Gonaives, Haiti News

Walking through mud with the sun beating down on his sweat-covered face, former US president Bill Clinton confronted this week the harsh reality of the country he wants to help.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009 at 3:33 p.m. GONAIVES, Haiti a ' Bill Clinton paused during an aid mission to Haiti on Tuesday to honor Michael Jackson for helping the Democratic Party raise cash at a crucial time.

Gonaives is a port city with an estimated population of 200,000. It is the sixth largest city in Haiti and is located approximately 110 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

Norma Jean Hackett has fed hungry children in impoverished countries, witnessed families living in shacks and faced gunfire en route to war-torn lands.

Outside of the direct actors, we don't know exactly what just happened in Honduras.

Powerful Hurricane Ike charged across the Atlantic toward the Bahamas and the U.S. east coast on Thursday while Tropical Storm Hannaa s death toll from floods and mudslides in Haiti grew to 90.

Hoping to reduce the vulnerability of Haitians living in some of the country's most high-risk areas for flash floods, the U.S. Agency for International Development plans to spend $155 million over the next five years on stabilizing some of Haiti's most denuded hillsides.

Joicilia Mercius, a frail-looking woman who lives in a hillside tent city of canvas and soiled bedsheets, feels a sense of dread at even the slightest hint of rain.

The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Friday, May 22: The appointment of former President Bill Clinton as a special United Nations envoy to Haiti may be the best thing to happen to that impoverished Caribbean nation in years.

Floods triggered by torrential rains have killed at least 11 people in Haiti, as the poor Caribbean nation struggles to recover from last year's disasters, civil protection officials said on Thursday.

Several days of heavy rain has swamped Haiti and left 11 people dead across the poverty-seeped Caribbean nation, officials have said.

Haiti's Artibonite Valley, which includes the flood-prone city of Gonaives, has been put on alert as residents are warned to brace themselves for days of heavy rain.

Workers make their way through a street filled with dirt and debris from last year's hurricanes in Gonaives, Haiti.

One by one, the bodies were carried off the boat in a somber sunset procession. Wrapped in silver tarps or white sheets, they rode up the long wooden dock on gurneys.

''It makes sense for us to keep those people here,'' said Carline Desire of the Association of Haitian Women in Boston.

Big and small, the perfect pumpkins for fall. >> Photo Essay Wind-Whipped Wildfires Firefighters battle blazes in Southern California >> Photo Essay Stuck In The Mud In the aftermath of Hanna and Ike, Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, remains encased in mud.

May 8, 2009 8:26 pm US/Eastern LIGHTHOUSE POINT A child stands in the mud and rubble of his house in the devastated city of Gonaives some 124 miles north of Port Au Prince on Sept.

Haiti's environmental degradation is a time bomb that needs urgent attention if the country is to preserve its already strained social and economic stability, says a new briefing from the International Crisis Group .

Sonson Pierre, 7, huddles in mud outside his home in Gonaives. Seven year-old Sonson Pierre, 7, huddles in mud outside his home in Gonaives, Haiti in this award-winning photograph.

Fifteen-year-old Mardoshe Thelisma is comforted Nov. 14, 2008, by 29-year-old Roman Jean Francois at the funeral of Mardoche's cousin Dieunana Thelisma, who was crushed to death when the three-story College La Promesse school collapsed in Petionville outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti.