Haitian children at the water’s edge. Photo: Ara Ayer

Worldfocus correspondent Benno Schmidt writes about navigating Haiti’s dilapidated infrastructure while reporting there last year.

Driving in Haiti is an experience unlike anywhere else in the world, with roads haphazardly crisscrossing one another, one- and two-way interchanges clogged with patched together cars and buses, dilapidated trucks limping along on fewer than two working axles, taxis and horse- or donkey-pulled carriages breaking down randomly or changing direction suddenly.

Simple trips of only a few miles in length turn into a half-day adventures as private construction or home improvement attempts (underscore attempts) spill into streets with no warning — trapping vehicles and blocking key arteries.

There is no ‘normal’ in getting around Haiti — international efforts in the wake of the earthquake will be hobbled by a country that doesn’t have functioning roads — much less interstate highways — and can’t support large trucks or construction equipment/bulldozers under ideal conditions, let alone after a horrific natural disaster like the recent earthquake.

There are no patterns of traffic, no recognizable right of ways, no sense of order to the mass chaos in and around the capital Port au Prince — the epicenter of the massive quake.

Driving approximates scenes straight out of ‘The Road Warrior’ (if vehicles had room to speed, or functioning mechanics to attain speed!) coupled with a spirited game of chicken.

Traffic halted along nominally one-way streets?

No worries!

Drivers violently reverse or turn around. What was once one-way is suddenly two ways.

Planning a day around well-intentioned meetings is a vain exercise if any time inside a car is required. Best to agree on an afternoon meeting time — which can quickly morph into an evening or next day rendezvous should accidents or breakdowns occur: probably the only constant while driving around Haiti.

These conditions will make international aid efforts more difficult as large trucks and earth moving equipment—so central to search/rescue/rebuilding efforts will not be able to even move initially.

Simple SUVs are often mobbed in the slums of Port au Prince when UN patrols police areas. SUVs in Haiti have a distinct otherness, a build quality and functionality quotient that screams money, food, drinkable water or work.

They are easy targets for kids and adults looking for company, water, food or work. In desperate times they will be mobbed, surrounded and halted.

In 2009, Worldfocus visited much of Haiti by car and helicopter and found medieval conditions widespread — roads abruptly dead-ending into forests or standing water with no evidence of state run public works or sanitation efforts.

This is what the international community faces when sending aid to Haiti.

Worldfocus documented flooding in the western port city of Gonaives a year after heavy mud slides left 80 percent of the city homeless or under water.

Roughly a 100 miles, the drive from the capital to Gonaives took six to nine hours depending on traffic and road conditions.

A spontaneous political demonstration devolved into a massive block party and kept us motionless for several hours on the way back as we approached the outskirts of the capital…

One year later entire areas of Gonaives were still digging out — by hand.

The hands of elderly men — 70- and 80-year-olds stood proudly with shovels outside city hall offering hourly labor to homeowners deluged with mud — again a year after tropical storms flooded Gonaives.

The odd dump trucks available were slowly moving dirt outside the city, but most of the ‘progress’ was by hand.

There weren’t enough large trucks available in all of Haiti to dig out and move the mud — so a year later people abandoned their first and second floors to standing mud that expands with moisture and brought down so many homes with folks inside.

Haiti’s sorry transportation state is further hampered by cronyism, cheap chicanery, generational corruption, political corruption, squabbling and payoff schemes that keep public projects mired in delay and argument.

Corruption in Haiti is the norm.

Aid workers will have to bring their own communication infrastructure and equipment, and treat the entire area around Port Au Prince as a mass undeveloped area in crisis dotted with broken roads, busted homes and numerous other hazards.

Getting equipment and workers into Haiti will be a lot easier than affecting change once on the ground.

- Benno Schmidt

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

In Haiti, freedom of expression is alive and well despite nearly constant turnover in the government, from the president and prime minister all the way down to obscure ministers often forced out over corruption charges.

But one of Haiti’s signature political expressions is this: A huge rally for a senate candidate shutting down an already traffic-clogged part of Port-au-Prince, the island nation’s capital. These types of demonstrations are part political rally, part Mardi Gras, and a big excuse to party. There is nothing subtle about these impromptu celebrations, which start small and then drag in people and onlookers with very little political interest into the fracas.

For people living in terrible poverty, the political rallies are an excuse to cut loose and dance in the streets. Haiti’s police help direct traffic and onlookers as the rallies grow and grow.

Haiti’s sanitation, sewage and plumbing are nonexistent for large pockets of people living in crowded conditions in Port-au-Prince. It means that nearly forty tons of trash and sewage and debris literally wash into the Caribbean each year after the storm season. The result is that the large slums in Port-au-Prince like Cité Soleil bleed into the sea. People fashion houses and living quarters out of the mounds of trash and sewage that accumulate.

It creates havoc for fishermen who say the fish are getting smaller, are harder to find and are sometimes poisoned by all the trash and nasty stuff seeping into the water. Also, the storm season each year contributes to the trash problem as rains form mudslides that wash everything into the ocean.

- Benno Schmidt

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

The small island nation of Haiti relies heavily on food imports, but with prices soaring, some Haitians are resorting to eating mud.

The cookies — made of dirt, butter and salt — hold little nutritional value, but manage to keep Haiti’s poor alive.

Worldfocus special correspondent Benno Schmidt and producer Ara Ayer report from Haiti, showing how far some people are going to fill their stomachs.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

On the outskirts of Port-au-Prince’s infamous slum – Cité Soleil – we stumbled into this explosion of noise, excitement, money and above all else, anticipation.

We couldn’t understand why the Haitian men, just a few feet from the Caribbean in the outer extremes of the slum, weren’t letting the roosters off their leashes to fight.

This was one of the several cockfights held every Sunday in various parts of Port-au-Prince. The whole point is for two prized roosters to fight it out unrestrained, with betting and bragging rights going to the winners.

In a country where many live on less than a dollar a day, gambling is a way to make a lot of money fast. The men were clearly getting their prized fighters ready: Washing them down, winding them up and pointing them in the direction of their anticipated foe.

But then our Haitian fixer/guide told us they were waiting for us — the Worldfocus crew — to make a bet. They weren’t going to bet their own money and thought the camera crew might be interested in placing a wager. So, the extraordinary images in the above video were as close as we came to seeing an actual cockfight here in Haiti.

No money to wager meant that these roosters got a pass — at least that Sunday. They didn’t have to battle it out because no one was putting any money on the table — at least not for the fights.

- Benno Schmidt

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Chosen by Haitian President Rene Preval, Pierre-Louis — the country’s second female prime minister — directed the Foundation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL), a non-governmental organization that works for economic empowerment.

But she faces enormous challenges in a country with a history of government instability and pervasive political, economic and social upheaval.

In January, Worldfocus correspondent Benno Schmidt interviewed Pierre-Louis. In this extended interview, she discusses how she and the rest of the government can work to overcome Haitians’ ingrained distrust of political leaders.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Visit a few inhabitants of Gonaives to learn how the mud has interfered with their lives.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.

Worldfocus special correspondent Benno Schmidt and producer Ara Ayer visited there recently and report that in their struggle to survive, Haitians are destroying the very elements of their environment that sustain them.

Months after the storms have passed, some Haitians are trying to dig their homes out of 10 to 15 feet of mud. The video Hurricane mudslides bury Haitian towns explores how long-gone storms continue to interfere with day-to-day life.

Below, bloggers discuss the environmental disaster in Haiti and what can be done.

A blogger at “Haiti Tales” describes her experience visiting Haiti for the first time:

We were “prepared” to be bombarded by locals when we arrived begging for money, but never was I ready to see the amount of people waiting - for our plane only (only two fly in each day). Surreal thing - as we landed in Port au Prince, you could see the devastation on the mountains from past and recent storms [...] I was dumfounded by the amount of people in the streets - very dirt[y], very condensed streets. There were fires started in the roads, stray (skinny) dogs everywhere eating from garbage and little kids walking around near dark by themselves. [...] The air wreaked of fire.

Very devastated place here — very poor — very sad. Lots of beauty though too, and I am hopeful that I will see more of all of it.

Blogger Daniel Schnitzer, the director of an organization working on environmental innovation projects, writes about possibilities for building Haiti’s future:

Back in August of 2008, during my first trip to Haiti, I was standing in front of the heaviest paperweight I had ever seen in my life.  It was a perfectly new 170 kW diesel generator, connected to a non-functional streetlighting grid in a coastal town called Tiburon on the western tip of Haiti’s southern peninsula.  My Haitian friends had told me that the local congressman invested tens of thousands of dollars and a great deal of effort into developing this project. But now that he had been re-elected, no one was sure whether this generator would ever give light to Tiburon. Electricite d’Haiti built the grid, but had since abandoned it.

This was just one of several personal encounters I had on that trip with symptoms of the governmental and market failure we read and hear about. [...]

In Les Anglais, InterIntel is building a clean energy retail store to stock appropriate energy technologies like solar lamps, solar home systems, and efficient charcoal stoves. Of course, merely having a brick and mortar store is insufficient to engender the transition to cleaner energy sources. This project is characterized by three other key features - cooperation, training and microfinance - to foster this type of change.

Another Web site, Konkou Biznis Ayiti, has launched a contest for entrepreneurs, hoping to bring biogas — a form of renewable biofuel — to Haiti.

For more Worldfocus coverage of Haiti, visit our extended coverage page: Haiti’s Poor.