Associated Press
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Defying pleas to wait for Haiti's reconstruction, families lugged heavy bundles of wood and tin up steep hillsides Friday to do the unthinkable: build new homes on top of old ones devastated in the earthquake.
The defiance reflects growing anger and frustration among Haitians who complain that their leaders -- and any rebuilding plans -- are absent more than two weeks after the Jan. 12 earthquake damaged or destroyed thousands of homes in the capital.
Few tents have been supplied, rubble remains strewn in many streets, and signs begging for help in English -- not Haitian Creole -- dot nearly every street corner in Port-au-Prince.
It could take another month to get the 200,000 tents needed for Haiti's homeless, said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the culture and communications minister. Haiti now has fewer than 5,000 donated tents.
In the concrete slum of Canape Vert, an area devastated by the quake, dozens of people were pooling their labor and getting on with rebuilding.
The government's first priority is moving people from areas prone to more earthquakes and landslides into tent cities that have sanitation and security but have yet to be built. Preval has engaged in dozens of meetings with potential outside contractors to discuss debris removal, sanitation and other long-term needs. Albert Ramdin, assistant secretary of the Organization of American States, has offered help in creating a new Haitian land registry -- a process that could take months if not years because countless government records were destroyed in the quake.
Haitians ardently defend their property rights. If a family has occupied land for more than 10 years, they gain ownership rights even without a deed.
Many have tired of living in tents improvised from tarps, sheets and bedspreads, opting to rebuild their homes rather than find new plots.
Lassegue said such rebuilding wouldn't be tolerated -- and that the government wants to develop and implement a comprehensive reconstruction plan that might feature building codes, an anomaly in this impoverished nation.
Associated Press writers Evens Sanon and Michelle Faul contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince.
