Healing just beginning in Haiti

Tamar Hahn, UNICEF

© UNICEF

Camp Hope is home to 1,500 displaced Haitians from Port- au-Prince.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (May 6, 2010) — Camp Hope is an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) settlement  just three miles away from the border with the Dominican Republic.  It's also what 1,500 displaced Haitians from Port-au-Prince call home these days. It is a dusty, desolate tract of land with tents provided by the Red Cross and UNICEF.

All unaccompanied children in the camp have been registered and adults who came during the weeks following the earthquake to collect their children had to prove that they were relatives. This is crucial, as the trafficking of children across the border has been a major concern.

Inadequate supply of basics necessities

© UNICEF

Jessica, age 17, is one of the many children living in Camp Hope.

Children escape the beating sun, sitting on wooden benches under plastic sheeting. "I am doing fine," Jessica, age 17, said when asked about the situation. "But the water is disgusting and so are the toilets and we have no privacy at the showers so we have to bathe very late at night or before the sun comes out. We all have rashes because of the dirty water."

Indeed, the doctors at the field hospital up the road from Camp Hope confirm that the water at the camp was contaminated and that it had tested positive for E.coli bacteria.

Jessica's mother, like many other adults in the camp, spends her days in Port-au-Prince trying to restart her business—a stall where she sells used clothes. When asked what she does all day, Jessica said she did not go to school because she had no money for her uniform, shoes and books.

"I am bored, I have nothing to do. All I do is read this," she said, holding up a booklet of daily prayers entitled Messages of Hope. "And I am hungry."

Creating safer spaces for children

Port-au-Prince is full of life again, compared with the weeks after the earthquake. The streets are a chaotic bazaar where everything and anything is sold: shoes hanging from tree branches, corn roasted on the sidewalk, iron gates, tires, pillows, pipes, French champagne by the bucket, aspirin bottles, cell phone chargers, a pedicure, pregnancy tests, mangoes.

In the camps, makeshift tents have been replaced by real ones, bearing the logos of UN agencies and NGOs. There are latrines, water and food, but the water is not always sufficient and the latrines are often overflowing and unusable. The camps remain incredibly crowded spaces, precariously built on barren, dusty squares and parks which are a rainfall away from becoming a toxic cesspool. And the rainy season is here, to be followed by the hurricane season next month.

The camps might have some basic services but at night they are dark, dangerous places where women and girls are raped, where aid workers warn parents to keep their children close for fear of kidnappings and abuse, where widespread disease is a constant threat.

The government has begun to move some of the displaced people into more permanent spaces where they will be more protected from the rain but it is a slow-moving process.

Signs of progress amid the destruction

© UNICEF

The Haitian Ministry of Education backed by UNICEF and partners, has issued a nationwide call to return children back to school. This is the first step in an operation that hopes to see more than 700,000 students back in places of learning over the next two months.

The process of removing the rubble of the capital is on-going, but it is estimated that it will take two years to clean up the city. Every house bears a stamp at the entrance which is either green, yellow or red. The green stamps mean that the house is in good condition, the yellow ones that it needs reinforcement and the red ones signifies that it is unfit for living and will be demolished.

The UNICEF office falls under the last category—unfit for living and will be demolished.

Port-au-Prince looks like an open wound. No longer bleeding but far from healed. The words Nou Bouke—"we are exhausted"—spray-painted on walls in the city.

Despite the fatigue and the piles of debris, children walk to school. Over 4,000 schools were destroyed by the earthquake and last month, UNICEF began to open 120 of them. In a country where 55 percent of children did not receive an education prior to the earthquake, the sight of these boys and girls negotiating piles of rubble, traffic and the chaos of this city dressed in perfectly ironed uniforms is the best sign of progress.

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