Haiti: Living in limbo

Reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti — The shattered stores along Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines may never reopen. But amid the colonial-style columns and wide, arched entries, one group of women won't let a little dust get in the way of beauty.

They've set up a sidewalk salon, where patrons soak their feet in large metal bowls. The stylists work in teams, their clients seated on blocks of concrete or broken chairs, strands of faux hair in their laps.

"We just started doing hair at this corner," Marie Eliz St. Floren says.

A wig costs $25 and a weave less than $5, but in the wake of the Jan. 12 earthquake, the competition is growing, she says as she twists and ties her client's long, black braids.

"More people are doing hair now because there are no jobs in the country," she says. "But I don't have a problem with it, because everyone has to live together. Life is hard."

The boulevard is bustling with activity. Women and men walk along with baskets on their heads selling used socks, stalks of sugar cane, a bit of everything. But hardly anyone is buying.

Cobbler Francois Toto rests his elbows on an ancient Singer sewing machine as he waits for customers.

"It used to be a good place to work," the 28-year-old says of a life spent making shoes under covered walkways that once sheltered wealthy shoppers. "I don't like it here now, but this is where we have to survive."

At the street salon, beautician Guerline Desir remembers good times too.

"There was electricity at night. We used to have a street club with music and dancing, girls and boys mixing. It used to be fun."

But the 38-year-old remains positive. "It's possible that it will come back.... It could even be much better."

A few feet away, a woman rides off on a motorcycle taxi, her hair and nails beautiful for the weekend ahead.

carolyn.cole@latimes.com

Three months after the earthquake, few stores had reopened on Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines in Port-au-Prince. Instead, street vendors arrived daily in hopes of selling what little merchandise they had.

Sugar cane is sold by the stalk on the boulevard, which is bustling with activity despite the destruction.

Beauticians on the boulevard say business has fallen off since the quake. "More people are doing hair now because there are no jobs in the country," says one. "But ... everyone has to live together. Life is hard."

A mango seller ties up packaging as she prepares to leave Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the end of the workday.

A man sells packets of water on the boulevard.

Francois Toto, 28, is a third-generation cobbler. He started coming to work with his father at age 7, but he says he doesn't want his son to do what he does. "There are too many bad people in the streets now," he says. "I'm afraid. I can't walk around like I used to."

A man maneuvers his shaved-ice cart down the street.

In the evening, piles of trash are burned along Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines in preparation for the next day's commerce.

Reporting from Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Alescandra Simin bathes her two young daughters in a large metal bowl, the same one the family uses as a latrine when it's too dark to make their way to the outhouses at the far corner of the park that's been home since Haiti's January earthquake.

What was once a pleasant city garden is now a terrible web of humanity, with lines and wires strung from every tree connecting the tarps where hundreds of families have been forced to live.

Alescandra, 23, sleeps with her daughters and her mother on two thin pads laid on top of concrete blocks and old blankets, mud oozing underneath. Plastic bags stuffed with personal items cram every corner of a makeshift tent so low you can't stand upright. A small trough dug into the dirt floor at the edge of the mattress island directs rainwater downhill. The temblor destroyed Alescandra's apartment and her mother's home, leaving them to try to survive together in the tent city.

A single mother, Alescandra is worried about her 6-year-old daughter, Midjalannda, who keeps losing weight.

"They used to give food cards here, but there was a lot of fighting going on … so they would just leave," she says as she knits, a skill she learned during three years of trade school.

"Now it seems like they are slowing down the food handouts, so it's getting even harder."

At midday, Alescandra's daughters still haven't eaten. Midjalannda begs her mother for some change so she can buy candy. The younger one, 2-year-old Midjanna, keeps asking for juice.

When Alescandra finally relents, the girls buy a single penny candy from a neighbor's stand, which they divide into four pieces.

Alescandra holds a rolled-up flier given to her at a nearby medical tent. A colorful diagram explains the four major food groups needed to prevent malnutrition, a baby with a bloated belly shown at the top of the page.

When asked what she plans to do, she just shrugs. "I am just waiting on God to see if he is going to put something in my hand," she says. "I'm just waiting on that."

As night comes, the family gathers on the bed as a light rain falls outside. Alescandra has found some bread for her daughters. Midjalannda holds a candle in one hand and a hot dog bun in the other. She chews in silence, staring off at the flickering light.

carolyn.cole@latimes.com

Life in the tent camp in front of St. Pierre Catholic Church in Port-au-Prince is crowded and dirty. Here, the neighbors of Alescandra Simin cook under a tree.

Simin's daughter Midjalannda, 6, stands at the entrance to the tent where she has been living since the earthquake. The family has no money and scrapes together what little food it can day by day.

Simin washes her feet in the morning. "I am just waiting on God to see if he is going to put something in my hand," she says.

Simin bathes Midjalannda in a large metal bowl, the same one the family uses as a latrine at night. She worries about her daughter's weight loss.

Madame Fernand watches after Simin's two children, Midjalannda and the sleeping Midjanna, 2.

Simin is told to come back later after waiting in line for what she hoped would be food. It turned out to be a registration card.

Midjanna takes a nap on her mother's lap.

The young sisters eat a hot dog bun, the only thing their mother was able to feed them that day. The park they call home is often without electricity.

Reporting from Grand Goave, Haiti — Rose Marguie Normil puts on makeup to cover the scar above her right eye. She is as beautiful as she was in December when she went to a photo studio to have her picture taken on her 40th birthday.

But inside, something is terribly wrong. Rose can't stand without the support of crutches, and it feels like her insides are falling out.

It's been months since she sat on the ground outside Canape Vert Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, a bloody bandage stuck to the wound above her eye. It was the day after the Jan. 12 earthquake, when she had been buried up to her neck in rubble.

The hospital was closed and there was no one to tend to the critically injured people sprawled outside, much less to Rose, who looked to be in good shape compared with them.

A rumor was spreading that a tsunami was headed toward Haiti, and everyone who was able had left in search of help or higher ground. Rose was alone, in terrible pain. As she waited for help, she prayed for the safety of her daughter Jenny Princess, who would have been on her way home from seventh-grade class when the magnitude 7.0 quake hit.

Two days and nights passed without help at the hospital. "Only the dead people were left, myself, and one girl who had a broken leg," Rose recalls.

When friends finally found her, they took her to a military hospital, where she saw several doctors.

"They said there was nothing they could do for me because they didn't have an X-ray machine," she says. "They cleaned up my wound and told me to rest."

That night, before most foreign medical teams had arrived in Haiti, family members took Rose home to Grand Goave, two hours south of the capital, where she was reunited with her daughter and now stays in a small plastic hut with five other people.

For three months she slept on a wooden board, medical advice she got somewhere along the way, and spent the days wondering whether she would ever walk again.

Rose says the doctors in her hometown seemed to dismiss her despite her complaints of constant pain. They told her there was nothing they could do, so she would leave, weeping in fear and frustration.

Finally, she made the long, bumpy ride back to Port-au-Prince, where an X-ray of her midsection was taken. It showed her pelvis broken in two places. The bones were healing slowly and surgery wouldn't be necessary, the doctor told her.

Seeing the severity of her injuries, the patchwork of her bones, Rose started to cry. But somehow, seeing the X-ray also soothed her.

"My spirit," she said, "is finally at peace."

carolyn.cole@latimes.com

Months later, still in pain, Normil waits to have X-rays taken at the hospital in Grand Goave, south of Port-au-Prince. She left the capital soon after the quake and has been in constant pain and barely able to walk.

Normil looks through her papers and pictures, sitting on the wooden board someone advised her to sleep on to help ease the pain in her midsection. The plastic side to the hot tent is lifted to let in some air.

Normil puts on a brace around her midsection as she gets ready to go to church despite the pain. Her daughter, Jenny Princess, lives with her along with four other relatives in the small plastic hut.

Before going to church, Normil puts on makeup over a scar above her right eye from a wound sustained in the earthquake. A friend helps fix her hair.

Normil, a devout Catholic, makes the slow walk to church on Easter Sunday. While she was buried in the rubble, she says, she started to pray, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus..." And that gave her strength.

Normil prays on Easter Sunday at the Catholic Church in her hometown, Grand Goave.

Normil makes her way to the local hospital in Grand Goave, where she says she had been overlooked because she seems OK on the outside. But inside, she is in a lot of pain.

Normil and another patient wait to be seen by doctors at the Grand Goave hospital. She hadn't known for sure what was wrong until three months she returned to Port-au-Prince, where doctors took X-rays that revealed her pelvis fractured in two places.

Three months after the earthquake, doctors look at an X-ray of Normil's pelvis, which reveals two fractures. She was told she wouldn't need surgery as the bones were healing by themselves.

Reporting from Petionville, Haiti — All Rony Guervil ever wanted was to earn enough money for a proper wedding.

Guervil and his girlfriend, Immacula Exilus, have been together for 11 years now. They have two boys, a 10-year-old and a 5-year-old, and live with Guervil's mother in a concrete house that seems to defy the laws of physics as it clings to a ravine in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

"When the earthquake happened, I immediately came back to the house and took my family to a safer place," recalls Guervil, 38. "I didn't know if something else was going to fall down."

Hundreds of people crowded into a park seeking safer ground after the Jan. 12 quake. For the first week, there was no shelter, only the sound of singing and praying.

During those long hours, Guervil would sit and hold his younger son, Kency. "It was crowded and there was a lot of suffering going on," he says. "I was thinking about the situation … and trying to figure out how I was going to get my family out."

Ten days later, Guervil moved them back home. The house has little damage, but the view from the kitchen window is one of utter destruction. Houses to the left and right have fallen off the hill. It looks like a bulldozer went mad.

The gray concrete floors of the small living room are bare except for a few plastic chairs and a red rubber ball. "God did the best that he could for me and I am grateful for what I have received," Guervil says. "My family is alive and well."

Each morning, Guervil puts on a bright red helmet and lines up with at least 10 other taxi scooter drivers waiting their turn for a rider. Guervil can make $20 on a good day, above average for most Haitians, but he says he earns less than half what he used to. Many businesses remain closed, and his customers are out of work.

"There's not much traffic or money to be made, but we're surviving," Guervil says. "My dream was to make enough to build a little house for my family and to finally have a real wedding," he says.

He and Exilus were planning to get married in St. Pierre Catholic Church, across the street from the park where they took refuge and where thousands of people remain. "All of the plans we had have fallen to pieces," he says.

carolyn.cole@latimes.com

Guervil, with son Kency and longtime girlfriend Immacula Exilus, says he's grateful for what his family has despite the post-quake struggles. He works as a motorcycle taxi driver and makes less than half what he used to.

Many of the houses surrounding the Guervil family's home have been destroyed. At one damaged residence, a man hangs a shirt up to dry.

Kency looks out a bedroom window in the family's house outside Port-au-Prince. His parents' plan to build their own place has been put on hold.

Guervil catches Kency, who had slipped out the front door. He doesn't allow the boy to play outside because most of the area is unsafe.

Guervil climbs a rubble-strewn stairway in his Petionville neighborhood.

Kency jumps on his parents' bed. His family returned home 10 days after the quake, but life is difficult. "There's not much traffic or money to be made, but we're surviving," his father says.

Reporting from Borgne, Haiti — From her hospital bed, Marise George can hear the ocean where she used to swim.

George doesn't go swimming now. She doesn't sleep well, either, despite the soft sound of the waves.

"She often falls asleep sad," a friend says.

Here on the far northern coast of Haiti, in a place residents call O'Boy, George boarded a bus back in January with high hopes for the future. The 46-year-old single mother of three had finally gotten a sponsor to help her get to the United States, and she was going to Port-au-Prince to apply for a passport.

For the trip she chose a white cotton blouse with white lace trim. Her mother and son volunteered to come along.

The earthquake struck the afternoon they arrived in the capital. The three-story house where they were staying collapsed. Nine people died, including George's mother and son.

Rescuers eventually lifted George out of the hole in a bright orange sled, her bandaged arms folded across her abdomen. Her hair looked lightly dusted; the white blouse she had left home wearing days earlier was still clean.

The long journey back to O'Boy took weeks, including stops at five hospitals. At one, George's right leg was amputated above the knee.

In recent weeks she has been at the Borgne hospital, a stone's throw from the beach. Nine families are living in tents under a large open shed built beside the hospital. The ceiling fan isn't big enough to move the air down around the tents.

"We were planning to get a fan for each tent and something to keep their minds active - like a TV - but we ran out of funding," said Dr. Thony Michelet Voltaire, the hospital's medical director.

Doctors ordered a prosthetic leg for George, but weren't sure when it would arrive.

George thinks about the things she has lost. She thinks about her mother and her son. "It would make me happier if I had something I could listen to during these hard times," George says, a distant look on her face.

A deeply religious woman, she remembers how she would often sing church songs and strum the guitar. She wasn't very good, she says, but she liked it.

"For now, I just sing in my heart."

carolyn.cole@latimes.com

George, seen here in April, spends her days at the hospital in Borgne, on Haiti's northern coast. At one hospital stop on her journey back to her hometown, her right leg was amputated. "Psychologically what happened to Marise has been very traumatic," says her doctor, Xavier Ilaman Armond. "She has not only lost her leg, but she's lost her family members."

George had recently obtained a sponsor to help her move to the United States and was in Port-au-Prince to apply for a passport when the earthquake hit.

"It would be nice if I could get back to normal. Get a functioning leg and hand, so I could get back to my business and go back to church," George says. She lost her son and mother in the quake.

George's right hand was also badly injured when the house collapsed, and she suffers frequent shooting pains.

George, 46, lives in a tent at the Borgne hospital, a stone's throw from the water where she used to swim. Several families are living in tents under a large open shed built beside the hospital.

The house in Port-au-Prince where George was injured remains a pile of rubble. She was sitting on the front porch when the building collapsed. The building next door is still standing, but not occupied.

Borgne holds memories of swimming and singing for George. "It would make me happier if I had something I could listen to during these hard times," she says.