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Posted on Sun, Nov. 02, 2008
Mud,
misery rule storm-ravaged Haitian city
BY TRENTON DANIEL AND JACQUELINE CHARLES
Colossal clouds of dust stretch for miles along a
post-apocalyptic scene of human misery where schools, streets, homes and
hospitals remain buried under heaps of dry earth.
Nearly two months after back-to-back storms ravaged their forgotten
city, the people of Gonaives subsist in mud-caked ruins, sleeping on
rooftops, in classrooms, and in shacks fashioned from tattered bedsheets
and rusted tin.
After what is unequivocally one of the worst natural disasters to hit
this deeply impoverished country in 100 years, international aid for
recovery has stopped at slightly more than a third of the $106 million the
United Nations asked for. And the recovery is mired in a lack of
leadership, infighting by political and relief organizations and
profiteering.
''We Haitians are living like animals, and the government doesn't
care,'' said Luca Junior Limose, 47, who is among 200 Haitians living in
a crowded wing of the abandoned Chachou hotel (fanciest hotel in town,
not too far from Emmanuel’s school—US drug raid took the owner, put him in
US jail, and hotel closed).
His bathing facility: a swimming pool with stale brown water and smelly
muck.
A city of 300,000 with a history of inciting revolt, Gonaives has become
the focal point of the fight to help Haiti dig itself out of devastation
caused by a string of storms that left more than $1 billion in damage,
793 people dead, and more than 100,000 homes destroyed or damaged.
Since September, the United Nations' World Food Program has distributed
more than 5,000 tons of food to 520,000 storm victims, half of them in
Gonaives, Haiti's third largest city, built below sea level
northwest of Port-au-Prince.
But the relief and cleanup have been scattershot, with many Haitians
wondering how long they can linger in fetid conditions.
Haitian President René Préval on Friday called a meeting with government
ministers and representatives of about 20 groups involved in the recovery
effort. After the meeting, the government designated vacant land to build a
proper shelter, and decided to name a Gonaives recovery czar soon for the
enormous undertaking.
`STILL IN A MESS'
''Normally, if you have an emergency, you have some plans,'' said Vikki
Stienen, Gonaives project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, an
international medical relief organization. ``You have some emergency
preparedness plans. . . . There are none. The city's still in a mess. You
just have to see it for yourself to believe it.''
While residents suffer, opportunists take advantage of the misery by
hijacking the aid. Last week, Haitian officials arrested several city
employees after police found a warehouse stashed with stolen food donated
by Venezuela. Among those arrested: the employee tasked with helping
coordinate distribution of the aid, officials said.
Indeed, the shipments of aid have sparked
an underground economy. One reason for the chaotic aid distribution:
After years of allowing the international community to take the lead in
rebuilding Haiti, Gonaives Mayor Stephen ''Topa'' Moise and other local
authorities have insisted on playing a lead role. But the lack of
expertise and skilled manpower, and ongoing political conflicts, have
thwarted efforts to restore even the lowest level of order to residents'
lives. So have Haitian pride and nationalism.
''We don't have the resources, but that doesn't mean we should just
allow Country I and Country Z to do what they want for us,'' Moise said.
``The government also has to make an effort.''
But there is no security presence in shelters, few police are on the
streets, and aid groups are working at cross purposes.
Some residents think Moise is among those trying to profit from the
city's misery. Moise has strongly denied that, telling The Miami Herald,
for instance, that he has no idea how the Venezuelan rice, beans, milk,
sugar and ready-to-eat meals meant to be given away have ended up in bulk
quantities at markets, where they are being sold.
On a recent morning, as relief SUVs bearing French and English acronyms
plowed through slimy streets, hundreds of young men and women shoveled
debris into green wheelbarrows to be trucked out of the city. Watching the
ragtag convoy of government trucks from their mud-packed yards, many
Haitians wondered how long it would be before normal life resumes.
Haiti was already in a miserable state -- the result of rising global
food prices that triggered deadly riots -- when Tropical Storm Hanna
flooded Gonaives and bathed it in mud, followed days later by Hurricane
Ike.
''We the people of Gonaives, we have a lot of problems,'' Leonie Joseph
said from the cramped rooftop of a wholesale food store she used to run.
That rooftop is now the family's home.
The yard remains submerged in floodwaters, and the family's few
possessions are covered with soiled bedsheets. Eight people, including a
3-month-old and a 3-year-old, live on the roof.
At the city's southern limits where a new lake has formed, 512 people
live in a tent city. The tents are better than a roof, but it's unclear
how long the tent city will remain.
CONCERN FOR LIVES
Government officials and humanitarian experts say one reason the
recovery seems uncoordinated and slow is that the initial focus was on
saving lives.
Today, weeks after Hanna practically destroyed this seaside city, aid
workers are still experimenting with how best to distribute food. And the
government is still working on a plan to relocate tens of thousands of
homeless people.
''It could be better, but everything is complicated here,'' Joel
Boutroue, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Haiti, said of
the recovery. 'But we are not sitting on our hands saying, `We cannot do
anything.' We are trying to do what we can.''
Boutroue and Haitian Interior Minister Paul Antoine Bien-Aimé had both
asked that the government name a relief and recovery czar with
executive-like powers to speed things up.
There are entire city blocks that need to be condemned, rivers and
canals to be dredged and schools to be opened. The U.N. has asked local
authorities to open 166 schools. But with as many as 23,000 homeless
residents still living in 37 schools, local officials have resisted
resuming classes.
Bien-Aimé said the conflict goes beyond the spat between the U.N. and
competing local officials. It also spills over to international aid
agencies and governments that want to set the conditions for their
assistance.
They also have conflicting agendas. Take the warehouse where 900
residents currently live. They were bused to the facility by the mayor,
who did not have the owner's permission to temporarily house anyone. The
U.N.'s World Food Program would like to stockpile food in the depot, but
another U.N. agency is working to keep the people in the shelter.
U.N. rules prohibit mixing storage with temporary shelter.
That shelter and others like it are patrolled not by police, but by
self-appointed bands of young men.
There are fears that women and children are being left vulnerable to
violence and exploitation.
''Since we came here to this shelter, we don't know if the Haitian
government exists,'' said Elvariest Paulveret, 51, standing in the dusty
yard of the warehouse.
''We have almost two months that we have been sleeping on cement, and
since then we have yet to come across a representative of the government to
tell us anything,'' he said. ``We used to sleep on beds, but the
floodwaters washed away our beds and everything else we owned.''
After fights broke out at the depot a few weeks into the food handout,
the World Food Program and a local government disaster committee halted
distributions.
PROBLEMS AT SHELTERS
''It hurt me to do it, but the shelters are not managed at all,'' said Alix
Loriston, World Food Program coordinator in Gonaives. ``The conditions for
safety, conditions for humanitarian assistance for a human being, are not
there.''
For weeks, U.N. officials have asked Moise to relocate thousands of
displaced Haitians. But neither the mayor nor anyone else in the government
complied until Friday, when the president personally got involved.
''We need better organized shelters in another area where we can have
better controls, including the protection of women,'' said Boutroue, the
U.N. official.
With donor response lagging, government officials have turned to their
own measly coffers to begin the process of rebuilding. Using $200 million
saved from discounted oil purchases from Venezuela, the Haitian government
bought garbage trucks and bulldozers to assist in the cleanup and set aside
$17 million to be split among 142 counties.
Bien-Aimé said the government is seeking more tents to provide temporary
housing. But the country needs permanent housing.
A JOB PROGRAM
To put money in people's pockets, the government has joined the U.N. and
the U.S. Agency for International Development in a job program, paying
locals to shovel mud. Wearing gray and orange T-shirts, the street cleaners
receive $3.75 a day.
While the jobs will help a few people, many others have nothing -- no
possessions, no savings, no means to earn an income, except through
bartering or selling rations. Some aid workers say that even though they
don't condone such selling, they understand it. Food and water are not
enough for survival.
Some local officials are less sympathetic. They accuse recipients of
lying to receive extra aid.
''The people seem to think that in the aftermath of a natural disaster,
the aid is indefinite and they should be receiving food and more food,''
said Marc-Elie St. Hillien, a government appointee involved in the
recovery. ``If they spend a week or two without receiving any food, it's as
if they have never received any at all.''
The World Food Program concedes that some people may have fallen through
the cracks. Last week, it increased the number of distribution sites in the
city and provided new ration cards for cereal, beans and oil.
The change was prompted by complaints that lines were too long, and
that women were being
beaten and robbed of their rations.
''We have to find a good
solution where the most vulnerable can get food,'' said
Loriston, the World Food Program coordinator.
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