Haiti PM opens residence to quake victims

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 23, 2010 (AFP) - The gardens of Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive’s grand official residence have become an unlikely home for almost 1,000 survivors of the massive earthquake that devastated the capital.

“I am proud that the prime minister has opened the gates of his garden, even if I feel a little sad,” said Leon Frantz, a young doctor who lost his house in the January 12 disaster, but goes to the residence every day to help distribute medicine.

Looking like a relic of the Caribbean nation’s colonial past, the white villa with red roof tiles sits on the top of a little hill, with the gardens stretched out beneath.

But while the grounds used to be an oasis of calm in chaotic Port-au-Prince, they are now buried beneath a sea of white and blue plastic sheets laid out by people left homeless in the quake.

The palace itself is closed because of the risk of landslides. Inside, a valuable set of historic dishes has been smashed, pictures have fallen off the walls and the walls have cracked as if made of clay.

The prime minister’s cabinet chief, Juve Herve Day, sat on the patio and prepared to spend another night in his car.

“Before I go to sleep I like to take a walk to listen to their complaints,” said Day, pointing out the crowds of people who ferry water through the gardens and cook beneath their makeshift shelters.A hand-out of aid by the Red Cross sparked scuffles and shouting in the gardens of the residence. He was protected by security guards and the situation looked tense, but Day insisted it was not.

“There is a security perimeter and they respect it,” he said. “The day the earthquake happened we opened these spaces up to the public.” Haiti’s official buildings have all found new uses since the quake.

The imposing presidential palace in the city center was largely destroyed, its white cupola half toppled from its perch, and its gardens have been used as a landing pad for helicopters.

The Haitian cabinet is meeting in a police station at the airport. But it is only the prime minister’s office that is actually housing refugees.

In the gardens sat Melie Laventin, 40, who has five children, the youngest just six months old.

After the quake destroyed their home near the palace, she came here immediately with her husband, not knowing what to expect.

She had never previously set foot in the prime minister’s office — and would gladly never do so again.

“I just want them to get us out of here, I want to get out of Port-au-Prince,” she said.

Her husband is unemployed and has no way to pay for tickets out of the capital for the family, apparently unaware of a government program offering free buses to new tent camps in other parts of the country.

“We don’t know where to go,” she added.

Darius Jeanlevy, a security guard at the house of a staffer at the US embassy, said his house, in a nearby shantytown, is still standing but they were so afraid it could collapse that they came to stay in the PM’s garden.

“I don’t feel proud, this is not my house,” he said.

Jeanlevy feared there would be more quakes like the aftershocks that shook the country early Friday and said he will send his children into the countryside as soon as he can.

“The ground keeps shaking,” he said.