The slums of Cit? Soleil - 'To those in power, we are not considered victims'

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AP
Children break through a gate to grab food being distributed by the UN in Cité Soleil


Haitians: 'To those in power, we are not considered victims'

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The slums of Cité Soleil were destroyed, yet aid is almost non-existent
<AUTHOR>By Guy Adams in Port-au-Prince</AUTHOR>

The local delicacy in Cité Soleil is known as "mud-cake". It's a sort of biscuit, made from clay, salt and a little bit of cooking oil, then baked dry in the sun. "They fill you up," a local explained, "but they are no good for your health. I guarantee: if you eat too many of them, you will be sick."

Right now, mud-cakes are selling like, well hot cakes, on the cobbled streets of the Cité, a shanty town sandwiched between Haiti's airport and the Caribbean. Around 300,000 people live here, in the nation's most impoverished slum. Before last week, they had almost nothing; now they've even less. Cakes made from clay are the only food they can afford.

International aid may at be last trickling, painfully slowly, into the rubble-strewn centre of Port-au-Prince. But in this filthy shanty town half an hour's drive away, where families sleep five or six to small shacks, next to none has arrived. And the poorest of the poor complain that their plight is being forgotten.

"We don't have doctors, we don't have food, we don't have water," said Louis Jean Jaris, a 29-year-old resident. "The aid comes to Haiti, but it goes elsewhere. In Cité Soleil we are all victims, just like everyone else, but compared to the rest of the country, we are a low priority. To the people in power, we are not considered to be victims."


Much more at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...er-we-are-not-considered-victims-1874215.html

 

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Re: The slums of Cit? Soleil - 'To those in power, we are not considered victims'

Haiti's 'Forgotten City' Lost in the Rubble

Bart Childs | Port-au-Prince 24 January 2010

The historic earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 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 earthquake and that is the 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 orphanage here since 2006.

And, while the number of patients he treats has increased, he's not over run like other hospitals in Port-au-Prince.

"By and large 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 nobody welcomed: an increase in crime. When the earthquake hit it collapsed the main prison downtown and some 3,000 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 underground and come out at night," says Dreibelbis.

And when they come out they prey on the poorest of the poor.

Read more at:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Haitis-Forgotten-City-Lost-in-the-Rubble-82555447.html