The Innocent

We have been helping a single mother who has a set of twins with food for the last few months. She lives in Cite Soleil. She came to the house on foot carrying both babies in October seeking medical care for them. There was a visitor here and she helped the mother by holding one of her babies. Later we drove her back to her home in Cite Soleil. There is one area near Airport Rd and Cite Soleil where there was a lot of gang fighting. Cite Simon and Cite Militaire are 2 poor neighbourhoods where the gangs are brutal. We knew about the fighting taking place through one of our cooks. On one of our trips to Cite Soleil we asked Christianie if it would be alright to travel through Cite Simon for a short-cut home. There was some foot traffic at the entrance road through the area. We proceeded and as we entered the middle section of Cite Simon we noticed that something was terribly wrong. All the doors of homes and businesses were closed and nobody was outside. We saw a UN patrol on one of the side streets. We drove quickly through that section and as we approached Airport Rd. there was more activity. On one of the mothers visits for follow-up to Bernard Mevs Hospital she walked home by herself with one of her babies through Cite Simon. Gang members stopped her and demanded that she give them money. She had no money. They hit her and burned her with a metal pipe that they had heated over a fire. They demanded that she give them her baby. She told them no. The last photo shows the burn marks on this woman's arm. I think that the Cite Simon gang is the one that is terrorizing our neighbourhood. Please pray that these gangs are stopped and pray for the communities affected as they try to live and carry on with their activities in the midst of powerful gangs.