the current rate of recession, it will be months before the refugees can return to whatever is left of their homes.

In the meantime, a tent village is springing up across the road as the Hilton residents shift from their emergency accommodations to more permanent, if no less stark, living conditions. The road is Haiti’s National Highway Number One, but this section has been eerily empty since the great, arcing lake submerged 1.5 miles of highway just east of the Eben-Ezer Mission.

To the west, the road leads into Gonaives. In that direction, the water has finally receded from the road, collecting in the lowlands on either side. However, it has left behind a landscape resembling a battlefield with potholes the size of small buses. The picture doesn’t get any prettier as one enters the city.

Mud covers everything. Where the water has receded, the people have painstakingly scraped the mud out of their houses. Yet with no mechanical means of removing the mud—no dump trucks or bulldozers—it sits in great mounds along the edges of the road. In some places, it has dried and cracked beneath the sun’s penetrating rays. In others, it is still wet and ripe with algae and microbes. Between the stagnant water and the ubiquitous mud, disease has been ravaging the people—mosquito-born malaria, vaginal infections from wading through filthy water, severe allergies from the mold, and infected cuts on bare feet.

In the city streets, the people pick their way carefully around the wettest parts, winding their way through the city over a series of cement slabs and wooden boards set up to ease travel by foot. Those on bicycles and mopeds are forced to make their way directly through the mud. Those in cars don’t fare much better. They may be removed from the mud, but long lines form as two-way traffic is forced to alternate through narrow gaps between potholes and mud heaps.

At one point, the young man driving Eben-Ezer’s small, white SUV gets out to look ahead at the bottleneck where a large tanker is trying to pass in one direction and a convoy of UN trucks in the other. He leaves the car running because it must be pushed every time it is restarted. He goes to stand at the edge of the road where dozens of vendors sit fanning themselves beside their open-air displays: baskets filled with bags of cheetos and packets of powdered drink mix, tables piled with cans of tuna and evaporated milk, and strings of phone cards for DigiCel and Voila, the dominant cell phone companies.

The two women sitting in the mission car settle back in their seats, watching mopeds and bicycles swerve between the huge trucks that idle face to face. One moped driver miscalculates as he maneuvers the ruts in the road and tumbles sideways, dumping his two female passengers onto a small mud heap. A passerby pulls the moped off of them, and unharmed, the women angrily brush off their clothes, gather their things, and set off on foot. The driver sighs at the lost fare and continues down the road. Finally, a few police officers arrive and direct the tanker down a side street, allowing the UN convoy to pass, followed by a line of tap-taps and a few private cars.

After a failed attempt to withdraw money from the recently reopened bank (the system was down), the mission residents head back out of Gonaives, with one extra passenger whom they picked up in the city. Along the way, they stop twice to purchase goods from roadside vendors. First, they pull alongside a line of men who lift great blocks of ice from the road onto small tables, rinse away the sawdust in which the ice is packed, and chisel off chunks for their customers—a small square for 10 gourdes, a large rectangle for 50 gourdes. One of the mission women buys ice directly from the car window, haggling with the vendor over the size of her purchase and instructing the man to put it in a plastic sack. A few miles down the road, she tells the car’s driver to pull over, and she runs back ten yards to buy bread and avocados from a woman sitting beneath an umbrella.

Back at the mission, the field workers are told they must go another day without pay. Some are angry, others resigned. All are frustrated.

“Hanna,” they mutter. “Hanna has ruined everything.”