Reporter's notebook: The 'Dyaspora' feels your pain
DISPATCH - Homeless earthquake victims formed a massive line that started at the restaurant's front door, cued around the corner and ended all the way up the block...
What struck me immediately was the irony. We pulled up to Muncheez, a restaurant in Petionville, long known as a trendy hang out for the upper class and saw that on this day its clientele was the under class that make up most of Haiti’s population.
Homeless earthquake victims formed a massive line that started at the restaurant’s front door, cued around the corner and ended all the way up the block.
Already more than a hundred people were there lining up, yet dinner service would not begin for another hour and a half. The restaurant has been feeding an average of 3,000 people a day since the earthquake hit.
The way they stood, each person right on the back of the person in front of them, with no space in between as if they were one huge family, said everything about who they are as a people. Or I should say, who we are as a people.
I am always conscious of the fact that I share the same cultural ties and if my parents weren’t lucky enough to emigrate to America almost 40 years ago, I could have been on that line as well.
The restaurant’s owner, a Haitian-American from Miami named Cliff Rouzeau, decided that he would feed the community’s displaced poor free of charge. He says he won’t stop until he runs out of food and money.
He’s what people here in Haiti call “Dyaspora”. That’s the Creole term for a Haitian who lives in America. Perhaps now they’ll know that we, the Dyasporas of Haiti, feel your pain and we care.
Watch the video here:
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