Mirlande's Haiti

Mirlande is the mayor of Acra camp, an internal displacement persons (refugee) camp on the grounds of a factory smack dab in the middle of Port au Prince. She’s not really the mayor, but as she took us on the guided tour yesterday, she shook hands with people at every point along the rows and rows of tents like a true leader. Visiting IDP camps is an important part of the work, because it gives one the truest sense of how people are living and what is needed. However, it also makes one feel voyeuristic and sad. With Mirlande leading the way, a lot of these feelings were mitigated by her genuine engagement with those in the camp and her enthusiasm for our presence. Mirlande, a self-described talker, gave us the low down:

“Here’s where ARC built a water tank; the faucet broke the day the donor came to inspect it. This child here attended ARC’s child-friendly spaces program and her mother is my good friend. People used to live on that garbage pile, but were moved because they were getting diseases. My husband and I live in the “Libya” section of the camp; people are fighting all of the time. Hahaha!”

I find it difficult to explain my new job to friends and family. My title is “Protection Technical Advisor.” Within the humanitarian community, this is a familiar title, but the tasks, even among the experts, seem nebulous. I’ve told my mom that when people have to go into refugee (or internal displacement) camps, my job is to provide guidance to our water and shelter and health programs to ensure that we respect the human rights of the people we serve.

Protection is about dignity. Today when I walked through this meandering urban camp of about 35,000 it was the utter lack of dignity that punched me in the gut. There was the stench of sewage, piles of garbage being picked through by pigs and dogs, little babies sitting in filth and people bathing in alleyways. To me, this all added up to a terrible loss of dignity. How can we possibly allow people to live like this? Why haven’t our interventions worked? What can be done to solve this?

The answer is simple: get these people the hell out of the camps. To work toward this simple answer is not so simple. Bound by humanitarian law (and common sense) we cannot force people to leave. Also, while some of the lingering in camps might be because of the “dependency syndrome,” most of the people stay because they have nowhere else to go. Housing is scarce as people still dig out from the earthquake.

At the end of our tour, I tried to slip Mirlande a $20 bill. She had been an employee of ARC, but because of lack of funding she was let go. She gave us the tour of her own good will and I wanted to thank her. She very quickly refused and I pushed back. She was adamant and explained that “the camp has eyes everywhere.” I immediately felt embarrassed and amateurish for compromising her position in the camp and apologized profusely. Mirlande instantly summoned her mayoral poise and offered a quick solution: the volunteer organization she created when ARC funding ended was having a fund raiser next week and I could make a contribution. What a woman, what a place.