The displaced flow into a small Haiti town

central america / caribbean | miscellaneous | non-anarchist press Tuesday February 02, 2010 05:54 by Mitchell Landsberg - Los Angeles Times

Petite Riviere residents seem to welcome the newcomers, but no one knows when the recent arrivals will be able to go back to Port-au-Prince. And so, a household of eight becomes a household of 15.

Reporting from Petite Riviere De L'Artibonite, Haiti -- National Route 1, which cuts north along the Caribbean from Haiti's crumpled capital, barely deserves to be called a road in stretches, much less a national highway.

Long sections are more potholed than paved, and for miles and miles the pavement disappears altogether and is replaced not so much by dirt as by rocks the size of mangoes.

On this road, earthquake victims have fled Port-au-Prince by the tens of thousands. Some critically injured, with untreated fractures or fresh amputations, they have bounced and lurched and thudded along.

From Route 1, some turn onto a less heralded dirt road that meanders inland through lush green rice fields to the farm town of Petite Riviere de l'Artibonite.

The 7.0 earthquake that leveled vast sections of Port-au-Prince, about 30 miles to the south, jolted Petite Riviere but caused no damage or injuries. But it dramatically changed life here, and in other rural towns, perhaps forever.

It takes about three hours by car or bus to get from Port-au-Prince to Petite Riviere, and it feels at least that far away. Long and narrow, the town occupies a shelf above the Artibonite River, and commands vistas of lush farm fields that stretch to distant mountains. Its houses, built of concrete or wood, are painted in faded tones of green and coral. Goats and pigs wander the streets. Nobody seems to hurry.

In the nearly three weeks since the quake, Petite Riviere has seen its population nearly double, from 37,000 to an estimated 62,000, as people who lost their homes in the capital have arrived to stay with friends and relatives, or sometimes just seek shelter in a place they presume is safer than Port-au-Prince.

"I wasn't prepared for it," said Berman Vicsama, a farmer in Petite Riviere who took seven relatives into his tin-roofed home, where they rub elbows with his family of eight. "But you just have to accept it. When I have food, they eat. When I don't, they go without."

Although Petite Riviere is an extreme example, the same phenomenon is swelling towns and villages throughout Haiti, which aren't always equipped to handle the newcomers.

The influx in Petite Riviere has caused an increase in food prices that worries Mayor Lucien Rollindelva. A 35-pound bag of rice, a staple of the Haitian diet, has gone from about $4 to $9, he said.

"They're black-marketeering," he said of the town's merchants, and he plans to give out food donated by residents in an effort to drive prices down.

For the most part, people in Petite Riviere seem to have welcomed the newcomers -- most of whom, after all, are relatives -- and are in no hurry for them to leave.

At least, that's what they say for now.

Here's the rub: No one knows when, or if, many of the newcomers will go back to Port-au-Prince.

"I don't have a house in Port-au-Prince, so what are we going to do?" asked Gabrielle B. Remonvil, a 36-year-old mother of two whose home collapsed in the quake. "We're here until Jesus decides what he wants to do with us."

The United Nations, along with local officials in some towns, is already doing some planning on its own. Pascale Lefrancois, humanitarian affairs and development director for the U.N. in the province of Artibonite, says her agency hopes to locate aid projects in the region to provide jobs to displaced people who want to stay.

That would suit Haiti's government, which will be hard-pressed to provide food and shelter for the people who have stayed in Port-au-Prince, much less the estimated one-third of the population of 2 million that has fled. The government has encouraged people to leave the capital, helping to organize free bus rides and agreeing to a U.N. plan to build at least one large tent city in the countryside.

In the days immediately after the earthquake, authorities in the provinces also pitched in, sending buses to Port-au-Prince to pick up people who wanted to leave. In some cases, they pulled up at overflowing hospitals and filled buses with the injured and their families, bringing them to hospitals throughout the country.

At Raboteau hospital in the provincial capital, Gonaives, north of Petite Riviere, patients lie on mattresses in hallways and fill the floor of what used to be a large waiting area for visitors. The hospital has tried to make them comfortable, and screens movies on the wall to divert their thoughts, but many of the stories the patients tell are tragic.

"My house fell on me," said Ginette Vilus, a 32-year-old with a broken arm and a spinal fracture that has paralyzed her below the waist. She was lying on a mattress on the waiting room floor, her face unable to mask her anxiety.

The hospital director, Dr. Marcel Chatelier, said his doctors lacked the equipment or expertise to perform the delicate spinal surgery Vilus needed, so he was trying to get her airlifted to Miami.

Chatelier said his 32-bed hospital has treated 816 patients who were hurt in the quake. Along with an aid team of 24 Cuban nurses and doctors, his staff has performed 81 major surgeries and 123 minor ones. Although the hospital was becoming less crowded each day, he was gloomy.

"Every day, people come and evaluate the situation we're faced with, and nobody has helped yet," he said.

Back in Petite Riviere, the newcomers spend their days aimlessly, hanging in clusters on the street, waiting in the broad plaza in front of the town's imposing Catholic church, or just sitting around the houses of their relatives.

Although many grew up in Petite Riviere, they say they find it small and stifling now, and some long to return to Port-au-Prince, despite their fears.

"I'm just waiting for everything to be over so I can go home," said Jessica Bellevue, 23, one of the people staying with Vicsama, her brother-in-law.

Bellevue looks every bit the cosmopolite, with chic clothing and braided hair extensions. A university student who is studying economics, she was home when the quake hit; her house was damaged but not destroyed. Her school, however, collapsed, killing many of her classmates. Now she doesn't know when it will reopen.

In the meantime, she sits and waits. "This thing," she said of the quake, "changed everything."