Editor's Note: Wave Contributing Editor Betty Pleasant spent three days (Aug. 30-Sept. 1) in Haiti with members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Global Mission. This is the first in a series of reports on the people and places she saw while visiting the earthquake-ravaged nation.

Sunday will mark the eighth month since the largest Caribbean earthquake in more than 200 years damaged much of Haiti and destroyed its densely populated capital city, and nothing much has changed since that fateful day.

The only difference between Jan. 12, the day the earth quaked, and Aug. 29, my first day in Port-au-Prince, is that the bodies of dead Haitians that littered the city’s streets have been removed and thousands of Haitians are living in all manner of makeshift tents wherever a tent can be erected.

And the people are mad about it. The historically resilient, long-suffering Haitians are just about fed up with their lot and cries of protest and revolution against their living conditions since their homes were destroyed by the quake are being heard from those whose plight is better than most of their countrymen.

Displaced Haitians who are “lucky” enough to live in official, government-operated tent encampments are angry that their temporary, emergency housing arrangements have stretched into eight months with no end in sight.

Let me describe the situation for you: 1,350 Port-au-Prince families live in white government-issued tents inside an official camp. The residents receive government goods and services, such as food and water and sewage systems and shower facilities. The official camp is fenced and is guarded and patrolled by forces of the United Nations. It is roomy and clean.

On the other side of the fence are thousands of earthquake-rendered homeless families living in unofficial camps in whatever kind of tents they can find on their own and are receiving nothing from the government; they get no services. These families squat near the official camp in the hope that some of the “goodies” from inside the fence will fall on them. But they don’t.

These campers survive anyway they can, as do the thousands of “squatters” who set up tents beyond the official camp all over the city in any spot big enough to hold one.

Trouble is brewing in the official camp. I joined the Rt. Rev. Sarah F. Davis, bishop of the AME Church’s 16th Episcopal District and other AME clerics at a meeting in the official camp last week with seething residents eager to express their discontent with their temporary surroundings. They were organizing to launch public protests and they gathered around their leaders — Philip Ferrel, Laurent Yvon, Eloi Garry and Edonier Patrick — and supported them as they passionately and eloquently related the following:

• The camp inhabitants had homes, jobs, businesses and careers before the quake destroyed them. Their relocation into the tents was supposed to provide them temporary shelter, but they’ve been in them so long that the tents are falling apart and are no longer capable of protecting the people from the elements, as they fill with water during Haiti’s morning rains. Eight hundred tents leak from top to bottom.

• The camp dwellers are working people and they need to work. They have had only 30 days of work during the seven months they’ve been in the camp. They are paid 90 gourdes a day for their work and charged 110 gourdes a day to stay in the camp. They were overcharged for beans and other basic foodstuffs, causing the population to go hungry for three months.

• Large numbers of people, especially children, are getting sick from infections and inadequate health services are provided for them. A displaced hair dresser, whose husband worked with computers before the quake, cried as she talked of the inability to get assistance for her chronically ill 3-year-old son.

• The camp lacks adequate security, as the UN forces are selective about the security needs to which they will respond.

The leaders blame their problems on the camp’s operators: World Vision, Organization for International Migration (OIM) and the American Relief Committee (ARC). “But World Vision in the biggest criminal inside the camp,” Ferrel said. “These organizations won’t let any other nonprofits come in and try to help,” Ferrel said. “They humiliate us; treat us badly and threaten us and the situation will get worse when we demonstrate,” Ferrel said. “We want to get out of these tents and we want jobs. We want our homes and our lives back,” he added, as tears welled in his eyes.

The Rev. Belinda Washington of Baton Rouge, La., is the regional coordinator of the AME church’s disaster relief program in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. She was my roommate in Haiti and she said: “We went through the same thing with these same organizations about housing for Katrina victims. The people stayed in FEMA trailers for two years, dealing with health problems, respiratory and allergy problems from formaldehyde because those trailers were temporary and the people should not have stayed in them longer than one year,” Washington said.

“In the aftermath of a disaster, the number one recovery problem is going to be housing and somebody needs to prepare for that,” Washington continued. “The FEMA trailers were bad enough, but these people don’t even have that — they have what is becoming long-term tents! It’s social injustice and I’m going to the United Nations,” Washington said.

Later that evening, Bishop Davis met with Rachel Yu, a World Vision International official, and Paul-Emile Cesar, an official of World Vision Haiti, to discuss our meeting with the camp residents.

“They told me the problem was not with them, but with ARC because they make the rules and manage the camp,” Davis said. “I told them the people are blaming World Vision and if they wanted to preserve their humanitarian reputation, they’d better solve these problems now because this place is getting ready to explode.”

Next week: Where have all the houses gone and when will they be back?