Haitians fleeing quake zone flood home to native villages
Woose Gammanuel Ulysse wipes his runny nose, as he hides behind his mother’s skirts. The five-year-old has been wheezing and coughing since the terrible events of January 12, when his world collapsed around him. The boy was trapped for an hour an a half under the rubble of his uncle’s house in Port au Prince, says mother Tulia.
Woose lived with six older siblings – three girls and three boys – who had moved to the capital from the district of Gros-Morne, in northwestern Haiti. Like many rural Haitians, Tulia and her husband had sent their children to live with relatives in the city, in search of a better life, educational and work opportunities they could not find at home.
Francoeur Jean-Joseph, Project Manager in CARE’s Gros-Morne office, greets the family and follows them up a steep, winding path from a dirt road to the high bluff where their home stands. The trail is of dusty, exposed limestone, the hillside bare of trees – evidence of the deforestation that has decimated much of Haiti’s once fertile farmland.
Atop the hill, the sun is just setting over the banana and sugarcane plantations and dry scrub vegetation of this spectacular valley, known as “Les Trois Rivières” – the three streams. The sounds of a country evening – roosters crowing, birdsongs, insects, the occasional motorbike or truck motor – filter up from below. Houses of stone, mud and sticks, and cement cluster in the hamlet of Cressac, while a patchwork of small family farms spreads to the horizon, climbing up the hillsides to the farthest plots hacked from precarious slopes.
Woose, Tulia, and nine-year-old Rooby lead the way to their four-room stucco house, its porch crowded with newly arrived friends and relatives. Twenty people are packed in where five normally live. The seven Ulysse children fled Port au Prince for their native Gros-Morne along with a dozen others, including neighbours who had nowhere else to go.
Woose’s older sister Patricia stands in a doorway, a charming gap-toothed smile flickering briefly across her pretty face. But sadness returns when she remembers the day of the disaster. “When we were crushed, it was very hard,” she recalls. “I threw up, and couldn’t breathe.”
The 19-year-old is relieved to be safe. “The good part is that my whole family has come back – if anyone had died we would have been very sad. A lot of people we know died.” But coming back to Gros-Morne is a disappointment. In Port au Prince, she was completing 12th grade, and looked forward to attending university, like many of her friends. She dreams of becoming a doctor.
“There’s nothing here for me,” says Patricia. “I want to go back to Port au Prince – not the way it is, but if school starts again. I’m scared, but I have to.”
Tulia has other worries. With 15 extra mouths to feed, the family’s modest income – they run a small grocery-and-hardware shop on the road below their house -- is stretched to the limit. She dishes out rice and beans from a big pot in the storage room of the shop, where nearly a dozen people eat, standing, from battered metal bowls. How will she afford their next meal, and the one after that?
Francoeur says CARE is keenly aware of the stresses facing host families in this part of Haiti. Already battered by several killer hurricanes and tropical storms in recent years, the coastal city of Gonaïves is now struggling with an influx of some 30,000 displaced people. Gros-Morne, with a normal population of 122,000, has taken in about 14,000, and more arrive daily.
“We’re moving as quickly as we can to bring food in. In two days CARE and the mayor’s office will distribute food for 15,000 people provided by Catholic Relief Services,” he says. “Each family will receive 17 kilos (37 pounds) of rice, as well as portions of wheat, corn and lentils.” Much more is needed, though – and with roads in poor condition, trucks in short supply, and much of the relief effort focusing on Port au Prince itself, getting in aid shipments will take time.
The mayor of Gros-Morne, Rodner Antoine Dameus, echoes worries about his town’s ability to absorb so many returnees. “Of course we’re happy to have them back. They live better here than in Port au Prince: they have land, animals, a river to wash in – in Port au Prince you have to buy water. But there’s not enough food. Everything has become much more expensive since the earthquake.”
CARE has long worked to strengthen the local government, and has an office in the town hall. Long before the quake, CARE helped citizens here, as in many other Haitian towns, organize a Civil Protection Committee to prepare for future disasters. They swung into action to help Gros-Morne natives trapped in the capital, says committee member Georges Rigaud, 37.
“After the earthquake we deployed various tactics to evacuate people. We hired two buses which made five or seven trips, each bringing about 80 people back,” Georges explains. “Even the mayor is supporting some survivors with his own money, but our committee has no resources – we need support to help reach survivors in difficult circumstances.”
CARE is continuing its long-term development work, addressing chronic food insecurity in the Northwest, says Francoeur. Its objectives include helping rural households set up small businesses raising chickens and goats, providing seeds and agricultural training. It will be all the more urgent to ramp up those activities, he says, now that local households are supporting so many more people.
“We have to get more food here, and fast,” he says.
