Rich and poor: All Haitians suffer, each in their own way (Feature)

By Franz Smets Jan 21, 2010, 0:44 GMT

Petionville, Haiti - The devastating quake that shook Haiti last week affected all lives in the Caribbean country: there are very few families that have not lost at least one of their members.

Businesswoman Medjyne Jeremie practically lost everything. With her husband and two children, she is living in the garden of a small, 20-room hotel in the residential Port-au-Prince neighbourhood of Petionville, along with around 100 journalists and international aid workers.

The family hopes to be able to travel to the United States, where several of their relatives live.

'Did you hear the shots during the night?' Jeremie asks hotel guests, many of whom ran out into the garden in their underwear following the powerful aftershock Wednesday.

Even in this neighbourhood, where many houses withstood last week's quake without major damage, the situation is not safe. Such aftershocks scare everyone, and they are the reason why Haitians and many foreigners still choose to sleep outdoors.

In the early hours of Wednesday there were shootouts, allegedly between people who were carrying a coffin and armed personnel who keep watch over the houses. The watchmen allegedly assumed that the group meant to dump the coffin in the neighbourhood.

Nerves are on edge.

The Jeremies, like so many other Haitians, have been lucky in their misfortune: they came out of the massive quake alive.

'My husband was there to close (his) business when the house began to collapse,' Medjyne Jeremie says, as she stands near the rubble of the building that used be her company.

The three-floor concrete building on a mountain side partially collapsed and is down to just one floor.

'He saved himself by going through the balcony to the swimming- pool,' the woman recalls.

Her husband was the only one in the building. The 13 employees had fortunately already left.

For their neighbours in a five-floor apartment building, the rubble meant death. Most worked for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and remained under the ruins.

Madame Jeremie's business headquarters, on the other hand, isstill standing. Her employees are busy removing the rubble from the space before the house. The heavy concrete ceiling has fallen in on what used to be the store. On top of that lie, in layers, the remains of the higher floors.

To get to the back of the building, you need to climb over chunks of concrete, stones and piles of crumbled construction materials.

The room that used to hold the workshop and sewing machines withstood the quake with only a few large cracks in the walls and the ceiling. Everything is covered in dust and dirt.

The Jeremies' home is only a few kilometres away, also on a hillside. It is a huge house with a large balcony, and it is completely intact, although a large portion of the garden slid onto the street below.

Inside the house, everything has fallen out of the cupboards. In the bathrooms, soap and perfume bottles lie on the marble floors, and the bedrooms of the family's two sons are messy, covered in toys and videotapes.

Even this house is not fit to live in right now. The neighbour' house, further up the hill, has slipped a few metres nearer due to the quake, and it threatens to crash onto the Jeremies' home. That could happen in an aftershock.

Further down the hill, people have had it worse. Most poor shanties have been destroyed.

Survivors gather on the tennis court by the Jeremies' home. There are 37 families, with up to 18 members each. Ketlie Adelson acts as 'coordinator.' Within two days, the group had gotten together bits of wood and sheets of metal and built improvised homes on the tennis court.

The centre of the court has been kept free for common activities for around 400 residents, with chairs and makeshift seats.

There are lots of kitchen utensils - but little food.

'There is barely anything to eat. We don't even have water,' Adelson says.