Gangs become father, mother to Haiti’s forlorn orphans FEATURE 05/11/2010

Gangs become father, mother to Haiti’s forlorn orphans

FEATURE 05/11/2010  PORT-AU-PRINCE — They’ve been forced to swap school books for pistols, homework for hold-ups and drug-dealing: with no parents, some of Haiti’s earthquake orphans have turned to slum gangs as ersatz family in a hard-scrabble bid to survive. Square meals and the comforts of home are part of the past for thousands of youngsters who lost their mothers, fathers and other relatives in the January 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and traumatized the country. And for some orphans in the capital’s desperately poor shantytowns, roving gangs are filling the void. In the notorious Cite Soleil, or Sun City, a clutch of youngsters trail behind a scruffy gang leader named “Toutou Soleil 19” and members of his band, darting around makeshift huts and clotheslines strung across filthy alleyways in the capital’s biggest slum. Toutou, a 31-year-old who still carries knives but says he gave up his guns in a 2006 amnesty, stops and points across a sewer to a crude sheet-metal cabin on a mound of trash at the seafront.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune   URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100511com7.html

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