Concern is giving four orphaned siblings a chance of something resembling a normal life, writes LARA MARLOWE
SHE WAS the saddest person I met in a broken country – orphaned, homeless and hungry. I met Miselaine Dieujuste in the makeshift psychiatric clinic of the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Port-au-Prince on July 7th.
There were many tragic stories that day, but the Haitian student who interpreted for me said he had to hold back tears when we talked to Miselaine. It was the way she spoke about her mother.
Mama did everything for us, Miselaine said. She was the best mama. She stayed with us every evening. Miselaine had pressing problems, but every worry came back to the woman who went out to sell fruit and vegetables that morning of January 12th and never came back.
God was not just to Miselaine Dieujuste, nor to Haiti. In a country where so many people interpret the cataclysm as a sign of God’s wrath, the girl’s name seemed bitterly ironic.
Miselaine’s older sister also died in the earthquake. Although 22 years of age, Miselaine seemed barely a teenager, with three younger siblings to care for.
She had a vague sense of responsibility for them and an even greater sense of helplessness, like the Haitian government for its people.
Perhaps worst of all, the owner of the roadside land where Miselaine and her brothers and sisters slept under a tarpaulin was demanding that they leave, along with the other displaced people who camped there.
The landowner was a member of the mulatto elite – the “private sector” on which international donors pin so much hope.
I suggested to Miselaine that she go to a managed camp for displaced people. It was hopeless, she said. Men in the camps demanded money of newcomers and she didn’t even have enough to pay that.
Several aid officials confirmed to me that racketeering of the poor and displaced by the poor and displaced is a serious problem.
I wrote the name of a managed camp, run by an aid group I had visited, on the back of my business card and suggested to Miselaine that she ask them to help her.
It was naive of me; when I eventually returned to Washington, I found a telephone message from Dr Marie-Aude Piot, the MSF psychiatrist who is treating Miselaine for depression.
“You sent her to a camp and they turned her away,” she said.
I don’t know if Dr Piot’s message was meant as a reproach, but I certainly reproached myself for giving false hope to a desperate girl. I imagined Miselaine spending precious pennies for a “tap-tap” communal taxi to visit the camp where I’d sent her, for nothing.
I usually leave humanitarian work to those who are trained for it, but the thought that I had left Miselaine in the lurch – in much the same fashion that the international community fails to keep its promises to Haiti – was unbearable.
Over the following days, I contacted four European and American aid groups. There were hundreds of thousands of such cases, one aid worker shrugged. It wasn’t their problem.
The most disheartening refusal came from the executive administrative officer of Seán Penn’s J/P HRO – which, to its credit, runs one of the best camps, at the former Pétionville Golf Club.
This wasn’t the most desperate case, she insisted. I wondered what could be more desperate than being orphaned, homeless and hungry. The executive administrative officer referred to Miselaine as “he”, evidence she hadn’t read my message.
The international community pledged $5.3 billion (€39.9 billion) for Haiti last spring and all I was asking for was a tent and one meal a day in a managed camp for four orphaned children. I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult.
When Áine Fay, director of Concern’s emergency response team, told me the International Organisation for Migration had to give its approval for Miselaine to be placed in Concern’s camp at Tabarre, I first thought another aid organisation was passing the buck. Apologies, Áine.
A week later, I received an e-mail from Áine saying the IOM had agreed to relocate Miselaine and her siblings to Tabarre, on condition there were adequate support services for her.
“We will have to do some work with the community to ensure that the family will be accepted there – not always easy,” she added.
The following day, I received an e-mail from Dr Piot. Concern had contacted her to locate Miselaine. “I told her the news myself and she was truly happy!” Dr Piot wrote.
Happiness is not an emotion I associate with the girl with saucer eyes and stick-like limbs.
She and her siblings may encounter hostility in the new camp. They may be permanently dependent on western aid, but suddenly there was a glimmer of hope, a possibility that the children called Just God could rebuild something resembling a normal life.
Concern is giving them that chance and for that I am extremely grateful.