Alec Santos

Little improvement at Haiti's epicentre

If you ask, where did all the money for Haiti go, one answer is: not here.

When the earthquake rumbled up from the earth directly below Leogane, 20,000-30,000 people were killed, and 80 to 90 per cent of the town's concrete buildings were reduced to rubble.

And, chunk by chunk, shovelful by shovelful, that's some of the rubble that Saint-Fort Mackenson and the other members of his work crew are clearing away. 

Mackenson, a thin young man with a mop of plaited hair, pauses to lean on his shovel and wipe the sweat from his face.

“It's very hard work to to clear this debris,” he says in Kriyol, the French-related language of Haiti, “because we are using only our hands. We don't have any machinery. “