By Mark Schuller, Huff­in­g­ton Post

It’s about 7:30 local time as I write this. We’ll see if I can con­nect to the inter­net and post.

I just got off the phone with Leslie, a friend and leader in Asan­ble Vwazen Solino (the Solino Neigh­bor­hood Assem­bly). Know­ing the answer, he asked me, “is it rain­ing over where you are?”

“Of course it is. But you know I have a house.”

“We are all wet!” he intoned. “We won’t get to sleep tonight.”

I doubt if I will either. It’s been rain­ing — hard — since the after­noon. There’s a trop­i­cal storm brew­ing off the north­east coast of the island — yes, on the Domini­can side. But there’s cur­rently a sixty per­cent chance of sev­eral days of rain.

Now more than six months after the earth­quake, the 1.5 mil­lion home­less that it cre­ated are still wait­ing for real change that has yet to come. True, some 28,000 “T-shelters” (tem­po­rary shel­ters) have been con­structed. But hun­dreds of thou­sands of fam­i­lies are at this very moment try­ing des­per­ately to keep their most impor­tant doc­u­ments, money, baby pho­tos, or the babies them­selves dry. I’ve been to camps where as much as half of the tents are now ripped.

Last Mon­day marked the six-month point fol­low­ing the earth­quake. At the remains of the National Palace medals were given out to sev­eral peo­ple, includ­ing CNN jour­nal­ist Ander­son Cooper and Sean Penn, who has been man­ag­ing a camp for inter­nally dis­placed peo­ple. The French ambas­sador joked that it was impor­tant to acknowl­edge the pow­er­ful neigh­bor to the north, as no French cit­i­zen or group — or for that mat­ter, Cuban or Venezue­lan — received a medal.

That after­noon a rain­storm wreaked havoc on the camp of Corail, held up as the model for relo­ca­tion. hun­dreds of tents were instantly destroyed, and a cou­ple thou­sand peo­ple rushed under the shel­ter of the tent donated by the Cirque du Soleil. Peo­ple were moved from the camp where Penn is now work­ing because of the “envi­ron­men­tal” risks — to wit, flood­ing fol­low­ing a rain storm.

True, Corail boasted many ser­vices that many (if not most — still con­duct­ing research) other camps lack — like latrines, show­ers, wash water sta­tions, a med­ical clinic, and even a “Krik Krak” library donated by Hait­ian Amer­i­can writer Edwidge Dan­ti­cat. But the fail­ure of Corail as the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment knighted for­eign­ers is emblem­atic of deeper issues that require urgent and sus­tained atten­tion. Most notable is its iso­la­tion. On pub­lic trans­porta­tion, it takes an hour and a half to get to town, using three or four buses, depend­ing on routes. There is no eco­nomic activ­ity at all out­side the camp, no mar­ket, no stores, no schools, not even a church. The camp itself is built near Titanyen, the mass bur­ial ground used by para­mil­i­taries in the past and by the cur­rent gov­ern­ment to bury the unmarked, unnamed, dead from the earthquake.

Not just bereft of eco­nomic activ­ity, the area around Corail lacks veg­e­ta­tion. It is a desert, built against a bare moun­tain. There is no shade what­so­ever, no trees to hold the soil, so the gusty winds often carry the white dust into the tents and into people’s nos­trils. The white dust reflects the Caribbean sun. “There really is noth­ing to do,” said a res­i­dent who was either afraid or tired of giv­ing her name, given the score of jour­nal­ists who vis­ited. “You can’t stay in your tent because of the heat. You can’t go out­side because of the dust. And you can’t leave the camp because there’s noth­ing to do.” What is worse, she — let’s call her “Mil­dred” — and her seven thou­sand new neigh­bors may be forced out yet again to accom­mo­date a new indus­trial park.

Last week’s rain destroy­ing — yet again — hun­dreds of people’s homes should serve as a wake-up call. Accord­ing to CNN, only 2 per­cent of the 5.3 bil­lion in aid that was promised for the next 18 months at the March 31st donors’ con­fer­ence (see the Recon­struc­tion web­site for pledges) has actu­ally mate­ri­al­ized. Most other reports say 10 per­cent — but there is not, to my knowl­edge or inter­net access, a site that details the actual dis­burse­ment of pledges. Such a site would be wel­come and go far to alle­vi­ate ten­sion and rumors. France, for exam­ple, hasn’t paid up — and it vehe­mently denied a prank reported by the AFP as news that it would pay resti­tu­tion for the 90 mil­lion francs Haiti paid its for­mer col­o­nizer from 1825 to 1947 as indem­nity. The U.S. has still to pay its 1.15 bil­lion in pledged aid.

Mak­ing mat­ters worse, the foreign-led Haiti Interim Recon­struc­tion Com­mis­sion co-chaired by UN Spe­cial Envoy Bill Clin­ton and Hait­ian Prime Min­is­ter Max Bel­lerive that is replac­ing Haiti’s elected gov­ern­ment now that Par­lia­ment has expired, post­poned its sec­ond meet­ing sched­uled for Thurs­day by a month.

Haiti had a cou­ple of very promis­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties fol­low­ing the earth­quake. First was a gen­eral good­will and unity. In the first days fol­low­ing the earth­quake, peo­ple worked across extreme class and polit­i­cal divi­sions to sur­vive. And they did. As the urgency wore off, the old divi­sions came back with a vengeance. Yes­ter­day the CEP, the Pro­vi­sional Elec­tions Com­mis­sion, reit­er­ated a deci­sion made in 2009 to exclude Fanmi Lavalas, the party of exiled pres­i­dent Aris­tide, from this year’s leg­isla­tive elec­tions that were orig­i­nally sched­uled ear­lier this year but post­poned. Although not to the extent of giv­ing out medals, the UN pro­claimed last year’s elec­tions that also excluded Fanmi Lavalas and where almost no one voted, a suc­cess.

Haiti’s eco­nomic divi­sions fare lit­tle bet­ter. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of home­less are beg­ging for a 180-goud ($4.50 down from the legal min­i­mum wage of 200 goud, or $5) cash-for-work job, mostly to clear the rub­ble with sledge­ham­mers and wheel­bar­rows while Haiti’s edu­cated mid­dle class, Dias­pora, and for­eign con­sul­tant zoom by in new air-conditioned cars, some mak­ing as much as $1000 per day. Some for­eign aid work­ers even stayed at the “Love Boat” — a U.N. ship cost­ing$112,500 per day, or the price of 100 “T-shelters.”

Another oppor­tu­nity squan­dered is decen­tral­iza­tion and rural devel­op­ment. 600,000 peo­ple like Fris­line and Marie-Jeanne, two women in the film Poto Mitan, left the city to go to the provinces. Haiti’s crum­bling rural infra­struc­ture could have been rebuilt by employ­ing tens of thou­sands. With no jobs, no aid, no prospects of rural devel­op­ment, noth­ing to keep peo­ple in the provinces, the bulk of this reverse migra­tion was undone, and Port-au-Prince is once again a mag­net for those seek­ing jobs. This time, it’s food-for-work, even more tem­po­rary than off­shore apparel fac­tory jobs. If and when the recon­struc­tion aid ever arrives, much of it should go towards a real national devel­op­ment plan, build­ing fac­to­ries to trans­form and keep the value of Hait­ian agri­cul­tural pro­duce in the coun­try. For exam­ple, yes­ter­day I bought three man­goes for 10 goud (25 cents). At a Whole Foods in New York last month, these same man­goes sold for $2.50 apiece. This “value added” and job cre­ation should stay in Haiti, in the peas­ant, rural sec­tor. But the cur­rent devel­op­ment blue­print, the Col­lier Report - high­lighted on the UN Spe­cial Envoy page — pri­or­i­tizes export.

In addi­tion to the rain, peo­ple like Leslie and thou­sands of oth­ers are fight­ing for the right guar­an­teed by the United Nations and Hait­ian con­sti­tu­tion to sleep on con­crete blocks, in wet, muddy, rip­ping tents. Fris­line, who is liv­ing in her sec­ond camp since mov­ing back to Port-au-Prince, lamented, “You never know what’s hap­pen­ing. One day they could ask you to leave. We never know any­thing. Noth­ing is secure.” As if to illus­trate her lack of secu­rity, some­one stole her bag with most of her remain­ing belong­ings on Mon­day. Some own­ers have even taken to send armed gangs to ter­ror­ize peo­ple so they will go away. Less extreme tac­tics such as freez­ing peo­ple out of ser­vices so they will leave on their own are far more com­mon. Three of eight camps that my research assis­tants vis­ited so far this week are fac­ing forced removal. Inter­na­tional Action Ties has also released a report detail­ing a dis­turb­ing pat­tern of pri­vate land own­ers forc­ing peo­ple off the camps.

The rain just stopped, three and a half hours after it began. My phone isn’t ring­ing. I know I will see and hear more of the dam­age tomor­row morn­ing. In the mean­time, I am hon­or­ing a promise to Leslie, Fris­line, and other peo­ple that I would do what I can to spread the fol­low­ing messages:

1. Despite the dip in news (except for the cov­er­age at the sixth-month mark), the major­ity of Haiti’s peo­ple are doing very badly. The sit­u­a­tion is still quite urgent.
2. The aid needs to be released. Now. The U.S. Con­gress should vote on this with­out delay.
3. Peo­ple need shel­ter. The short-term T-Shelters will do but peo­ple have a right to hous­ing. And need it des­per­ately as this weekend’s storm is likely to do more dam­age. The hur­ri­cane sea­son is on for sev­eral more months.
4. The UN and Hait­ian gov­ern­ment need to pro­tect the 425,000 or so fam­i­lies that are liv­ing in camps from forced removal. The best pol­icy is to build per­ma­nent hous­ing and pro­vide jobs and ser­vices that will give peo­ple rea­sons to will­ingly leave, and cre­ate incen­tives for pri­vate homes to be quickly rehabbed.
5. Have a more fair and inclu­sive elec­tion. Not even count­ing the exclu­sion of Fanmi Lavalas, seri­ous steps need to be made in ensur­ing that the 1.5 mil­lion home­less will have access to elec­toral cards.

Haiti’s 1.5 mil­lion home­less — like Leslie — can’t afford this recon­struc­tion to be post­poned, to be rained out, any longer.

Mark Schuller is Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of African Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Anthro­pol­ogy at York Col­lege, the City Uni­ver­sity of New York. Hav­ing researched NGOs in Haiti since 2001, he is study­ing the impact of aid on con­di­tions and gov­er­nance in the IDP camps this sum­mer. He is the co-editor of Cap­i­tal­iz­ing on Cat­a­stro­phe: Neolib­eral Strate­gies in Dis­as­ter Reconstruction.

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