Devastated Haiti caught between limbo and fires of hell

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Disease, despair and the constant threat of violence stalk the earthquake-ravaged streets of Port-au-Prince. It is a place where help is at hand, yet seems so out of reach. Award-winning 'Sunday Tribune' photographer Mark Condren captures the chaos and torment of a city of the dead. Words by Simon Roughneen

A father holds his daughter, whose two legs were broken

Two men carry a coffin containing the body of their brother, who was found in the collapsed building behind them

A little girl in a French-run hospital

A child sleeps beside a bag of food

A lorry driving up a hill is emptied of its cargo of rice

John O'Shea of Goal arriving in Port-au-Prince yesterday with some of the Irish aid that left Dublin on Friday

The burnt remains of an earthquake victim lie at the side of a road

A man, believed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress, is still covered with dust from the earthquake 12 days ago

Rachel Voltaire shuffled disconsolately on a narrow, rubble-strewn lane, which runs alongside a camp set up to shelter 700 Haitian survivors of the 12 January earthquake.

The area is called Delmas, one of Port-au-Prince's worst-hit suburbs. Buildings lie flattened, and the locals say that many bodies remain underneath. Voltaire's story is a harsh mix of tragedy and catch-22 that makes her downbeat demeanour all the more understandable.

"I was kicked out of the US coz I didn't have no green card," she drawled. She arrived back in Haiti just days before the earthquake, her five children split between cousins in Georgia and an ex-husband in Miami.

"I ain't got family left here, more than 20 were killed in the earthquake. My mom, my sisters, their kids, everyone."

She has savings in Citibank, but all the branches in Port-au-Prince were destroyed. "My ex sent me $50, but the CMA [a Haitian version of Western Union] doesn't have no cash, so I can't get my 50 bucks", she explains.

"What'm I gonna do?" she asks. "Are those guys gonna help?" pointing at the Goal volunteers pacing through the squalid camp to see what the people need, and how it can be delivered.

Paul Kelly is a civil engineer from Louth. He tells the 'community leaders' to draw up a list of families staying at the camp as soon as possible, so the aid agency can allocate shelter, food and hygiene kits donated by the Irish and US governments.

The previous day, Goal carried out one of the first aid deliveries conducted by an NGO since the earthquake. With enough material for 300 families, the atmosphere went from anticipation to tension as word spread down the hilly streets in Turgeau district that some international aid had at last arrived. UN peacekeepers from Sri Lanka accompanied the delivery, tasked with ensuring the security of aid workers as they distributed the material.

"Back, back – monsieur s'il vous plait!" echoed around the 10m x 6m square where three narrow streets met. Fearing a deluge of needy Haitians if the distribution took place in a wider, open-air location, aid agencies need to do work at places where crowd management is easier.

Port-au-Prince can be dangerous at the best of times, but with hundreds of thousands of traumatised earthquake victims seeking food, water, shelter, medication and security, amid a stodgily-slow international relief effort, the danger levels for foreigners transporting much-needed goods goes up.

Men have been setting-up vigilante groups to protect themselves and their families as they sleep en masse in the open. Four-thousand escaped prisoners have roamed the city since the earthquake, and homeless Haitians are afraid. Close to the once-magnificent Notre Dame cathedral in the city centre, a charred corpse lay contorted on the street. Burnt black, the face bore the horror of a man being burnt alive. Apparently this was an escaped convict killed as a warning to others not to steal or attack the displaced. The remains of the destroyed cathedral towered above, the steeple having crashed through the roof, trapping unknown numbers of religious and lay below, attending a choir practice that evening.

Aid workers on the ground have been doing their best to meet needs and are growing frustrated. The clogged airport and damaged seaport restricts the delivery of the levels of mass aid cargo that is necessary. Brazilian-led UN peacekeepers and US marines will hopefully ensure that aid can be delivered safely.

But some relief work is not being carried out with sufficient planning or care. On Thursday this reporter saw two truckloads of rice being simply fired out the back of the lorries, onto to the streets, sparking a near-riot among those present to pick up the goods. In the first instance, the truck parked outside a temporary clinic set up to treat some of the thousands of wounded. The vehicle stopped on a steep hill and men threw the rice onto the street below, despite heavy traffic. The truck then slide back and across the road, nearly ploughing into other cars and pedestrians, who rushed to try to get some of the material.

The again, many Haitians have not seen any aid. In seven different places across the capital, I was told that I was the first foreigner they had seen, a week and more after the earthquake.

"What you goin' do for us?" said Andre Whettu. A crowd of about 15 immediately gathered round, and though no intimidation was intended, the agitation in his voice was clear.

"Nobody has been here since the earthquake, it's been 10 days. We ain't doin' so good," he said in the lilting jive-ish Caribbean-American accent that marks out Haitians who have spent time in the US. Most people speak a snappy, staccato form of Creole French as their lingua franca at home.

Rachel Voltaire ain't doing so good either. She walks back over, bent on telling me a few more things that she didn't get to while being interviewed.

"I have an eight-month old baby in Miami, but because I was deported, I cannot get back to see my little girl. I know one guy who didn't even have a passport, but he got outta here to Miami. I wanna do that. How do I do that?"

January 24, 2010

Comments

#1 Gerard Mc Ardle commented, on January 25, 2010 at 2:53 a.m.:

Monday morning...25/1/10 @ 2:31 a.m. and still people in Haiti are going without aid...both the basics & medicines...& I'm left wondering why can't the UN or the US military get somebody with organizational skill's to get to grips with this aid effort & get it to everybody over & over again. Some of the people got some water & food three days ago & have had nothing since. & also...why can't they get a few generator's in there to provide some light to people who have to mingle in the dark in make-shift tent's every night since this happened.

& the cruellest thing of all is that for ten days after the earthquake there was medicine of all sorts stacked up at the airport & people were dying of blood poisoning & gangrene & tetanus because doctor's had no antibiotics, antiseptics, & pain-killers to give them & not even oxygen or surgical saws to carry out amputation's. And the worst part of it was that children were being successfully rescued only to die for lack of same. So many "Stupid Death's" happened because of stupid inaction by STUPID people not taking intelligent decisions. The people of Haiti could be a lot more hopeful this Monday morning...but instead they're still suffering so "Hopelessly" still!

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