You Probably Don't Want To Know About Haiti's Sewage Problems
The rain began on Good Friday. It fell into the roofless ruins of Port-au-Prince's Catholic cathedral. It swirled through stalls in the market downtown. In the hills above Haiti's capital, the rain ran off the clay roof tiles of upscale homes.
No matter where the rain fell, it was all destined for the same place: the system of concrete canals that cut through the city and down to the sea.
At the edge of the city next to the shore, the rain pounded on the zinc roof of Jean Claude Derlia's single-story cinder block home. His neighborhood, Project Drouillard, was dense with families packed into homes like his. Most people who grew up in Project Drouillard stayed, as he had. The community was close-knit, poor and socially isolated from downtown Port-au-Prince.
It was also extremely vulnerable to flooding from the canal full of trash and raw sewage that bordered it on one side. After a rain storm a few years ago, Derlia had been swept away by a wave of sludge and nearly died before neighbors fished him out. He'd been sick for weeks after it happened, but he survived.
Now, over the sound of the rain, Derlia heard people shouting, "The water is coming!" There was nothing he could do but wait and pray that the water, or the things the water carried with it, wouldn't kill him this time.
A city without a system
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is one of the largest cities in the world without a central sewage system. There are no sewers connecting sinks, showers and toilets to hulking wastewater treatment plants. Most of
