In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry
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By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: February 5, 2010
MERIDIAN, Idaho — Paul Thompson sent an urgent e-mail message to a group of friends last month as he rushed to prepare for a trip to Haiti.
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Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Corinna Lankford, one of 10 Americans accused of child abduction in Haiti, was driven to help people, relatives in Idaho say.
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American Charged in Haiti Had Some Troubles in Idaho (February 5, 2010)
Haiti Charges Americans With Child Abduction (February 5, 2010)
"It wasn't very long, it wasn't very detailed at all," said David Sparks, a friend from college who received the message. "It was basically, whoever could go on a short-term basis, possibly two or three weeks, to let him know. He wasn't asking for money or anything like that."
Mr. Sparks, who attended Wayland Baptist University in Texas with Mr. Thompson in the 1980s, added, "I don't know anybody with a bigger heart to serve than Paul."
Mr. Thompson, the pastor of East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho, and nine other Americans, including Mr. Thompson's teenage son Silas and a cousin, now face child-abduction charges in Haiti after officials there accused them of trying to take 33 children out of the country illegally.
Laura Silsby, an Idaho businesswoman and a leader of the group, has said they planned to open an orphanage for the children in the Dominican Republic.
While Ms. Silsby, 40, and another member of the group, Charisa Coulter, 24, Ms. Silsby's live-in nanny, were involved in the planning for the trip, some of the others appear to have learned about it through e-mail messages forwarded among friends, families and church members.
All were said to have swiftly decided to go.
Robert Lankford, whose daughter-in-law, Corinna Lankford, and granddaughter, Nicole Lankford, 18, are among those being held in Haiti, said, "Corinna was just saying we're going to help those little kids that don't have anything."
Nicole Lankford plays the piano and helps lead the youth worship at Central Valley Baptist Church, the same church Ms. Silsby attends, Mr. Lankford said. "Never said a swear word, never smoked a smoke, never drank," he said. "She's a very devout girl."
Now Mr. Lankford and the family members of some of the others being held in Haiti are desperate to get them released. Mr. Lankford's son met with leaders at Central Valley Baptist on Friday in an effort to get help from the American government. Several people here have been critical of what they said was an insufficient effort on the part of the government to help the group. American officials have said Haiti is handling the case transparently.
"I'm at my wits' end," Mr. Lankford said. "All they did was try to help."
In the rushed days before the group left, they collected donations of clothing, diapers, baby formula and toys. Corinna Lankford's 16-year-old son, Daniel, said he went to dentists' offices to ask for donations of toothpaste and toothbrushes.
Mr. Lankford said the group filled 15 large plastic bins with supplies and paid more than $1,000 in extra luggage costs for their flight to the Dominican Republic.
"Those are not things that criminals take and pay to do it anyhow," he said, adding that his daughter-in-law and granddaughter packed only small bags for themselves.
Corinna Lankford, the mother of six, has home-schooled all of her children, Daniel said. He said his mother and Nicole had once traveled to Ecuador on a mission trip to help build and clean churches.
Family and friends of the group members have said little critical of Ms. Silsby or the churches that helped promote the trip. Mr. Lankford said that he was not sure how well his family members knew Ms. Silsby, but that their understanding was that logistical and legal details in Haiti were "being taken care of."
Haitian officials say Ms. Silsby lacked documentation to take custody of and travel with the children. A lawyer in Haiti for the group, Edwin Coq, suggested to reporters this week that Ms. Silsby might face a difficult prosecution.
The events have also prompted scrutiny of Ms. Silsby in Idaho, exposing a complicated financial history with lawsuits pending against her and a house lost to foreclosure.
When Mr. Coq was asked about the other nine Americans, he echoed their friends and relatives here: "completely innocent," he said.
Central Valley Baptist, which had allowed members of the news media to work in its common areas earlier in the week, locked its doors after the Americans were charged on Thursday afternoon and would not allow the press in on Friday.
Five of the Americans attend Central Valley, and three attend East Side Baptist in Twin Falls. One is from a Baptist church in Kansas. Another, Jim Allen, Mr. Thompson's cousin, lives in Amarillo, Tex., where he owns a small welding shop.
An employee at the shop said Mr. Allen had received an e-mail message about the Haiti trip through a church in Amarillo that his parents and Paul Thompson's parents attend.
"He decided to go help," said the employee, Linda Hand. "He was very excited to go help the children. That's just the type of heart that he has, and we're all very proud of him."
Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care
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By IAN URBINA
Published: February 5, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former President Bill Clinton, who is the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, returned here on Friday to meet with government and aid officials, visit a health clinic and deliver medical supplies, computers and generators.
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Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press
Former President Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, visited a clinic in Port-au-Prince, on Friday.
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Panoramas: Views From Haiti
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Haiti Earthquake Multimedia
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Haiti Hospital's Fight Against TB Falls to One Man (February 6, 2010)
In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry (February 6, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Mr. Clinton praised the progress being made in the relief effort, especially in addressing the need for food, shelter and security, but he expressed a growing sense of urgency about the country's requirements for sanitation and health care.
"We learned a lot from the tsunami relief effort, and the United Nations and the international community worked in a far more coordinated fashion this time," he said while touring the Gheskio health clinic in the Bicentenaire neighborhood. "But we can still do better, and one of the areas that I think we have to improve is sanitation."
To prepare for future disasters, Mr. Clinton said he planned to suggest that the United Nations consider stockpiling latrines and other sanitation supplies in disaster- or conflict-prone areas around the world, much as it already does with medical supplies, food and water.
He said he believed that the United Nations and the international community needed to devise plans for handling natural disasters and conduct practice exercises to improve coordination and diminish response time.
Mr. Clinton was given the added responsibility on Wednesday of overseeing United Nations aid efforts and reconstruction in Haiti after the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, the capital, and surrounding areas on Jan. 12.
Dr. Paul Farmer, the deputy special envoy to Haiti who toured the clinic with Mr. Clinton, said: "For sanitation and health, the key is going to be to create community-based solutions, which basically means hire Haitians and lots of them to begin tracking infectious diseases, doing follow-up on treatments, as well as building latrines and water infrastructure. It shouldn't be seen as some radical notion that we need to inject the money into the Haitian population, because they are the ones who can actually do the follow up."
United Nations officials echoed the concerns over sanitation and health.
"The rainy season is going to make our sanitation problems become our water problems if we don't find a way to get more latrines built," said Souleymane Sow, coordinator for Unicef's water, sanitation and health cluster. "The rain will wash the waste into the area where people are living and may cause people to become very sick."
More than 900 pit or trench latrines have been dug. But sanitation facilities are still needed for more than 950,000 people, Mr. Sow said. He added that more donations of services and latrines were still needed from sanitation companies in the United States.
At a sweltering encampment on Toussaint Louverture Boulevard, about a mile from the Port-au-Prince airport, Pierre Toutiane nodded in agreement about the need for more latrines. He stood in his shanty, which is crowded on three sides by other shanties and which opens on the fourth side onto a gulley flowing with human waste.
Just inches from the gulley, Mr. Toutiane's 3-year-old son, Christian, lay on the shanty's dirt floor.
"Every day that trench gets wider and closer to us," Mr. Toutiane said. "But we have no place else to go."
United Nations officials said they were making great progress in other areas, having provided some water or food to a total of one million people. More than 338,000 people received two-week rations of rice over the past three days, they said.
Health officials have performed more than 1,000 amputations, but more physical therapists are needed for post-operative care, they said.
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By IAN URBINA
Published: February 5, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former President Bill Clinton, who is the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, returned here on Friday to meet with government and aid officials, visit a health clinic and deliver medical supplies, computers and generators.
Enlarge This Image
Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press
Former President Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy for Haiti, visited a clinic in Port-au-Prince, on Friday.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Panoramas: Views From Haiti
Interactive Feature
Haiti Earthquake Multimedia
Related
Haiti Hospital's Fight Against TB Falls to One Man (February 6, 2010)
In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry (February 6, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Mr. Clinton praised the progress being made in the relief effort, especially in addressing the need for food, shelter and security, but he expressed a growing sense of urgency about the country's requirements for sanitation and health care.
"We learned a lot from the tsunami relief effort, and the United Nations and the international community worked in a far more coordinated fashion this time," he said while touring the Gheskio health clinic in the Bicentenaire neighborhood. "But we can still do better, and one of the areas that I think we have to improve is sanitation."
To prepare for future disasters, Mr. Clinton said he planned to suggest that the United Nations consider stockpiling latrines and other sanitation supplies in disaster- or conflict-prone areas around the world, much as it already does with medical supplies, food and water.
He said he believed that the United Nations and the international community needed to devise plans for handling natural disasters and conduct practice exercises to improve coordination and diminish response time.
Mr. Clinton was given the added responsibility on Wednesday of overseeing United Nations aid efforts and reconstruction in Haiti after the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, the capital, and surrounding areas on Jan. 12.
Dr. Paul Farmer, the deputy special envoy to Haiti who toured the clinic with Mr. Clinton, said: "For sanitation and health, the key is going to be to create community-based solutions, which basically means hire Haitians and lots of them to begin tracking infectious diseases, doing follow-up on treatments, as well as building latrines and water infrastructure. It shouldn't be seen as some radical notion that we need to inject the money into the Haitian population, because they are the ones who can actually do the follow up."
United Nations officials echoed the concerns over sanitation and health.
"The rainy season is going to make our sanitation problems become our water problems if we don't find a way to get more latrines built," said Souleymane Sow, coordinator for Unicef's water, sanitation and health cluster. "The rain will wash the waste into the area where people are living and may cause people to become very sick."
More than 900 pit or trench latrines have been dug. But sanitation facilities are still needed for more than 950,000 people, Mr. Sow said. He added that more donations of services and latrines were still needed from sanitation companies in the United States.
At a sweltering encampment on Toussaint Louverture Boulevard, about a mile from the Port-au-Prince airport, Pierre Toutiane nodded in agreement about the need for more latrines. He stood in his shanty, which is crowded on three sides by other shanties and which opens on the fourth side onto a gulley flowing with human waste.
Just inches from the gulley, Mr. Toutiane's 3-year-old son, Christian, lay on the shanty's dirt floor.
"Every day that trench gets wider and closer to us," Mr. Toutiane said. "But we have no place else to go."
United Nations officials said they were making great progress in other areas, having provided some water or food to a total of one million people. More than 338,000 people received two-week rations of rice over the past three days, they said.
Health officials have performed more than 1,000 amputations, but more physical therapists are needed for post-operative care, they said.
Haiti Hospital's Fight Against TB Falls to One Man
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Sommervil Webert, 24, is a tuberculosis patient in the makeshift clinic in Port-au-Prince. Other patients must sleep outside.
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By IAN URBINA
Published: February 5, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — At a fly-infested clinic hastily erected alongside the rubble of the only tuberculosis sanatorium in this country, Pierre-Louis Monfort is a lonely man in a crowded room.
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Panoramas: Tuberculosis Patients
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In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry (February 6, 2010)
Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care (February 6, 2010)
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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Clervil Orange, a patient at what remains of Haiti's only TB hospital, getting a haircut this week. "Why don't you just leave us to die?" he asked the lone nurse there.
Haiti has the highest tuberculosis rate in the Americas, and health experts say it is about to drastically increase.
But amid the ramshackle remains of the hospital where the country's most infected patients used to live, Mr. Monfort runs the clinic alone, facing a vastness of unmet need that is as clear as the desperation on the faces around the room.
"I'm drowning," said Mr. Monfort, 52, flanked by a line of people waiting for pills as he emptied a bedpan full of blood. All of the hospital's 50 other nurses and 20 doctors died in the earthquake or have refused to return to work out of fear for the building's safety or preoccupation with their own problems, he said. Mr. Monfort joked that the earthquake had earned him a promotion from a staff nurse at the sanatorium to its new executive director.
In normal times, Haiti sees about 30,000 new cases of tuberculosis each year. Among infectious diseases, it is the country's second most common killer, after AIDS, according to the World Health Organization.
The situation has gone from bad to worse because the earthquake set off a dangerous diaspora. Most of the sanatorium's several hundred surviving patients fled and are now living in the densely packed tent cities where experts say they are probably spreading the disease. Most of these patients have also stopped taking their daily regimen of pills, thereby heightening the chance that there will be an outbreak of a strain resistant to treatment, experts say.
At the city's General Hospital, Dr. Megan Coffee said, "This right here is what is going to be devastating in six months," and she pointed to several tuberculosis patients thought to have a resistant strain of the disease who were quarantined in a fenced-off blue tent. "Someone needs to go and help Monfort, or we are all going to be in big trouble."
A further complication is that definitively diagnosing tuberculosis takes weeks. So doctors are instead left to rely on conspicuous symptoms like night sweats, severe coughing and weight loss. "But look around," Dr. Coffee said. "Everyone is thin, everyone is coughing from the dust and everyone is sweating from the heat."
Dr. Richar D'Meza, the coordinator for tuberculosis for the Haitian Ministry of Health, said his office and the World Health Organization had begun stockpiling tuberculosis medicines. "We are very concerned about a resistant strain, but we are also getting ready," he said, adding that he is assembling medical teams to begin entering tent camps to survey for the disease.
"This will begin soon," he said. "We will get help to these people soon."
For Mr. Monfort, it is not soon enough. He scavenges the rubble daily for medicines and needles. He sterilizes needles using bleach and then reuses the bleach to clean the floors.
In his cramped clinic, eight of the sickest and most contagious patients lay on brown- and red-stained beds. He said he had lost count of how many more were sleeping in other pockets alongside the hospital. Hundreds come daily to pick up medicine.
Outside the clinic, the air is thick with the sickening smell of rotting bodies. Occasionally a breeze carried a waft of char from small cooking fires nearby, offering a respite from the stench and the flies.
Mr. Monfort began to explain that his biggest problem was a lack of food. Suddenly a huge crash shook the clinic. A patient screamed. Everyone stood still, eyes darting. A man outside yelled that another section of the hospital had collapsed. People looking for materials to build huts had pulled wood pilings from a section of the hospital roof, which then fell as the scavengers leapt to safety, the man said.
Mr. Monfort looked to the ground silently as if the weight of his lonely responsibility had just come crashing down.
"These people are dying and in pain here," he said. "And no one seems to care."
The dire scene at Mr. Monfort's clinic speaks to a larger concern: as hospitals and medical staff are overrun by people with acute conditions, patients who were previously getting treatment for cancer, H.I.V. and other chronic or infectious diseases have been pushed aside and no longer have access to care.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Sommervil Webert, 24, is a tuberculosis patient in the makeshift clinic in Port-au-Prince. Other patients must sleep outside.
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By IAN URBINA
Published: February 5, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — At a fly-infested clinic hastily erected alongside the rubble of the only tuberculosis sanatorium in this country, Pierre-Louis Monfort is a lonely man in a crowded room.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Panoramas: Tuberculosis Patients
Related
In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry (February 6, 2010)
Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care (February 6, 2010)
Enlarge This Image
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Clervil Orange, a patient at what remains of Haiti's only TB hospital, getting a haircut this week. "Why don't you just leave us to die?" he asked the lone nurse there.
Haiti has the highest tuberculosis rate in the Americas, and health experts say it is about to drastically increase.
But amid the ramshackle remains of the hospital where the country's most infected patients used to live, Mr. Monfort runs the clinic alone, facing a vastness of unmet need that is as clear as the desperation on the faces around the room.
"I'm drowning," said Mr. Monfort, 52, flanked by a line of people waiting for pills as he emptied a bedpan full of blood. All of the hospital's 50 other nurses and 20 doctors died in the earthquake or have refused to return to work out of fear for the building's safety or preoccupation with their own problems, he said. Mr. Monfort joked that the earthquake had earned him a promotion from a staff nurse at the sanatorium to its new executive director.
In normal times, Haiti sees about 30,000 new cases of tuberculosis each year. Among infectious diseases, it is the country's second most common killer, after AIDS, according to the World Health Organization.
The situation has gone from bad to worse because the earthquake set off a dangerous diaspora. Most of the sanatorium's several hundred surviving patients fled and are now living in the densely packed tent cities where experts say they are probably spreading the disease. Most of these patients have also stopped taking their daily regimen of pills, thereby heightening the chance that there will be an outbreak of a strain resistant to treatment, experts say.
At the city's General Hospital, Dr. Megan Coffee said, "This right here is what is going to be devastating in six months," and she pointed to several tuberculosis patients thought to have a resistant strain of the disease who were quarantined in a fenced-off blue tent. "Someone needs to go and help Monfort, or we are all going to be in big trouble."
A further complication is that definitively diagnosing tuberculosis takes weeks. So doctors are instead left to rely on conspicuous symptoms like night sweats, severe coughing and weight loss. "But look around," Dr. Coffee said. "Everyone is thin, everyone is coughing from the dust and everyone is sweating from the heat."
Dr. Richar D'Meza, the coordinator for tuberculosis for the Haitian Ministry of Health, said his office and the World Health Organization had begun stockpiling tuberculosis medicines. "We are very concerned about a resistant strain, but we are also getting ready," he said, adding that he is assembling medical teams to begin entering tent camps to survey for the disease.
"This will begin soon," he said. "We will get help to these people soon."
For Mr. Monfort, it is not soon enough. He scavenges the rubble daily for medicines and needles. He sterilizes needles using bleach and then reuses the bleach to clean the floors.
In his cramped clinic, eight of the sickest and most contagious patients lay on brown- and red-stained beds. He said he had lost count of how many more were sleeping in other pockets alongside the hospital. Hundreds come daily to pick up medicine.
Outside the clinic, the air is thick with the sickening smell of rotting bodies. Occasionally a breeze carried a waft of char from small cooking fires nearby, offering a respite from the stench and the flies.
Mr. Monfort began to explain that his biggest problem was a lack of food. Suddenly a huge crash shook the clinic. A patient screamed. Everyone stood still, eyes darting. A man outside yelled that another section of the hospital had collapsed. People looking for materials to build huts had pulled wood pilings from a section of the hospital roof, which then fell as the scavengers leapt to safety, the man said.
Mr. Monfort looked to the ground silently as if the weight of his lonely responsibility had just come crashing down.
"These people are dying and in pain here," he said. "And no one seems to care."
The dire scene at Mr. Monfort's clinic speaks to a larger concern: as hospitals and medical staff are overrun by people with acute conditions, patients who were previously getting treatment for cancer, H.I.V. and other chronic or infectious diseases have been pushed aside and no longer have access to care.
At the Champ de Mars, Jean-Baptiste Renauld sat on a curb, one shoe missing, his blue polo shirt torn, his head cupped in his hands. "I have TB, and I am also supposed to get dialysis every other day," he said, explaining that he was a doctor's assistant before the earthquake and meticulous about his treatments. "I have not had dialysis in three weeks, and I feel my blood is rotting from inside."
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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Amid the rubble of the sanatorium in Port-au-Prince, Pierre-Louis Monfort struggles to meet patients' needs.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Panoramas: Tuberculosis Patients
Related
In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry (February 6, 2010)
Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care (February 6, 2010)
Waving his hand over a sea of tents and tarpaulins, he added, "It is like this country."
Back at the clinic, Mr. Monfort struggled to fix an IV that had missed the vein and was painfully pumping fluids under a patient's skin. Another ghost of a man hobbled to the doorway on crutches, moaning for help. "Please wait, please wait," Mr. Monfort said in a tense whisper.
The biggest source of stress, Mr. Monfort said, is that his three children and wife are living on the street because the earthquake destroyed their home. His wife begs him daily to stay with them. Instead, unpaid and without a mask or gloves to wear, he walks to the sanatorium each day at 6 a.m. and stays until 8 p.m. when most of the patients drift to sleep.
"Why don't you just leave us to die?" asked Clervil Orange, 39. Mr. Monfort looked offended by the notion. But he did not answer and the question seemed to stick with him.
The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus once wrote that there was a type of suffering so intense that, even in our sleep, it bores into the heart until eventually, "in our own despair, against our will," it taps into a terrible wisdom.
After several minutes in silence, Mr. Monfort spoke of that wisdom. He referred to it as a "strange hope" that had sprung from the suffering of his patients and the loss and abandonment of his fellow staff members.
"These people here are dying, but they keep me alive," he said. "I know they are hurting more than me and not complaining.
"So," he said, handing another walk-in patient a packet of pills, "I must continue."
Enlarge This Image
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Amid the rubble of the sanatorium in Port-au-Prince, Pierre-Louis Monfort struggles to meet patients' needs.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Panoramas: Tuberculosis Patients
Related
In Idaho, Questions on How Aid Mission Went Awry (February 6, 2010)
Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care (February 6, 2010)
Waving his hand over a sea of tents and tarpaulins, he added, "It is like this country."
Back at the clinic, Mr. Monfort struggled to fix an IV that had missed the vein and was painfully pumping fluids under a patient's skin. Another ghost of a man hobbled to the doorway on crutches, moaning for help. "Please wait, please wait," Mr. Monfort said in a tense whisper.
The biggest source of stress, Mr. Monfort said, is that his three children and wife are living on the street because the earthquake destroyed their home. His wife begs him daily to stay with them. Instead, unpaid and without a mask or gloves to wear, he walks to the sanatorium each day at 6 a.m. and stays until 8 p.m. when most of the patients drift to sleep.
"Why don't you just leave us to die?" asked Clervil Orange, 39. Mr. Monfort looked offended by the notion. But he did not answer and the question seemed to stick with him.
The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus once wrote that there was a type of suffering so intense that, even in our sleep, it bores into the heart until eventually, "in our own despair, against our will," it taps into a terrible wisdom.
After several minutes in silence, Mr. Monfort spoke of that wisdom. He referred to it as a "strange hope" that had sprung from the suffering of his patients and the loss and abandonment of his fellow staff members.
"These people here are dying, but they keep me alive," he said. "I know they are hurting more than me and not complaining.
"So," he said, handing another walk-in patient a packet of pills, "I must continue."
In Port-au-Prince, the Smell of Death, the Odor of Corruption
By Jessica Desvarieux / Port-au-Prince Saturday, Feb. 06, 2010
A Haitian walks away with a bag of aid at an old military airfield in Port-au-Prince.
Fred Dufour / AFP / Getty
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Women stroll down the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince with bulky bags of rice sitting on top of their heads. It's an image imprinted on the collective conscious of many Haitians, and behind these classic silhouette, there's an all too familiar story, even amid the extraordinary destruction of the Jan. 12 earthquake. With beads of sweat sliding down her face, 17-year-old Claire Fondnancy said she woke up at 4 in the morning to make her way up to Delmas to wait in line for three hours for her bag of rice. But it's not the wait that bothers her but the 250 Gourdes (or about $6) she had to pay for a carte or coupon. "We're obliged to buy the coupons because we can't find food," says the mother of a three-year old son.
(See TIME's exclusive photos from Haiti.)
The coupons are a part of the World Food Program distribution plan aimed at women and children. Theoretically, the program disseminates coupons to Haitian community leaders who then are supposed to give them out to the women of that community. But they are quickly becoming a commodity. The women tell me of places where I can go to find the men selling the cartes: the stadium, the gas station on the corner, all places where you go to meet the right people. It's clear relief has come hand in hand with Haiti's age-old, seemingly death-defying corruption. "Let the white people give out the coupons. The Haitians will just take them and sell them," says Josmen Jean, 25, who also made the journey for her 50 lbs bag of rice.
Haitians who've had to deal with the loss of their family members and their homes, now find fellow citizens profiting from their pain. But the hunger on the streets is growing. In the suburban city of Petion-ville, protesters wove in between cars chanting against the mayor Claire Lydia Parent. The demonstrators allege that Parent too is charging them 250 Gourdes for coupons for bags of rice. "She's keeping it in the depot so when elections come around she'll give the rice away. Then people will vote for her," says Danka Tranzil, 17. (Mayor Parent has said that food is constantly being distributed and that what people in the street may perceive as supplies being kept from them is actually being taken to other parts of the city in need.)
"Blocking the rice" is what the residents of the city are calling the halting relief efforts. There's so much blocking in the system that frustrated members of my family, neighbors, the man selling baguettes in the morning will tell you: "the government works against you, not for you." The Haitian government has tried to show some positive signs of life. There have been several distributions led by Haitian police officers dressed in khaki uniforms with official Haitian patches embroidered on their sleeves. But the presence of the law does not translate into order. One distribution site at the makeshift camps of the Place du Champ de Mars quickly erupted into a frenzy, with government workers throwing bags of rice into the crowds.
(Watch "What Is Slowing the Relief Effort in Haiti?")
As important as rice is, the hottest commodity on the streets of Petion-ville is a tent. I think back to the $34.99 I paid at Target for my tent as I was preparing to make my way down to Haiti to visit my family and report on the earthquake's destruction. Now tents can sell on the street for a hundred dollars each, if you can find one. One woman says she'd been walking all day looking for one. She was dressed in a tight spandex lime green shirt, her hair neatly coiffed. She said she offered a man 1,500 Gourdes or $40 for one and he just laughed. "We are just making our homes out of sheets but what will happen when it rains?" she tells me. "What will we do?"
It's a question the Haitian government plans to answer with campsites in places like Croix-de-Bouquets, eight miles from the capital. The ground there has been plowed in preparation but much more headway has to be made. The rains will begin in a few weeks.
(See the top 10 deadliest earthquakes.)
The signs in broken English say it all: "We need help, food, watar." One Haitian radio station S.O.S. gives Haitians the opportunity to voice where they are and what they need. One man calls in and says he's from Delmas 83 and says that their area has yet to receive any aid. A story all too familiar, as growl of bellies in the streets grow louder.
By Jessica Desvarieux / Port-au-Prince Saturday, Feb. 06, 2010
A Haitian walks away with a bag of aid at an old military airfield in Port-au-Prince.
Fred Dufour / AFP / Getty
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Women stroll down the streets of downtown Port-au-Prince with bulky bags of rice sitting on top of their heads. It's an image imprinted on the collective conscious of many Haitians, and behind these classic silhouette, there's an all too familiar story, even amid the extraordinary destruction of the Jan. 12 earthquake. With beads of sweat sliding down her face, 17-year-old Claire Fondnancy said she woke up at 4 in the morning to make her way up to Delmas to wait in line for three hours for her bag of rice. But it's not the wait that bothers her but the 250 Gourdes (or about $6) she had to pay for a carte or coupon. "We're obliged to buy the coupons because we can't find food," says the mother of a three-year old son.
(See TIME's exclusive photos from Haiti.)
The coupons are a part of the World Food Program distribution plan aimed at women and children. Theoretically, the program disseminates coupons to Haitian community leaders who then are supposed to give them out to the women of that community. But they are quickly becoming a commodity. The women tell me of places where I can go to find the men selling the cartes: the stadium, the gas station on the corner, all places where you go to meet the right people. It's clear relief has come hand in hand with Haiti's age-old, seemingly death-defying corruption. "Let the white people give out the coupons. The Haitians will just take them and sell them," says Josmen Jean, 25, who also made the journey for her 50 lbs bag of rice.
Haitians who've had to deal with the loss of their family members and their homes, now find fellow citizens profiting from their pain. But the hunger on the streets is growing. In the suburban city of Petion-ville, protesters wove in between cars chanting against the mayor Claire Lydia Parent. The demonstrators allege that Parent too is charging them 250 Gourdes for coupons for bags of rice. "She's keeping it in the depot so when elections come around she'll give the rice away. Then people will vote for her," says Danka Tranzil, 17. (Mayor Parent has said that food is constantly being distributed and that what people in the street may perceive as supplies being kept from them is actually being taken to other parts of the city in need.)
"Blocking the rice" is what the residents of the city are calling the halting relief efforts. There's so much blocking in the system that frustrated members of my family, neighbors, the man selling baguettes in the morning will tell you: "the government works against you, not for you." The Haitian government has tried to show some positive signs of life. There have been several distributions led by Haitian police officers dressed in khaki uniforms with official Haitian patches embroidered on their sleeves. But the presence of the law does not translate into order. One distribution site at the makeshift camps of the Place du Champ de Mars quickly erupted into a frenzy, with government workers throwing bags of rice into the crowds.
(Watch "What Is Slowing the Relief Effort in Haiti?")
As important as rice is, the hottest commodity on the streets of Petion-ville is a tent. I think back to the $34.99 I paid at Target for my tent as I was preparing to make my way down to Haiti to visit my family and report on the earthquake's destruction. Now tents can sell on the street for a hundred dollars each, if you can find one. One woman says she'd been walking all day looking for one. She was dressed in a tight spandex lime green shirt, her hair neatly coiffed. She said she offered a man 1,500 Gourdes or $40 for one and he just laughed. "We are just making our homes out of sheets but what will happen when it rains?" she tells me. "What will we do?"
It's a question the Haitian government plans to answer with campsites in places like Croix-de-Bouquets, eight miles from the capital. The ground there has been plowed in preparation but much more headway has to be made. The rains will begin in a few weeks.
(See the top 10 deadliest earthquakes.)
The signs in broken English say it all: "We need help, food, watar." One Haitian radio station S.O.S. gives Haitians the opportunity to voice where they are and what they need. One man calls in and says he's from Delmas 83 and says that their area has yet to receive any aid. A story all too familiar, as growl of bellies in the streets grow louder.
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