Place St. Pierre is a meagre two minute walk from the CARE office. In what was once a quiet residential neighbourhood of middle-class Haitians and expatriates, there are now around 1,200 families living out in the open, barely protected from the sun and dirt of the city life around them. After the devastating earthquake of January 12, they settled on the square, squatting between the police station, a hotel, a church and a supermarket. A surreal surrounding for this enormous agglomeration of stranded souls. Several aid organisations support the families with food, fresh water, medical supplies and other relief items.
On February 19, CARE organised a distribution of plastic sheeting, mattresses and kitchen supplies. “Since then, we call this camp Cité de CARE”, explains Anita, the president of the local committee who helped organise the distribution. The day before, CARE staff went to the site to assess the number of families living in the camp and to hand out coupons for the distribution. As early as 5 o’clock the next morning, people started lining up in front of the police station. As has become standard procedure for CARE, items were distributed to women only, a strategy that has proven successful over the course of the last weeks.
Walking around the newly baptised Cité de CARE, we meet 26-year-old Prunes. He shows us a map he has drawn of the site, breaking down the square into different sections, with numbers allocated to each tent. With his whole city dissolved into nothing but rubble and chaos, it seems like this plan gives him some small form of orientation and order. Here’s the face of inner turmoil and resilience.
We stop by someone’s temporary home. There are 14 people to the shelter made out of plastic tarps. It might get a bit crowded, but at least they will all stay dry when the heavy rains start in a couple of weeks. Three mattresses lie on the floor and some kitchen supplies are stored in the back. Yverna Milie watches her 10-month-old daughter Jenny as she dances around on the tarp floor. She makes everyone laugh with her funny facial expressions and her curiosity. How did they experience the earthquake? Yverna laughs and makes gestures to show how she reacted to the shock. “I went left, I went right, I screamed…” Here’s the face of trauma and coping with it.
Gynal Syné is 14 and on his lap sits his 15 months-old sister Lycile. He feeds her some bananas. What does he like to do? “School,” he quietly says. When it’s time for them to have their picture taken, he gets up and grabs a t-shirt for his younger brother Farenal to cover up his naked chest. Here’s the face of dignity and responsibility.
Sitting on a shaky wooden chair with her broken feet placed on a stool, 34-year-old Marie Francel Jean-Louis watches another day in the Cité de CARE come to an end. She used to work for an insurance company after returning from the US where her husband still lives. So she now stays with her mother, son and two sisters underneath the tarps not far from her old office. When the earthquake hit, they were in their home and luckily managed to escape before the whole building collapsed. However, Marie Francel broke her foot and cut her head severely. When she finally received medical treatment six days later, the wound had already got infected. Her head is shaved along the scar and she makes jokes about this unusual hair style.
When asked what she has eaten today, Marie smiles yet again. “Bulgur,” she replies, a local grain. It goes without saying that this has been the only meal for the day. What can one wish for in this situation? “I want a scholarship for my boy so that he can go to school and become a doctor,” Marie says firmly. And when she looks at the pictures taken of her, she laughs with a cackling voice. “Despite of all the problems, they are quite beautiful,” she says. Here is the face of true beauty inside and out.
Before leaving the Cité de CARE, we ask the committee whether they have anything more to say or ask. “Yes”, says Israel. “What does CARE mean exactly?” Well, for now and for today, CARE means a dry spot to sleep at night. Let’s hope that in the near future, CARE will manage to mean even more to these people.
