More than five months after the earthquake that killed her single mother, Daphne Joseph, 14, lost her bearings a second time when she was forced to leave the makeshift orphanage where she had felt at home.
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Immediately after the earthquake, she watched with horror as her mother's mangled body was carted away in a wheelbarrow from a shattered marketplace. Dropped at the doorstep of a community aid group, she contemplated suicide.
Yet within a couple of months, displaying a resilience that many in this shattered country exhibited, Daphne righted herself. She found an improvised family in a ragtag group of fellow earthquake orphans and the adults who nurtured them. Skipping cheerily to greet a visitor in March, she announced, "I'm so much better!"
In mid-June, however, Daphne was claimed by a relative who is not really a relative -- the 23-year-old common-law wife of her half brother's father -- and moved into a squalid tent city. It made her feel unmoored once again. Where did she belong? she wondered.
What made her questioning especially poignant was that the makeshift, open-air orphanage where she longs to return is an unsteady anchor. The community aid group that runs the place -- which is little more than a pair of tents -- is caring, but lacks expertise and resources. And neither the Haitian government nor international organizations here have helped it in a lasting way.
Like Daphne, the orphanage faces an uncertain future, with an eviction looming.
"We don't really know what to do next," said the Rev. Gerald Bataille, the primary supervisor of the children. "Somehow, the whole world wants to help Haiti, but we feel like we're on our own."
The lives of Daphne and 14 younger children hang in the balance, although conditions at the makeshift orphanage are far from ideal.
On a recent Sunday, the newest arrivals, 11-month-old twin girls named Magda and Magdaline Charles, lay limp and entwined on a urine-soaked rug under a mango tree. They were covered with flies.
"They arrived naked and dehydrated," Pastor Bataille said. "Their mother said, 'If you leave them with me, they're going to die.' So although we're not equipped for babies, we took them."
Pastor Bataille's organization, known by the acronym Frades, is a grass-roots collective that specializes in microloans. Although it was not a child-care organization before the earthquake, it assumed responsibility for local children who were orphaned or abandoned afterward, about 26 of them at first.
With the help of the mayor's office, Frades board members found a place to keep the children: an idle construction site where a foundation had been laid for a nightclub that never materialized. Save the Children provided two large tents, but nothing to furnish them.
A Frades board member, through a personal connection, got a two-month supply of water and basic food from Ceci, a Canadian group. Readers of a January article in The New York Times about Daphne and the other children contributed about $1,000 in cash and Medika Mamba, a nutritionally fortified peanut butter, and they formed a support group.
But Frades needed more: mattresses, latrines, showers, medical care, money to pay cooks and counselors and a continuing water and food supply. And even with so many international aid groups in the country, sustained help was hard to find.
Frades board members said they had visited the United Nations logistics base and asked Unicef for beds. They were directed to a supply request form on the Internet, which they filled out. They never received a response, they said. (Contacted by The Times, a spokeswoman for Unicef suggested that they try again, and offered contact information.)
Next, they sought further aid from Save the Children. In February, they submitted an application for a project they called "For Children to Reclaim Life in Croix-des-Bouquets." They supplied three versions of a budget, they said, met with Save the Children administrators and followed up with phone calls in which they were passed from one person to another.
Finally, this month, a Save the Children administrator sent an e-mail message, which began "I regret to inform you ..." The letter concluded, "According to our current standards and operational criteria, we can't unfortunately validate Frades's proposal, as it doesn't match with the objectives of our internal strategy nor with our areas of intervention."
Daphne Joseph, center, arm-in-arm with her friend Chantal, walks with her stepmother. She said she would rather still be with the orphans she once lived with in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, outside Port-au-Prince, after the earthquake there killed her mother. The shelter where she lived, set up by the Frades organization, faces the loss of its space on an unfinished building foundation.
Magda, one of 11-month-old twin girls, sleeps covered with flies at the makeshift shelter where Daphne used to live.
Older children help to care for the twins.
Thirteen-year-old Michaelle Point du Jour, who lost both parents in the earthquake, cooks for and feeds the younger children.
Michaelle, in red skirt, keeps an eye on other children as she goes about her chores.
Michaelle serves a midday meal of rice for the children.
In one of the tents that make up the improvised shelter, children play and help to care for one another, with the supplies the Frades organization has been able to supply.
Michaelle serving a meal in one of the tents. "We don't really know what to do next," said the Rev. Gerald Bataille, the primary supervisor of the children. "Somehow, the whole world wants to help Haiti, but we feel like we're on our own."
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SOURCE: The New York Times
