Please try to contain your shock…
But crowd control remains an almost insurmountable problem. Word has gone out that the impoverished masses at the Pétionville Club will receive food and water, and the camp grows daily, with some aid workers saying it now numbers 100,000. Oxfam has done a heroic job of installing giant water bladders with taps, but this is insufficient.
The US Catholic Relief Service (CRS) was able to distribute 1,300 food kits late last week, but full-scale distribution has repeatedly been delayed for fear of food riots, while CRS divides the camp into A, B, C and D blocks and distributes a voucher to the mother of each family, in the hope of organising an orderly distribution. If all goes well, CRS will begin its distribution today. “If it takes an extra day to do it right, it’s worth it,” says Donal Reilly, the Dubliner in charge of food distribution for CRS.
The camp, one of the largest of some 500 in Port-au-Prince, is becoming infamous as a place where the displaced can find water and a modicum of security, provided by the US military, but no food. It’s not entirely true; the 82nd Airborne gave away 10,000 meals each day until Saturday, making this camp the US military’s largest distribution point in Port-au-Prince. But the Americans decided the food attracted too many people to a volatile site, and temporarily stopped it.
“The crowd has calmed down,” Lt Brad Kerfoot said as he surveyed the tent city below us. Fights broke out the previous day when CRS tried to distribute vouchers—not even food, just vouchers. “We told them we wouldn’t give any food away today, because of the way they behaved yesterday,” says Kerfoot.
The military and CRS officials say there are no signs of starvation in the camp. Some of its inhabitants have enough money to buy food in the local market. And the soldiers say they see ration boxes hoarded in what they call “the village”.
“Yesterday, they threw water bottles back at us and said, ‘We don’t want your water’,” Lt Kerfoot says. “When we gave out high energy biscuits, they threw them on the ground and stomped on them when they saw they were cookies. My soldiers and I think they’re ungrateful.”
The displaced Haitians want food, not water, a Haitian woman explained to me. And in their culture, biscuits are not real food, but something given to children.
During the day, Lt Kerfoot positions two riflemen armed with M4s above the camp. After nightfall, there’s an entire squadron. “There’s people in the camp with guns,” explains Donal Reilly of CRS. “There’ve been knife fights. The Americans told me last night the Haitians were selling drugs. It’s turning into a typical Port-au-Prince slum, and there’s not one policeman down there.”
Lol – I love it! I hope all those cell phone donations for food aren’t used to buy nourishing biscuits because they’ll get stomped in the ground! Too funny. Maybe hot dogs, ice cream, and filet mignon would be more appropriate?
Great front page article in the Wall Street Journal about a giant convoy to nowhere in Haiti that was too afraid to stop. They thought would be killed by the people they’re trying to feed unless they could distibute the food in a secure area – which they couldn’t find of course. Thank god they made it back to the airport by nightfall! Woooohahhahahahha
That is funny Mark, do you have a link to that?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704878904575031673153590414.html?mod=rss_Today’s_Most_Popular
Great Quote fron Philip Johnosn in the Comments section of the article:
.Goodman Said: “As for the poster who tries to compare Washington DC and Southern California’s infrastructure to Haiti – well, that just highlights your lack of comprehension as to what people are going through in Haiti. ”
Really ? You mean like what the people of Mississippi and Naw Leans went thru after Katrina and Rita came thru, or maybe what the people of Shri Lanka went thru in the Tsunami, or the the poeple in Florida when Charlie or Andrew came thru, or the Philipines having to evacuate due to Valcanoes, and for that matter couldn’t we compare Haiti chaos to Kosovo, or Georgia, or the Maos Massacre or even Stalin killing off Millions, or the 1975 Bingiao Dam disaster where 145,000 died the weeks after, or the China, Viet Nam, North Korea and British Famines.
You know, just because you can post, doesn’t mean you have to.
And, I repeat, anyone who pumps money into a 3rd World Country so they can keep breeding like rabbits is an idiot, plain and simple. But, I reckon that’s ok as long as you have your football metaphors, eh ?
60 Minutes had Lara Logan covering Green berets training Afghan commandos. One of the Afghans shot one of ours in the leg. The price of diversity. Next stop will be training Haitian commandos? Because when the mission is diversity, the job is never done.
No kidding OA, I interviewed the cadre at the base from where we train them here and they’ve been doing so for decades with no end in sight.