Tuesday, July 27, 2010

"We've Lost the Battle, but We Haven't Lost the War:" Haiti Six Months After the Earthquake

By Beverly Bell, Truthout
July 15, 2010


Haiti during the World Cup is much like my hometown of New Orleans was during the Superbowl. Don't try to make plans with anyone to do anything during a game. (In the more cash-rich New Orleans, the ban on non-game-related activity stretched back a day or two before a game, because there was food and alcohol to be purchased and a feast to be cooked.) I make the mistake of trying to go to a cell phone office during that time; employees sit hypnotized in front of the big-screen TV, unwilling to be distracted by clients.

When Argentina, a favorite in Haiti, loses the soccer match, I can finally conduct my business and leave the store. People are pouring out from their tents and houses with a thing or two to express about Argentina's loss. A group of skinny men parades in bikinis and wigs. Noontime drunks shout nonsense at each other. Throngs of mourners dance through the streets of Port-au-Prince, waving Argentine flags and palm fronds. Among them, loyalists still smarting from Brazil's loss wrap cloths with that country's flag around their heads.

"Thank God it's almost over," my friend Maryse, director of a special education school, said this morning. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/weve-lost-battle-we-havent-lost-war-haiti-six-months-after-earthquake61321

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