There was nothing left over to send them to school or buy them uniforms or books. Marie Dadie Durvergus, a kindergarten teacher who lives with her two children in one camp, said a bag of rice that cost 750 gourdes ($6) last year now costs 4,000 gourdes ($31).īerline Laguerre, a former street vendor who once sold used clothes, said the money she had saved to buy more clothes went to feed her children. Meanwhile, double-digit inflation has deepened poverty. The organization has been forced to use boats and planes to ferry supplies to the south, but even that is complicated because the port is located by the Cite Soleil slum, where more than 200 people are believed to have been killed recently as rival gangs fought over territory. Increasingly powerful gangs have seized control of the main road leading from the capital of Port-au-Prince to Haiti’s southern region, disrupting efforts to provide food, water and other basic goods to those in need.Ī lot of organizations have been forced to pay bribes to avoid staff being kidnapped while driving to the south.Ĭindy Cox-Roman, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit HelpAGE USA, said there is “a great feeling on the part of people there that they’re alone in this.”Ĭassendy Charles, emergency program manager for the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Mercy Corps, estimates it could take five years for the region to fully recover from the earthquake. It noted that a lack of funds and a spike in violence have delayed reconstruction. They rely on the neighbors for their only meal of the day.īut UNICEF warned last week that more than 250,000 children still have no access to adequate schools and that the majority of 1,250 schools destroyed or damaged have not been rebuilt. “I don’t know how long I can continue like this,” said Renel Cene, a 65-year-old who lost four children in the earthquake and once toiled the nearby fields of vetiver, a plant whose roots produce an oil used in fine perfumes.įamilies walk to get well water, sometimes letting the sediment settle before drinking it. The camp, like several others, also floods quickly when it rains, forcing hundreds to flee to higher ground as they watch their belongings get drenched. Thugs have ripped apart the shacks, thrown rocks at families and tried to set the camp on fire twice in recent months. In one camp, friends of the property owner are trying to take back the land where the refugees settled. What’s worse, others are victimizing the quake victims. “I don’t have anything to provide for them,” Castel said. The tiny girl, Wood Branan Ernest, fell asleep during her failed attempt. But after a year of surviving on scraps in a makeshift camp, Castel had no milk. On Thursday morning, she tried to get her 9-month-old daughter to suckle. So today, Castel is alone, fighting for her family’s survival like many struggling to restart their lives after the quake. "Sensitively etched by Ellen Page (now Elliot Page) and Kate Mara.WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsorĪs the family waited for help, Ernest died of prostate cancer last year. Can Lucy and Mercy overcome their intense differences, or will these differences consume them? But eventually Lucy must confess her reasons for getting involved in the cause: her own father was convicted of murder and now waits on death row.
Their relationship grows from hostility to curiosity to intense, physical passion. Lucy and Mercy could be bitter enemies, yet they share an undeniable connection. Mercy is there to celebrate justice served. At one such event, Lucy spots Mercy, daughter of a police officer whose partner was killed by a man about to receive a lethal injection. Sisters Lucy and Martha Morrow are regular attendees at state executions across the Midwest, where they demonstrate in favor of abolishing the death penalty.