Return to Haiti

I spent the night in an orphanage in Port au Prince Thurs. I had first been to this orphanage to ask the director about child trafficking in their area which is known as Delmas. She told me that she would see the trafficked and street children behind the house using the gully there as a path. She would invite some of these children in to play with the orphanage children and give them something to eat before they left. The orphanage is always full so she is not able to keep those children, but is able to feed them when they come. She said it is extremely difficult for children to exist on their own without any help on the street so usually they do have an adult in their life, and often that adult expects them to earn money. They are often taught to beg, steal or prostitute themselves to earn that money.

Many children are given away by their parents in Haiti because they can not afford to provide for them. They may give them up hoping the child is able to find a better life with the person they are being entrusted to, but all too often this is not the case. The orphanage director and other directors told me they were frequently asked to take in children by parents who can not afford to keep them.

This time when I came I found a mattress had been put on the living room floor for a mother and her 2 day old baby. Dominese, the mother, lost her husband in the quake in Haiti. She and their child were spared. Dominese was 6 months pregnant and now had no home to live in. Dominese's sister also died in the quake, but her 2 children lived. So Dominese took in both of her sister's children so she now had to provide for herself and 3 children with no place to go. The orphanage director gave her a tent and allowed her to put it up on the orphanage grounds.

On Tues. night it rained very hard in Port au Prince and Dominese's tent flooded. She went to the clinic that the orphanage maintains and went into labor. Fortunately, a new team of volunteers had just arrived that day and there was a doctor and nurse at the clinic. Although they did not have any medicine to ease the pain of labor for Dominese, the birth was normal and they were able to assist in a successful delivery for the mother and her new daughter.

written by Sandra Kirkpatrick to be continued

Girl getting washed in the gutter in Port au Prince camp across from the palace

We had our earthquake here in California and south across the border yesterday, and today a soft, light rain is falling. I wonder about the people in Haiti, the ones without any home now, and if it is raining on them. I know many are being relocated from the "camps" of tent cities - tents that were made of bedsheets and anything else they could find - to safer areas less likely to flood. But still the problem of adequate shelter remains. The photo is of a little girl who is living in a camp across the street from the National Palace being given her shower - in the open gutter with a bucket of water. Only 30% of Haitians had running water before the quake. Now it is anyone's guess as to how many have access to any plumbing at all.

In the University of Miami field hospital the floor was plywood, but the 200 cot sleeping tent where I stayed had straw over a dirt floor. And the portable toilets and makeshift showers were outside about 20-30 feet away. We counted ourselves lucky, at least we had a real tent and facilities, although the water from our storage tanks for the showers ran out every day, and that's when the pumps were working. I found I could shower using 3 small bottles of water if the showers were not working. In the 90 degree heat and stiffling tent I was ready and willing to improvise. I can not imagine how the people are surviving in the small tents in the camps.

I heard from one of the directors of an orphanage in Port au Prince I am working with who gave an account of some of the horrific conditions in the camps. He said

two weeks ago, an eight year old girl was raped while her mother went out looking for food to feed her. Another girl who is 15 also was raped inside her makeshift shelter. She cried out for help but no one came to her rescue.

The security in the camps is neglible and not only do violent crimes against children take place there, but so does trafficking. AUSJ continues to work with UNICEF to try to improve the safety of children in and out of the camps. We work to build community so that people will look out for each other as well as their own families. Your donations via our website www.ausj.org help us make Haiti safer for everyone.

written by Sandra Kirkpatrick, Executive Director, AUSJ