Mark Silverberg is a welcome guest blogger. He is an Ohio businessman who read about our work in Gaza (in the NY Times) and got in touch. “I want to volunteer and help,” he said. “I can take pictures.” He came with us to Haiti–we saw the pictures, felt Mark’s heart, and now he is a dear part of our team. He sent us this account of his time in the tent camps.
Enjoy his story.
Jim
We hiked to three tent camps on the side of a mountain today, Thursday morning. Hot as heck. What I saw cannot be described– 13,000 people live in one camp alone. The pictures and videos only begin to tell the story. We were given a tour through the camps by the residents who are elected to help coordinate running the camps, so a school and homes were opened to us. The camp organizers kept introducing us to people and children with problems and asking us how they can help them. We suggested they apply to take the CMBM training. [Note: if this is your first time to the blog, you can read other posts about CMBM’s Haiti trainings to help Haitian caregivers help these kids & families]. The visit was a very humbling experience.
An extraordinary experience on Friday morning. I went to the Champ de Mars tent camp across the street from where the CMBM training program was held at to take printed pictures to the kids and families I photographed during the CMBM training in December 2010. Laurent Sheineder helped me find all of the kids and adults in the pictures. They were very surprised to see their pictures and of course posed for many more! They told Laurent and I that of all of the people who had taken their pictures I am the only one to bring them copies. I think they must feel invisible.
Then at lunchtime the organizers of another nonprofit, Zanmi Lakay (ZM) from Oakland, CA picked me up and we went to Cite Soleil. It’s the worst slum in the poorest city in the hemisphere. And we weren’t in the BAD part of the slum. This was big time scary.
ZM organizes basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education) for homeless children in Port au Prince. Before the earthquake they had a home and facilities for many children, but the earthquake destroyed the house so the kids are spread out in three clusters in Cite Soleil and Jacmel. The kids also receive documentary photography cameras and training in their care so they can document their lives, tell their stories and express their hopes and aspirations. There have been 5 gallery shows across the US (SF, NYC, DC, Florida) to raise awareness and funds. The kids’ pictures are sold to benefit the organization that helps care for them.
So I was able to be at the first gallery show in Port au Prince, at a cyber cafe in Cite Soleil today. Forget what you think about a cyber cafe. Small, dark, a few folding chairs – but still a space for their pictures, which were taped to the wall with packaging tape. The original location where the show was to open had too many shootings, so it had to move to this new location.
The kids got to see their pictures on the wall, to hear about the gallery shows in the US and the great reviews they got, received certificates for completion of their photography training–I donated items and foodstuffs from CMBM faculty and staff. They asked me to speak, and I told them about teaching photography to kids their age in a poor inner-city Cleveland neighborhood nearly 40 years ago. I encouraged them to continue using photography to express themselves and to clarify their dream, since their dream will keep them going through hard times. It was a gift to be present for the recognition of their struggles and accomplishments.
After leaving Haiti the memories of those two days kept echoing in my mind. I recalled that when I was leaving the school in the mountainside tent camp on Thursday, one of the kids said repeatedly, “We are waiting for you,”–meaning, “waiting for you to return.” On the following day when I brought the pictures to the kids and families in the Champ de Mars tent camp, their reaction was often puzzlement. I later realized it was because their expectation was for people to not come back, to not remember them or be touched by what they saw; to return to their normal lives, unmoved and unchanged.
I hope I’m not that person.
