Haiti: Living in limbo – Clinging to dreams

• Posted By: Bryan Chan
• Posted On: 12:22 p.m. | July 28, 2010

In the days after the Haiti earthquake, Rony Guervil spent long hours cradling his son in the park where the family had fled. Months later, Times photographer Carolyn Cole found them again — home now, at a house perched incongruously on a ruined hillside.

Reporting from Petionville, Haiti — All Rony Guervil ever wanted was to earn enough money for a proper wedding.

Guervil and his girlfriend, Immacula Exilus, have been together for 11 years now. They have two boys, a 10-year-old and a 5-year-old, and live with Guervil’s mother in a concrete house that seems to defy the laws of physics as it clings to a ravine in the hills above Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.

“When the earthquake happened, I immediately came back to the house and took my family to a safer place,” recalls Guervil, 38. “I didn’t know if something else was going to fall down.”

Hundreds of people crowded into a park seeking safer ground after the Jan. 12 quake. For the first week, there was no shelter, only the sound of singing and praying.

During those long hours, Guervil would sit and hold his younger son, Kency. “It was crowded and there was a lot of suffering going on,” he says. “I was thinking about the situation … and trying to figure out how I was going to get my family out.”

Ten days later, Guervil moved them back home. The house has little damage, but the view from the kitchen window is one of utter destruction. Houses to the left and right have fallen off the hill. It looks like a bulldozer went mad.

The gray concrete floors of the small living room are bare except for a few plastic chairs and a red rubber ball. “God did the best that he could for me and I am grateful for what I have received,” Guervil says. “My family is alive and well.”

Each morning, Guervil puts on a bright red helmet and lines up with at least 10 other taxi scooter drivers waiting their turn for a rider. Guervil can make $20 on a good day, above average for most Haitians, but he says he earns less than half what he used to. Many businesses remain closed, and his customers are out of work.

“There’s not much traffic or money to be made, but we’re surviving,” Guervil says. “My dream was to make enough to build a little house for my family and to finally have a real wedding,” he says.

He and Exilus were planning to get married in St. Pierre Catholic Church, across the street from the park where they took refuge and where thousands of people remain. “All of the plans we had have fallen to pieces,” he says.