Tent city founder scrapes enough cash to rent apartment

Project Jacmel update: Earthquake 'put a hole' in Midi Jackson's life, but at least his family is off the street

Midi Jackson's initial plans for 2010 did not include a 12-month regression. As 2009 wound down, the father of four was just wrapping up a legal struggle that served as a reminder that he needed to focus on providing for his family.

Then the earthquake struck. His apartment caved in. He moved his children into a communal tent in the nearby yard of a Wesleyan church, which over a few wet months morphed into a series of family-sized tents that became a community. A group of Haitian-born New Yorkers pitched in, buying trucks of gravel to help with flooding and doling out dozens of suitcases' worth of clothes, food and other supplies.

And then the there was the inevitable split. Allegations of abuse of power and nepotism were tossed around; Mr. Jackson's faction of the camp moved to a new site down the road.

Somehow, Mr. Jackson has manoeuvred community leadership into a job that pays enough for him to rent a small, four-room apartment that gets his family off the street. Many of his comrades still live in a nearby yard, having graduated from tents to medium-term shelters with tarp walls and tin roofs. Mr. Jackson's kids to go school again; he gives taxi rides on his motorbike and teaches people agricultural skills and other information he picks up on the radio in exchange for whatever they can pay him.

Put another way, he's nearly made it back to square one.

"The earthquake put a hole in my life. If it hadn't occurred, I would have been further in my personal activities," he says.

His hope for 2011 is real progress.

"What we need for the future is support and job creation, so the people can have some sort of activities to do for themselves instead of being given handouts."