CAP HAITIEN, Haiti — The pickup jostled through craters in the dirt road, pushing farther into Petite Anse, a packed collection of tin shacks, squat cinder block homes and abandoned trucks on the outskirts of Cap Haitien.
The three women in the back climbed out as it stopped and headed down one long dirt path, toward an opening piled with mound after mound of densely compacted garbage.
They are part of a team of outreach workers who go into Cap Haitien’s poorest slums, working out of a health clinic at Fort Saint Michel and funded by Konbit Sante, a Portland-based nonprofit.
The clinic is one of only two that serve the devastatingly poor neighborhoods bordering Cap Haitien, offering maternity care, tuberculosis testing and treatment, prenatal care, emergency care and other services.
Traveling Wednesday into Petite Anse, which is built on refuse, the women walked across a causeway built up with old tires, dirt and trash that held back the fecal-contaminated pools of stagnant water.
Click on this link to the rest of “Making a difference for poorest of the poor” by Portland Press Herald staff writer Matt Wickenheiser.
My name is Keith Michaud and this is “Letters From Away,” a blog written by a Mainer living outside the comfortable and sane confines of New England. The blog is intended for Mainers, whether they live in the Pine Tree State or beyond, and for anyone who has loved ’em, been baffled by ’em or both. Ayuh, I am “from away.” Worse still, I live on the Left Coast – in California. Enjoy! Or not. Your choice.
Letters From Away 