"Desperation at our gates"

Rick Perera, Emergency team member, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
January. 17, 5:30 p.m.

If charity begins at home, CARE is in the right place. Just outside our Haiti headquarters, many hundreds, perhaps thousands – no one has counted them – of newly homeless people are camped out in the main square of Pétionville, a near suburb of Port au Prince. They wait patiently in the hot sun, but their desperation grows by the hour. At night, groups of people can be heard clapping and chanting. Some have hung banners, painted on bedsheets, with messages like “We need help!” in English and Creole.

As CARE Haiti Country Director Sophie Perez and I walk by, we pass many pedestrians with handkerchiefs tied around their noses and mouths against the overwhelming stench. Waste of all kinds is piling up in the streets around the square. An overflowing garbage truck stands idle. The gutters are clogged with plastic bags, bottles, and objects beyond description. Perez shakes her head when she sees the growing piles. “We urgently need to address the waste disposal issue,” she says. “If that garbage keeps accumulating it will certainly spread disease.”

Over the past few days CARE has been focusing on distributing water purification packets, containing a powder called Pur. It’s highly effective, and can make almost any water safe to drink. But to use it requires two five-gallon (about 20 L) containers – one for dirty water, the other for clean – and the worst-off here don’t even have a bucket to their name. So for many, the magic powder isn’t enough.

“We will distribute the Pur along with hygiene kits in the coming days, packed into large buckets that people can use,” says Sophie. The kits will also contain crucial items, from soap to sanitary napkins, to help survivors stay healthy under these appalling conditions.

In the meantime, CARE is working to arrange for a tanker truck to bring water to the square outside our gates, and a huge rubber “bladder” to store it. There’s so much to do everywhere in this city, but we won’t forget to serve our neighbors in need.