|
The main challenges facing the former French colony include clearing the rubble left from the quake, finding safe housing and work for its homeless people and rebuilding its infrastructure so a similar disaster doesn’t happen again. Delivering enough food and water to quake victims also remains a challenge, especially given the sheer number of people who need to be fed every day.
“Here, there are not enough services, there is not enough food and water,” Stanley Fortin, a resident of a tent camp, told the NewsHour. Fortin said he would stay in the camp despite the food and water shortages because he and his neighbors have formed a community.
Tent camps are becoming small cities
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 Students can attend school in the tent camps, although aid workers think only a few of those who could attend school actually do. |
|
|
Most displaced Haitians have been relocated to sprawling camps, where thousands of people live under tarps, tents and other makeshift shelters. To get by, many camp residents have opened businesses, selling everything from haircuts and motorcycle repair to wine and food. Children even go to school in some of the tent camps, although aid workers estimate that only a small number of those who could go to school actually attend.
Aid organizations intentionally built some of the tent camps outside Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, to encourage people to spread out. Eventually, relief organizations intend to build permanent housing in these areas to avoid re-creating the over populated Port-au-Prince communities that collapsed during the quake.
Some Haitians have returned to their damaged homes, often sleeping in tents on their property because their houses have been deemed structurally unsafe. Government officials and aid workers visited peoples' homes, marking them with green stamps if they are safe to live in, yellow if they need some work and red if they should be demolished.
Weather poses a new threat
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Hurricanes and the rainy season are threatening tent camp residents whose fragile shelters are vulnerable to storms. |
|
|
To make matters worse, the rainy season recently began in Haiti, bringing with it strong storms with damaging wind and rain. One such storm ripped through the Corail-Cesselesse tent camp outside of Port-au-Prince, destroying many shelters and flooding the ground.
Corail-Cesselesse is one of the camps that was built in the Haitian countryside as a way to get people out of the crowded city, and some residents of the camp believe the land is inhospitable and vulnerable to storms. Some aid workers view the storm’s damage as a warning of things to come, including potentially devastating hurricanes like those that ravaged the island nation in 2008.
“What happened was essentially a squall that led to some 344 tents being ripped asunder or damaged,” Leonard Doyle, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, told the New York Times. “One shudders to think what would happen when a proper storm arrived.”
Health issues remain for quake victims
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Amputees who lost limbs in the quake are learning to use their prosthetic arms and legs, most of which were provided by international aid organizations. |
|
|
Immediately after the earthquake struck, a main concern was treating the thousands of injured Haitians. Today, many of those who survived still struggle with their injuries, both physical and mental.
At a workshop where prosthetic limbs are built, Haitians who faced amputations after the quake are learning to use their new arms and legs. Being able to get around is especially important for those living in the crowded tent camps, and several charities have come to Haiti just to fit patients with prosthetic limbs.
Healing Haitians’ mental wounds could prove to be even more difficult, since those who lost family members and homes often re-live their trauma over and over again. Children sometimes can’t sleep or focus in school, and adults experience panic attacks and depression.
“We try to tell them that this has already happened, and they still have their life, so that's what they need to be grateful for,” Marie Denis St. Louime of Doctors Without Borders told the NewsHour. “We try to encourage them to see that way. There is no way to go back. There is no way to change, so we do our best to give them strength.”
|
I think we've been witnessing violence for years, whether in reality through the media or through video games, and I don't think that's a first-hand effect.
