An incredible image (and situation). Have any readers been there? Is there any space for vehicular traffic other than bicycles/mopeds/pushcarts? It's hard to grasp the implications for sanitation, public health, fires, hurricanes...
Photo credit Ramon Espinosa / AP, via The Atlantic.
That looks like those stacked stone houses (Ireland)?
ReplyDeleteI have been in Port-au-Prince several times, though not in that neighborhood. I first went in 2016, and even then there was quite a lot of rubble and wreckage still evident from the 2010 earthquake. Much of Port-au-Prince is on pretty flat land. I understand that Jalousie (the pictured neighborhood) was built up in the aftermath of the earthquake; people basically went up the hillsides and built small homes. The government wanted them painted to give them more Caribbean character, especially since the area could be seen from the more affluent area called Petionville. See this BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-44068840
ReplyDeleteMotorbikes are common transportation, and probably the main automotive thing that can get up those hills. Most people don't have those. They usually just walk and may use taxis (tac-tacs) or hop onto trucks.
Sanitation and health are indeed big issues -- even more so now with national resources severely strained or cut off.
Whenever I see pictures of places like this, or New Delhi, or the old Kowloon Walled City, I'm reminded of two things. First, how absolutely amazing and resourceful we as humans can be, and how willing we are to stuff ourselves into whatever places we can find (this can have, of course, good and bad consequences attached). And second; if every human on earth were willing to live in this sort of population density, the entire world population could fit into Texas, leaving the rest of the world entirely empty. Just food for thought.
ReplyDeleteRemember that old song:
ReplyDeleteLittle boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same
Very apropos until you get to the verse that says all the people in the boxes went to university, which I have to assume is not the case here.