Hope in Cite Soleil: Brazil Helps to Restore Order in Haiti

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Hundreds of patients lay in the open air of the courtyard, many directly in the blazing sun. Daniel Wiersma, a young aid worker from the US, treats a woman with a smashed jaw. The left half of her face is swollen beyond recognition.

Children with open head wounds lay on pallets, and workers pull dozens of glass splinters from an 11-year-old girl's foot. "We desperately need anesthesiologists," Wiersma said. Most of the earthquake victims arrive with shattered arms and legs, he explains, and most of those limbs can't be saved. "We have to amputate in 95 percent of all cases," says George Boytin, 73. "This is wartime medical care."

A surgeon from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Boytin came to Port-au-Prince on his own initiative together with his daughter three days after the earthquake hit. He has already performed hundreds of operations in rapid succession. Now he needs new surgical instruments. When an aftershock had hit that morning, doctors and assistants fled the building. When they returned, surgical instruments and oxygen canisters were gone. "People steal even things they can't use," Boytin says.

Sergeant Andretti helps unload the generator and his mission is accomplished. On the way back to the base, he picks up a woman with an injured foot. The convoy passes two dead bodies, presumably looters who have been lynched, and a corpse burning in Petionville -- with dark smoke rising from the bizarrely deformed body.

The next morning, Brazilian UN troops return to Cite Soleil to distribute food and water. Hundreds of men, women, and children flock to the distribution point. These relief operations are never announced beforehand and mostly start in the early morning, when the risk of looting and unrest is lower.

The first 300 people receive 12 liters (three gallons) each of water, powdered milk, sugar, sardines, cold cuts and cookies. When supplies ran out, hundreds are still waiting.

Yankee Charles, who raised the American flag over Cite Soleil, has since taken it down and doesn't want to be photographed next to it, either. "Then the Brazilians might not bring us food anymore," he says.

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• Part 1: Brazil Helps to Restore Order in Haiti
• Part 2: 'Wartime Medical Care'