Matt Payne

Ask me a question.

Photo Gallery:

• 
  
  18 Photos Matt Payne in Haiti

Page 2, continued

LA SOURCE, HAITI (June 2010) — Inside the car were two other people.  In the front, a blonde named Naomi and between Bryn and I, another man named Eric. 

Destroyed Building in Port au Prince
Photo/M. Payne click photos to enlarge

“Are you guys with the movie?” I asked, trying to ignore the mass destruction and poverty in the city that now raced past me as the car accelerated onto a major thoroughfare.

“I’m with Operation Blessing,” said David.

“Oh,” I said, unfamiliar with the organization.  “Are all of you guys with Operation Blessing?” I asked.

“No, he’s with Artists for Peace and Justice,” he said referring to Bryn. 

“Mostly actors and that type of thing,” Bryn said coolly.

“I see,” I said.  “So are you involved with the movie?”

“Nope,” he responded before launching into a humorous rant about the Red Cross and how little they have done, and are doing, as I receded from the conversation still not sure who I was with and why. 

“So are any of you guys with Generosity Water?” I asked. 

“Nope,” they answered collectively.  “But we work with them,” said David as the car smashed into a crack into the street without so much as braking. 

“Got it,” I lied as we pushed forward swerving to miss a school bus packed with Haitians, spilling out the windows and extending onto the roof, one of many I had seen in a few short minutes.

“That guy almost killed us!” I gasped, noticing that this fact was not registering with my colleagues.

“Are you with the movie?” Bryn asked me not at all concerned by the fact that we had all almost died.

“No.” I responded as we accelerated and swerved to narrowly missing yet another bus, this one with a cartoon-like Jesus painted on the front with the phrase “God is our friend” splashed across the front.

“What the hell!?”  I said, panicked.

“They’re called tap taps because you tap on them when you want the driver to stop,” explained Bryn.  “It’s how everyone gets around in Haiti when you don’t have a scooter.”

Accepting the fact that every moment thus far felt like a harrowing escape from death, I began to look at the city around me, noticing that in the ten minutes we had been driving at nearly fifty miles an hour; despite thousands of Haitians, emaciated dogs, goats and cattle climbing across piles of rubble, heaps of tires and plastic bottles, and wadding through green malignant puddles to cross narrow streets, we were yet to come to a stop. 

Not because we were fortuitous with green lights but because there weren’t any stoplights. 

Haitian Women Photo/M. Payne
click photos to enlarge/slideshow 

Hoping to somehow shield myself from the carnage, as we slowed in traffic, I pulled out my camera and rolled down the window to take a photo of a bone-thin woman standing in front of what was once perhaps her home. 

Her dark skin, like most in Haiti, had turned a sickly gray from ash and dust adhering to her ceaselessly perspiring skin; spare one swath of her natural skin tone where a tear had recently rolled down her hollowed cheek. 

Catching my moment of exploitation, with a blend of scorn and despair-fueled indifference, she turned away as we swerved to miss three men on a pink scooter. 

“You better keep that camera in the window,” said David, picking up speed again, smashing into a deep pothole as we made our way past one of countless refugee camps where tents of white and blue, spackled with tattered sun-bleached blankets crammed one on top of the other. Without sewage, power, or sanitation, these tents extended claustrophobically for miles on end. 

“They’ll see your arm hanging out the window with that camera and they’ll yank it off.”

As I struggled to digest the ever-unfolding apocalyptic discord around me, Bryn, David and the rest of the gang in the car joked about a party that they had attended with the NGOs (non-government organizations) the night before.  David and Bryn, I learned, in addition to endless aid projects across some of the most dangerous parts of the country, he and many others spent Thursdays picking up unclaimed bodies at the morgue and providing them with a dignified burial. 

“Otherwise,” Bryn told me, “most of them wind up in a landfill.” Sometimes,” he continued, “we even play music.” 

Shifting from the morose, the conversation turned back to me.

“So what brings you to Haiti?” asked Eric, one of the members of Operation Blessing.

Children in the street Photo/M. Payne
click photos to enlarge/slideshow 

“What?” I asked, trying to disassociate the word “bodies” from the word “landfill.”

“Why are you here?” the question reshaped itself, hanging there. 

“I don’t really know,” I answered, as a bright-eyed little boy in a green shirt and no pants took a sip of water from the same puddle in which his goat cooled his feet.  His mother, or more likely, surrogate mother watched a few feet back, unaffected.

We made our way out of the city towards Jacmel and just beyond that, the village of La Source. A village that somehow, was only a day away from cleans water and,- I hoped impossibly- hope. 

From Hell to Hope: 72 Hours in Haiti, page one
From Hell to Hope: 72 Hours in Haiti, page two
From Hell to Hope: 72 Hours in Haiti, page three

This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.