One More Haitian

Joegodson and Paul

There’s another Haitian in Haiti. Her name is Joenaara.

She is six hours old. She is lying with Antonia on the bed that her Dad Joegodson built a couple of months ago. She is feeding from her mother’s breasts. That is calming her down.

She complicates the telephone conversation from Canada, because she has a lot to say and she’s saying it forcefully. Joegodson thinks she had been hoping for something better. Joenaara arrived to find out that she is Haitian and that her country is facing multiple crises. There you go …

Antonia went through a tough night.

Yesterday, a friend of ours called Joegodson from Switzerland. She is a doctor who had entered Haiti, along with some colleagues, independently of NGOs. She and her fellow doctors were working directly with the poor, like Antonia and Joegodson, who really need support these days. She knows us from our reflections here. She had contacted us after Deland’s death to offer condolences and to let us know that she and her friends would soon be arriving in Haiti. Unfortunately, before she could meet with Joegodson, the UN authorities had already ejected them from the country. The UN wants doctors attached to NGOs approved by the occupation. Hopefully, we’ll be able to explore this issue in the detail that it deserves in the future.

Yesterday, she called Joegodson directly, realizing better than anyone abroad the state of the medical services in Haiti and the needs of the poor. She is not constrained by NGOs. She can speak independently.

Joegodson and Antonia were enormously thankful. She gave them the support, over the phone from thousands of kilometres away, that they haven’t been able to find in Port-au-Prince. She listened to Antonia’s current condition and advised them what to expect. Especially in light of Antonia’s increasing anxiety about her imminent delivery, the doctor’s call was perfectly timed. Only hours later, Antonia went into labour.

Joegodson and Antonia were surprised at how quickly the event took place. The labour pains began only a few hours before the delivery. Antonia’s mother, sister and brother-in-law responded quickly to Joegodson’s call that Antonia was having stomach cramps. That was about ten o’clock last night. Antonia’s mother, having considerable personal experience with childbirth, recognized that Antonia was in labour.

Antonia was feeling weak. She could not find the strength to help the baby into the world. Moreover, since this was her first pregnancy, everyone decided that it was best to make sure that it proceeded in the presence of medical experts. Medecins sans frontiers is known to have medical experts on hand and their clinic is close by, in Saint Louis de Gonzague in Delmas 31. Most importantly, they offer free help. Joegodson and Antonia had planned to go there when the time came. In the past, that clinic helped expectant mothers.

So, after considerable difficulty finding a car that was working, Antonia and Joegodson and four members of her family drove to the clinic. (It was Frederique who found the working car. A guy who lives in a tent near Frederique and Manouchka has a car that still functions. He was happy to help.) Once at the clinic, with Antonia accelerating towards delivery faster than the car that had carried her, the staff informed them that their specialty was now setting broken bones. They don’t assist in childbirth and wouldn’t accept Antonia. To enter the Medecins san frontiers clinic, Antonia would have needed to break her arm. Things were already complicated enough.

So, the car continued along, aiming for a hospital in lower Delmas. However, only a short distance from the clinic, as they passed the Imperial Cinema, Antonia gave birth. They carried on to the hospital where they woke up a doctor who came to the car and cut the umbilical cord. Joegodson helped Antonia to a room. Medical staff bathed her and, a few hours later, they headed back home to Delmas 33 with Joenaara.

Everyone is coming by this morning. Right now, Joenaara is sleeping. (When we started writing she was feeding. See how quickly things change.) Joegodson and Antonia want to thank the Swiss doctor who cared enough to call from Europe. They wish she had been allowed to stay in Haiti.

A Restavek Named Haiti

Joegodson and Paul

This is the story of a little restavek named Haiti.

We have described the role of restavek in Haitian society through Joegodson’s personal experiences. A restavek is a child who has the misfortune to have no guardian. He or she is adopted into a family that pretends to protect his or her interests. Restaveks are deprived of education and basic human needs. They are valuable only insofar as their unpaid labour advances the interests of the adoptive family. They are exploited and abused according to the needs and desires of their ‘benefactors.’

Mrs. NGO and her husband, Mr. MNC, have taken in the little restavek called Haiti. Mrs. NGO claims the responsibility to care for the orphan. She promises to feed, clothe, and educate the child. However, the neighbours have great difficulty knowing what actually goes on behind closed doors. In any case, no one really wants to know the details. They have their own problems. They have no time or real interest in holding the stepparents to account; they are looking for their own ways To Get Ahead.

Haiti’s stepfather, Mr. MNC, is particularly harsh. He appropriates her labour. It is strange that the neighbours claim to be unaware that the vulnerable little child is being exploited to the point of slavery since they are openly buying in broad daylight the products that the kid is producing behind closed doors in the dark. Instead of challenging the stepparents, they wonder if they too couldn’t get themselves a live-in slave To Get Ahead. It’s a competitive world; everyone needs a restavek or two.

The stepmother, Mrs. NGO, was happy to see the child arrive. She told everyone that she was going to feed, clothe, and educate the poor little orphan. But then she closed the books – uh, doors – so that the neighbours couldn’t see what was happening inside. “Things are going very well,” she assured anybody who asked. “She’s a tough case, but I’m making sure that she has everything she needs.” Meanwhile, Mrs. NGO asks for help to raise the child. She needs money. She gets some. But the child remains ragged and thin. If the donors were to go inside the home, they would see that there is no bed for the child. On the other hand, Mrs. NGO has a new wardrobe. Fortunately, no one looks too closely. They prefer to focus on the evidence of their own benevolence: the donation. Mrs. NGO finds that if the child looks pitiful, then people give her even more money. In order to justify the contributions, Mrs. NGO decides to send the kid to school for a short while. But if anyone asks what the child is studying towards, there is absolute silence. Everyone knows that the ‘student’ has no future and there is no future for the ‘student.’ So no one wants to pursue the issue.

Once the child is grown, neither Mr. MNC nor Mrs. NGO has any use for her. She becomes a drag on the household. She starts talking about wanting to control her own life. She wants to make friends with the local bad kids (called Cuba and Venezuela). She offends her stepparents. So, she is thrown out of the house. They want nothing to do with her. They prohibit their birth children from playing with her. They report her to the police (the UN and MINUSTAH) as an unbalanced and dangerous presence.

Once on the street, she is an embarrassment to everyone. She reminds people everywhere of their shame. They prefer to turn away rather than confront their complicity. No one came to her protection when she was vulnerable and in the greatest need. Instead, it was then that people sought ways to profit from her. For instance, a local gentleman (let’s call him Klinton) claimed to be saving her from destitution. It was he who had come to the rescue of the abandoned child and had found her a home with his friend, Mr. MNC. But then he turned his back, not interested in her subsequent experiences. He tells everyone he is a great philanthropist, having helped the child in her hour of need. He doesn’t mention that he has been sharing the profits from her clandestine work for Mr. MNC.

And so, she walks the streets. She has a hard time communicating with people, because everyone refuses to believe her when she explains her past. They tell her she’s lazy and she should pick herself up and become independent. “Stop living in the past!” they chide her. “Why don’t you focus on the future?” She gets confused when they say that, because she doesn’t know how a future can possibly follow from anything but the past. But then, she never did get the education that would have allowed her to understand such complex philosophical propositions.

Insurrection in SONAPI

Joegodson and Paul

When last we left Frederique and Manouchka, in November, they were both working at the SONAPI Industrial Park in Port-au-Prince.

It was Baby Doc Duvalier who, in the 1970s, had offered the impoverished peasants, newly arrived from the countryside, to American industrialists looking for the cheapest labour in the hemisphere. While journalists recorded for us images of a few people cheering Duvalier’s arrival at the airport on Sunday, we think a more meaningful manifestation was taking place in the nearby assembly plants. It’s not clear how much the handful of Haitians were paid to cheer Duvalier’s arrival at Toussaint Louverture Airport (once named for his father), but we know to the gourd how much the workers make in the Industrial Park. That’s only part of their problem.

We hope the victims of Duvalier find the strength and the support to force Baby Doc to account for his actions. There appears to be such little life behind those eyes; perhaps only a comprehensive enquiry could light a spark in his soul. Meanwhile, we have to place the actions of the humble $3-a-day Frederique in juxtaposition to the $500,000,000 president-for-life Duvalier. We want to keep in the forefront those, like Frederique, who fight for justice and dignity, even as we are forced to deal with the architects of oppression like Duvalier. The trap is to spend so much time with evil that you forget where the hope lies. Moreover, Duvalier is only the most obvious case; he should not be allowed to displace those who have more effectively rationalized their avarice and contempt for the world.

Frederique

Remember that Frederique had been having problems submitting to the philosophic underpinnings of the Haitian class system. Much as the evidence showed him that he was worth almost nothing in the marketplace, he demanded nevertheless to be treated with respect. That flaw in his character culminated last week in a significant – and totally unreported – workers’ revolt in Building 43 at the SONAPI Industrial Park. Let’s trace the education of a troublemaker.

His girlfriend Manouchka had saved ten dollars so that he could take a course to learn how to operate an industrial sewing machine. After he was fired from his first job for insubordination, she also found him work at Building 31 at SONAPI. There, he was assigned the job of pressing men’s pants. He had a quota of 1,000 pieces a day and he earned about 20$US a week. If he worked all the overtime hours, seven days a week, he earned 36$US.

After a month, he developed a very uncomfortable rash under his arms as a result of performing the same motion repeatedly in extreme heat. Port-au-Prince is hot. Building 31 is hotter. Now, imagine pressing pants at breakneck speed for ten hours a day. He sweated profusely. His moist arms rubbed constantly against his sides and caused, over time, an irritating rash. Finally, he couldn’t perform the motion because of the pain. He asked for a few days off so that his skin might heal. No. He asked for a bonus in recognition of his pain. No. And so Frederique decided to leave anyway in order to heal.

He stayed in the tent in Delmas 31 that he had erected for Manouchka and him. Manouchka continued to take the taptap each morning to SONAPI, without him. Soon, his skin was healed and he was well again. But he didn’t want to return to that job.

Outside of each of the factories at the Sonapi Industrial Park, a group of unemployed wait to take the place of an unwanted employee. Notice that all of the hopefuls are men. Women are preferred by the managers as they are thought to be more controllable.

However, once healed, Frederique returned to SONAPI and stood in front of Kay Morisette (Morisette’s place). The locals name each building for the Haitian family that runs it. For instance, you may be sewing clothes for GAP or Gildan Activewear, but you know the sweatshop for the Haitian sub-contractors. Those are “the families” that run Haiti: the oligarchy.

Frederique was chosen to work in Kay Morisette. Like the other sweatshops, work started at 6:30 am. He worked in a small module to make pockets for men’s trousers. It was demanding. The module had to produce 1,000 pockets by 11 am. If not, it risked being sent home. The daily quota was 2,000 pockets. The members of the module worked hard to make sure they surpassed the quota. However, they got paid nothing extra when they did. They got paid nothing if they didn’t make the quota. At Kay Morisette, Frederique earned 80$US every two weeks. However, he hated the work. His experience was similar to that of Manouchka last year, described in our article A Haitian Love Story. The module system is designed to make workers police each other. If one member is slow, then the whole module suffers. And so, the workers can be cruel to the slowest worker. In SONAPI, a worker who is judged to be a drag on the module is called a kokoye: a coconut. It’s a bitter epithet to swallow.

After three months in Kay Morisette, Frederique got sick. He began to suffer from abdominal pains and couldn’t keep up. He told the boss he needed time off. The boss brought him a pill. He said he was serious, that he needed a real diagnosis for his stomach cramps. (Don’t forget, these overworked workers are living – like Frederique – in squalid conditions surrounded by malaria, diptheria, typhoid, cholera and other contagious diseases.) They told him to get to work. He asked the bosses why he was having ONA deducted from his miserable salary if there was no healthcare. (ONA is a mandatory deduction for employees in the formal economy. It is supposed to cover health insurance, but it is obviously a scam to line somebody’s pockets – the same pockets he was sewing while sick.) The bosses didn’t like his questions any more than Frederique liked their answers. They responded by mocking him. They aimed at his masculinity, calling him a wimp, a crybaby and, finally, when he weakened, a kokoye.

That was the final straw. He walked out on the job and to recuperate in his tent in Delmas 31.

Last month, Manouchka persuaded him to try again. This time, he stood outside Building 43 to work for The Well Best. There, the manager is a harsh Korean woman named Jessica. He was hired as part of a module of thirty workers to begin production of a new product the company was launching: women’s slacks. Jessica told them that the quota was 1,200 units per day. Pay was 80$US every two weeks. The workers responded that the quota was unreasonable. They said that their module could manufacture a maximum of 600.

Jessica made two modules of fifteen workers each. Each was responsible for 500 pieces. She offered a bonus of 4$ if they achieved the quota. The workers had seen this before; Jessica was testing them to see how much they could achieve if they worked hard. Once that was established, the bonus would be eliminated and the module would be responsible for the maximum.

The personnel officer has much power inside the SONAPI factories. He harasses, humiliates, and fires workers from time to time to control the group. The personnel officer needs to demonstrate to the owners that he or she is ruthless in order to be considered for advancement. They have to be seen to be contemptuous of the workers. In this case, the Well Best workers were finding the quota impossible to attain. They were working at breakneck speed. If they had to use the toilets, they rushed in, took care of business, and then rushed back so fast that they left the paper towels on the floor. They knew that there was a janitor whose job was to clean the washroom. However, the personnel officer – a Haitian – came by to humiliate the workers very publicly. He called them animals – kabrit (goats) – for the way they left the washroom.

Those kinds of words are meant to humiliate the workers. The personnel officer needed to be as loud and insulting as possible in order that his bosses register his contempt for the poor workers. Frederique was supposed to recoil in the face of the insult. However, Frederique responded in the tone that the personnel officer had chosen. He said that if they were indeed animals and coconuts, then there would be no question of them operating the machines, since everyone knows that goats can’t sew. He said that all thirty workers were going to  work like actual goats until the personnel officer and Jessica admitted they were human beings. Spontaneously, every one of the workers stood with Frederique.

The apology not forthcoming, they all walked out of Kay Morisette and loudly made known their insurrection. Other workers from the other sweatshops of SONAPI began to join them. They all threw stones at Kay Morisette, breaking the windows and terrifying Jessica and the personnel officer.

MINUSTAH also has a presence inside of SONAPI. The control of workers is a priority of the "international community," excluding its populations, press, and politicians - except in huis clos.

Jessica called the SONAPI guards. However, they were not strong enough to confront the growing crowd. Then, Jessica called the PNH (national police). They arrived and asked the workers why they were striking. The workers responded that they were underpaid and treated like animals. The police told Jessica that it wasn’t their business. They left.

The insurgents remained well past closing time, holding Jessica and the personnel officer hostage since they were afraid to present themselves to the crowd that the security guards and the police had decided were outside of their jurisdiction.

Jessica then called out to the workers using a loudspeaker. She said that they should choose three people to negotiate their grievances. The crowd began to calm down. They chose three people to speak for the whole module. The crowd then disbanded, deciding that they would withhold their decision until the following day. However, as soon as the crowd dispersed, Jessica left the building to go home, without exchanging as much as a word with the representatives. It had been a tactic to disperse the crowd. She had no interest in negotiations.

The next day, when Frederique and the others arrived for work, they first learned of Jessica’s treachery. Frederique said that he had had enough. He handed in his badge and turned around for Delmas 31.

Manouchka called Frederique later in the day, worried. She stopped by Kay Morisette after work as usual to ride home with him. He explained that he had given up on the place. She said that there was a big crowd out front. She was afraid for what might have become of him.

Later, she joined him at their humble tent up in Delmas 31. He was worried that she would be angry that he had lost another job. But she understood his frustration and his action. She said that she couldn’t stand working there either. They decided that they would find a way to realize their dreams together and that they would not include SONAPI. Manouchka spoke once again of her dream to be a florist or to sell flowers as a street merchant. It has been slipping away. Both working together at SONAPI can’t make enough money to live in more than a tent.

We suggested months ago that the industrialists have no interests in the earthquake victims improving their living conditions. Frederique and Manouchka are living under a tarp stretched across two by fours, each working over sixty hours a week, and cannot save enough to improve even that shelter. Even the humanitarian NGOs who help the victims of the earthquake underwrite an inhumane system of exploitation.

 

Double Crossed

Joegodson and Paul

As Canadians were donating to the Red Cross in order to help the victims of the Haitian earthquake, one of its ex-employees, Virgil Grandfield, was refusing to allow the labour abuses he witnessed in Indonesia after the tsunami of 2004 to fade into history. He resigned from the Red Cross when it refused to address his evidence that the Red Cross subcontractors were not paying the Javanese workers they had brought to remote areas of Aceh province. Stranded, the men found out too late that they were victims of human trafficking. You can read Grandfield’s account of his struggle to seek justice for the Javanese wokers here. Radio-Canada, acting on his information, verified the systemic use of human trafficking by the Red Cross subcontractors. Young business graduates searching for a career in the current global market might want to watch how a Red Cross spokesperson earns her keep by filling in the moments until the interviewer has exhausted his stunted curiosity.

In the age of global neoliberalism, subcontracting is standard procedure for burying unethical business practices. We have shown how multinational corporations use it to protect themselves from allegations of worker abuse. There is much more to say. While basking in the light of goodness, NGOs are in fact corporate structures that ruthlessly protect their reputations and their ability to raise huge amounts of capital.

On the Wednesday before the election, Joegodson went to explore a project that the Red Cross is sponsoring in Cite Soleil. He was raised in another part of Cite Soleil, so, once he disembarked from the taptap, he had to ask the local people for directions to the worksite.

Once there, he saw a truck marked International Red Cross coming from a construction zone. He entered the area. It was a large camp with many shoddy tents. A section of it was under construction.

He saw a number of groups of men constructing shelters. He was drawn to one of the groups where an argument was taking place. The argument was about money, but they stopped as he arrived. The men dispersed.

Joegodson spoke with the boss who remained behind. He was a young man and the foreman of the group. Each group had one boss and five workers.

Joegodson told the boss he was a carpenter and asked if there was any chance in finding a job on the site. The boss told him that the training sessions had already taken place some time ago. Each worker and boss attended the training sessions. Then they had begun the actual work. However, the boss advised Joegodson that if he checked in each morning, very early, he might be able to take the place of anyone who quit. Joegodson asked why people quit. The boss answered that sometimes they find better jobs elsewhere. Joegodson asked how much money the workers earn. He told the boss that he had been to the USAID-CHF worksite where the workers worked but didn’t receive their pay. The boss wouldn’t say how much the men earned, but he said they were paid. The boss went away.

Joegodson hung about and approached a couple of the five men – the workers – who had been talking with the boss earlier. Joegodson asked about the working conditions and salary. The guys said that the group has to make one house every six days. They start very early in the morning. The houses aren’t prefabricated and the ground has to be prepared, so there is considerable work involved. The bosses wanted to pay them 300 Haitian dollars for each house, but the workers forced them to agree to 400, which is 80$US. So, in principle, each worker would make 13$US a day. However, no one had yet been paid anything at all. They said that they are supposed to be paid when the whole project is finished. No one knows when that will be.

These men are the victims of the earthquake. They are homeless, except for their tents. They have families that they can’t feed. The workers are afraid that, like the CHF men, they won’t be paid. So, now Joegodson could understand why they might look for work elsewhere – work that paid.

The men told Joegodson that they thought the Red Cross were thieves for withholding their salary. Question: “Why do you work here then?” Answer: “There’s nothing else.”

Joegodson left to poke around the shelters that had been completed. He was amazed at the apparent lack of foresight in regards to the planning. The shelters were simple affairs. They were each three sheets of plywood by four, or twelve by sixteen feet. They were crowded together; there was not a metre between them. The most disturbing thing was that in the middle of the group of shelters was the community latrine. It was central so that the shelters actually butted up against it. In some cases, he could measure 50 centimetres between the latrines and the shelter. No one was living in them yet, but Joegodson couldn’t see how they could ever be inhabitable. In the Haitian heat, fecal matter makes its decomposition quite public. No one can stand the smell of the latrines even from a hundred metres away. When the trucks come to empty them, the smell is unbearable. And so it is unimaginable that people would accept living in such proximity to the community latrines.

There was a solitary young woman sitting in front of the shelters. She appeared dejected. Joegodson went to sit on a rock next to her and struck up a conversation. He asked her what she thought of the shelters. Why did she think they would put the toilets in the middle of the shelters? She was trying to understand the same thing. She said that even when you’re a distance from the latrines, the odour is unbearable. How could people possibly live here? She told Joegodson that she lived in this neighbourhood. Like everyone else, she was now under a tent. But she was not going to live in these things. So, she was trying to figure out what to do. She had a family.

She said that the Red Cross had a program that she didn’t like any better. If you found a room somewhere else, like Delmas, and you brought a lease from the prospective landlord to the Red Cross, they would check it out and go to see the landlord. They would pay the landlord for six months rent. Then after six months, they would give you 2,000$H (400$US) to start a business. (That’s what they say; no one believes anything.) But then they would have to leave their neighbourhood – their community – and they would have nothing to live on.

Staring at the little development in front of her, she said that the mud was going to be a critical problem when it rained. In Port-au-Prince, the people in the poor districts are very sensitive to mud. There is no pavement or grass and the torrential rains turn the common areas into disaster zones of mud. (People sometimes just leave their shoes in the mud and carry on without them when they get stuck too deep.) The shelters were in a little depression and nothing had been done to assure that the entrances would be protected from the rain and mud. The planning was disastrous.

He left her to ruminate over her family’s future. He didn’t see either choice as attractive either.

A Haitian Love Story, continued

Joegodson and Paul

On June 2, we left Manouchka at death’s door at the CICIMED medical clinic in Delmas 19, Port-au-Prince. Her boyfriend Frederique had tried to get her back pay from SONAPI to cover the costs for the tests that the staff said she needed, but he had failed. Both were desperate in the face of her impending death.

Manouchka preparing for work before she came down with malaria in June.

The medical personnel told Frederique that Manouchka would have to be transferred to another clinic where she could be diagnosed and treated. CICIMED is an upscale clinic that normally takes only paying customers. Clearly, they counted Manouchka and Frederique among working Haitians. And working Haitians could not afford CICIMED bills. Manouchka was delirious and deteriorating quickly. Frederique was desperate.

Things changed. Soon after, the medical staff told Frederique that Manouchka had malaria. They also agreed that they would provide her with the antimalarial drugs that would save her life.

Things could have been worse. We can understand both her illness and recovery in relation to the earthquake. The earthquake led to the squalid living conditions in which malaria and other potentially fatal diseases thrive. It also brought organizations that temporarily infused local private clinics like CICIMED with cash. In order to qualify for the cash, we speculate, they were obliged to accept cases like Manouchka. Before the earthquake, the poor people living in the neighbourhood of CICIMED never considered it in relation to their health. You need money to be admitted into CICIMED. That window of treatment for the poor has closed again. The old healthcare model has re-established itself.

To understand the difference, consider the experience of Manouchka in June and Deland this week. Deland, it must be underlined, is suffering from both typhus and malaria. Also facing death, he was required to travel in insalubrious and uncomfortable conditions to line up for hours for a quick examination and diagnosis. He was then sent away with a prescription for expensive drugs. Hundreds of poor Haitians lined up with Deland at the same public clinic from five o’clock in the morning, for want of more humane alternatives.

When Manouchka left the clinic in June, she did not want to return to her old job at SONAPI. She tried to imagine another way to survive. When she returned for the back pay that they would not give to Frederique a couple of weeks earlier, she learned that receiving it depended on resuming the job that she detested and that had almost cost her life. She acquiesced for want of an alternative.

Meanwhile, Frederique was unemployed. He had erected their tent in Delmas 33, but it was a shoddy affair even in relation to the other makeshift shelters. He was ashamed to be at “home” while Manouchka worked long hours at least six days a week.

Frederique with Manouchka in the CICIMED clinic in June.

After a few weeks, Manouchka was able to save 10$US so that Frederique could take a course in operating a sewing machine and thus enter the formal labour market. The course completed, he presented himself outside a factory at SONAPI. He was hired. However, since his skills were rudimentary and he was unable to work fast enough to please his bosses, they fired him.

He was able to find another job in one of the many sweatshops of Port-au-Prince. While he came to work efficiently, he refused to accept the degrading treatment from his bosses. He spoke back, asserting that he was a man and therefore refused to be treated as a child. He also refused to relent in the face of the constant derision. He says that his resistance angered the boss who saw it as a test of wills. Frederique came to see that insisting that he be treated with respect was upsetting the equilibrium of the sweatshop. The daily salary of three dollars US came with constant humiliation. Learning how to operate the sewing machine was only part of the job. More important was accepting the subordinate social role of worker.

We should note that the sweatshops do not even train the workers they abuse. Men and women must already have paid for a course that allows them to be financially and socially maltreated.

Before long, the boss realized that Frederique would not submit and fired him. By now, Frederique was proficient at the work. He would need to at least pretend to accept the proposition that he was the social inferior of the bosses in order to keep his next job.

Men wait outside the gates of one of the SONAPI factories in June. When an employee is judged too slow or troublesome, he or she is quickly replaced by these unemployed, always in great supply. Women are chosen first which accounts for the fact that this photo (illicitly snapped by Joegodson) shows men waiting their chance to make four dollars US a day.

In August, he went back to SONAPI. Manouchka, after a year, is considered a profitable asset. She, like Frederique, was fired from her first jobs at SONAPI and in the more informal sweatshops because of her inability to work at the pace of the quota. In August, she was able to convince the boss to hire Frederique who waited outside the factory. For the last couple of months, they have been working together in the same shop. They each make under thirty dollars for a seven-day week.

They live still in their tent in Delmas 33. That means that they have to take a taptap to and from SONAPI each day. Since the factories all open at six-thirty in the morning, they must leave at least an hour in advance to have a chance to arrive on time. At six-thirty, the gates close and the latecomers are shut out for the day. Likewise, returning after five or six in the evening (depending on when they are dismissed) is chaotic. All of the commuters are under the same pressure to arrive on time and they fight with each other for spots on the limited number of taptaps.

Like Frederique, Manouchka refused the treatment when she first arrived from the countryside. She still hates it. However, now, she wakes up before Frederique, who is less resigned to their fate. She makes sure that they leave early enough to arrive at the factory on time. He allows her to lead him. Both ponder their dreams as they are pushed around Port-au-Prince: Manouchka to be a florist and Frederique to open a karate club. However, they work such long hours and are so exhausted that they have no time or energy for anything but survival.

They managed to save enough over the last two months so that Frederique could buy some two-by-fours in order to reinforce their tent. In other words, they seem to be building a life in the tent. Their employers in the formal economy – the sweatshops run by wealthy Haitians in the service of the multinational clothing corporations – are profiting from their squalid situation. Manouchka and Frederique are motivated to continue to suffer the abuses because of their young love and their dreams of a future together.

At home, there is little in the way of domestic chores because there is nothing there. They have no time or wherewithal to cook and so they buy their plates of rice from the street merchants. On the Sundays when they aren’t required to work, they buy from the merchants near their tent in Delmas 33 and eat together.

Antonia and Joegodson watch their friends with great sympathy. They too are looking for a way to escape the inescapable trap set by the powers that control Port-au-Prince within the global economy.

“It’s so tragic,” Joegodson mused the day after the hurricane as his own father faces death from malaria and typhus. “They are in love and they want a future, but it’s hard to see how they can escape the fate of people like Mayou.” Mayou is Joegodson’s elderly neighbour who lost her only son in the earthquake. She has never been able to live independently of her equally poor mother despite working all her life at the SONAPI Industrial Park. (We called her Seret in a previous article, but she is no longer concerned about us using her real name.)

We wonder how the employers will respond to the deadly epidemics that are present in Port-au-Prince and show no signs of dissipating. With the public healthcare so ineffective at even keeping people alive, skilled, overworked employees like Manouchka and Frederique living in squalid conditions will be increasingly vulnerable. Manouchka has already escaped death, but could more easily succumb to the next bout of malaria, cholera, typhus, or tuberculosis, all of which are flourishing in the squalor.

We must take note of the fact that Haitians are not at the bottom of the global pay scale. Other populations in Asia are living in squalor and receiving even smaller salaries. It is possible that, around the boardroom tables, executives are calculating the birthrate and the availability of replacements for the deceased. (We can’t know how they are calculating their bottom lines because their strategies are protected from public scrutiny. Private, corporate entrprises are fundamentally totalitarian.) Joegodson highlights the fact that the birthrate has exploded since the earthquake – a phenomenon well documented after other disasters and wars. In other words, the exploitative employers will not lack for victims. He observes, with mordant accuracy, “We’ve already replaced everybody who died in the earthquake. More, probably.”

Manouchka is alone with Frederique. Her female relatives, with whom she was living after the earthquake, refused to accept Frederique; she thinks out of jealousy. In choosing Frederique, she faced the abandonment of her relatives. While she resents having been forced to make a choice, she is happy with the one she made. They are fortunate to have good relations with Frederique’s mother and brother, who are struggling like them. Frederique’s mother has recovered from her broken leg and has resumed her work as a street merchant. Again, she benefited from the funding that NGOs (Doctors Without Borders) temporarily offered after the earthquake to have her leg set in a clinic.

Meanwhile, Frederique and Manouchka are trying to figure out how they can escape the prison of SONAPI. They aren’t alone.