Today we transferred to La Gonave; it was with very mixed emotions we left our colleauges at Petit Goave. We had come to do surgery, and we had heard that La Gonave was a conmfortable place to be, so all was well in that regard - but the need at Petit Goave was tremendous and a number of medical people would be leaving with uncertainty about the arrival of replacements.
The drive back to POP (Port au Prince) brought us through a much more devasted place than I recall from the drive out. I don't even remember seeing that kind of poverty and devastation in the poorer areas of India - this point was really driven home when I was told that many of the most shocking sights had been present before the earthquake.
For example, Cite Soleil (though havving an uplifting name), is probably one of the poorest and most dangerous places in the northern hemisphere; until recently the police and military wouldn't even travel there in the evening, and relief organizations required UN escort through the area as kidnappings were as endemic there as malaria. Ironically today the security is better, but the poverty is certainly not. We witnessed hundreds of womwn lining up for food, with long lines controlled by US Marines and UN soldiers from different countries. The shanties looked like they would blow away in the first strong breeze, and don't appear waterproof - this only a few months before the start of hurricane season and there seems to be no plan in place to solve this problem. All over this part of Haiti people who did have homes that would offer a modicum of protection from hurricanes are now living in makeshift shelters or tent cities; even those people whose still standing homes offered a modicum of protection are afraid to sleep inside with the aftershocks.
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