Cell Phones in Haiti
Produced for the World Vision Report.
Phone-call seller Francois Saenneus leaves the displacement camp in Port-au-Prince to look for customers.
Photo: Grant Fuller
Story Transcript:
I found 62-year-old Francois Saenneus on the dirt path they call "Main Street," in one of Port-au-Prince's biggest camps. His salt-and-pepper sideburns highlighted a friendly face, so I approached him. As he held a bulky, bright orange phone, Saenneus told me his story.
SAENNEUS: Well, I used to be a farmer, and I also used to make bricks. But then I moved to Port-au-Prince, and you know, when you get to a certain age, you can't do the same things anymore. As you can see, I'm too old for that now. That's life.
Two years ago, Saenneus' kids went to a local cell phone company and bought him one of their customized vendor phones – it's the size of a desk phone, with fat buttons, an LCD screen and even a cord. But it functions like a cell phone and uses a pay-as-you-go system. Right away, Saenneus set out to make a living with it.
SAENNEUS: A person might have a phone, but sometimes the battery's dead or they don't have minutes on their account. So they see me and they use the phone.
If your call is successful, you pay a few cents for the service. If the call doesn't go through, you don't have to pay. Saenneus was doing fine in general, he says, until the earthquake. One of his daughters died and her body still hasn't been found. His house is unlivable. So now, he lives in this camp, but still works the same way he did before … or at least he tries to. The day I caught up with him, Saenneus hadn't had much luck. As he made a loop around the camp and out to the street, I followed behind and listened to him on the hunt for a customer.
SAENNEUS: When you sit down, you really don't find people wanting to make calls. But when you're moving around, people are motivated. You might walk here and you find somebody, walk a little bit further and you find somebody else. It's good exercise, and I keep in shape. But you know, if I find some business, I find it. If I don't, I don't. Life tells you that you have to be content with what you get. After the earthquake, nothing's really been working. Some people found their relatives this way, by calling. But others couldn't get through because the signal was really bad. So it was just a game of luck.
SAENNEUS: Nope, it didn't go through. … The thing is, sometimes you have to find that one person that's making a call, and then it attracts other people to make a call, too. That guy was looking for something called Papadap. That just lets you send minutes to someone's phone automatically. But I don't have the money yet to start a Papadap service. … Nothing's easy anymore, since the earthquake. Most people went back to their towns. Others, well, they're dead. And people that are here don't have money, so business is slow. Well, that time the person's phone was shut off. So I've had zero business today. Nothing at all. All I can say is that even if God doesn't give you anything today, you still need to be happy. I'm just gonna wait for the day where I get something, you know, where I have a good day.
And with that, Saenneus trudges uphill on the camp's dirt path. For the World Vision Report, I'm Grant Fuller in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Produced for the World Vision Report.