Haiti revisited: June 15, 2008 - before the earthquake...

Haitians searching for food or anything else at a dump. Rising food prices led to riots in April. Most Haitians earn less than $2 a day.

Malthus Redux:

 By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Published: June 15, 2008

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

good intentions

what you need to know about donating to Haiti:
good intentions are not enough

Don’t send shoes, send money. Don’t send baby formula, send money. Don’t send old coats, send money.  

more: NY Times  

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Before

It was a sad song - I mean to say that she was sad and that she didn't know any other kind of song. She didn't sing loud and it was a song with no words, her mouth shut the song sticking in her throat like a moan... so what do you want? She sang as the black girls do, as if you're smothering a sob, and this song always ends by beginning again because it is made in the image of misery, and tell me, will misery ever end?"

Jacques Roumain, "Gouverneurs de la Rosée" ("Masters of the Dew") Translation by MADISON SMARTT BELL

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The street of the La Saline market (Port-au-Prince, Haiti).

 Every day thousands of women from all over the city of Port-au-Prince try to resell supplies and food from questionable sources in the La Saline market. The informal sector significantly predominate within the poor Haitian economics and the regular shops virtually do not exist. La Saline is the largest street market area in Port-au-Prince. [July, 2008]

Photography Copyright © 2002-2010- more: Jan Sochor

Haiti in Ink and Tears: A Literary Sampler, By MADISON SMARTT BELL

more: NY Times 

DONATE  HERE

Iron Flowers

sluggish, semi-stagnant
the water in Haitian gutters,
small gullets, trickles green,
sewerage green, here even
the dirt is poor and
there is a cloying dullness
camouflaging even strongly
persistent colors

in squared, white walled
cemeteries
funeral flowers are made of
painted iron/ i see no roses
rising through this Port
Au Prince poverty

i hesitate to take pictures
it is like thievery
almost like
i am stealing precious light
that these, my brothers and sister,
need to live

IRON FLOWERS A POETIC REPORT ON A VISIT TO HAITI,  Kalamu ya Salaam.

1979
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