Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 - No comments

Diary of a survivor in Haiti: Part II

Life in the refugee camps in post-earthquake Haiti is unspeakably hard, with little being done to meet the needs of the refugees.

On the Place Pigeon, the need for food is the primary goal of every family living in the camp. Certain families have received coupons for a small bag of rice, but only women are allowed to line up for distribution.

According to other families who haven’t received these, the committee has given these coupons out to people close to their own families. This distribution took place near the Palais National on Friday January 29, very early in the morning.

Access to shelter

From the evening of Wednesday February 10 to Thursday February 11, there was some rain, and the families all had to get up to make sure that the water didn’t damage the sheets that they were using both as shelter and as a bed. All their things got wet. The next day, the families washed their sheets, spread their belongings out to dry in the sun and tried to put together their shelters again with wood and plastic. Thus, protests started because no one in charge had foreseen this and taken steps to prevent the shelters from becoming wet.

The families want access to tents, only the families with greater economic means have bought tents, whose origins no one knows.

Often, you see people in the camp who chase after people who are rumored to have coupons but these people have not been identified.

Moving the refugee camps

According to rumors going around, the government of Haiti wants to move the people in refugee camps to send them to the Place Cathedrale, located at the Rue Docteur Aubry and Bonne Foi. It’s a housing center and its construction has already started.

However, people have noticed the installation of toilets by the JEDCO company in the back of the camp.

An atmosphere of anxiety

In the middle of the camp, near the back fence, shelters have been put up where young girls and boys are living, who are about fifteen to twenty five years old. Often, these young people fight and make a lot of  noise, despite their risky situation since the disaster. This creates an atmosphere of anxiety for the families living in the back of the camp.

Monday January 15, 2010, around 11:00 PM, police officers came to the Place Pigeon and were able to capture two prisoners who had allegedly escaped from prison in Port-au-Prince.

More and more needs arise

Days went by, more and more needs arise. The heads of the family–or more precisely, the women–complained of only having rice and that they needed other food to cook with and that rice wasn’t enough to feed their families.

In terms of health care, Cuban and Haitian doctors provided care to those wounded in the earthquake and to people suffering from illness. They are here almost every day between nine and twelve o’clock.

Presently, about a dozen of the JEDCO toilets are working, six for women and six for men. Only two are open at night. JEDCO provides toilet paper and a small tank of water and soap to use.

Shelter from the elements

Because of the strong rain in the evenings from Wednesday through Friday, the families living in this camp are reconstructing their cloth shelters by digging canals all around their shelters to avoid getting wet. This has sparked protests for tents from families so that they can protect themselves from the rain.

This blog post was originally written in French by the writer Carine Exantus, a student living in a refugee camp in Haiti. It was translated into English by the Conversations for a Better World team.

The views expressed in this blog-post are solely those of the author.