Haiti faces high cost of dying

Life has always been a struggle for Haiti's poor. These days, death isn't much easier. The city morgue is under-refrigerated, jammed to capacity with unclaimed corpses and so short of funds that workers don't have paper masks to ward off the stench. Deforestation has inflated the price of coffin wood, and hundreds - possibly thousands - of deaths in street violence are pushing up the price of funerals. Robbers plunder graves for coffins to resell, and families try to thwart them by smashing the coffin before it is covered with earth.

Some bereaved families are taking out high-interest "funeral loans," falling deep into debt to send off relatives with the dignity many were deprived of in life. Others have to abandon their dead on a dusty field known as Titanyen, a Creole word meaning "less than nothing," on the edge of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

A funeral now costs around $540 — more than most Haitians earn in a year. Cremation is only for the wealthy. It costs a relative $27 just to pick up a body if it was dropped off at the morgue, and $47 if the morgue had to collect it off the street. As a result, few bodies are ever claimed by relatives. They end up in a common grave outside the capital, along with those dumped at the Titanyen field. "If the families don't have money to claim the bodies, they simply never show up," said morgue director Sergo Castor.

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