Haiti: Testimony From Camp Corail as Cholera Looms
by Georgianne Nienaber
Investigative journalist, author, Haiti relief worker
While Haiti was spared severe wind damage from Hurricane Tomas, flooding killed eight people and threatens to worsen a serious cholera epidemic. 1.3 million people are living in unspeakably crowded and filthy condition eleven months after an earthquake killed as many as 300,000. On Monday, the Haitian Ministry of Population (MSPP) released new figures indicating at least 8,138 cholera patients and 544 deaths in five regions or "departments." Artibonite, Centre, Nord, Nord-Ouest, and Ouest all registered cases. This is serious news, since it means that the contagion has spread from the "epicenter" of the outbreak in Artibonite, to the north and northwestern parts of Haiti. The epidemic is a little more than two weeks old.
Anger is increasing under shredded tarps, which the media insists on identifying as "tents." Residents of Camp Corail-Cesselesse, Haiti's flagship IDP camp, were evacuated prior to Tomas from what the government and aid groups once called "hurricane-proof" tents. The previously white nylon tents are now looking more and more like the dirty shredded tarps found in adjacent Camp Canaan, whose 5,581 residents were not offered the luxury of protection as the storm approached. They may have been better off than the people of Corail, who offered testimony that they were moved to an abandoned hospital and housed no better than some of the farm animals that joined them there.
Camp Canaan, the "Forgotten Camp"

Man repairing his "hurricane proof" tent in Camp Corail
If cholera should enter any one of these camps the outcome will be catastrophic.
We have written volumes about conditions in these two camps, and will continue to do so.
For now, listen to testimony from Camp Corail and ask yourself where the money has gone, why 1.3 million people are living in these conditions, and why upwards of 16,000 "charitable" organizations find themselves unprepared for an outbreak of diarrheal disease. Cholera was unpredictable and we will look at its origins in the coming days, but an epidemic of disease was inevitable.
Here is the story from a man living in Camp Corail, taken on November 6. It is time we started listening to the Haitian people. The truth resides with them and in their testimony. Listen as he asks if media organizations have been paid to lie about life in the camps.
Hopefully, you will be outraged as he describes aid workers arriving in expensive SUVs while he "lives in misery."
"It is only God's will that we are still alive."
This was our third visit to Haiti since the earthquake, and what this man (in video above) says is completely accurate.
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Photos and video by G. Nienaber November 6, 2010. Please take and use.

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Comments
Anyway I am now married, she had me gassed and and she "DID" me to make it official. She goes for what she wants, she seems to be a real BIACHE, if you know what I mean.
I showed my friends your photo of camp Canaan last night, it's hard to look at these things but no one should turn away. We cannot let our hearts become stone. I wonder how the children will stay alive there, I want them to be warm and fed and safe. I am sorry Ezili, for all the mothers and fathers of all those children too. I am grateful that you don't stop showing us these things and ask God to keep you strong. Love and strength to you.
@'Heure Bleue
I feel you. Courage, love and strength to you. Don't fold, ever. I am saying to you exactly what I say to dying and many times demoralized Haitians... For instance, I tell stories like this: There's a Haitian warrior named Sanite Belè (Belair). When the French captured her during the Haitian revolution to end slavery, her husband, another soldier who was leading his own battalion offered to exchange himself for her freedom. At the appointed exchange place, the French betrayed them, went back on their word of honor, captured him, tortured him and put both, husband and wife, to a firing squad. During the execution, the French general said to the Haitian soldier, because you're a woman, I will blindfold you so you won't have to see your husband getting shot to shreds or when the bullets come for you. Sanite Belair, said "No thank you. I am a Haitian woman. I know how live with dignity. I know how to die for freedom . Keep your blindfold." She then offered her chest to the bullets, saying, in essence, do your worst civilized France. France killed her.
But, because Sanite Belair knew how to live free, today I stand without the blindfold. And so @'Heure Bleue do you who support this work giving voice to the voiceless in Haiti. No one said it would be easy watching the various bullets come. Or, living without the media blindfold. But not turning your head will help the next generation everywhere @'Heure Bleue. They may not know your name or mine, but the energies you're lifting by facing, with eyes wide open, the evil that vies for our basic goodness is stronger than death. Stronger than these bullying profit-over-people predators and all their propagandas and ideological tools. Ginen poze.