Camp Dadadou

Sue’s friend Carl lives in Camp Dadadou, one of the comparatively smaller camps in Port-au-Prince. After the earthquake, people living in the middle-class neighbourhood Delmas 3 moved across the street to the soccer stadium and set up tents…10 000 people. The houses remain under the rubble, along with the deed to their properties and their loved-ones who have passed. Relatively speaking, it is one of the nicer camps since it is surrounded by a high stone wall and barbed wire providing memory of a previous Haitian era when Haiti was represented in the World Cup in 1978. There is a volleyball and basketball court, and folks have started businesses, like cell phone charging stations, Skype phones service to Canada and US, and shops stocked with the Cheetos, beer, cigarettes, rice and beans.


However, being small means it has been overlooked by the larger NGOs in infrastructure management. They haven’t had drinking water for two months and they have 126 toilets for 10 000 residents. They have 24 orphans who are housed by a tent provided by USAID but are fed by the residents of the camp. A mobile clinic is run by Partners in Health and a Haitian nurse provides emergency care and delivery attendance 24/7. This nurse has attended 126 deliveries in the tents, 3 of which were transported for cesarean. There were no maternal deaths and 5 neonatal deaths.
The camp has security that residents provide. Though fighting between residents is managed as any mob would, without the back up if police and ambulance to disperse the crowd. Last night, while Sue and I were at Dadadou, having a beer and visiting with Carl’s family, a fight broke out between two teenage girls. Everything stopped – the volleyball game, the basketball game, bathing children, cooking on the coal pit – everyone rushed to see two girls lunge at each other with batons and back away and taunt one another. They were cheered on by the crowd. Entering into the circle of the fight, came a young man who raised a thick baton – it happened quickly, one of the girls stumbled and collapse unconscious. The crowd didn’t disperse but some men were able to carry her to the clinic which is surrounded by barb wire. She was laid on a camp cot in the clearing of the clinic and observed by the mob from the edge of the barb wire. Carl led me through the wire. The girl continued seizing for the next two hours while there were these Lord of the Flies moments of cheering and calls of justice served. A middle age woman appeared and said she was a friend of the girl’s mother, she asked if the girl could be taken to a tent for a rest? Would she wake up? I pointed to the girl’s seizing right hand, stiff legs and jaw, non-response to pain, and fixed pupils – her brain is bruised, she needs to go to the hospital. My limited experience in resource-poor countries (or who come from resource-poor countries and are receiving care in Canada) is when you tell someone they are sick or injured – the default pathway is death, and it only once you explain that there is treatment do they consider life a possibility. Whereas in Canada – our default is life, and we’re shocked to learn that medicine can’t rescue everyone from death. When I said she had to go to the hospital, the mob at the barb wire, and those who had managed entry and were now surrounding us in the clearing, said she’s as good as dead. It didn’t help that the girl when collapse on the cot, stiffened and start seizing again…in Haiti, voodoo beliefs are stronger than rational belief. And no explanation of brain bruising and bleeding vessels would dissuade the mob from pointing out that she was changing into a cat or a dog, and she was about to leave. Finally, our friend Nickel appeared with his jeep and we loaded her into the back, her head resting on the lap of the woman accompanying her to the hospital. We arrived at the National hospital, and knowing that she wouldn’t be assessed until the morning, we left them. The next day, we were told she was discharged, having progressed from seizing and unconscious to a headache…