Photographs by Jock Fistick

Eileen Dodien sits in her one-room home trying to stay comfortable while her burns heal. Her face and upper body were severely burned when a lantern exploded while she was lighting it. Because lantern fuel is scarce in Cap Haitien, people are using any combustible fuel they can find, usually gasoline. The fire burned her home and her life savings of $1,500, which she had hidden in her mattress.

A baby boy endures the pain of having the burned skin peeled from his hand and arm in a clinic in Cap Haitien. The hungry boy had plunged his hand into a pot of boiling water to grab a handful of rice.
Don DeHart, co-founder of the Tampa Bay relief group For Haiti With Love,
cares for one of his many patients who was burned while lighting a lantern filled
with gasoline instead of kerosene.

Coffin-making is one of the only thriving businesses in Cap Haitien that is not part of the black market.

Two boys watch as a gravedigger covers their grandmother's coffin after she fell ill and died from lack of food and proper medical care. In this, Cap Haitien's only cemetery, at least 10 people are buried every day except Sunday, which is a day of rest.All photographs© 1994 The Tampa Tribune