By Loetitia Raymond, CARE Haiti
Marie Gislaine Bartelus moves with her back bowed, burdened by the weight of the years and, like many Haitians, a life of hardship. In a few days it will be her turn to receive one of the 2,000 temporary shelters that CARE is distributing to some of the families most affected by the January 12 earthquake. Marie will finally be sheltered from the sun, rain and above all the high winds and torrential rains that can come during hurricane season.
This woman of 65 years is relieved that she will receive one of the shelters that will allow families to have a roof over their heads after months of living under tents or tarps. For a woman who never had the chance to finish building her own house before the earthquake destroyed everything, this transitional shelter from CARE is not just a temporary solution – it’s a home.
“I have seen the houses that CARE is building, and I want one just like it,” she said. “They are beautiful!”
Without a trace of self-pity, she takes a sober and pragmatic view of her life.
“You know, in Haiti, things are not as they should be,” she says. “If you have children, your priority is to send them to school, so everything you have is put towards that goal. When I could put a bit of money into building my house, I did, but the most important for me was that my children went to school.” With the shelter, she won’t have to choose between putting a roof over her children’s head and making sure they know how to read and write.
Since her house was destroyed, Marie has lived beneath a jumble of iron sheeting, like thousands of others. Like them, she recovered pieces of wood and bits of scrap iron from within the piles of rubble. While these hastily constructed shelters protected its inhabitants from prying eyes, they did nothing to protect against the heat, nor the rain, and even less against a tropical storm. Marie insists that this new shelter will protect her. She first slept under the stars, “but that wasn’t a solution, my old bones cried out the whole time from pain caused by rheumatism.” It was also difficult to find sleep in her tiny shelter that she shared with her sons. “Every night, I could feel the weight of their anger and agitation. It was like I was hit by an army, and my old bones suffered greatly.” She looks forward to sleeping on a bed without her sons.
Marie said she lost her dentures in the earthquake and, for a while, her will to live. Her frankness cuts like steel. “I am old, and since January I feel older than my years. It’s as if after the earthquake, my life was over. To live through something like this will make you old . . . In this house, I will at least be able to rest a little.”
CARE staff explained to her that this shelter is hers, and that she can adapt it as she likes, even move it to another location. “I look at these houses and I can’t help but admire them,” she said. This 18m2 of wood, plastic tarp and iron roof now represents her most precious possession. After the earthquake, she was left with nothing but an old iron bed and a few bits of clothing.
Her only hope for the future is linked to her house. “I will move in now, and then it will pass to my children.” A certain pride flickers across her face when she talks about what she could leave to her children. “This house is my legacy, to leave to them to renovate, to make the necessary changes.”
How could one not be moved listening to this woman speak of this temporary shelter as a ‘legacy’? On the Haitian hills, the carpenters hammer the wood into place for the new shelters. We must move quickly for the thousands of Haitians who see these shelters as a symbol of security and a bit of renewed hope.