PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti’s National Palace lies in ruins, so the boys of Delmas 40 refugee camp built a cardboard substitute.
The roughly 12-foot-wide house of military ration boxes tops a ridge above a sprawling tent city near a base for the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne division. The boxes are unfolded and held up by wooden poles and coat hangers. A mini Haitian flag flies in front, and a painted sign proclaims it the “palais national.”
When the white-sheet roof billows, you can almost see one of the tapered domes of the real palace that for eight decades crowned downtown Port-au- Prince.
“I’d never been in a national palace before, so we built one,” said Jhonny Narcisse, 32. He, like the others, form the rap group “D-Clan.”
The musicians are working on a song about the quake that destroyed all their homes called “Bible Story,” but that isn’t finished. For now they freestyle a verse in English and Creole: “We need the food. We need to eat. We are heroes. We are heroes.”
