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by Miami Herald on Scribd
Haitian government spokesman Eddy Jackson Alexis did not respond to a Miami Herald request to meet with Clément Bélizaire, executive director of the Housing and Public Buildings Construction Unit, which has been working with the U.N. to build roads and other infrastructure in Canaan and is overseeing the reconstruction of public buildings.
While Canaan is the most vivid example of Haitians finding their own solution without government help, it is not the only one where Haitians have taken it upon themselves to try to set permanent roots.
Toto’s Land
Teren Toto, Toto’s Land, sits on a hill along Avenue Albert Jode not far from the U.S. Embassy on the border of the cities of Tabarre and Delmas in the capital’s metropolitan area.
“Everybody is fighting to take care of themselves,” said Jean-Canel Clessidor, 37, who says he moved to Toto after the earthquake. “If you are going to wait around for the government to do for you, then you will never find a leader who will help you.”
Goats wander along a makeshift dirt road that passes by the Teren Toto camp on the border of the cities of Tabarre and Delmas in Haiti. José A. Iglesias jiglesias@elnuevoherald.com
Clessidor said he thought his stay in Toto would be temporary. But after three months of watching the wave of charities offering food, tarps and temporary shelters made of plywood but no permanent housing, he gave up.
“Now, we don’t have any hope of anything changing,” he said.
Many in the camps say their hope for change is not with the leaders who have time and again failed them and use them as political pawns, but with God.
“Nobody sees us,” Sadrack Charles, 32, said with desperation in his voice. “Imagine I am a young man, a young man who can work, and with all you have to offer, you’re not working. Every day you wake up and sit here, not serving a purpose. Every year that passes is a year lost.”
Charles, whose house is sturdier than most, said he built it sheet by sheet, sometimes sacrificing a meal to use the money for the zinc.
“When you are looking at the situation of the country, everyone has suffered. Foreigners are afraid to come invest,” he said. “We don’t live well. ... The country is finished.”
Behind Charles’ shack is a small canal. “When it rains, it’s miserable for us. It’s nothing but,” he said.
Manette Francois, 58, says that before the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake she had an easier life than today. She lives in a tent city, Teren Toto, in Delmas, in a tin shack that doubles as living quarters and neighborhood grocery store. José A. Iglesias jiglesias@elnuevoherald.com
Manette Francois, 58, said that before the earthquake her life “was beautiful.” Sure, it was tough with nine children, she said, but she had a job as a maid.
She lost her job as well as her home in the earthquake.
“If you see where I am living now, when it rains, I have to take a basin to collect the water,” she said.
Perched at the top of the hill, where residents have laid sandbags to stop mudslides and help them climb the hillside, Francois’ tin shack doubles as living quarters and neighborhood grocery store. In a back room, a blue bucket is nestled up in the tarp-covered ceiling to catch rainwater.
The brewing humanitarian crisis, skyrocketing inflation now hovering at 20 percent annually, and the drastic fall of the domestic currency, the gourde, have meant that her customers can’t even afford to purchase a candle, much less a bag of rice.
Francois said she would like to get out of the camp, but she doesn’t see how she would even sustain herself if she were to move back into a regular neighborhood.
Women carrying produce and other goods walk by some of the tin shacks that make up the Teren Toto camp in Haiti’s capital. José A. Iglesias jiglesias@elnuevoherald.com
Junior Alexis, one of Teren Toto’s two leaders, called the camp “a tiny country within another country,” referring to the lack of government and services and to residents’ inhumane existence.
“The Haitian government does not respect people’s rights,” he said. “There are people here who want to live as human beings.”
The camp is densely packed with shacks, separated by narrow dirt paths that are one hurricane away from being washed away. While many Haitians are still living in tin shacks, others have managed to build sturdier homes from concrete blocks.
Located off the main road and up a winding hill, Teren Toto is the largest of six makeshift settlements that make up Village Caradeux. According to 2017 camp estimates from the International Organization for Migration, there were 10,162 displaced individuals living in Caradeux, and of them, 4,759 lived in Toto.
Junior Alexis, 32, is one of the leaders inside the Teren Toto camp. Alexis said the camp’s residents want to be treated as human beings and need “durable, good housing” after being displaced by the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. Jose A. Iglesias jiglesias@elnuevoherald.com
In any other country that had experienced a disaster like Haiti’s, Alexis said, the population would have recovered already. But not in Haiti.
“The people did not anticipate this,” he said. “The people thought they were going to get out of the first phase they were in.”
Alexis, 32, earns his living as a motorcycle taxi driver. He’s among the rare few in the camp with steady employment.
A few years ago, IOM tried to clear the camp. Aid workers showed up accompanied by Haitian National Police officers. Residents, who served as their own security watch, fought back, using trees and rocks to prevent the police and workers from entering.
IOM Project Officer Marguerite Jean said it is true Caradeux was targeted for relocation purposes, but the registration required to relocate people and the necessary funding “at some point was no longer available.”
A Haitian government official, who asked to remain anonymous, confirmed the relocation attempt but said it was called off by a powerful lawmaker who warned that the people in the camps were his constituents and were not to be touched.
“Every five years they come here and mislead us,” Alexis said about Haiti’s politicians. President Michel “Martelly sat here and misled us. After Martelly, Jovenel Moïse came to a school we have over here. ... He said, ‘There are a bunch of guys who are playing dominoes. I am going to teach you, I am going to take you out of playing dominoes,’ ” Alexis recalled.
“Where are they today? Every house has dominoes ... because they do not have anything else to do.”
SOURCES- José A. Iglesias --By Jacqueline Charles-Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.alberto, luis-farmer, paul. Dr,-ALEXIS, JUNIOR-JEAN, MARGUERITE-MARTELLY, MICHEL-LOPRETE, GIUSEPPE-MUNEVAR, FELIPE-