The Big Truck That Went By by Jonathan M. Katz

Author:Jonathan M. Katz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137323958
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-01-27T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

SUGAR LAND

IT STARTED WITH A TIP: FIND OUT WHO OWNS THE LAND UNDER CAMP Corail, and you’ll know why reconstruction is stalled. Corail-Cesselesse was the 18,500 acres that Préval had expropriated on the eve of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s March visit, where officials planned to relocate fifty thousand people whose tarp shelters were deemed most at risk from spring landslides and floods. Out past the last of the banana plants, where the capital’s northern slums give way to cactus and rock, the vast plain half the size of Port-au-Prince had become a blank canvas for dreaming architects and the escaping poor alike.

“Camp Corail” referred to about a hundred acres in the middle of Corail-Cesselesse, where the first of 7,500 displaced people had been moved in early April. General Keen, in a last act of mission fulfillment before giving up command of Joint Task Force-Haiti, had provided Navy engineers to prepare the land and buses to move out residents. UN peacekeepers operated the heavy machinery, and NGOs built cinder-block latrines and tents. Sean Penn ensured the people relocated would come from the Pétionville Club, fulfilling his promise from March.

But why would Camp Corail, of all places, explain the continued lack of reconstruction since the quake? It was the bright spot of the effort so far, the one big thing that had worked. True, nine miles from the edge of the city, the camp seemed a bit remote, and when the relocation was announced a few aid groups had complained that they hadn’t had time to get ready. But those were quibbles. Préval, confident he had shown leadership to foreign donors eager to see displaced people relocated to safety, went out to greet the new residents with an equally exuberant Sean Penn. The four-star General Douglas Fraser, Keen’s boss, stopped by on a Black Hawk helicopter to see the progress for himself.

Stepping off the bus into the desert, the new residents got a wheelbarrow of food, toiletries, and other supplies and a guided tour of the latrines, showers, and police tent. They also got wrist bands, as if Camp Corail were a desert resort. It kind of was. The roomy white tunnel tents were set up on spacious plots, with space for rocky gardens, firebreaks, and walking paths—a kind of accommodation unthinkable for most quake survivors. Each new arrival was futher promised that within three months he would get a sturdy provisional “T-shelter.” A cell phone company even set up a concert stage, where the popular roots band R.A.M. came to play its fusion of funk, jazz, and Haitian drums while teenagers danced and kids batted inflated condoms from the on-site health clinic.

Other quake survivors were following these first lucky recipients to the official camp, squatting on the land nearby, perhaps hoping some of the aid might spill out.

The tip had all the makings of a Haitian rabbit hole, the kind of story you can go down forever, bouncing off dead ends. But it had one promising element. The tipster had used a magic word: land.

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