Our local slum...

Although French Guiana is part of France, the world's fifth largest economy, it is located in South America and is surrounded by utter destitution. Our two neighboring countries, Surinam and Brazil, are facing great challenges to create decent living conditions for their average citizens. To increase the disparities, French Guiana offers free health care, unemployment money and a higher-learning educational system which costs barely nothing. In this manner, French Guiana has become a magnet to attract large waves of poor immigrants from throughout South America and the Caribbean. The problem is that the population is exploding : France also gives every family money depending on the number of children they have... the more children, the more money. Making babies has thus become a business here : pregnancies often start while in junior high school or high school and many families have between 8 and 13 children. (Incidentally, having 8 children pays about 1,500 euros per month... That's the salary I earned when I started my career as a teacher.)

It's all happening too fast. There's just not enough housing being built to accomodate for the rapid rise in population. As a result, people build slums to settle in-- anywhere and everywhere.

In order to go to the grocery store from our apartment,  we have to drive through a slum which is just a few minutes away from where we live. At first, it appears almost normal... (click on images to enlarge)

 Most of the inhabitants here are from Haiti or Brazil which is often proudly displayed.

Some houses almost look normal...

But it keeps getting worse as you go down the street.

As none of these houses have an official address, the inhabitants just buy a mail box and install it alongside the main road. No wonder mail is so slow in French Guiana!

Worst of all are the environmental and sanitary problems of our slums. There's no evacuation of sewege, little running water, and electricity is hacked from city power lines.... as a result, there are often power malfunctions or outages and other residents down the line have to pay for the stolen electricity on their bill.

Garbage collection is also a problem. The city organizes rounds for the garbage trucks to collect what they can. However, many of the slum inhabitants also litter and throw their garbage in mounds along the roadside.

Is the French government capable of handling this situation in French Guiana? What can we do? Help!