Haitians seek food amid wait for aid

2 Apr 2010, 10:43 am   -   Source: AAP
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Haitians struggling with daily living in tent cities near Port au Prince were skeptical of massive aid pledges.

Haitians struggling with daily living in tent cities near this devastated capital were skeptical on Thursday of massive aid pledged for reconstruction, as they face the urgent need to find something to eat.

"Money to do what? To rebuild? Up to now I've seen nothing," asked Pierre Belize, who like many living in tents since their hillside homes crumbled in the January 12 earthquake has had a hard time meeting even his basic needs.

Most have been issued small "igloo" tents or sheets stamped with the logo of an international aid organisation for shelter.

And most lament the same thing: no access to food aid.

"You need a ticket (to get food), and you can never find them," said Wilkerby Desrameaux, 30, who was washing his jeans by hand at the entrance to the tent he shares with his wife and two children.

Asked if he had heard about Wednesday's donors conference in New York that netted Haiti nearly $US10 billion ($A10.9 billion) in pledged aid over the next ten years, Desrameaux said he had not.

Neither had his neighbour Nadine Pierre.

She was "not optimistic" about the future, saying she too was having trouble finding food.

"Once I got a bag of rice..," said the woman whose tent had been taken over by children hypnotised by the images from her television, bought before the earthquake that left some 220,000 dead and 1.3 million homeless.

"You can never find a ticket."

According to French aid worker Carl Henry, "there are leaders who take all the cards and keep them to give to their families, or they sell them."

To avoid this kind of corruption, Ygens Lamarre, a now-unemployed professor of French literature, said it would be better if aid groups distributed the money pledged in New York.

"I have confidence in the UN, in the international community. I'm sure they will help us," Lamarre said.

"(Corruption) has been a problem in my country for a long time, in governments and in the people's thinking. They need a new mentality."

In a small tent with his wife and their two children, Lamarre spends his days reading and waiting for news about when his classes will restart.

A member of President Rene Preval's Lespwa party, he said the country needed to be run by the international community.

"It is against our constitution and history, I admit. I'm a nationalist! But our political class is incompetent."

Abraham Joseph, 16, who works at a camp station that serves beer and charges mobile phones also wants to believe.

"With the UN, anything is possible," he said.

Further away, Stancia Laguerre was trying to calm her baby, born at the time of the earthquake, while a friend warmed a green gruel over a charcoal fire.

"We haven't seen any reconstruction and there is nothing to do," she said.

"The government must find us work."

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