Waf Jeremie

• Prize
• Photographer
  Marco Baroncini, Italy

Waf Jeremie, or Waf, as it is called, is one of the poorest neighbourhoods of Port au Prince, where about 150,000 people live in absolute poverty in tin shacks and in a few brick houses, often inundated by the floods. It raised more than ten years ago on a garbage dump between the sea and a river of black water. There are no toilets or sewers, or water pipes. Electricity has never existed except for a few shacks illegally connected. It’s an area of high risk of diseases and epidemics. Here is one of the first hotbed of cholera in Port-au-Prince. In addition, the floods are very frequent. Even if it rains a little bit, most of this area is covered by water and its shacks too. For gangs and arms dealers it makes simpler to increase their business, because the police forces and United Nations Organization cannot enter in. Waf is one of the areas forbidden by United Nations because it is a very dangereous place. From the day of the earthquake there weren’t organizations inclined to follow developmenting projects on this area. Sister Marcella, since the earthquake, was one of the few “foreigners” that could stay in the slum. She is a Franciscan missionary nurse who has been living here for seven years, developing and carrying out concrete projects to support the population.Thanks to donations received, Sister Marcella could build 122 brick homes, two schools, one social dining hall (300 meals a day for the children), two sets of latrines, one point of distribution of water. She has rebuilt the clinic (destroyed by the earthquake) and a cholera camp, a series of workshops in which teenagers can learn a job (bakery, carpentry ....) and a orphanage. All the revenues from the book sales go to her projects.