Back to the streets for some....back inside for me

The clinic was closed yesterday due to demonstrations for the first time since the "food riots" in April. This time, though, it was for a planned peaceful march to protest against the high rates of kidnapping for ransom that have been plaguing Port-au-Prince for the last several years. I unfortunately wasn't able to attend but there is a brief blurb with photos here

I've purposefully avoided talking about the kidnapping issue until now. It's a hard thing to put in context when you are living here much less when you've never experienced Haiti. 99.9% of Haitians are wonderful people who are equally afraid of the 0.1% of people who are carrying out these acts. But in an environment of structural poverty where police and the justice systems are so weak, the 0.1% have a disproportionate amount of power. I don't want to unnecessarily worry you as I generally haven't been worried about it. Kidnappings are highly calculated economic exchanges here. Since no one knows me - no one knows who to ask for money - and so I'm generally not at risk.

The rules seem to have changed a little in the last few weeks though - and the kidnappings got a little closer to home for me and many others. About three weeks ago, the brother-in-law of the clinic's director was shot and killed in an attempted carjacking/kidnapping just outside the gate to his house. A week and a half ago, a Canadian graduate student who had just been in the country for several weeks to do research was kidnapped. She was released unharmed after 10 days of negotiations. In the last two weeks two teenagers have been kidnapped from schools during the day. In one case, even though the family paid $40,000 in ransom, the child was brutally tortured and killed. This is the event that moved people to march.

It's hard to articulate what it is like to live in an environment like Port-au-Prince in this season. While I haven't felt at risk of being kidnapped, I've definitely felt the impact of this generalized sense of insecurity. It's incredibly difficult to figure out how to live here as a single foreign female over a longer term. I have lost all of my independence - out of respect for those who are hosting me here I can't walk down the street alone, I can't drive alone, I don't live alone - I basically don't do anything alone except sit in my bedroom (which I've spent a disproportionate amount of time doing in recent weeks). Having a community of people is essential to one's sanity but developing a consistent accessible, like-minded community has been a real challenge.

I've met many wonderful people over the last few months - Haitian and foreigners alike. There has been a series of good people to share Cornell housing with me - but most of them are here for only short periods of time. Most of the people I've gotten closer to do not have access to cars or they live in places far outside Port-au-Prince. The place where we live is lovely and safe - but it's about a 15-20 minute drive from the areas of town where there are restaurants and shops and where most people I've met live. For my first 6 months here I had pretty consistent access to a vehicle but in recent months have had almost no access. I've spent 2-3 days on end not leaving the small neighborhood were we live. Despite the lovely green trees, the pool, and the 24-hour electricity, it's hard sometimes to not think of it as a prison yard.

There is something that happens to a person when she lives in an environment like this for awhile - I've seen it in myself. When you have no one that you are responsible for or really anyone who feels responsible for you, it's incredibly hard not to start looking inward more than outward. It's hard to remember who you are back in your community. It's hard to think about the fact that others need you as much as you need others.

Each foreigner I've met has different strategies to cope. Mine is to spend way too much time doing things like mindlessly surfing the net and writing rambling blog entries like this one. With so much alone time I should be really productive but as an extrovert, I find it very hard to be energized to focus on work without quality time with people. Drinking a lot more than usual seems to be another common coping strategy. Romantic relationships are not so easy to come by - but most of those who find them tend to very quickly focus most all their energy there (which some would say is true in any context). At least one or two of my fellow blan (foreigner) friends actually seem quite comfortable with their day-to-day life in Haiti...but they are not single females.

It takes so much planning here just to get from point A to point B that at any one time, people don't seem capable of holding on to too many relationships that come with expectations. Yet when your community is so small, it's a struggle not to have fairly high expectations for the few relationships you have. One small change basically resets the entire system - and this is a place of constant change.