Hard Living

Port au Prince is cold. Stand in front an open fridge cold. It is damp. It is damp and cold. And so many people are living on the streets- women, men, children, the elderly, the sick. And I mean literally, on the streets. Some are in tents, some are in makeshift structures covered by tarpaulin, some are in huts constructed from salvaged materials. But a great many are sleeping under sheets. Fabric. In the cold and damp. Without privacy. The ground underneath soggy, muddy and stenchy. It is rainy in Haiti.

This is wretched. Yet there is no time for mourning or moaning. Survival is a twenty four hour attention activity. Life is exhausting in so many dimensions beyond our experience.

And yet, Haitians are persevering. Over 70% of Haitians are ‘independent workers’. Self-employed. Many are in micro-scale marketing or production. The hustle and bustle never stops. Haitians are a people accustomed to depending on themselves.  But now, surely, they must be at their limit, at wit and will’s end.

Many families need tents, need cots. They will be in this situation for the foreseeable future. The other structural problem- the majority of householders in Port au Prince are renters or squatters and not in control of the land needed for rebuilding, for reconstruction. Temporary shelters may well become far from temporary as solutions are sought for re-siting the hundreds of thousands of unhomed persons.

Organisations working with people in ‘spontaneous temporary shelters’ in their neighbourhoods need our ongoing help.

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