Five Years After Hurricane Dorian, Displaced Citizens Of The Bahamas Shift From One Shantytown To The Next

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Today, that world is uninhabited. Beyond the barbed-wire fence that continues to cordon off the Mudd from the rest of the community, thick vegetation has crept over the old streets, the yards, the court. Only the basketball hoop, now bent at a 45-degree angle, can be spotted through the overgrown trees. The Mudd, when it existed, was a large, visible part of life on Abaco. But in the years since, a portion of the Mudd’s most vulnerable population has been pushed deeper into the shadows. Other shantytowns have sprung up in more remote corners of the sprawling, 90-mile-long island.

One such place is called “the Gaza”. On a recent afternoon in August, the temperature creeping towards 90F (32C), a local pastor named Breslin Beaubrun made one of his regular trips into the shantytown, where many members of his congregation live. Ten minutes down the highway from the Mudd, Beaubrun pulled his car off to the shoulder of the road and made the rest of the trek on foot. A steady stream of other people – another pastor, a family of five – were making the same journey along a partially flooded dirt road to get to the settlement.

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There’s a sense of isolation in the new shantytown that the Mudd didn’t have, she said. Out in the countryside of the island, everything feels expensive: the taxi fare to get to the nearest grocery store, the gas to power a small generator, the rent she still pays to live in the shantytown. International aid groups sometimes used to bring food, water and clothes. “Then, after a while, that stopped,” she said. Several houses down from Pierre-Louis, a 39-year-old man from Haiti, who asked not to be named out of security concerns, has struggled to find work after Dorian. A one-year work permit in the Bahamas costs at least several hundred dollars; even when he finds a temporary job in landscaping or construction, the project ends after a month or two.

But in the Gaza, the biggest collective fear is the prospect of ending up back on the street. After a lengthy legal battle, the government issued hundreds of eviction notices in Abaco’s shantytowns earlier this year and has started to demolish homes. A section of the Gaza has already been destroyed. “If they break down the houses,” the 39-year-old from Haiti said, “we don’t know what to do.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/31/hurricane-dorian-survivors-impact-bahamas