22101: (Chamberlain) Caribbean Storms-Survivors (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

*   By PETER PRENGAMAN

   JIMANI, Dominican Republic, May 27 (AP) -- Chalman Charlusmain came to
this bleak border town for a better life. Instead, she watched helplessly
as her mother lost her grip on a palm tree and was sucked away.
   The 22-year-old Haitian described her loss without tears -- too numb to
weep but not to mourn.
   Charlusmain said she and her mother were sleeping when rains struck the
town Monday, creating a flood that swept them out of their house and
slammed them into a palm tree.
   The young woman grabbed the tree; her mother could not hold on and
disappeared into a torrent of crushing mud.
   "I held onto the tree and kept holding on, but my mom couldn't," said
Charlusmain, who once lived in the Haitian village of Fond Verrette just
across the border.
   "I just want to work," she said Thursday, explaining why they left their
impoverished homeland. "We had nothing to eat in Haiti."
   Rains over the weekend lashed the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti
shares with the Dominican Republic, causing floods and landslides that
wiped out entire neighborhoods. Hundreds died on both sides of the border.
   In 1975, the Dominican government built 40 small houses on the hillside
in Jimani and called the neighborhood La Cuarenta -- "40" in Spanish. By
Monday, there were more than 200 houses and over 1,000 people -- mostly
Haitian immigrants -- living in the area.
   Many worked as maids or farmers, earning between $35 and $100 a month.
Both Charlusmain and her mother had two jobs, working as maids and as
lettuce pickers.
   Like many others searching for lost loved ones, Charlusmain hasn't found
her mother's body. Many corpses were washed into a crocodile-infested lake,
others were buried in the mud.
   Pepe Dematin, 18, came to the Dominican Republic from the northern
Haitian city of Cap-Haitian to search for his brother's family.
   "I came to find them, but their house is gone," he said. "I don't know
what to do."
   Alphonse Garcia, another Haitian, lost his two cousins, age 20 and 22.
He found their bodies in a morgue.
   "I had them come here and now they're gone," Garcia said. "It's much
better to work here. There's always a way to get something to eat, some
little job to do."