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Djedson Hypolite deftly coiled severed electrical wires at a
collapsed home in the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on
Monday afternoon, as he scanned the debris for more metal.
The 13-year-old boy and his brother Dawenson, 9, have been
extracting and reselling wires and cables found in the wreckage
since the quake struck on Aug. 14, killing over 2,000 people
across Haiti.
"We are fatherless and our home collapsed, so we're just trying
to survive somehow," said Hypolite, explaining the two brothers
earned about $5 a day collecting the electrical wires.
The earthquake occurred just over a month after the
assassination of President Jovenel Moise, deepening the
political turmoil in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation,
where violent gangs run rampant, hunger is on the rise and
healthcare services were already buckling under COVID-19.
Though official efforts to clear the rubble have been slow in
hard-hit cities and towns across Haiti's southern peninsula,
scrap metal collectors and recycling enterprises are busier than
ever, providing much-needed cash for hundreds of residents, and
extra hands for clearing debris.
All across the city, residents carried the scrap metal to
collection sites on motorbikes, pickup trucks, or balanced on
top of their heads. Those who could shoulder the weight hauled
aluminum sheeting, which netted 25 Haitian gourdes (25 cents)
per kilo, or iron rods, which went for 10 gourdes at a recycling
collection site in downtown Les Cayes.
Holmes Germain, the owner of a downtown recycling enterprise,
said the amount of iron and aluminum he was receiving had
doubled or tripled since the quake.
Trucks flowed in and out of his scrap yard, taking the loads of
twisted iron, warped aluminum sheeting, tangled wires and the
occasional battery to the capital city, Port-au-Prince. From
there, he said, it was recycled for domestic use, or packed onto
shipping containers and exported.
Germain sees his business as both an economic opportunity and a
public service at this time of crisis.
"If we don't buy the iron they will throw it away or just leave
it lying there, so this is our way of trying to clean up
downtown," he said.
(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Les Cayes, Haiti; Editing by
Anthony Esposito and Karishma Singh)
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