Jasmine Artes features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.
PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - If you feel like a pampering in the Poasboy camp in east Port-au-Prince, shake a certain tent flap and ask for Jasmine Artes. She’ll emerge with a chair and a plastic basket of cosmetics, combs and powders. Sit back and let her make you look pretty.
“I do hair implants,” she said, brushing the thick locks of one of her female customers. “I also do nails. Men’s nails. I do the edges for men too.”
A year after the earthquake laid waste to almost 200,000 homes in and around the capital, life is still a nightmare for the 1.2 million-plus Haitians who live in camps. It’s not unheard of to find six to 10 people sharing a single tent made for two adults. Rain, mud and the fear of cholera add to the misery.
But that doesn’t mean camp dwellers don’t take pride in their appearances. It’s the details of daily life that make for dignified living. Whatever the weather, clothes get laundered. You’ll see more ironed shirts on the tent city of Champs de Mars than you will in most college towns in the Western hemisphere.
Which is why Jasmine, 38, can just about make ends meet with her brushes and scissors.
As her neighbours gossip over washing tubs, she snips and curls, teases and braids. One woman wants heavy eyeliner, another rouge cheeks. She charges them what they can afford.
“Some are nearby,” she said. “Others come from far away. There aren’t many customers really. Customers don’t have any money to come.”
Jasmine recalled the day the earthquake hit, leaving the houses on the slope above her shack dangerously cracked and liable to collapse on her.
“I was asleep, and while I was sleeping, I heard a noise… I felt the bed fluttering. I said: ‘What’s that?’ And when I jumped out to run, I couldn’t feel the ground. My feet couldn’t touch the ground and I ran
with my hands. When I started to run, I saw everything turning upside down. My things weren’t standing straight.
“Afterwards, it was over. I was traumatised and I didn’t want to stay in the house. Then I hit the road and came to this place. I thought I’d feel more secure.”
She dreams of being able to go home, though when and how she doesn’t know.
“You pray to God,” she said. “There is no life in the camp. Unless someone dies, you don’t exist. They never come around here. They forgot the people of Polasboy camp.”
