By DIONNE SEARCEY And KEVIN NOBLET
e.
CITE SOLEIL, Haiti—For once, it paid off to be the poorest among Haiti's poor.
While countless bigger, multi-story homes, churches and offices on the hillsides of Port-au-Prince fell in the earthquake, crushing tens of thousands of people beneath their heavy concrete, the flimsy tin-roofed shanties of the slums fared much better.
In Cite Soleil, the biggest, poorest seafront slum, there was significant destruction to two large churches, but not to people's homes. Most shacks stood upright. There was no smell of rotting corpses.
Here, life went on Saturday with some semblance of normality. Mule carts carried charcoal and ice—a precious commodity now—and street side stands for candies, crackers and electronics plied their wares.
"It was a blessing," said Frederic Jean Junior, a 23-year-old DJ for Radio Boukman, a station that operates out of Cite Soleil. He spoke among a crowd of young men who echoed his sentiment, some of them shouting "Amen."
Not that slum residents haven't felt the city's paralysis. Electricity remains cut off and, unlike Haitians of means, the poorest cannot turn on gasoline generators to get a couple of hours of power.
A shanty here and there did collapse and, according to one local political organizer, Reginald Jean Francois, bodies of victims had been buried in the open lots on the slum's fringes. But a large concrete cistern was in tact.
"It doesn't seem like we have a lot of chaos like downtown," he said as aid helicopters passed overhead. "We're supposed to be the worst people but we're helping each other out."
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