Haiti - the encampments

Yesterday I walked through Place Petion and another of the camps in town, along with Junior (Louis Joseph) who is my friend and guide here. I met Junior through his wife Helene Mounkoro, a Malian who studied for her doctorate in sociology at the University of Santiago in Cuba, where I met her while I was traveling in 2005. Junior lost a 22 year old sister and a 9 year old brother in the quake, but continues to spend his time working 16 hour days (maybe 3-4 hours sleep) on the project to get people out of the city and get them decent housing that will survive the rains. I suggested to him that we use some of the resources I brought to help his two sisters who are living in the encampments (town squares), and he said it would be better to find out if the communities had been organized, and to find the community leaders and ask who had the greatest need instead.

Contrary to the news reports I had seen before going, the camps didn't feel dangerous. I was accompanied by a local who had family in the camps, so we were treated like invited guests. Inside the individual homes (which have roofs made of bed sheets or thin tarps bought for $6-7 USD in the local markets) people have all their remaining possessions, which are few - generally no changes of clothing, maybe a cooking pot, some soap, a bag of donated rice. People take sponge baths in the narrow aisles between the homes, or in areas near the entrances/exits. People say that there is generally water and food available now, but some people came up and asked for some.

People who are alone are in particularly bad shape - like an older man who said he sleeps on the open ground (stone) with no bed and no sheet to protect him from the sun. A man in a wheelchair who does not have the use of his arms or legs said that his wife went to another town to check on her family and hadn't returned. Neighbors were making sure he was covered from the sun and could get from the wheelchair to the ground at night and back into the chair in the morning. There were also people saying that babies are not happy being exposed to so much heat, with just a bedsheet between the sun and their heads.

Communication is an important need which hasn't been addressed. There are people with generators at the camps, charging around 20 Gourdes ($0.50 USD) to charge a cellphone. Most people had cellphones prior to the quake, but some people don't have chargers and no one in the camps has access to power.

Around the camps, rumors fly about what the latest batch of aid consists of. The main concern is housing, especially housing that could survive the rains that will come in about 3 months. There was a rumor of tents coming, so some people came up to me and asked if I was distributing tents. I was also asked if I was a doctor.

There aren't really any foreigners walking around alone. The aid organizations travel in groups, most of which are well-armed. While I am told that apparently peaceful groups can quickly turn violent, I never felt threatened.