The family competed for space in the tent with a score of other adults and children, not to mention roosters and mice. There was no privacy, no quiet. Sometimes, it rained so ferociously that Reginette’s prosthetic leg, made by limb builders in New Hampshire, got drenched.
“When we walked out of that tent for the last time, it was like freedom day,’’ Cius said one bright Saturday in her new home. “It was hell in that tent, too hot during the day, too cold at night.’’
Here, at least, the floor is concrete, the roof tin. The door bolts shut. They can be alone with their thoughts, even if those thoughts dwell on a murky future: Cius has no job. They never know where their next meal will come from.
Across Port-au-Prince, hundreds of thousands remain marooned in encampments that grow more woebegone with each passing day. Salvation, like a faraway mirage, exists in the form of a home, any home, any place that isn’t a tent or a lean-to. But liberation from that life often depends on luck as much as anything, and few commodities are in shorter supply here.
Reginette’s family found escape through the generosity of a Massachusetts woman who grew up poor herself. After learning of the family’s plight through an article in the Globe, the woman, wishing to remain anonymous, decided to donate $1,800 — enough to shelter Reginette’s family and two others.
But how could she get the money to a family mired in a tent? She turned to the man from New Hampshire who arranged for Reginette’s replacement leg.
