Khamal Georges

While Haiti calls for help from be­yond its bor­ders, help is al­so com­ing from with­in.

"I had some mon­ey, so I used it to take care of the peo­ple." It's a sim­ple yet pow­er­ful state­ment from one of the re­al-life he­roes emerg­ing in the wake of Hur­ri­cane Matthew.

Peo­ple like Alouze Luzane are step­ping up and shar­ing the lit­tle they have with their neigh­bours. Last Tues­day she packed her bags, took what­ev­er mon­ey she had and made the four-hour jour­ney to Fla­ment in Les Cayes from her home of Jacmel. All of the south­ern re­gion was hard hit by Matthew, but Fla­ment has been vir­tu­al­ly cut off from the hu­man­i­tar­i­an ef­forts un­der­way in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

"When I came I found the peo­ple were re­al­ly, re­al­ly in need. I found es­pe­cial­ly that they were hun­gry be­cause of Hur­ri­cane Matthew," Luzane says.

At the site of Fla­ment's last stand­ing home, Luzane works hard to bat­tle that hunger. Her sim­ple meal of rice, beans and chick­en feeds over 50 peo­ple a day. It's a light for the peo­ple of Fla­ment who have lost, not just their be­long­ings, but al­so their fu­ture.

Plan­ta­tions of crops, co­conut trees, ba­nanas ready for har­vest­ing were all lev­elled. With no food to sell or cook, it is a sce­nario des­tined to lead to fur­ther hunger. Luzane's great­est fear is that the peo­ple will starve if she leaves. Through her links with ITNAC, she is re­ceiv­ing mon­ey to con­tin­ue to help the peo­ple.

"I have to leave at some point, but I hope that when I am gone food will be still sent to them," she says.

"I hope that it doesn't stop."

The church at the top of the hill in Fla­ment was al­so flat­tened. It was a place of refuge for Luzane who wor­shipped there for many years. Dur­ing her time in the con­gre­ga­tion she de­vel­oped a close re­la­tion­ship with its now de­ceased founder.

She says she "came to help peo­ple in that church, but she end­ed up help­ing all of the oth­er peo­ple."

She once came to the church on the hill to be fed spir­i­tu­al­ly, now the peo­ple of Fla­ment come to her for their dai­ly bread.

More in­fo

Guardian Me­dia has part­nered with ITNAC and is en­cour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to do­nate re­lief items to this group which has been in­volved in a range of hu­man­i­tar­i­an and de­vel­op­men­tal projects since 2003. Among the pri­or­i­ty items need­ed are chil­dren's clothes, non-per­ish­able food, over the counter med­ica­tion, ba­by sup­plies, bed­sheets, tow­els and shoes. The items can be dropped off at Sa Mai­son Guest House, 6A An­der­son Street, St James. Cash do­na­tions can be made to ITNAC's ac­counts at First Cit­i­zens 1660410 or Re­pub­lic Bank at 510009446802.