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Haiti's Forgotten City Lost in the Rubble

   Bart Childs | Port-au-Prince 24 January 2010

Photo: B. Childs - VOA Photo

   The  historic  earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th, changed it's
   capital  city Port-au-prince forever.  And while the American military
   has   secured   it's  damaged  port  and  streets,  international  aid
   organizations supply medical and food supplies and cargo planes fly in
   around  the  clock,  one place really hasn't changed, either before or
   after the earth quake and that is forgotten city, Cite Soleil.
   "Cite Soleil is the last place to get anything, if anything. There are
   places  that  are impassable because of collapses, but normally people
   just  ignore  Cite Soleil," says Pastor Mark Dreibelbis, who has run a
   clinic  and  orphange  here  since  2006.   And,  while  the number of
   patients  he  treats  has  incresed,  he's  not  over  run  like other
   hospitals  in Port-au-prince. "By enlarge in Cite Soleil there weren't
   a  whole  lot of fatalities. One because there are a lot of tin shacks
   and they flexed and two, the buildings aren't real tall," he says.
   But  there  is one change that no body welcomed: an increase in crime.
   When the earthquake hit it collapsed the main prison downtown and some
   3000  prisoners  escaped, many of them former gang members, who looted
   the armory of guns and rifles before they scattered, some home to Cite
   Soleil.  "I  saw  one yesterday.  Generally they stay under ground and
   come out at night," says Dreibelbis.
   And  when they come out they pray on the poorest of the poor.  Josette
   Pierre  has  a  small  business  selling sodas and pots. She has eight
   children and is a vicitim. She says, "when we ran out during the quake
   we  left everything.  By the time we got back everything was gone, all
   my money and all my possesions.  Now we are living in the streets."
   It's the forgotten city.  And while there is a US hospital ship in the
   harbour  and  mobile  clinics  being deployed, here in Cite Soleil the
   Mission  Ranch  Medical Clinic was here before and will be here after.
   "Cite  Soleil  is  a  slum  of  about  200,000  people and it's almost
   impossible to care for them, says Dreibelbis.
   "The  mother  found  some goat poop to put on the wound to heal it and
   now it's infected."
   The  unchanged  injuries from an unchaged...  And forgotten city, Cite
   Soleil.

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