July 22, 2005

Come Nightfall, a Public Park Serves as a Library

By Marion Lloyd

It's 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night, and the wooden benches in the Champs de Mars park are packed with college students. For many of them, like Pierre Madoché, a 23-year-old African-studies major at the State University of Haiti, this is the closest they get to a library.

The university closes at dusk, when chronic power shortages plunge most of the city into darkness. So the students have no choice but to head to public parks, the only places that are illuminated late into the