By Garry Pierre-Pierre
The Haitian Times

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Dusk has barely arrived and already the residents of Port-au-Prince’s Rue Berne section are making their beds. These makeshift bedrooms are arranged neatly on one side of the street, away from shaky walls and fragile home frames that remain so dangerous.

The men erect barricades, leaving barely enough room for vehicles to navigate through the streets. Soon, they share whatever pasta or rice with smoked herring anyone might have. A few hours later, mothers will tuck their children to their bosom and listen to the news on radios. By 8 p.m., some people are already falling asleep.

“You see what we’ve become,” says Herold Joseph, who was born and raised in this long time middle class enclave. “The streets have become our home, no different from the stray dogs that we used to chase with sticks and stones.”

Joseph’s house, a squat tin-roofed house now sits feeble like every other home in Rue Berne, the victim of a fierce earthquake that nearly completely destroyed this capital city. In its wake, millions have been displaced — their lives forever changed.

The death toll so far has reached 50,000 people, but the misery index remains immeasurable and will never be fully known. Millions of people completely lost their homes, and other houses are too unsafe for people to venture inside — rendering this city one giant homeless shelter.

The scene at Rue Berne is similar to every block in every neighborhood of this capital city, ringed by gentle mountains. In many ways, those in Rue Berne are better off than most. Those who cannot sleep among friends in the streets have sought shelter in courtyards of various government buildings such as the prime minister’s office or the offices of National Television Network, known by its French acronym, TNH.

In the TNH yard, people bring mattresses or rags to sleep on as the station produces its live coverage of the calamity.

“We’ve been the best in terms of television coverage,” said Pradel Henriques, TNH general director. “You have to remember the rest of the country, particularly the area north of Port-au-Prince, does have electricity and we’re the only station that covers the entire nation.”

Henriques said he was worried that he may not be able to continue his coverage because equipment has started to break down and he was running out of tape.

But unlike on Rue Berne, the dwellers in this public courtyard are permanent — with nowhere to go during the daytime. The open space has become their home.

As the few hospitals that are still functioning are overwhelmed with bodies, these government yards have turned into improvised health centers. Foreign doctors and their Haitian counterparts administer medical care and deliver babies — most of them born prematurely, induced from the shock their mothers have suffered.

“It’s very sad, ” said Fernando Gomez, a Dominican physician who sought permission from Henriques to remove an expectant mother from the yard to the Dominican border to deliver the baby by Ceasarian section. “We’re just glad we can help our neighbors during this tragedy. ”

Dr. Gomez says he has worked almost non-stop going from government offices to health centers to treat the injured.

“We do the best we can,” he said.

Though this was a natural disaster, man has played a large role in the calamity. For nearly four decades, Port-au-Prince, once a bucolic town of professionals, has grown into a giant slum with haphazard construction and thrown together neighborhoods.

The degradation began in the early 1960s when dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier began bringing busloads of peasants from the countryside to the city to sing his praises when the shunned leader had foreign dignitaries visiting his country. Duvalier gave them a one-way ticket — and seduced by the lights of the big city, the country dwellers stayed and abandoned their farms.

One result is the city’s infamous slum of Cite Soleil. Once there, they erected tin shacks and poorly built cement structures with no sewer lines and electricity.

Over the years, Port-au-Prince, a city built to handle 200,000 residents, mushroomed to nearly 2 million — an estimate considering there hasn’t been a census taken in nearly three decades.

As the dawn arrives in the Rue Berne neighborhood, residents gather their beds from the streets and quickly whisk them into courtyards. They bathe, brush their teeth and try to live a normal life.

“It’s going to be a long time,” said Joseph, when asked how long he was going to live on the streets. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He and a group of men head off to survey the damages as if they are heading to work. But their only job now is to search through the destruction that has become their beloved city.