Edmonde Roseline is a single mother of four. Before the earthquake she says she lived a normal life, waking up at 5 am everyday to get her kids ready for school. When the earthquake rocked Port au Prince she was in a busy marketplace. In her rush to escape the collapsing building, she fell in a manhole. There were bodies all around her, she recalls. She ran home, only to find her house totally collapsed and two of her children carrying their infant brother out from rubble.
Edmonde and her kids are now homeless, as they have been for almost three months since the quake. They are staying under a tarp in a filthy encampment with a few hundred other people in the Petionville area of Port au Prince.
Al Jazeera did a story about Edmonde in January, days after the quake, when she was desperate for any food and handouts. In February Al Jazeera correspondent Jonah Hull did another story on Edmonde’s progress and struggles to provide for her kids.
On Tuesday I visited Edmonde again to check how things were going, and discovered nearly three months after the quake she is only marginally better off, and in many ways might be worse. She and her young kids are still forced in the same camp in inhumane conditions.
The camp is becoming more 'permanent' - a dangerous sign it could very well turn into a permanent slum, which just prolongs the cycle of poverty in Haiti. Edmonde and her kids didn't choose to live this way. Nobody would. They are just trying to cope and adapt as best they can, given the deck of cards that was dealt to them after the earthquake.
These are Edmonde’s words, translated from Creole:
Living conditions
"Things are not better, they are not worse. The reason I say neither better or worse is because last time (you visited me) I did not have a tarp. I was living under a bed sheet. When it rained I got wet. I borrowed a carpet to sleep under, but the owner came and asked for it back, so I went back to the bed sheet. When it rained, neighbors would take me and my kids into their tents where we slept under carpets. This made me feel very humiliated. But later I got a tent and I can thank God for that."
“This tent is OK, and I thank God I have it. But it is not completely waterproof. So I still have to put a bed sheet to catch some water that goes through the tent. I see some people have a tent that does not allow water in and I wish I had a tent like theirs.”
Her children
My kids are doing OK. But one is in the hospital now with malaria.
Food supply
“Someone (an NGO) gave us a card that allowed me to buy food at a market. But the money ran out. I don’t know if they will give us cards again. I have not seen any.”
“What they gave me I have to manage to make last the longest. I used to use a cup of rice a day for food (for her and her kids). Now I use half a cup a day.”
Hopes for the future
“I am less hopeful now because I have nothing in my hands. I don’t see a way to help my kids – especially since I have one that is sick.”
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