It’s hard to see in the photo but this kid’s Scooby-Doo shirt would probably fetch a nice price at a vintage shop in DC. The woman at rear is collecting water from a drainage ditch — water that had spilled from a water truck down the block.

Ever seen City of God? From an (enthusiastic) article on Wikipedia:

The neighborhood, originally designed to house manual laborers for a local Export Processing Zone (EPZ), quickly became home to squatters from around the countryside looking for work in the newly constructed factories. After a 1991 coup d’état deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a boycott of Haitian products closed the EPZ. Cité Soleil was soon thrust into extreme poverty and persistent unemployment, with high rates of illiteracy.

Armed gangs roam the streets. Murder, rape, kidnapping, looting, and shootings are common as every few blocks is controlled by one of more than 30 armed factions. The area has been called a “microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, insanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence.”

US Army scouts are currently conducting foot patrols in the neighborhood to provide security to food distributions and a couple guys I met said that it has been very quiet lately. But they’ll be pulling out in a few weeks and apparently turn the area over to Jordanian troops.

I’ll post more pictures in the coming days. For now, this little character. She followed me around, refusing to take her little fingers off my leg.

The post title? Inspired by this (Vermonter’s) song.

We often see cars on the road – driving – that were heavily damaged by falling buildings and debris. I’ve seen cars with no windshields, cars with roofs crushed like aluminum foil, massively dented cars missing whole body panels and doors. Half the time the streets look like a demolition derby.

This poor guy was trying in vain to retrieve pieces of the V6 engine from his destroyed Acura. 

Thousands of houses like this one stand half-fallen around Port-au-Prince, next to others that have crumbled into piles of debris.  The sign reads “House for Sale.”  Morbidly funny under the circumstances, but it points to a probably long lasting consequence of the earthquake that can easily be overlooked in the face of the immediate humanitarian disaster.  For the time being, most real estate is virtually worthless.  The collapse of so many homes has created engineering challenges and urban planning dilemmas of an unimaginable scale.  Clearing damaged or destroyed houses and rebuilding will take years.  That is if the residents of Port-au-Prince decide to rebuild at all.  Many are too traumatized to live inside, especially as geologists note the possibility of a stronger quake and popular rumors wildly exaggerate that possibility.  For the time being, even money doesn’t guaranty freedom from sleeping in parks or streets as land, material, and the will to rebuild remain elusive.

– Dan Leff

Taken with a Flip Camera:

Street Scene in Croix Deprez, Turgeau, Port-au-Prince from Paul G on Vimeo.

From Open Street Maps, which has (incredibly) mapped most of Port-au-Prince:

View Larger Map

Also – thank you to those of you who told me that something funky was happening with my site on Tuesday and Wednesday. Apparently some malicious code made its way into one of the pages. Sorry about that – I’ve made changes and hopefully the site won’t cause problems from now on.

Down a steep mountain road from one of our sites the UN was distributing food. The Marines were out in full force though it looked like they were totally bored. I talked to a couple and they were curious about other relief efforts. Haitians collected bags of rice and headed back up the hill:

Kids here are a bright spot. While so many are orphaned or homeless, going without food or medicine — or worse — they’re still kids. On the street today a few were hanging out and joking around in a “tap-tap” bus (that could also go in quotes). They kept yelling to me, “Mon blanc!”

The beauty of digital cameras:

From Carrefour the other day, my friend taking a minute to show off some rusty juggling skills: