PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) Â? The Petionville Club used to be an upmarket nine-hole golf course. Now it is home to a rainbow-coloured sea of makeshift shelters and some 50,000 Haitians displaced by last month's earthquake.
The sprawling site, on the hills overlooking Port-au-Prince and the Caribbean beyond, epitomises the challenges facing the Haitian government and relief agencies as they try to rebuild a country devastated by the Jan. 12 quake which killed 212,000 people.
The camp has just one toilet for every 400 or so residents. People say they are hungry, and are using bed sheets and blankets for shelter. Thousands of flimsy homes are pitched on steep slopes, with the rainy season only weeks away.
"I dread to think what would happen if we had an early sustained tropical downpour," Oxfam media officer Ian Bray told AlertNet in the Haitian capital. "There's a great risk of flooding. If there's a lot of run-off, the latrines would overflow."
Only around a third of the need for waterproof shelter has been met in areas devastated by the magnitude 7 earthquake, according to U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes, and no more than five to 10 percent of the toilets required have been built.
The Petionville Club camp, nicknamed Delmas 42 after the nearest street, is one of the settlements the government has earmarked to be moved outside the city.
But that is easier said than done. New people arrive every day, drawn by the relative order, security provided by U.S. soldiers and the promise of regular food and water distributions.
"People are burning brush and cutting down trees," said Lane Hartill, media officer with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), one of the main agencies working in the camp. "It's increased in size since I was last here."
The camp thins out during the day as people go back to their damaged homes or look for work, but Hartill said there may be as many as 100,000 people there at night.
SPRINKLERS AND TENNIS COURTS
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the agency in charge of shelter in Haiti, has distributed 16,000 tarpaulins in the camp and is working with the government on a strategy to manage the swelling site.
Oxfam has built 121 latrines there and hopes to have installed 280 by next week - a drop in the ocean given the demand.
"People use alternative means," said Bray. "Some go back to their homes, they use plastic bags and throw them away or they just find somewhere else to go."
Despite the huge challenges in terms of shelter, food and sanitation, however, many of the systems put in place by aid agencies and camp residents are working well.
The golf course's sprinkler system Â? which used to irrigate the greens Â? is being used to channel drinking water around the vast camp. There are tap stands at each of the course's nine holes.
"We can get water right into the heart of the camp, so people don't have to travel so far. It's a novel idea to use the sprinkler system," said Bray of Oxfam, which has also distributed hygiene kits containing essentials such as soap, detergent and toothpaste.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres is also on hand, providing medical care.
Food distributions happen daily, overseen by CRS and manned by paid Haitian staff and volunteers. Armed U.S. soldiers watch from a distance and say they have seen little trouble. The troops have their own camp at the top of the hill by the club house and the tennis courts where rice sacks are piled up.
The camp is informally divided into blocs and committees of residents have formed. CRS surveys the camp to count numbers and identify the most vulnerable before handing out coupons and coloured wristbands entitling people to a 50-kilogramme sack of rice, a two-week ration.
Workers offload the sacks from a truck and slide them down a tarpaulin on a slope to people standing in line. They are then whisked away by men with wheelbarrows or loaded onto women's heads.
"You can't just back up a truck, open the door and throw out food. The system here is orderly Â? they know they'll get food," said Hartill of CRS. "They may have to wait until the next day but they know they will get it.
"When we go tent to tent (to survey), we target women, pregnant women, the elderly."
LATE-COMERS LEFT OUT
Inevitably, though, some people fall through the cracks. Many arrived at the camp after the first census and will have to wait until a new evaluation is done.
"By the time we came, the coupons had already finished," said Laurent Yvon, 45, who arrived on Jan. 26 with his wife and four children. "People are friendly. If they get bags of rice, they share it with others...but we're all hungry."
Marseille Walaine, 25, staying in the camp with her two children, said she had received water, but no food and no tent.
Not all the food rations can be used. Some of the rice, provided by the World Food Programme and USAID, has turned into green, mouldy clumps. People clamber back up the hill to exchange the bad sacks for good ones. Some are angry but most remain in good spirits.
"With hundreds of bags, you're going to get some bad ones," said Lane.
There is an air of calm in the camp. Children fly kites as helicopters whirr overhead and U.S. soldiers do press ups in formation.
But no one knows when they will be able to move to a better place. The government has identified eight sites outside the capital, where it hopes to provide temporary settlements for 160,000 people. But many will be reluctant to leave the city where they had homes and livelihoods before the quake.
"None of us has any idea how long we're here or what we'll do when the rains come," said Yvon.
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