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03/11/2010

Lesly Mullin spreads his arms. His white and green t-shirt, emblazoned the number 19, is just a few numbers too big, he looks tired and he stands there speechlessly. But his gesture says it all: Everything is lost.

A couple of blue walls, one other painted pink -- there is not a lot left of his house in St. Martin, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Yet Mullin still comes here a lot. He walks up the few stairs that remain, which lead up from the small piece of land on which the house once sat, and makes his way over the concrete lumps to survey the ruins of his home.

His grandmother built this house and he was born here. Most recently Mullin, 42, lived here with his wife and four children: Clifford, Steve, Stephanie and Gary. Then came the earthquake that devastated the city on Jan. 12. Gary, who was only two years old at the time, died in the tremors.

"The whole land bled," Mullin says.

A Nation of Mourners

One does not have to go far to hear further stories of death and disaster, the sort of stories that have turned Haiti into a nation of mourners. Just stepping outside the beige and blue tent, where Mullin and his family spend their nights now, is enough.

"This is our place," he explains. The few cubic meters are adequate enough as emergency accommodation. And the place is surrounded by a labyrinth of tents and huts made out of corrugated iron and fabric or plastic sheeting stretched over wooden frames. On the sheets are the names UNICEF (United Nation's Children's Fund), USAID (the American government's aid organization) or UNHCR (the United Nations refugee agency). There's often only about a foot of space between the temporary dwellings.

And there are hundreds of these kinds of camps. Sitting near apparent deserts of ruins, on the sides of roads or on football fields, most don't have any sort of toilets or any power. Port-au-Prince has become one big refuge for the homeless.

The largest camp has spread itself onto the city's central square, the Champs de Mars, directly opposite the ruined presidential palace. About 30,000 people live there. Despite this, the Red Cross estimates that only half of the 1.3 million poeple made homeless by the earthquake have managed to find refuge in some sort of emergency accommodation. "The needs are still huge," Gregg McDonald, the coordinator of the organizations aid efforts in Haiti, said on Sunday in Port-au-Prince.

Still Waiting for the Haitian Government

The rescue teams are still waiting for the administration to officially designate better-suited areas for emergency accommodation. The United Nations has also put pressure on the administration, but up until now nothing has happened. It has been some time now since the Haitians last heard from their president, René Préval. "He's a phantom," some say, disparagingly, of the leader, who set up a temporary office in police headquarters after the earthquake, but who has hardly been seen since. Préval has given no televised speeches nor has he made any visits to the tent cities.

What the people here actually need is a leader who can point a way out of the catastrophe and who could help to avoid the next one. And the next one could soon be on its way. "When the rains come, there will be endless illness in the camps," says Rüdiger Ehrler, of the German aid organization German Agro Action (Welthungerhilfe, or WHH). Aid organization fear the threat of outbreaks of tuberculosis, typhoid fever, diphtheria and malaria.

Ehrler is part of the WHH's emergency response team. Almost as soon as the news broke of the devastating earthquake, the 57-year-old was already packing his bags and heading to Haiti. "Getting projects on track," is how Ehrler describes his job. He has seen camps being set up almost daily, and in a hasty and uncontrolled manner. A number of them are now in danger of flooding, which could make them hotbeds for contagious diseases.

There are better places for emergency accommodation -- such as empty warehouses belonging to well-to-do Haitians. "But one gets the impression that the Haitian administration doesn't want to step on these people's toes," Ehrler explains. "In fact, we should just be occupying them."

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• Part 1: Haiti's Next Disaster Looms
• Part 2: Rainy Season Could Spell Disaster