The city’s public hospital has been forced to shut down. Thieves have stolen the batteries from solar panels that provided electricity to the church school. And protesters took food that an Episcopal parish worker was delivering by truck on behalf of an international charity.
“There’s no one you can call,” says Archdeacon Abiade Lozama, 39.
Molière, the unemployed secretary, lives in one of Les Cayes’s poorest neighborhoods with her mother, Venise Jules, and three other relatives. Their house, made of mud and stone, has a corrugated metal roof that leaks when it rains. The bathroom is an outhouse with a hole in the ground. With no running water, the family has to fill buckets at a public tap several blocks away.
“It’s not only that we’re hungry for bread and water,” Molière says. “We’re hungry for the development of Haiti.”