Haitians yearn for home as gangs welcome them and police warn it’s too dangerous

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AP):

Naika and Erica Lafleur stared at a pile of rubble where their house once stood in Haiti’s capital and began to cry.

Their mother had instructed the two sisters, ages 10 and 13, to visit the home they fled last year and report back on its condition after powerful gangs raided their community in November.

“I was hoping to have a place to come back to,” Erica Lafleur said. “There’s nothing to see.”

The sisters lived in Solino, home to one of Haiti’s most powerful vigilante groups that proudly fended off gangs for years until their leader was killed and gunmen invaded.

Gangs seized control of the area for almost a year only to abruptly leave in recent weeks as they encouraged residents to return.

Many Haitians are anxious to flee crowded and dangerous shelters and want to either rebuild their shattered communities or recover what’s left of their home and belongings.

Police have told Haitians that it’s not safe to do so, but hundreds of people are ignoring the warnings. Being able to return home is a rare opportunity in a capital nearly entirely controlled by gangs.

‘NOTHING LEFT TO SAVE’

The sound of shovels scraping against asphalt echoed in western Port-au-Prince this month as hundreds of people cleaned their communities and shuffled their feet or ran their hands through mounds of ashes that once were books, clothes, photo albums and furniture.

Neighbourhoods like Solino, Nazon and Delmas 30 became ghost towns after gangs razed them in November, forcing thousands to flee.

“There is nothing left to save,” said Samuel Alexis, 40, who asked the government to help Haitians return home. “I did not lose any family, but I lost everything I worked for.”

As he mulled whether to return to Solino, gunfire erupted nearby. He flinched.

In August, Jimmy Chérizier, a leader of a gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm that was blamed for last year’s attacks, stressed that it was safe to return home.

Few people believed him at first, but then small groups began tentatively entering their old neighbourhoods.

“I’m just now visiting my home,” said Ronald Amboise, a 42-year-old tile setter. “What I saw, I can’t explain. It’s like a bomb went off.”

He moved to Solino after the devastating 2010 earthquake and remained there until gangs invaded his neighbourhood in November. He yearns to return because he, his partner and their two children, ages six and 13, are staying at a cramped and dirty shelter. But he’s undecided.

“Police have a radio announcement telling people not to return. Gangs are saying it’s safe to return. I don’t know which one to trust yet,” he said.

Amboise doesn’t make enough money to properly feed his family, who lives under a plastic tarp and gets soaked when it rains.

“I don’t know if your notebook can hold everything I’ve endured for the past nine months,” he told an Associated Press reporter.