by Stefan Gates
Cité Soleil aka Hell on Earth
I must admit that before I arrived I had read lots about Haiti and it was clear that life here was poor and difficult, but at the back of my mind I kept thinking, 'Yeah, but it's a Caribbean island, for crying out loud. How bad can life really be?'
Cité Soleil feels like the nearest I have come to hell. It's dark, crammed, stinking and wretched, and every house, school or water tower is covered in a terrifying acne of bullet-holes. I've never seen anything like it – not even in Afghanistan. In the areas where the major shoot-outs have taken place, there's a concentration of bullet-holes around windows and doors, but it's not just a few holes, it's thousands. Rubbish and excrement lies in piles on the streets, children run around naked and all the time the sun beats down. There's little food, no hygiene and scant hope of a way out for people here. There are few jobs on Haiti and no sign of the investment that might provide jobs – mainly because the place is so corrupt and unstable that you'd have to be either insane or in possession of your own militia to feel confident investing money here. There's no running water or sanitation, and with no jobs, these people seem to have barely any possessions at all. They seem to be living a life stripped of human dignity, enduring appalling conditions. Everywhere I go, kids and adults alike hassle me for money, and I don't blame them.
Most places I've visited have had a deep conflict at their heart, whether it's religious, political or cultural. It is often infuriating and brutal – as in Afghanistan and Burma – but there are reasons and structures to the conflict that can be dissected and understood. Here in Cite Soleil the conflict is chaotic: unpredictable gang warfare fed by absolute poverty and desperation in a place where hope has dried up. And although it's deplorable, it's also understandable that people with no hope turn to violence. This is a place where extortion and theft aren't just social problems – they are also an accepted means of employment: a kind of subsistence money-farming.
The Brazilians are different from your usual UN peacekeepers because rather than patrolling and running for cover when things get a little tasty, they have decided to meet the gangsters head-on, mounting aggressive raids using a fearsome amount of firepower in the heart of the slums where the Haitian police haven't dared to go in years. This has landed them in hot water at times, especially when, on 6 July 2005, they raided the base of a 'gangster' called Dread Wilme. In the ensuing firefight, during which an astonishing 22,000 bullets were fired, the dreaded Dread was killed, but so were several civilians (estimates ranged from five to 80). MINUSTAH admitted that civilians were killed during the raid but confused the issue by claiming that 'gangs were seen killing civilians following MINUSTAH's operation' and that the UN acted in self-defence. Other operations include a major gun battle in February 2007, and there is often talk of inevitable collateral damage.
I suppose, given that the assaults against the gangsters seem to have been effective, and therefore there will hopefully be less violence and fewer deaths and kidnappings in Cite Soleil, that the ends could justify the means, but that won't pacify the relatives of the innocent dead. And I can't help thinking that gangs don't disappear when you kill the leader, they just go underground with their weapons and hatred. And in any case, with an organization as informal and unregulated as a gang, how do you know who's in and who's not? That said, the Haitian police have just managed to enter Cite Soleil for the first time in years under the protection of MINUSTAH, and the gangs appear to have been largely dismantled for the time being. They may be lurking underground, ready to surface as soon as MINUSTAH goes home, but at least there's a sense of stability that hasn't existed here in decades.
I ask if I can walk and chat to some of the residents, so we get out of the APCs and go for a weird sort of stroll: ahead of us crawls one APC, I walk surrounded by a dozen heavily armed soldiers, and we are followed by the other two APCs. It doesn't make for calm nerves, taking a walk amidst such terrifying firepower, but I get the sense that no one's going to mess with us.
The residents stare at the soldiers, but I can't tell if it's resentment or respect in their eyes. I chat to several women who say, 'We thank God they are here,' and that they have restored order, that they couldn't walk the streets before they arrived. The soldiers punch fists and give high-fives to people as they walk, the kids seem happy to see us and men grin nervously and wave. Mind you, if a group of heavily armed men trooped past my house and waved, I think I'd probably wave back with a nervous grin whether they were gangsters or UN soldiers. The kids pull at my bumbag and pockets trying to make me give them some cash, but the soldiers warn me not to give anyone money or else there'll be a riot, and people might very well die as a result.
I find a woman selling strange clay plates, which turn out to be mud cakes, made from dirt and eaten as a delicacy. I buy a few and they taste very much as you'd imagine clay to taste, but with a strange gloopy, almost chocolatey consistency. It's quite a nice sensation although it does clog up your mouth. Apparently the cakes are full of minerals and are especially good for pregnant women, although people sometimes also make a face cream sludge from them.
We stop for the night in Strongpoint 16, an old market building slap bang in the middle of the worst area of the slums. It has been covered in sandbags and camouflage netting and taken over by the army. There must be 20 of us here, and we each have a small bunk-bed in the open air on the top floor of the building. I feel very vulnerable, both to the mosquitoes of Cite Soleil and the strongmen of the slums who could, if they wanted to, overrun us with ease as there are only a couple of guards on duty through the night.
Dinner is delivered from the main barracks: cold feijoiada, the classic Brazilian meat, beans and gravy, a dish that always creates copious flatulence in my system. It's gratefully received by all of us, but for my hosts' sake, I'm pleased we'll be sleeping in the open air.
And then, just as we're settling down, for some insane reason the commander decides to take us on a night patrol through the slums. Night patrol? Eh? This is the most dangerous slum on the planet, and we're going to cruise around it at night? I know they've got a job to do and all that, but this seems like a terribly bad idea.
Out on the streets, the mood of the people has changed and I can hear the occasional abusive shout from the shadows. This time we don't venture out of the APCs, but drive through the slums pointing searchlights into corners, illuminating people eating, drinking, some just sitting in the dark and, at one point, a man and woman who look distinctly like we've rumbled them having sex. Such is life lived under the concerned searchlights of a UN peacekeeping mission.
We spin around the slum's main streets, making the MINUSTAH presence felt, but the soldiers become a little concerned because there's a bad smell in the APC – possibly engine trouble, but with strong top notes of dog mess. I check my boots with the rest of them, but shake my head innocently, and we decide to return to Strongpoint 16 without delay.
Despite the mosquitoes, the open air and the cacophonous banging and crashing of the slums, I manage to get some sleep and wake only at dawn when the sun peers over the sandbags to burn through my eyelids. The soldiers all wake at the same time and tuck into a breakfast of long-life yoghurt, crackers and honey.
I sit with one of the soldiers for a while, watching the day unfolding from his lookout point. The people on the streets below are in a hurry, starting the day's task of scraping together enough money to buy something to eat. If this sounds over-dramatic, it's not. When you have next to nothing, the task of getting food for yourself and your family becomes the most important thing in the world. But with no opportunities for employment, the chronically poor will do anything they can, often starting with scavenging. One man has salvaged a crumpled hat from somewhere, and he walks along the road trying to sell it to everyone he meets. A great many people walk the streets with a shoe perched on their head, and I wondered if this was some sort of cult of supplication until my guide Mario explains to me that the shoes are for sale.
; We go on patrol again and the streets are full of people with something to sell. Wherever I walk, people stop me to try to sell me something: usually cigarettes, clothes or charcoal but a fair few more obscure items too, such as a motorcycle headlamp, an ancient porn mag and at one point an artificial leg. I was quite tempted by the leg, actually. And if you don't want to buy, they'll simply ask you for money, relentlessly harassing, pleading, pulling at your clothes and putting arms on your shoulders. Everyone wants money, just a little something to get by. And if you've got a camera, they will try to step in front of whatever you're filming, and then demand money for having been in your shot. It's irritating and intimidating but completely understandable: if I had nothing, I'd be pounding the streets doing whatever I could to buy my food, and if some English bloke turned up with a camera that was worth more than I was going to earn in my entire lifetime, I'd feel well within my rights to tap him for some cash.
I speak to a young man who tells me that two days ago he and a few-friends managed to break down a car for scrap and earned a dollar, but his local gangster found out and when he returned home he was ordered to hand over the cash at gunpoint, and there was nothing he could do. This is how life is in a country where 70 per cent of the workforce is either jobless or under-employed.
The northern section of Cite Soleil spreads along the coast and we wander towards it to get a sense of the scale of the place. From afar, I wonder if this is where slum-dwellers come to breathe in some fresh air, take a break from the pressures of slum life, perhaps even take a swim. As we arrive, however, I realize how ridiculous that would be. There's no beach, no sand, and the seafront is basically a mound of rubbish that hasn't yet been washed away. One of the horrible burdens of the slums is the lack of rubbish collection, so whatever doesn't lie around in heaps on the streets is washed slowly but inexorably towards the sea. The water is a rotting swamp of filth, shit, oil and insects, and Cite Soleil just stops abruptly at the water's edge, excreting and leaking its essence into the Caribbean.
In any case, rather than being drawn to the ocean people here shy away from it, preferring to huddle next to other houses for protection against the typhoons and hurricanes that regularly rip through the area. Mario tells me that no one, not even the fishermen around here, can swim.
Finally, we help out with a 'hearts and minds' mission run by the army to distribute food and hope in the slums. It's a big old cheesy PR exercise, but seems to be very popular: about 100 soldiers take over a building and set up a kitchen to dispense hot-dog rolls filled with mince. Hundreds of people turn up, although the rules are strictly kids first. Over half the children in Haiti are malnourished, so they are understandably eager to join the queue, some of them coming in several times over. I help to hand out the food for a while then chat to some of the kids who've been trying to steal extra food.
I ask them if things have improved since the UN soldiers arrived. A little girl says, 'A load of gang guys were walking around last night with machetes. They slashed some poor people.'
'Do you think most of the kids in Cite Soleil are hungry?
Boy 1: 'Yes, and many of our parents have died.'
Girl: 'My father is dead.'
Boy 2: 'My father is dead.'
Boy 3: 'My father is dead as well.'
I don't know how many, if any, of the kids are telling the truth, but they're only about six years old, so it's a strange world that they are living in to make this stuff up.
As well as handing out food, the soldiers throw a party to get the locals on side. Two very energetic and very irritating clowns bounce around taking the mickey out of all the adults, to the squealing delight of the kids. A DJ sets up his sound system and plays music that gets everyone dancing, there's a fella giving free buzz-cuts, and someone else handing out free bottles of water.
The UN forces aren't aiming to make any long-term structural improvements – they don't have the resources to lay on a spread like this very often, but if it makes the Cite Soleil residents happy and friendly towards them, their work will be a shade easier and less dangerous. And it's no bad PR exercise for them either, especially when they need to counter the bad press over their actions here in the slums.
Finally I'm taken back to the MINUSTAH base and I hand in my helmet and flak jacket with a sense of gratitude mixed with relief.
• • • • •
Just outside Port-au-Prince is a huge sugar cane farm. During French rule Haiti was the richest colony in the New World and the world's leading sugar cane producer. Half a million slaves were brought here to work the plantations. I join Jacques, a sugar cane cutter who has been working these fields for 20 years, and offer to lend a hand. His friend lends me his machete and Jacques shows me how to hack the thick canes at an angle near to the base. It's extremely difficult, sweaty work, and the vegetation is full of bugs, flies and snakes that don't take very kindly to me destroying their homes.
Jacques makes $5 a day, which for this kind of work seems like a tiny amount of money, but as 78 per cent of the population live on less than $2 a day, he's pleased for the opportunity. After a while we take a break and chew on some cane to refresh ourselves – Jacques says that he eats this stuff all day – but when I get back to hacking the cane, I realize that the sticky, sugary sheen all over me has made me infinitely more attractive to the bugs.
Haiti used to produce 6 million tonnes of sugar cane a year, but the big farms have mostly disappeared due to political turmoil, gangsterism and extortion. The woman who runs this plantation initially agrees to talk to me, but halfway through our interview she gets scared and has a change of heart, pleading with me not to show or name her. Her father-in-law and two of her brothers-in-law have been killed by gangsters and she runs the daily risk of being kidnapped simply because she has a successful business. Her minders arrive and insist that she leaves for her home before it gets dark.
Voodoo
That night we are invited to a voodoo ceremony. Although Haiti is overwhelmingly Catholic, the vast majority of Haitians practise some form of voodoo, assumed to be rooted in the animist practices of the West African slaves brought over by the French. I'm not particularly keen on toying with voodoo, although not as anxious as my wife, who is terrified of my dabbling in this kind of thing and is half-expecting me to return biting the heads off chickens. I've assured her that all those reports of animal sacrifice are just myths.
I meet Max Beauvoir, a Western-educated biochemist turned voodoo priest who runs a temple on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. He is surrounded by women dressed in white with red headscarves who smile and hug me. I'm already feeling a little intimidated, not least by the sudden and violent downpour that soaks us all in seconds. We retreat to Max's temple and he leads the singing, chanting and clapping, alongside the drinking of hefty spirits and some odd candle ceremonies. Four men drum at a ferocious pace and the women wail and dance, dragging me along to join them in some undisguisedly suggestive dancing. I'm beginning to feel carried away by some indistinct spiritual awakening, although it's probably just a combination of alcohol and trepidation. And the suggestive dancing.
We go back outside, and there's a great deal more dancing, drumming, singing and wailing, with Max standing in the middle talking in a loud, ominous voice and chanting some sort of incantations or prayers. The women drag me into dancing with them and I'm beginning to understand the rhythms they are moving to. It goes on for what seems like hours and starts to blur into one long strange and dark experience. I get hotter and hotter as the dancing gets wilder, and the sweat pours off me as the rain soaks me through. I realize I'm losing control, and my dancing becomes wilder and easier.
Suddenly there's a goat at my feet and I'm told to wash it with some branches of herbs dipped in water. It seems remarkably calm despite the noise. I'm told to walk the goat around the ring twice and feed it the herbs, then I'm wrapped in a sheet and taken away to have my face washed and to drink some herbal liquor. One of the women falls into a trance, dancing and
acting like . . . well . . . this will sound odd, but she starts moving like a chicken, clucking and screaming, and thrusting her head forward and back as she walks. Max tells me she's channelling Erzulie, the goddess of love but, unlike other spirits, she can't speak, she can only cluck. I'm taken away again to dance, and while I'm gone, I can hear some ominous noises that sound like a goat in extreme pain.
I'm brought to the front and see that the goat has, indeed, been sacrificed. God, I hope it didn't suffer too much. Max forces me to kneel down, and paints my forehead with the goat's blood. I'm not sure what the significance is, but I'm in another world by now, and I couldn't say which way is up or down, let alone right or wrong.
After more dancing and singing, the drummers beat a fearful last thrashing, and the whole ceremony grinds to a halt, the possessed woman collapses and everyone else slumps in exhaustion. Callum, the cameraman, looks ashen. He tells me what happened whilst I'd been taken away: 'They brought the goat out to the front of the temple and cut off its testicles with a knife. I've never seen anything so horrific in my life. The knife wasn't very sharp and it took a heck of a long time. Then they cut its throat, but it wasn't quick. They had to hack away at it as though they were using a saw. It looked at me, and I'll never forget that look as long as I live.'
Oh my God. I know we're here to observe, not to criticize, but that sounds appalling.
I sit down, soaked in sweat, rain and blood, and try to find out from Max what was going on.
'All those songs and the drums combined and also the dances, all that together makes one vibrate,' he explains.
'I was definitely vibrating, yes.'