Faint portraits of the poor only reminders of Haitian village

MAPOU, Haiti -- Dominos was the pastime of choice on lazy afternoons in this farm center, with players sitting in the shade and villagers gathering at the market to grumble over a glass of rum about stunted crops or cheating wives.

Now, the market is under 20 feet of water and voices that once rang out have been silenced. Some of their corpses float nearby -- a week after deadly floods cascaded down from Haiti's denuded mountains.

Many better-off residents, who had concrete houses financed by small businesses or remittances, survived the disaster that has killed at least 1,700 people along the south-central border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Mapou's poor died by the hundreds, however, remembered only as faint portraits from a vanished village.

"I remember Madame Roget," said Denis Phillipe, 44, a bread salesman who squinted as he recalled a woman famed for selling griot, or marinated pork feet. "But no one has seen her. Many of the people who lived in the mud houses are just gone."

Despite the scorching sun of the past week, the area still is deeply submerged under stagnant water rank with the smell of death.

"We heard that the man who used to sell mangoes died," said Denis Jean-Baptiste, 37. "I can't remember his name, but everyone knew his face -- he was missing most of his teeth."

Outside the village, the scent of fresh mint filled the air. But farmers, in despair over battered rows of corn, hardly seemed to notice as they lined up for food handouts from aid workers and American, Canadian and Chilean soldiers on Sunday.

Impassable terrain

Desperate to get more food into the area, Catholic Relief Services rented motorized wooden boats over the weekend, loaded them with 66,000 pounds of food and reached Grand Gosier, a seaside town separated from Mapou by the mountains.

They had hoped to get the supplies to Mapou, but found the waterlogged way impassable even by mule. Instead, aid workers set off on a five-hour hike Monday to tell residents to come to Grand Gosier to get a 15-day supply of wheat, rice, soybeans and oil.

Before the floods, villagers eked out a living growing mint, corn and coffee. Some worked as seasonal sugar cane cutters in Dominican Republic -- where more than a third of the flooding deaths occurred, most of them Haitians working to send money home.

Many in Mapou speak Spanish, the language of the Dominican Republic, as well as Haiti's official Creole and French.

Survivor Philis Milfort, 87, lost eight relatives who had helped support him since he lost a leg to gangrene three years ago.

"My leg is gone, my animals are gone, my house is gone and my family is gone," said Milfort. "The village is cursed by disaster."

In 1998, Hurricane Georges tore through the area, leaving scores dead and destroying a handful of buildings, some of which still had not been repaired when the floods hit.

The crushing poverty typical to most Haitian villages was a big factor in the magnitude of the flooding disaster. With no electricity, people chop down trees on the mountains that form this valley, etching chalky swaths of destruction where torrents of water sweep up gravel and boulders and rush down unimpeded.

Mapou is named after a tree sacred in Voodoo as a place where spirits congregate. But only a few mapous remain, their huge trunks signifying an age of a century or more and often the presence of a nearby spring.

Floods swept away a local Voodoo temple along with its houngan, or priest, who is among the hundreds missing from Mapou's earlier population of 3,000, according to Sinustal Jean, 76.

Another gathering place was the market, where women vendors sat hunched over piles of onions while men played dominos.

"People used to have a rum or a beer and complain about their crops or talk about how they thought their wives were seeing someone else," said Montero Saint-Louis, 46. "It was the place everyone went. Now there's no place to go."

Dozens of bodies remain trapped in the water while troops and aid workers are focusing on getting food and water to the living. Without inflatable boats and more manpower, many bodies could remain uncollected for days more.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has set up a makeshift hospital along a dirt trail outside the village, plans to post pictures of unclaimed bodies to help unite families.

With the area still in chaos, Haiti's interim leaders are talking about resettling residents instead of rebuilding in the valley.

"Until then, we will have to wait to see what God will decide should happen to this town," said Milfort. "It's in his hands now."