sara b. may photography

A community health worker walks along the perimeter of the settlement, accompanied by local children. 

A typical shanty seen throughout Cité Soleil, where the floors of most dwellings are usually covered with standing water.

Canals in the area serve as sewage systems and garbage dumps, and are the one of the few resources for drinking water and bathing.

A mother ties her son's shoes before joining a dance at the local church.

A community health nurse walks through a cholera isolation clinic on the outskirts of Cité Soleil. 

Shanties built from scavenged sheet metal and refuse are subject to flooding on a daily basis with the frequent downpours during the wet season. 

A typical shanty in Cité Soleil.

Thumbs up in Cité Soleil.

A United Nations armed guard patrols the area, though the presence of any law enforcement entity in Cité Soleil is the exception rather than the rule. 

A group of children tagging along with community health workers ask to be included in a photo. 

A taxi proclaiming Thank You Jesus on the road approaching Cité Soleil. 

A boy practices handstands under the clinic's awning.

The single room serving as both the waiting room and treatment area of the clinic. 

The small staff of the clinic is frequently overwhelmed by the arrival of boxes of often unusable medical supplies containing expired medications and contaminated, used medical equipment. 

Donated supplies waiting to be unpacked. 

A local man rides in the back a pickup truck while assisting with the transport of a critically ill clinic patient to one of the hospitals in Port au Prince. Most hospitals are gated and guarded by armed guards, and will refuse outright all patient transfers, as hospitals are already overwhelmed, overcrowded, understaffed, and undersupplied. In the absence of reliable phone service, facilities cannot be called ahead of time to arrange transfer, and patients must be driven from site to site, often lying in the bed of a pickup truck exposed to sun and rain, in hopes of being accepted somewhere. Due to poor roads and chaotic traffic, this process can often take 4-5 hours. 

A busy street corner at the entrance to the community of Cité Soleil. 

One of several daily thunder and lightening storms bears down upon a gas station at the edge of Cité Soleil.

A billboard proclaiming The World is Yours towers over a traffic jam on the flooded streets of Port au Prince following one of several daily thunder and lightening storms that routinely paralyze traffic for hours at a time.