Tragedy in the Streets

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

On Saturday morning, Mawiyah and I left her peaceful lakou behind and entered the bustling city of Cap Haitian on our way to the airport. While people at the lakou are kept remarkably in line by 94 year-old Mashoun, there is no such order in the city. Under the current conditions of extreme poverty, relative lawlessness, rampant impunity, and never-ending uncertainty, tragedy is poised to strike at almost any moment.

Such a moment came as our taxi was driving down a main road. There was a traffic jam where there shouldn’t have been one; as we slowly moved along, we saw that a mob was spilling into the road from all directions. Driving past the scene, the cause of the disarray became clear: a corpse emerged from the crowd, jettisoned by its makers. The body ended up underneath a bus, and the driver was harangued by the ever-growing mob to run it over. He complied.

Haitians are not violent people. I have been adopted as family by people I did not know five months ago, and I cannot imagine a safer place than the quiet village of Fondwa, where people live together in peace even with no police, judges, or state officials present in the region. Still, Haiti’s situation is forcing people to take drastic measures for survival, and the security situation has degraded accordingly. Does this mean that people who care about Haiti, be they Haitian or foreigners, should give up hope for a better future? I think about Haiti as a person, just like you or me, who has good times and bad times. If you think about the time when you were lowest, when you wanted to give up, when it looked like there was no hope, you will undoubtedly recall that it was the people who stood by you that made the difference. Now, when the situation is most desperate, is Haiti’s greatest hour of need. May we respond in kind.