Haiti alley tries to take matters in hand

Jan. 22, 2010 4:29 PM PT

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Moustang Brisson is in charge as a founding member of the executive board of the Delmas 36 Committee, representing several blocks’ worth of homeless, destitute earthquake survivors.

Notebook in hand, he has taken down in careful cursive the names of 389 residents at 36 Delmas St., all in need of food, water and tents.

‘If we waited for the Haitian government to help, nou grangou,’ Brisson said Thursday, using a Creole expression meaning they’d starve to death.

Across Port-au-Prince, block by block, Haitians are arranging themselves into subsets within the chaos around them. Seizing upon a centuries-long tradition of the most basic grass-roots community organizing, they have set up neighborhood watch committees of sorts that are meant to facilitate the distribution of aid and maintain security.
Whether the international aid groups that are pouring in to Haiti seize upon this structure remains to be seen. Much of the distribution thus far has been haphazard and spotty, leaving Haitians dangerously frustrated at what they see as the slow pace of desperately needed help.

-- Tracy Wilkinson reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti

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