People worry first about survival in Haiti political crisis

by Catherine Hours

Friday, January 2, 2004

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP): Sitting on a broken sidewalk, Gueguette Montina hopes to sell enough reheated coffee to feed her family, and like most ordinary Haitians is more concerned for her day to day survival than the political crisis wracking the country.

Haitians are caught between President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the political opposition in Haiti who both seek legitimacy through popular support for them.

In a statement marking the bicentenary of Haiti's January 1, 1804, independence after slaves revolted against French rule, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed hope Haiti would find a way forward "to overcome the current political impasse in their country". 

"There is a need to build a consensus that allows the goals of good governance, respect for human rights, economic and social recovery, and human and environmental regeneration to be more vigorously pursued," Annan said.

Sheer poverty, in the meantime, drives thousands of Haitians each year to move into the Cite-Soleil, a huge shantytown in the capital, located between the port and airport and home to 400,000 people.

Gueguette has lived there for eight years, ever since the boat she attempted to flee Haiti in wrecked on Guantanamo, the US military base in Cuba. 

In the midst of tents of torn canvas and huts with peeling paint, she sells coffee, sometimes spaghetti, heated on an old stove, earning around two dollars a day.

"I haven't paid rent for a year," she said. Her breezeblock hut has no running water and is in a neighborhood eaten up by fear since rival armed groups began to mete out their own law.

"Things are getting worse, nearly everyone is unemployed. People who have anything leave because of the thieves," said Estheus Kesner, who is in charge of the church of the Immaculate Conception.

Two thirds of Haiti's eight million inhabitants live below the poverty line; the economy is in tatters as is sanitation; and, according to the UN Development Programme in Haiti, 50 percent of the people suffer from malnutrition, only 46 percent are connected to mains water, AIDS is rife, and life expectancy is no higher than 50 years.

The crisis has grown out of political instability, institutions' deficiency, neglect, absence of investors, and on top of it the freezing of international aid following disputed 2000 elections.

Young people hang around in the streets. "Our only pastime is sex," said Gary Gervais, a city hall employee who has not been paid his meager 100 dollar wage since July,

People live by their wits. Many dress in second hand clothes brought from the United States. A few receive income from family living abroad. Some two million Haitians send around one billion dollars back home each year.

Many pin their hopes on the New York and Santo Domingo lotteries.

Others exist by cutting back on costs. Nadege Dieudonne and her seven children will be eating mashed corn this year, rather than the New Year speciality meat and squash soup she prefers.

Nadege lives in "Ti Haiti" -- or Little Haiti -- the most poverty stricken part of the shanty town. The ground is covered in smelly trash and open sewers flow like streams. But people stoically hang in there, naming their humble abodes "Patience" or "God Above All".

One of the many problems besieging Nadege is a leaky roof. "My son has typhoid and I have an ulcer," she said, as she sews together the hessian sacks that make her a meager living.

Graffiti covering the walls of Cite-Soleil includes slogans such as "Vit Titid" -- Long Live Aristide, the former shantytown priest, now president who has not lost all his popularity, it seems.

Nadege says she puts her faith in God. "It's not that politics doesn't interest me, but I really have to think of my children first. I don't know if some have taken advantage of Aristide being in power -- but I haven't seen much from him."

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