Some came from homes ...

Haiti, Day XXVII – 01 April 2010

Some came from homes of concrete and brick; others came from shanties of tin and wood. Most traveled from crumbled neighborhoods and devastated towns to places like Terrian Golf / Delmas 48 as a result of the massive January 12 earthquake. By some estimates, more than 1.2-million men, women, and children found their way from among the rubble where once stood proud and neat homes, to displacement camps filled with multi-colored tarps, tent, and cloth.

These Individual Displaced Person (IDP) camps are called home by as few as 20 to as many as 60,000 homeless Haitians at any one site from places like Carrefore, Petionville, and Leagone. Camps sit along side dusty dirt roads, on the medium strip of exhausted-filled highways, at putrid landfills, among banana groves, in city parks, next to methane-bubbling sewer trenches, and even on a golf course.

In most cases, what awaits this wandering band of uprooted Haitian society are overpowering stench of open sewers and piles of rotting garbage, sometimes rotting flesh, as well as unclean water and dust, smog-filled air. Camp residents live in cramped squalled conditions, side-by-side in huts made of frayed blue tarps and bed sheets, open tents sleeping hillside on hard-packed dirt floors. There is little privacy; bathing and toileting are done in full view of all nearby.

Crime is high, especially against women and children. Services are stretched thin as social and medical care depends on Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) like Doctor’s Without Boarders (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/). Delivery of food and clean water is sparse, dependent on private non-profit groups such as the Jenkins – Penn Haitian Relief Organization (http://www.jphrodonate.org/), sponsor of the Terrian Golf / Delmas 48 IDP Camp in Port au Prince. All depend on donations.

But for it all, there is a rhythm to life in the camps. Cooks selling foods of fried plantains or rice, craftsmen bartering hand-carved tikis squat along dirt paths outside their tents. Kids, when not begging for money or food, play soccer with duct-taped balls or fly homemade kites. Women gather water and wash cloths, men clean ditches or help frame a soon-to-be erected tarp tent. All the while babies and tots play naked in the dirt.

Hopeless and desperate as their situation appears, to a stranger children offer wide, beaming smiles and ask for high fives while chattering in Creole. Women and men nod, locking eyes when greeting with “Bonjou” in Creole or “Hello” in broken English. And although begging is a way for life for some, others will offer to share. And even though NO is common to both languages, a friendly “Orevwa” is given as strangers walk away.