Haitians cry in letters: Please,do something!

It was after midnight in a remote annex of this isolated tent camp on a windswept gravel plain.

It was after midnight in a remote annex of this isolated tent camp on a windswept gravel plain. Marjorie Saint Hilaires three boys were fast asleep,but her mind was racing. She lighted a candle and summoned a gracious sentiment with which to begin.

To all the members of concerned organisations,I thank you first for feeling our pain, she wrote. I note that you have taken on almost all our problems and some of our greatest needs.

Saint Hilaire,33,then succinctly explained that she had lost her husband and her livelihood to the January 12 earthquake and now found herself hungry,stressed and stranded in a camp annex without a school,a health clinic,a marketplace or any activity at all.

Please,do something! she wrote from Tent J2,Block 7,Sector 3,her new address.

When the International Organisation for Migration added suggestion boxes to its information kiosks in camps,it did not expect to tap into a well of pent-up emotions. I anticipated maybe a few cranky letters, said Leonard Doyle,who handles communications for the organisation in Haiti.

At this camps annex,Corail 3,Sandra Felicien,a regal woman whose black-and-white sundress looks as crisp as if it hangs in a closet,has become the epistolary queen. An earthquake widow whose husband was crushed to death in the school where he taught adult education courses,Felicien said she wrote letters almost daily because doing so made her feel as if she were taking action. We are so powerless, she said. It is like we are bobbing along on the waves of the ocean,waiting to be saved.

One afternoon,Felicien settled in front of her tent and started to recopy the rough draft of a letter that she had written that morning. While she wrote,a crowd gathered,concerned that she was getting special attention. She rose to address them,explaining that the letter she was writing was not personal but on behalf of all her neighbours.

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She read aloud the letter: September 14. Today we feel fed up with the bad treatment in Block 7. Have you forgotten about us out here in the desert? The crowd quieted. She continued reading: You dont understand us. You dont know that an empty bag cant stand. Heads nodded. The crowd dispersed. I dont know why I keep writing, she said. To this point they have not responded. Its like screaming into the wind.8221;