Haiti Quake Updates

Camp residents have little official information about plans to re-site camps

Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Less than a third of people living in one of the largest camps in Port au Prince say that they are willing to move to camps sited outside the city according to a snap-shot survey carried out by international agency Oxfam. If the new improved camps are established close to where they used to live then the proportion willing to move leaps to nearly three quarters.

The survey also revealed that there is little official public information available about plans to move people to new camps. Whilst 63 per cent had heard of the Government plans to resettle people, none had heard it directly from the Government and none had been consulted.

Some 13 per cent of people had heard of the plans from friends, 10 percent from the local radio and just one per cent had heard it from non-governmental organizations.

People surveyed said that any new camp would have to provide the very basics of housing, food, water and medical services as well as employment and schools.

“Living conditions of people in the camps need to be rapidly improved. Many of the current sites will not suitable due to the coming raining seasons which, without adequate drainage and sanitation, threatens to wash away shelters and cause health hazards”, said Marcel Stoessel, Oxfam’s Head of Emergency in Haiti.

Stoessel: “If new camps are set-up then people should be not be forced to go. The camps should be safe to reduce criminality and protect vulnerable groups such as women and children. They should also be seen as temporary solutions not end up as long term slums outside the city limits.”

According to Oxfam there is still no clarity on plans to re-site new camps and there needs to be meaningful consultation with camp residents so that they can make informed decisions.

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See larger version of before/after image of the former Petionville Golf Course, where Oxfam is using the irrigation system of the golf course to distribute water around the camp

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The scene could be taking place anywhere in Port-au-Prince - thousands of sweaty, dusty Haitians squeezed back-to-chest waiting for relief supplies that could determine whether they survive the next few weeks.

But in Petionville, a comparatively well-heeled suburb, the operation reveals more than just the colossal need that exists throughout post-earthquake Haiti. It shows how the disaster crossed boundaries of income and class, turning even the once-exclusive Petionville Club into a fetid expanse of desperation.

And it shows the enormous effort, involving governments, aid organizations and the U.S. military, that is required to satisfy the most basic of human needs in Haiti.

Roughly 400 members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division have taken over the club, using the restaurant as a headquarters and taking bucket baths on the bleachers by the tennis courts. A federal disaster-management team has set up a medical clinic on the putting green closest to the clubhouse, and the poolside cabana bar is serving as a pharmacy. The aid group Oxfam International is setting up 90 latrines along the fairways, part of a project to provide water and sanitation for the sprawling tent city.

Karen Ketchie, a disaster-management team leader from Jacksonville, Fla., who works at the club as part of a medical aid group, imagined that Gulf Coast hurricanes were good training for the Haitian relief effort - until she arrived in Petionville.

"There, the infrastructure is up and if we needed something, we could just go a few counties over," she said. "Here it's totally different. Everything you need is a challenge."

As Ketchie spoke near the club's half-empty pool, she was standing next to a sign that read: "Pillar collapse potential if aftershock. Do not stand here."

Oxfam America's Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues in Haiti to help with the relief effort. Here's her latest update, dated January 27; this is part two of a two-part series.

Read part 1.

In December, about a month before the tragedy changed everybody's lives, Janicia Dorval got a bank loan of 15,000 gourdes (about $370) to help her fund a used-clothing business. It was in full swing at the Petionville Club on Wednesday, with customers--mostly women--crowding around the shoes and purses heaped on plastic tarps next to the dusty road. There were the red patent leather slip-ons, shimmering in the sun, and green flip flops, and practical black loafers.

Dorval, leaning toward the practical in flat canvas shoes and a simple hat to keep the sun off her head, was driving a hard bargain with her customers. She wouldn't budge on the price of a black bag with a zipper--35 gourdes (87 cents). But toss in a pair of sandals, and she'd let the whole catch go for 400 gourdes (about $10). Behind her stood her shelter, decked out in a tiered lace curtain, yellow with dust.

Asked what she needed to help her business grow, the answer came as no surprise.

Money, she said.

But for Pharisien Marcaise, a 45-year-old tailor, who had sent all four of his children to Catholic school, there's something even more important for Haitians to have if they are going to move their country forward following this disaster.

"Education," he said. "If the country doesn't have education, it's a dead country."

Marcaise spoke with an unshakable conviction, even as the price he has now had to pay for it is higher than any parent should ever have to shoulder: When the quake struck, his son, who was studying to be a lawyer at Rubens Leconte University and was the first of Marcaise's children to achieve that academic level, was killed when the building around him collapsed.

"There are people who have lost five children," he said quietly above the hum of the camp around him. "I have to keep going with my life."

For now, that means keeping a small generator chugging so he can charge the batteries on the cell phones everyone here carries. Without a regular source of electricity, people depend on small vendors like Marcaise to keep them connected with their friends, their families, and the world.

Invest in Haiti's recovery by donating to Oxfam's Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. 
Learn more about how Oxfam is responding.