Tag Archives: haiti

Children at a Caritas orphanage outside of Port-au-Prince await their food supplies by Caritas member CRS. Photo: Conor O'Loughlin/CARITAS

East of Port-au-Prince, things are calmer than in the city. The massive overcrowding of the capital is much less on show here and even the destruction seems lesser. But then, there are fewer houses here.

It is a peaceful place; smallholdings with banana plants and chickens stand on the roadside. But the aftermath of January 12 lingers here, too. Most houses have sustained damage of some variety; every third or fourth has been completely demolished.

A small orphanage sits among the scrub at end of a stony lane, found only by following the lead of a rusty, hand-painted sign directing us to the ‘orphelinat‘.

When the earthquake struck, their headmistress tells us, all of the children were in an upstairs room of their house watching a documentary “about how children live in France”. Then the building started to shake.

“The bigger children grabbed the smaller children and ran down the stairs”, she told us.

Seconds later, the whole building collapsed. Looking at it now, buckled and angry looking in the midday sun, it is a miracle nobody was hurt. The two floors of the school building, across a small yard now littered with debris and shards of their former life, is also completely fell. Inside the rubble there can be seen a smashed blackboard, the last day’s lesson still lingering, the broken desks strewn drunkenly amid the rubble.

Caritas has worked with this orphanage for some time, providing the nuns with the food necessary to feed 55 children. But since the earthquake, more children have come. In fact, the number of children at the orphelinat is now 96.

“Many children have come,” we are told by their carer. “People from all around have brought us children that they have found. We don’t know where they have come from or where their parents are.” Continue reading →

Brothers at Petionville camp in Port-au-Prince, which receives aid from Caritas. Credit Conor O'Loughlin Caritas/2010

There is a pervasive narrative around the crisis in Haiti about levels of chaos and violence in Port-au-Prince hampering the delivery of aid. But as the United Nations’ humanitarian aid chief John Holmes points out, “every disaster is chaos because that’s what disasters produce”.

Experience has taught us that in crisis situations such as this, the weaker voices in society, already vulnerable to abuse, become more so – including women, children, the elderly and the infirm. Aid is getting through (Caritas alone has already fed well over 100,000 people since the earthquake struck) and now as we slowly move towards the recovery phase, a new set of concerns come to the fore.

As the dust begins to settle here in Haiti and we get a better picture of where the relief effort goes now, we need to think beyond simply meeting basic needs – food will not keep communities safe from abuse and water will not protect them from violence.

In addition to the devastating death toll, hundreds of thousands of families are now displaced from their homes, the vast majority staying in insecure informal camps and shelters. Weapons are widely available. People’s means of earning a living have been largely destroyed. Family members have been separated, with loved ones still missing, including the heads of many households, leaving young children and vulnerable family members to fend for themselves.

As the world continues to help the beleaguered Haitians, the aid community is focusing on work beyond relief distributions alone. Food will not keep communities safe from abuse and water will not protect them from violence.
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Sr Eileen Davey walks in her parish with some children from her nutrition and education programme. 'You may go out by yourself,' she says, 'but you never come home alone.' Photo: Conor O'Loughlin/Caritas

In a small brick house under the shadow of the church of Louis Marie de Montfort church in Port-au-Prince live three nuns.

The house is by the airport and the constant thumping of helicopters overhead provides a disconcerting soundtrack to the searing heat.

The three nuns have lived here for a long time and devote their time to the poor people of the neighbourhood.

“People are very poor here,” says Sr Helen Ryder, a sister of the La Sainte Union order from Co. Offaly in Ireland. “There are poorer, but then in Haiti there is always someone poorer.”

Her colleague, Sr Maria Hawkes from Cork, spoke of the moment the earthquake struck: “I was in my room at about 4.45 in the evening. Just sitting by my bed reading a book. Suddenly I became aware of the wall shaking. I got up quickly. My bed was moving across the room. The cabinet above my  sink popped open.”

They knew immediately that this was a major disaster.

“It was very sad to see, like a pack of cards, all the houses flattened. We went over to an open space and we didn’t return until the next morning. We lay on the ground that night. When there was tremors you could feel them in your spine.”
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Carmen Charles and her family survived the earthquake and are now receiving help from Caritas. Credit Conor O'Loughlin/Caritas 2010

Available in Spanish

By Conor O’Loughlin, Trócaire (Caritas Ireland) in Port-au-Prince

The camp is chaos. What little grass remains has been tramped down by the tens of thousands of homeless, most of it churned by now churned to dust and floating around the stifling air.

Two weeks ago this camp was a golf course, one of the few escapes of Haiti’s well-to-do. A lot has changed in two weeks.

50,000 people live here during the day now, and by night as many as 100,000 crowd together in huts made of ripped curtains and plastic sacks. There are few facilities. The noise is deafening – the public volume of every day living but mixed in are the occasional sobs of the injured or the alone, the hyperactive squawking of stray dogs or the constant fly over of helicopters delivering aid to another desperate part of this stricken city.
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A sample food kit at the CRS/Caritas Haiti warehouse destined for Haitian families. All of these goods were donated by churches and communities across the border in the Dominican Republic. Conor O'Loughlin Caritas/2010

With the airport in Port-au-Prince still not fully functional, most aid workers are getting to Haiti via the Dominican Republic. The road across the island of Hispaniola forms a line between two very different capitals: Santo Domingo with its Caribbean charm and laid-back atmosphere at one end and impoverished, stricken Port-au-Prince at the other.

The drive takes between five and eight hours, depending on traffic, and the route is lined with aid convoys bringing food and water, tents and medical supplies to the three million Haitians affected by the earthquake of January 12.

The border is chaotic. Leaving behind the genial bustle and brightly-painted houses of the Dominican Republic, the gate that marks the divide separates what could be thought of as heaven and hell.

Immediately you know you’re in a different country. The tar road gives way to rough gravel and the gay villages become sad, earth-coloured settlements that give off a thick air of poverty, even from a distance.

The people on this side smile less, too, but then they have less reason to.

It is well documented at this stage that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with two-thirds of people living off less than $2 a day. The Dominican Republic is hardly rich, but with an average GDP of around eight times that of Haiti, people here are a little further up the ladder of development.
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A volunteer fills cans with lentils as part of the food aid to 50,000 displaced Haitians living on the Petionville golf course Photo by Lane Hartill/Catholic Relief Services 2010.

By Lane Hartill, CRS Communications Officer, Port-au-Prince.  CRS is a Caritas member in the USA.

A lot of people around the world are asking the same question about Haiti: What’s taking so long for food to get out.

Spend a morning at the Petionville golf course, and you’ll have your answer.

The once-swanky country club in Port-au-Prince is now home to some 50,000 displaced Haitians. The camp is already taking on the trappings of a community. In one section of the camp, you can charge your cell phone, call Europe at a phone kiosk, buy vegetables, and get your haircut.

Cardboard street signs are even popping up on some trash-strewn paths. The place is so packed you have to turn sideways to get to some tents.

Behind the flowered bed sheets that serve as walls, you see shadows moving, hear babies crying and smell the akra sizzling in oil, the flat cakes made of flour and spices that Haitians love. The sun feels like it’s closer here, and most people lay in the shade, fanning themselves, trying to figure out how to make it through another day.

Most people keep their eyes averted from one of the hills at the camp. That’s where some Haitians bathe in their underpants, hiding behind some scrawny trees that offer only a suggestion of privacy.
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Seventy percent of St. Francois de Sales hospital collapsed in the aftermath of the quake that ravaged the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The hospital was about to close but with the help of CRS and Caritas Haiti the hospital now has three working operating rooms. "We figured if people survived the apocalypse of the earthquake," says CRS senior program director, Dr. Jude Banatte, "then they should not die because of lack of care, and that's what we are doing here, giving them the best care possible." Credit: Sara A. Fajardo/Catholic Relief Services.

By Lane Hartill, CRS Communications Officer, Port-au-Prince.  CRS is a Caritas member in the USA.

A lot of the stuff I saw at the hospital, I can’t tell you about. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you cover your kids’ eyes. I wanted to cover mine.

What I can tell you about is St. Francois de Sales, the CRS/Caritas-supported hospital that was almost destroyed in the earthquake but is now once again taking care of people. The Haitians there will break your heart.

Like Sara. A 6-year-old with what seems to be a left leg broken in multiple places. The quake buckled her house and she was trapped under it for a few hours. She was finally pulled out and now she’s here. Laying in a white undershirt and a diaper fashioned out of bandages. Her mom, wearing a red beret, sits next to her and spoons rice and beans into Sara’s mouth from a Styrofoam container. Neither of them smile.

Many of the people at the hospital were trapped in rubble and have the ghastly injuries to prove it.

Some were trapped for a few minutes, others for a few hours. Most of them sat on the floor in the heat and stink of various hospitals around the city.
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Caritas food distribution arrives at an encampment of earthquake victims near Sacre Coeur in Port-au-Prince. Credit: Katie Orlinsky/ Caritas 2010

By Conor O’Loughlin, Communications Officer, Trócaire (Caritas Ireland)

Haitians are a religious people. 80% are Catholic, and while it is known that some still practice a form of voodoo that dates back to the population’s ancestry in West Africa, the faith of the majority is reflected in the streets. Churches seem as common as trees and modified trucks that serve as taxis ply the streets painted in garish lettering with slogans like ‘God is with us’, ‘Jesus Loves You’ and ‘Pray to Mother Mary’.

In Haiti, God really is everywhere. In the nights since the earthquake, the streets swell with the music of hymns. People of all ages gathering together, many still afraid to go indoors, offering up thanks for their survival but remembering to put in a request for speedy recovery, too.

Caritas Haiti, the development and humanitarian wing of the Catholic Church here, has a simple office in the centre of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. The Caritas logo, a simple cross with beams of light radiating from its centre, is worked into the ironwork of the building. Instead of glass windows, vertical slats move tepid air through the rooms. Its carpark has no space for cars; instead, crowded together in tents of every colour, live aid workers from around the world, representing various Caritas organisations, in Haiti to help.

Run by Fr Chadic, Caritas Haiti already had its work cut out in trying to improve the lot of Haitians. Even before the earthquake, two-thirds of people here lived on less than $2 a day, and more than half of those lived on $1 a day.

That level of extreme poverty, the worst in the Western Hemisphere, meant that Haitians were not only affected much worse by the earthquake, but it will be much harder for them to recover.

If you live on $2 a day, how do you afford to rebuild your house? Or how do you replenish the tiny supply of plantain and tomates you sold from your doorway to scrape together an income?
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