Some Things Are Hard To Understand

How do I wrap up what happened this week in a few paragraphs....or even in words? I don't think I can. This week has been one of the most challenging since I arrived in Haiti. The things I saw and experienced don't all make sense...some of them don't even seem real.

On Tuesday Chris and I headed to Port to meet with a couple people from the UN that Chris has been in contact with. The UN is looking to do a pilot program and have us install filters in schools from few different zones in Haiti. We talked with them about how the filter works and some of the logistics of what it would take to get the project up and running. The meeting went well and we'll have to wait and see what comes from it. After the meeting we did the typical things like getting groceries, going to the hardware store, and visiting a few people. However, instead of heading back with Chris when we were done, I drove to Matthew and Nels' home. For a while now I have been waiting to accompany Matthew on one of his trips to work at the prisons. On Monday Matthew called Chris and said that they would be leaving on Wednesday to travel to a prison and wondered if I would be able to make it. I didn't have anything pressing, so Wednesday through Friday I accompanied Matthew and Nels as they worked in the prison near Les Cayes.


Wednesday morning we woke up around 4:30 am and packed our things and then drove to the UN base in Port-au-Prince. As I've mentioned before, Matthew and Nels have partnered with the UN to put biosand filters in all the prisons in Haiti. At the same time, this gives them the chance to interact with the prisoners and staff at the prison and pass out literature. Although the UN has agreed to provide the transportation necessary to do the work, we are last on the priority list and if they run out of room, we are the first to go. We were told that the plane we were going to be flying in had a few problems and that the pilot would only take 26 passengers. Well, we were passengers 25, 26, and 27. Nels had a friend that was going to be driving from Port to Les Cayes that afternoon, so he decided to catch a ride with her and meet us later in the day. By car, the drive is around 6 hours.

Our Transportation

When we landed in Les Cayes, we were greeted by some of the UN personnel from Canada that had been working with the prisons in Haiti. We grabbed everything we had brought and loaded it into their SUV. I must say that riding around in the UN vehicles is very nice since they are one of the few times you get to enjoy air-conditioning down here. Our first stop was where we would be sleeping for the next few nights. It was a university that had been built in the 80s but was pretty vacant due to poor management and recent bankruptcy of the original owners. You could tell the building was very nice when it was built, but over time nothing had been kept up and things were starting to deteriorate. The building had been built like and American style building with a drop ceiling and made to be air-conditioned. However, while we stayed there, we did not have any electricity. Without air-conditioning, the building heats up and does not cool off at night because there are only small windows and no air can move through it. The heat would have been bearable if we would have had electricity to run a fan. None of us slept very well since we would sweat profusely just laying in bed. The other downer was that we ran out of water on the second night and couldn't flush the toilets or get any drinkable water. I remember just laying in my bed between the interval naps, thinking....it must be getting close to morning....but when I looked, it was only 11pm. During all of this though, I was silenced from complaining by what I had just witnessed in the prison.

Our meals consisted of eating groceries out of a box that we picked up our first day in Les Cayes. We typically ate peanut butter, tuna, or spam sandwiches. However, when the supplies got low any combination of things was acceptable to eat.

Nels eating peanuts that he had spilled on the floor.

Matthew making a peanut butter, mayonnaise, and hot sauce sandwich.

On Wednesday afternoon we arrived at the prison and were admitted to enter after talking with the director. I was not allowed to take any pictures at the prison so I will have to describe it in words. After passing through two gates that separate the main prison area from the rest of the world, I was struck by the smell of urine and stagnant, swamp water. The prison is arranged in a rectangle with the prison cells on the outside and the middle being open to the atmosphere. In the middle is also a partially grassy area that serves to collect any liquids that are discharged from the cells, laundry buckets, and showers. There is a strip of concrete that cuts the grassy swamp in half that prisoners lay things on to let them dry in the sun. There were 12 cells on the perimeter of the rectangle, each one being about 12ft by 20ft. In the cells there were around 15 to 20 prisoners. There were not nearly enough mattresses for people and I'm not even sure everyone could lay down at the same time if they wanted. The prison had no electricity so the cells were extremely hot, dark, and full of mosquitoes and flies.

The judicial system is far from perfect in Haiti and varies greatly across the country. I've heard of police arresting people simply because citizens are in an uproar about something and in order to get them to calm down the police will arrest someone nearby. Or if you have a problem with someone, you can purchase a warrant for their arrest and the judge will grant it and drum up some charges to make sure they end up in prison. It is hard to know who truly deserves to be in prison and who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or who has an enemy with enough money to buy their prison sentence.

When we arrived the filters were all in one corner of the prison and none of them were being used. As Matthew went around to each cell and talked to the prisoners about how the filters worked and why they needed to be using them, I rearranged all the filters and started to get them working again. All the diffusion plates were missing from inside the filters because the prisoners had taken them out to fan themselves. We didn't expect that and had only brought eight diffusion plates...but now we needed eleven. After talking to the prisoners, Matthew found out that it would be best to install a filter at each cell so they could manage it themselves. Once Nels arrived, we started the slow process of walking the filters to their new locations. We did all the installations we could and then decided it would be best to come back with the proper materials and install the remaining filters another time. Matthew and Nels are trying to go back on Monday to finish everything up.

While we were installing the filters, prisoners would want to talk and between the Creole I knew and the English they knew, we were able to communicate a little. What do you say to a person who tells you they don't deserve to be in prison when the fact is that they may very well be telling the truth? What do you say when they ask you for a little money or for some food? Why doesn't it feel right to say I can't give them what they want or need when I have excess?