MN-based help for desperate Haiti earthquake victims

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- One month after the earthquake, life in the Delmas district of Haiti's capital city is surrounded by filth.

A moat of human waste runs around a dirt hill where people sleep, and during the day, children play with kites fashioned out of plastic bags and sticks. Even the toys are made from trash.

Children make up half of the 8,000 to 10,000 people who live at this massive settlement called Terrain Acra, where no one knows what will happen next in this country that's still in a state of emergency.

"We're hungry," said 39-year-old Neristine Merilus, a mother of seven. "We don't have anything."

In the four weeks since her home was destroyed, she hadn't spent a single night under a roof. Her family's living space was cobbled together with pieces of wood and scraps of metal, and there was enough for four walls. But nothing overhead.

Last week, the settlement buzzed with excitement one afternoon when the Minnesota-based American Refugee Committee handed out a shipment of tarps shipped in from Minneapolis. For many of the people in line, the tarps meant they finally would see something other than the sky at night.

"In fact, a nurse who's been working with us here has said that, ever since the earthquake, she's been sleeping out under the stars every single night," said Chad Lowe, a doctor volunteering with ARC.

But on that day, there were not enough tarps for everyone. Lowe worried about the rainy season that will begin in a little more than a month.

"Looking around the camp right now, (if there's) any bit of rain, we're going to see a second disaster happen," he said. "Definitely."

Lowe, who did his residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, took a KARE 11 News crew on a tour of the settlement. It looks like a shantytown sprouting out of the side of the dirt hill, which will turn to mud when it gets wet.

The camp, Terrain Acra, grew spontaneously after the earthquake. In the month that followed, it swelled into one of the largest settlements in Haiti. The Minneapolis based ARC adopted Acra and hopes to help the people living there return to something resembling normal lives.

But there's a long way to go in this impromptu village, where survivors built the shacks that serve as their homes out of scraps they recovered from houses that were destroyed. It's impossible to know when they might return to a neighborhood with long-term housing.

An estimated 1 million people across the country are in the same limbo, and aid workers still are struggling to find them all.

"If you come here and think about everything, the whole country, it's overwhelming," Lowe said. "And you just, you shut down. You just can't do it."

The fear around this devastated country is that the settlements will turn into permanent slums.

But for now, the focus is on the immediate future. In Acra, they're building latrines so people can stop going to the bathroom in plastic bags.

In a badly damaged neighborhood next to the settlement, survivors are digging through what's left of crumbled houses to find birth certificates and other documents that will help the living get their lives back.

And everywhere in Haiti, life itself still is surrounded by death.

At one house, a smell hung over three men who were searching for papers in the piles of concrete. They said it came from the decomposing body of a trapped baby girl.

At the settlement, 26-year-old Fanius Surcois said he lost his entire family. He was hungry and thirsty but said, more than anything, he wanted a job.

"If I have a job, no problems."

The American Refugee Committee has started providing jobs to a handful of survivors at Acra. For five dollars a day, people get paid to dig latrines and build child-friendly spaces so kids can play in an area isolated from the filthy surroundings.

"We try to choose one person from every family so that they're getting enough money to provide (for their families) and get back on their feet," said ARC president Daniel Wordsworth.

He said ARC's plan is to hire has many as 2,000 survivors in the next couple of years. But Haiti's problems will take decades to fix.

Stately buildings that crumpled downtown serve as sad reminders of a government that wasn't very effective to begin with. The presidential palace - Haiti's version of the White House - is smashed and uninhabitable. The Supreme Court building looks like a barn blown up by a Minnesota tornado.

Still, Chad Lowe, the doctor who has traveled to Haiti frequently to provide medical care, said there was reason for hope. Haiti's history is filled with struggles.

"I mean, everybody's hopeful," he said. "Haiti is built on hope."

In Acra, Lowe was spending most of his time inside ARC's medical tent. The team of doctors there treats 130 patients a day and tries to nurture that hope.

But as the doctors treat physical injuries and hand out medicine, visitors can't help but notice the look of despair on patients' faces. Doctors can't fix broken spirits.

And as the media spotlight moves away, the crisis will stay here. Kids will continue playing barefoot in the same fields they use as bathrooms.

"This is a long term problem," Lowe said. "This is not going to be fixed in a couple of weeks."

Just 700 miles from American shores, there may be hope in Haiti. But a month after the earthquake, that hope sits on a foundation of uncertainty.

"It's, it's definitely ..." Lowe paused. "Right now, we're teetering on the edge."

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