Irish charity offers hope for family living in squalid slum camp

AMONG the hardship and disease in Haiti, small signs of hope emerge.

In the downtown slum camp of Place Boyer in the capital, barely clothed and dirt-covered children run between dusty tarpaulin tents, where hundreds of families live, cramped together having lost their homes during the earthquake.

One family of eight, living by the rubbish-packed roadside here, were lucky to survive the cholera outbreak. Mother Janice Simeone, 37, explained how she watched as four of her six children and her husband became violently ill with severe diahorrea and vomiting. “They were very sick, so I went to hospital with them,” she explains cuddling her youngest infant who was hospitalised for 18 days.

Husband Dieu Puissant, 30, was already recovering from gunshot wounds to his knees which he suffered two years ago fending off a gang of thieves outside the family’s makeshift tent.

Today, wounds still mark the front and back of his legs and he has a metal plate in his right leg.

With most of her family hospitalised, and mother Janice fearful of returning to the family tent where disease had left her children and husband nearly dead, Irish charity Concern stepped in. Having first got them medical care, the charity then built the family a new home.

Hygiene and shelter continues to be a priority for the charity.

According to Concern engineer Thomas Ferguson, as many as 800 people are relying on one latrine in the agency’s camps. But this is down from the 2,000 in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. The aid agency are also involved in desludging toilets in camps, drainage, providing showers, fresh water and removing waste and human waste from areas. “The situation is deplorable. You have people literally stacked on top of each other.”

One find by the agency shocked workers. Mr Ferguson added: “We found a child’s body in a hospital latrine. Unfortunately, it was so far gone we couldn’t determine if it was a boy or a girl.

“We had to extract the body and then place it in a container and it was taken away to the morgue.

“It hurt quite deeply to see that someone would be disposed of in such an undignified manner.”