Alex Renton visits Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour Feuilles district, where Oxfam’s canteen programme is enabling Haitian people to start work again.
Nine months pregnant, an ankle and a hand still bandaged from her ordeal on 12 January, Carine d’Acier is wonderfully patient and good-humoured. And, as she sits outside the tent that is home to her and ten members of her family, she is very direct about what she needs: “Economic support. Oxfam has done a wonderful thing in getting us fed, but now what we need – what everyone needs – is a way to get job and a way to stand on our feet again.”
Carlene Charles nods in agreement. She has just served a lunch of boiled maize and spicy chicken to Carine and 80 other people in the Bien-Aimee quartier of Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour Feuilles district, under a programme organised by Oxfam. “We’re very content with this idea, it works well,” says Carlene. “It has enabled me to start work again.” Before the earthquake she ran a small local café. Oxfam’s livelihoods teams have enlisted her and, as of mid-March, 55 more local “restauratrices” to serve a hot meal every day to people like Carine and their families. The community and a local NGO, Cozpam, decide who are the most in need, and issue coupons for the free meals.
Oxfam’s team leader in the district, Alix Percinthe, explains the rationale. “There are various benefits. Some people lost everything when their houses collapsed, including cooking implements. And charcoal to cook has gone up in price. So giving them a hot meal once a day like this is effective.”
“But also, many of the small-scale merchants like Carlene had seen their business shattered – this helps them start again, and puts money into the community. The food for cooking is bought by them, locally. And the other good effect is that this encourages the community to discuss things, and work together.” Currently the canteen system is delivering more than 4,000 meals a day to the most vulnerable, at a cost of less than 70 pence a plate.
A sealed off suburb
Earlier I, Alix and some of Cozpam’s volunteers had ventured high up the slopes above Carrefour Feuilles, to where some of the poorest of Port-au-Prince live. Here on the mountainside, people’s simple shacks acted as a metaphor for the precariousness of their lives. We climbed through and over the rubble of those collapsed dwellings, around little encampments of tents and tarpaulins, passing women carrying ten-litre bags of water on their heads. One of them said that the daily climb to fetch the household’s water took her two hours.
We passed human chains of young people, patiently passing rocks hand to hand, in an effort to clear some of the route. Eventually, breathless, we stopped at a tin-roofed church, where 80 or more people had gathered to discuss the setting up of similar canteens here in Pekay. There were former shop, bakery and café owners registering their capacity to cook and serve food, and many family heads, mainly women, already designated as in need of the daily meal. The discussion was noisy, and soon turned to the huge range of problems this community faces.
Chief among them was the fact that that rubble landslides on the steep slopes had virtually sealed off this suburb from the roads – even getting a water bladder in looked like a job for a helicopter. Alix listened to these worries, and we climbed even higher into fields, looking for routes that Oxfam could use to access this cut-off community. On the terraces we saw farmers preparing the ground for the rainy season that will arrive next month.
This is something many people in Pekay are dreading. Even before the earthquake, the paths on these slopes were hard to negotiate in the wet, and there was a permanent risk of landslide. But spending the season down in the city, as many used to, is no longer an option – indeed, if people can be supported here, conditions may be better than among the 400,000 living in temporary camps.
“I can begin my job and my life again”
Sylvanie Pierre, 39, is one of the shop owners who will take part in the canteen scheme. We talk in the shattered remains of her cement and breeze-block house. Only one of the rooms is habitable for her and her six children. She is a widow, and badly needs the income the canteen will bring. “It means I can begin my job and my life again. It’s very difficult at the moment to feed the family. I have had to use all my savings, and now I am borrowing money.” Gael-Blanc, the two-year-old on her lap, has been subsisting mainly on porridge made from flour.
Jobs are of course a major challenge for the recovery of Haiti. Carine worked on the third floor of the Palm Apparel garment factory as a seamstress before, sewing t-shirts for sale in the States. She earned 14 Haitian dollars a day – about £1.70 and less than half the official Haitian minimum wage. “I was there when the earthquake hit, and the roof collapsed on me. It was awful.” It was 36 hours before Carine, then seven months pregnant, was rescued. More than 300 of her co-workers died in the factory. Carine has no idea if the factory will ever be rebuilt.
Before we leave, one of the Pekay community leaders, Vendrien Jeannot, takes my arm. “I want to say what a very good idea this is. It’s good for the community, for the little shop owners, and these women who need help badly. Thank you.” The listening crowd nods.
More on Oxfam’s Haiti earthquake response
Make a regular donation to the Oxfam 365 emergency fund
Oxfam GB CEO Barbara Stocking reports from Haiti three months on