Life on the streets after Haiti earthquake

Reuters

SURVIVOR: A woman drinks water in a shelter after the earthquake in Port-au-Prince. Haiti's earthquake survivors are making their pavement homes as bearable as they can while they wait for help.

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Using doors, towels and foam mattresses for floors, bedsheets for walls and bags of clothes for pillows, Haiti's earthquake survivors are making their pavement homes as bearable as they can while they wait for help.

Between heaps of soggy garbage and a growing stench of human excrement, some people cheered up their camps on Friday with portable stereos, charcoal stoves, cooking pots and tethered chickens.

A few people lounged on armchairs, some had wheelbarrows and plastic vats for storing belongings and one man clung to a vial of after-shave rescued from his crumpled home. Women braided one another's hair.

As thousands of people settled in for a fourth day on the street after Wednesday's (NZT) devastating earthquake, women cooked up vats of spaghetti with tomato ketchup, steamed plantains and even rolled out dough on wooden boards, although most people were still surviving on salty biscuits and sweets.

"We've been cooking rice with vegetables but there are no vegetables left and the chicken has stopped laying eggs," said Andre Simon, 49, an office worker who has set up his large family in a spacious tent made of wooden poles and bedsheets.

"The government takes no responsibility for anything in Haiti, it's down to us. We are deciding whether or not to eat the chicken and if there is no help tomorrow or the day after maybe we will try to get out to the countryside," said Simon.

A flood of emergency supplies has been flown into Haiti but barely any has reached the sea of homeless survivors sitting out in makeshift camps on every available patch of grass or pavement. Everybody asks when help is coming.

The arrival of water trucks at a camp around the collapsed presidential palace meant many could now wash and brush their teeth, and mothers bathed babies in plastic tubs, but the lack of sanitation was growing critical.

"We are making the best of it, but it's hard to sleep with the smell. People are going to the toilet everywhere. They go in plastic bags and throw it on the ground, it's very unhealthy," said Louis Widlyne, 18.

With no electricity and nothing to do but wait, the days pass slowly. Children, some coming down with stomach bugs and fever, played with bits of string and plastic straws. Those with bandaged limbs moaned softly.

Sidewalk surgery breaks the boredom: in a camp outside a hotel where injured victims lay on blue-and-white striped pool loungers and posh wicker chairs, a man winced as a volunteer nurse stitched up a bloody wound on the top of his head.

A death also brings a flurry of activity as female relatives swaddle bodies in sheets and menfolk cart them away.

Many were dreading another sleepless night after aftershocks continued to shake Port-au-Prince, large swaths of which now lie in ruins.

"It gets dark at 7 o'clock. There's nothing to do. We just sit here and wait," said Emiliano Edme.

"But stress is setting in. Every time we feel another tremor or hear a rumor of a tsunami it is worse."

- Reuters