Trip to Shantytown in the Ravine

We took a late afternoon trip to the "ravine" (= a poor community not far from MDL, that the mission tries to help with health and food/water, and to support the Haitian pastor who struggles there). One of the houses on the way down the hill is completey demolished, and debris from hill has tumbled down the hill. In the ravine, a small tent city has sprung up around the little cinder block and rusty corrugated metal shacks that we've visited before. Some are real tents, and some are nothing but sheets and scraps of building debris or cardboard. One thing I saw people doing was grabbing flat pieces of the demolished building on the hill and bringing these down to the tent village, and using these as a sort of tent platform. Obviously, they are concerned about rain, and their spot will turn into a mud pit when the rainy season happens. They are doing whatever they can to get ready, to survive. Sleeping on pieces of concrete blocks arranged together under a ragged tent of tattered sheets...this is what thousands, maybe millions of people are doing right now in Haiti tonight. Like I said in a previous post, Haiti has may ways of humbling you.
- mark 10mar10