- Rural Haiti struggles to absorb displaced, By Deborah Sontag, March 16, 2010, New York Times: “Before the earthquake that changed everything, Chlotilde Pelteau and her husband lived a supremely urban existence. A cosmetics vendor and a mechanic, they both enjoyed a steady clientele and a hectic daily routine, serenaded by the beeping cars and general hubbub of Port-au-Prince. Now, as roosters crow and goats bleat, Ms. Pelteau, 29, toils by day on a craggy hillside in the isolated hamlet of Nan Roc (In the Rocks), which she had abandoned at 14 for a life of greater opportunity. At night, she, her husband and their two children sleep cheek-to-jowl with a dozen relatives in the small mud house where she grew up. ‘With everything destroyed, what could I do but come back?’ said Ms. Pelteau, wearing a floral skirt as she poked corn seeds deep into arid soil unlikely to yield enough food to sustain her rail-thin parents, much less those who fled the shattered capital city to rejoin them…”
- Haitians who fled capital strain impoverished towns in countryside, By William Booth, March 15, 2010, Washington Post: “The earthquake that struck Haiti’s capital city has also jarred the impoverished countryside, sending 600,000 people into the provinces — where locals are now overwhelmed with the task of feeding and sheltering desperate newcomers. Haitian and international aid officials describe the migration as one of the largest and most wrenching in the hemisphere, as internally displaced people stream out of Port-au-Prince and head to struggling provincial towns in the aftermath of the earthquake like civilians fleeing war zones in places such as Rwanda, Kosovo and the Swat Valley in Pakistan. ‘They are everywhere. They are in the town, and they are sleeping in the fields,’ said Gerald Joseph, mayor of Lascahobas, a farming and trading town about three hours north of the capital. ‘Our schools are beyond full now. Our hospital is full. All our houses are full of people. We don’t have an empty house. Where four people were sleeping before, there are now 14…'”
Tag: Haiti
Haiti Earthquake and the Poor Elderly
Weeks after quake, Haiti’s elderly hobble through chaos, By William Booth, March 12, 2010, Washington Post: “It was always hard to be old in Haiti, but after the earthquake, to be old and poor feels like a curse, say those who are both. ‘We struggle to maintain a little dignity, but look at us,’ said Lauranise Gedeon, who sat, embarrassed, in soiled sheets in the ruins of a municipal nursing home here in the capital. Residents were bathed outdoors with a bucket, trying to cover their nakedness. They spent the long, hot afternoons in hospital beds lined up side by side, six to a tent, fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard. They begged for water to drink. ‘No water today. We are waiting. We are waiting for medicines, for the doctors, for God to help us,’ said nurse Yolette François. ‘I am serious. These old people have a lot of troubles.’ Her patients, about 80 men and women, were scooping rice and beans from dented metal bowls. Asked what they need most, one resident said, ‘Something for the flies.’ Another complained that her spoon had been stolen and held up her fingers, sticky with food. ‘Look!…'”
Temporary Housing in Haiti
Rebuilding effort in Haiti turns away from tents, By Damien Cave, February 3, 2010, New York Times: “Shifting tactics in the race to shelter an estimated one million Haitians displaced by the earthquake, aid groups on Wednesday began to de-emphasize tents in favor of do-it-yourself housing with tarpaulins at first, followed by lumber. Mark Turner, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said that a move toward ‘transitional shelters’ – built eventually with lumber and some steel – would give people sturdier structures and more flexibility. ‘Tents really have a shelf life of not much more than six months,’ Mr. Turner said. In contrast, he added: ‘You can stand up in a shelter that you build. You can start a business there.’ Officials from the migration agency said they were hoping to give people the means to create temporary housing, and the power to build where they wanted. They acknowledged that it could be five years before most people moved back into houses, which means that under the current best-case situation, Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, will soon be blanketed with hundreds of thousands of simple structures that designers describe as ‘garden sheds’ and others see as shanties…”