Dutchman Robert de Vries used to own a grocery shop and worked as an insurance agent for a while before moving to Haiti a year and a half ago. There, he started a new life with his wife and child, working for the Belgian-Dutch charity Hart voor Haiti. After this week’s devastating earthquake, Mr De Vries’ new life now lies in ruins. Literally.
Founded 25 years ago, the Hart voor Haiti charity has been involved in several projects in the Caribbean country. It created a children’s village in Bon Repos, not far from the capital Port-au-Prince, set up a school and a church as well as services for old age people and a bakery project. Now, it looks as if the organisation is back to square one.
“We are all in a state of shock, really,” Mr de Vries says.
“It’s a gigantic catastrophe. The streets are littered with bodies. Schools and other buildings have collapsed. At our next door neighbours, four people have died: two babies and two adults. One member of our church died when one of the walls collapsed.”
Running out of supplies
“We are doing what we can, bringing food and drinking water to the wounded. But we’re quickly running out of supplies and we fear that we won’t receive any new goods during the next couple of days. Banks are shut, so we can’t get any money to buy food. There are some 200 mouths to feed here, so the situation might get desperate soon. Fortunately, our bakery received some 30 bags of flour just before the earthquake struck.”
”We’re not thinking of moving, but the situation is terrible. Both our school and the church are in ruins. After the quake, we all gathered on the basketball pitch, which doesn’t have any buildings around it that could collapse. The aftershocks are quite powerful, which is why we sleep on the pitch too.”
Relief effort
“We just managed to restore power and we have water. The international relief effort is now getting under way. I just saw a plane coming in.”
Mr de Vries has filmed the devastation in the streets of his part of Port-au-Prince. You may find some of the images shocking.
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It's really terrible disaster and humanitarian tragedy in Haiti, Malk We hope from all over the world, especially the rich of them to provide all types of humanitarian and medical aid to the country as soon as possible.
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