PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – The tents are gone and clean up crews are grooming the grounds of the Petionville country club golf course, which served as a camp for 60,000 people made homeless by Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.
The camp, on Haiti’s only golf course, closed last week after the refugees were relocated, according to J/P Haitian Relief Organization, the group co-founded by actor Sean Penn that set up and ran the camp for four years.
The earthquake left almost 1.5 million people homeless in what was already the poorest country in the Americas.
While the camp’s closure marks a milestone in Haiti’s recovery from the earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people, J/P HRO said this week that its work in Haiti was far from over.
“We are continuing to build and rehabilitate homes so people can return to their neighborhoods,” said Gary Philoctete, director of Haiti Operations for J/P HRO. “There are still a lot of people living in other camps and we are committed to helping those families as well.”
According to the government, at least 147,000 people are still living in temporary relief camps, mainly on small parcels of private land around the capital. They face being evicted by landowners.
“LIFE IS NOT OVER”
Hours after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake, people who had lost their homes began migrating to the golf course. J/P HRO was declared manager of the camp by the United Nations, providing food, shelter, medical and educational services.
The organization set up its first headquarters on one of the club’s clay tennis courts. Penn personally managed the camp for its first nine months.
One of the people who sought refuge at the golf course camp was 26-year-old Nicolas Jean-Michel. The house in which he had been living collapsed in the earthquake, killing all the relatives he knew, including his cousin and her daughter.
“We invaded the golf course as we had lost everything,” he recalled. “Life was hard, four years of misery, in the rain and mud. I never thought I would have to spend four years there.”
