ADRA-UK News Update

Young children like 2-month old Talia are among the most vulnerable residents of the displaced persons camp in Carrefour, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where ADRA is working to provide relief.(Photo Credit: Hearly G. Mayr, ADRA International)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—“We slept in the open for three days,” says Suzete Edmond, a 51-year old woman from Martissant, Port-au-Prince, who was at a hospital with her ill son when the earthquake struck Haiti on January 12. The disaster is still clear in her mind.

“Everyone ran outside,” she says. “My heart was pounding. We prayed, because we thought we were going to die.”

Elsewhere, in Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour neighborhood, Michelle Nirline, 21, was inside her family’s house caring for her month-and-a-half old baby girl named Talia. The moment the earth started shaking, she grabbed her child and rushed outside while the house collapsed behind her.

“I was afraid,” she said.

Whether through fortune or providence, Suzete and Michelle managed to survive the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in recorded history. Suddenly, they found themselves without a home, displaced.

The impromptu tent city where they arrived within hours, sits between classroom and administration buildings, a laboratory, and the main school chapel inside the expansive grounds of the Haitian Adventist University in Carrefour. It’s a city of bed sheets strung together, propped up with branches cut down from a nearby stand of trees and cinder blocks from downed walls. Here is where thousands came, shocked and fearful, convinced that buildings were no place to be inside anymore, and where the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) began to assist survivors several days ago.

Suzete sits on the ground inside her makeshift shelter to talk about the situation she is in now. She looks tired. Each day, she does her best to hold her immediate and extended family together—seven children, an ill sister, and two nieces. However, the last 15 days have strained her ability to care for her loved ones. Her sister Magalie Lapaix, 46, lies on the ground on a bed sheet spread over a floor mat. She hardly stands up, as she has been struggling with a sickness that has kept her bedridden since April last year. Since she came to the camp, she has become dehydrated due to vomiting and diarrhea that has not been treated yet. A doctor, working with ADRA partner GlobalMedic, will come within minutes after this interview to give her care.

The disaster also strained the family’s small budget. As a result, Suzete started buying small quantities of food on credit at a local market—rice, maize, millet, and legumes. She did this for days, but now is unsure how long she will be able to do this.

“Food has become two or three times more expensive,” she says. Looking up to the sky, she says, “God, He provides.”

As food distributions increase in the camp, ADRA expects that displaced persons like Suzete will be able to eat better.

“We don’t know how long we will be here,” says Michelle, who is concerned about what will come next for her and her baby girl.

In the last week ADRA has distributed more than 351,000 pounds (159 tons) of rice, beans, oil, and salt inside the camp in Carrefour and among other displaced populations in Port-au-Prince, including another camp where approximately 7,000 displaced persons are staying. ADRA is working in close collaboration with the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to distribute food to earthquake survivors in Haiti.

“ADRA’s primary concern is to ensure that displaced Haitians receive the aid they so desperately need as quickly as possible,” says Luiz Camargo, a member of the ADRA emergency response team who is coordinating food procurement and distribution with the WFP.

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Source: ADRA International