Stories from the field
Haiti: "Three times I received help from the Red Cross"
January 12, 2011
When the earthquake hit on January 12, 2010, Tanya Petit-Frère Bien-Aimé was five months pregnant and she remembers the moment vividly.
"I was at home when I felt the ground shake. I didn't know what was happening so I stayed right there. It sounded like a storm was coming."
That night, her home damaged severely, Tanya slept on a mat on an open plot of land that was owned by a car dealership. This camp, soon to be known as 'Automeca' in reference to its owners, became home to thousands of people displaced by the earthquake. "The owner of Automeca told people to come so I went with my daughter and the baby in my belly," recalls Tanya. "It was a long night."
Days later, as the huge international response to the earthquake built momentum, Tanya found herself first in line for the first Red Cross relief distribution. She was five months pregnant and clearly one of the most vulnerable.
"Three times I received help from the Red Cross," she recalls. "I still have the pots and utensils that I got in the kitchen set and I also got hygiene kits but I used those up a long time ago."
Almost 12 months on, Tanya is now back in her dusty little apartment. At the beginning of May, when she was still in Automeca, she was rushed to a hospital in Cité Militaire where she gave birth to a young boy, Widjmy. Her landlord welcomed her back, her small apartment having avoided any serious damage.
"My dream is to open my own hairdressing salon one day but I don’t have the money right now."
A friend recently loaned her US$100. "It's not enough to start a salon but I'm going to buy some charcoal in Malpasse and sell it here in Port-au-Prince. I hope to save enough money from that to do what I really want."
Since the earthquake, the estimated number of households provided with at least one type of essential non-food relief item is 159,100.
