Concern Blogs

60 year-old Camila Avril sits outside her newly erected tent with daughter Lucienne Dorci, 34 and granddaughters Dudmicah Aladin, 6 months, and Esdrac Dorci, 17.

“The house jumped!” 60 year-old Camila Avril is describing what happened to her home on January 12, the day of the earthquake that devastated parts of Haiti.

Since then, she and the members of her household pictured here have been sleeping in the crudely fenced yard of a neighbor.

The family live on the island of La Gonâve, in a place called Sous Saline, a cluster of shacks built on an often flooded tidal plain at the edge of the island’s largest town, Anse-a-Galets.

Sous Saline resident Camila Avril shows one of the cracks in her home left by the January 12 earthquake.

Located some 40 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince, La Gonâve did experience structural damage to its weaker structures but none of the loss of life seen in Port-au-Prince and the lower peninsula.

In the days after the quake, an estimated 16,000 people fled here from the mainland—and all evidence indicates that most are here to stay.

The challenge for La Gonâve is two-fold: first to address the damage that disproportionately struck the homes of its very poorest residents—like Camila Avril—and second to cope with the population explosion of the last two months.

It will not be easy: La Gonâve’s isolation is compounded by its extreme vulnerability.  Shocks such as droughts and hurricanes hit the island particularly hard, because even in the best of times it does not grow enough food to feed its existing population, and any aid delivery and development efforts are invariably hampered by an inadequate road system—there is not a single kilometer of paved road on the 55 kilometer long island.

Concern logisticians James Malone (1eft) and Jimmy O'Connor join in the unloading of the tents from a UN helicopter, at Lycee National school in Anse-a-Galets on La Gonave.

On March 10, Concern launched a 3-day operation in which 600 family-size tents were distributed to nearly 4,000 people at 6 points across the island.  The tents were delivered by helicopters operated by the United Nations Humanitarian Aviation Service, flying 14 sorties between Port-au-Prince and La Gonâve.

“It was a complicated operation two weeks in the planning,” said Tom Dobbin, Concern’s distribution manager in Haiti, “but it was imperative that we get these tents here as soon as possible.  With the most vulnerable populations spread across the island, the helicopters were our best option.”

Back in Sous Saline, Camila Avril breaks into a smile: “I was so happy when they told me I was going to receive a tent. We were in a really bad state.  All of the children have gotten sick since we have been outside and the baby still has a fever. There are a lot of new people here from Port-au-Prince, so we are all sharing our food and eating less.  But now we have a place to live again and that is the most important thing.”

Jude rests along with his wife Madeleine Thibeault, four of their six children, and mother Marianne Chery.

A few meters away, a crowd gathers as 36 year-old Jude Chery unfurls the outer fly sheet of his tent.  His wife Madeleine Thibeault and their six children watch intently.  3 month-old Pierson, born just before the quake wears a second-hand Holstein-spotted hooded jumper with ears.  It reads “I’m udder-ly adorable” across the front. He is.

Their home town of Cabaret north of Port-au-Prince was completely destroyed.  For the last two months they have been living and sleeping in Jude’s mother’s house—nine people in a space of about 200 square feet.

“There are cracks in the house and of course we were scared to be in there—it could still come down, but we had no choice,” he explains.

“These are young children and they are not strong enough to sleep outside…We are happy to have the tent because we are making our home here now—we will not go back to Cabaret.”

Rings of trash and sewage mark the encroachment of floods around the community of Sous Saline home to La Gonave's poorest.

Concern’s plans for La Gonâve are comprehensive.  In the coming weeks there will be another round of distributions, including blankets, plastic sheeting, jerry cans, water purification tablets and hygiene kits.

Programs include road rehabilitation; the installation and rehabilitation of clean water sources; cash for work; a livelihoods security program targeting farmers; and an expanded primary education program.

“We live here because we have no other place to go,” says Camila.  The flood prone land of Sous Saline is free.  The rains are coming and we know there will be floods and hurricanes.  We would like to have another place to live…we would like to knock down this house and build a new one, but the future is in God’s hands…For now we feel safe.”