There must be few places in the world as devastating as the Cite Soleil slum. I spent a few hours down there today, amid the squalor and trash – home to 300,000 people, Haiti’s poorest. Urban poverty has always been, for me, the most extreme. I’ve seen plenty of it in Africa. India also. But I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere that seems so sweepingly impoverished – so desperately poor.
There is no running water in Cite Soleil. There is little or no electricity. It is impossible to describe the amount of trash that litters the ground – generated by 300,000 people each day, with no trash removal system, and no sewers. For years the police had no presence at all, and gangs still run the town. It is considered to be among the most dangerous slums in the Western Hemisphere. It’s easy to believe.
That said, my experience in the few short hours I spent there was a quiet one. I went to photograph the living conditions in the area for an NGO that is providing medicines to Haiti. At every stop, I was welcomed into the homes of strangers. Women brought their children to me to photograph, and beckoned me inside their sweltering homes to photograph the reality of their lives – charcoal blackened interiors shared often by generations of family members who have never made it out of the shanty town.
It was one of those days that reminds you how lucky you are, and how much you have in life.
April 25th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
