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People in Port-au-Prince call Junon Brutus "Soeur Junon" (Sister Junon), describing her as a prophet and a messenger from God. Her crowning moment thus far came on Feb. 12, when Brutus, 42, stepped center stage to face thousands of arms waving in unison, reminiscent of the pulsating energy during Carnival performances. The gathering was not a celebration but a lamentation marking the one-month anniversary of Haiti's earthquake - a disaster that many in Haiti believe Brutus predicted. But she thinks her country can rise from its travails. "God always has a plan for his children...
...ponder their mortality. Most Haitians are Roman Catholic, but they hardly needed the reminder - not after the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 of them. Marie Chantal, a baker who is living in a vast and squalid shantytown on the Champs de Mars park in downtown Port-au-Prince, says the rain that leaked through her makeshift tent on Wednesday night made her grieve more for the two children she lost in the quake when their house collapsed. To comfort her surviving child, 6-year-old Jean, Chantal wrenched what she could from the wreckage, including...
...First they have to prove that they can work more efficiently on immediate postquake urgencies like temporary shelter. Port-au-Prince's roads and streets are passable now, many businesses are humming again and the vibrant color of Haitian food markets has begun to compete with the gray ocean of crushed concrete. But so far only about a quarter of the 1.2 million Haitians who lost homes have been given tents (which relief agencies argue are scarce right now on the global market) or plastic sheeting (which those agencies now say is more practical than tents). Sanitation is even scarcer...
...development experts, Bellerive insists the quake's obliteration has yielded an opportunity to realize changes in Haiti - in as early as "four to five years," he believes - that might not have been possible before. The most important, he says, is the "deconcentration" of half a million Haitians away from Port-au-Prince. (There, he admits, the death toll was so high in large part because Haiti has had "no policy on controlling the population" of more than 2 million in a city where barely a million can fit.) As a first step toward creating enough jobs to keep relocated Haitians...
...lackluster example during the catastrophe. Bellerive, who took office in October, has as a result become more of a focus for Haitians and foreigners alike - including Haitian Americans, viewed as critical to the rebuilding effort, who began arriving en masse on Friday after commercial flights resumed service into Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture airport...