The dull thud, thud noise of a US military helicopter echoes in the
valley where the marooned Fraternité Notre Dame nestles,
high-up the scrawny hills of Petionville, a once affluent
neighbourhood of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

Some two thousand earthquake affected families have gathered in
line and eagerly wait for sheets of plastic, jerry cans and wool
blankets.

"Nights are getting colder now that the rainy season is fast
approaching," says Sister Marie Christine, who trained as a medical
doctor in Nantes, a university town in Western France. "With up to
70 per cent of all houses and dwellings damaged or destroyed,
people are in need of shelter and blankets to stay dry and
warm."

She adds that a majority of the population suffers for chronic
malnourishment and anaemia because of their poor staple diet, which
consists mostly of sweet potatoes, peas and maize.

"Although we have received emergency food rations from the World
Food Programme, most people are still shocked and vulnerable.
Without adequate shelter protection and blankets, we fear an
increase in the number of acute respiratory infections, which will
affect the very young and the elderly."

The primary health clinic in Fraternité Notre Dame
withstood the 12 January quake, as did the school which caters for
the educational needs of some 300 children aged 5 to 18. But many
nearby stone houses did not.

The Legitimus family lives by the ruins of their collapsed home
in an improvised shelter made of salvaged corrugated iron roofing
and plastic sheeting recently donated by UNICEF.

Madame Legitimus lives in one cramped room with 9 of her 13
children. Her husband, a part-time builder and four of her children
have walked six hours to Petionville to sell vegetables, fruit and
look for odd jobs.

The family built their house over several years, gathering and
transporting big round stones from neighbouring fields and buying a
few expensive bags of cement and four sheets of corrugated iron for
roofing in Petionville. 

All in all, the family spent countless backbreaking hours and
some 50,000 gourdes (USD 1,200) to build the house that now stands
in ruins.

"Because cement is so expensive, people tend to mix it with sand
and mud," says 36-year-old Montcler Paul, who came back to
Fraternité Notre Dame after studying law in Port-au-Prince.
"After each rainy season, families patched up weakened walls with a
little cement mixed with a few buckets of water and earth. Because
people here had never experienced earthquakes, they weren't aware
their house would turn into death-traps."

He points out to a few structures that did survive the quake,
which are mostly made of local wattle and daub.

Montcler Jean says these constructions were considered a poor
person's alternative to stone houses but that the 12 January
tragedy has probably changed this misperception.

"People are now scared of stone houses. They know they can kill.
For the time being, we will use tarpaulins and sheets of plastic to
protect ourselves from the rains. When we rebuild, we will do it
differently."