Hell in Haiti
Article & Photography by Gary Moore
We pulled into a military camp after an eight hour drive to the Jimini from Santiago on the Dominican/Haiti border. It was a dust bowl, a square piece of land holding various international organizations. It was filled with people, tents, aircraft, vehicles, a chaotic and rank home for the helpers where your ego was checked at the door.
The main hospital, walking distance from tent city, was the first place the seriously wounded from Haiti went. Many arrived with broken bones, infected wounds and terrifying and heartbreaking stories. Most lost everything, even the legs and arms they came with after doctors couldn’t save it.
Smoke from a pile of hundreds of burning amputated limbs in a field near the hospital climbed into the sky.
Fifteen doctors, nurses and paramedics made the humanitarian trip after Glen and Debbie Lahey of Kids Explore International, a childrens charity, made the plea for help after the earthquake struck.
On one of the buses into Jimani was a quiet Haitian from Florida, Pastor Bob LeFranc, who was expecting to see the destruction of the dozens of orphanages and churches he and his family run.
For this big friendly religious man it would be a walk into despair, but his faith he believed, would sustain him.
We arrived into Port Au Prince with the Dominican Civil Defense. Our two-hour ride over a potholed riddled dirt road then a dangerous paved road lead us into a carnival of horror.
The first stop was to a miserable and festering makeshift camp in Bon Repos, a cesspool of torment and desperation for the homeless; No food, no aid, no tents and no hope, just pieces of plastic and bedding draped over sticks to shelter them from the blistering heat.
A grandmother with several kids pleaded with Pastor Bob for help. You could tell by the look on his face, the tragedy was starting to sink in for him as a crowd of homeless swelled around him.
That day, we circled the destroyed city since it was too dangerous to venture downtown without an armed escort. Pastor Bob’s cousin Claude Innocent joined us. He was just about to walk through the front door of his house when the quake hit destroying his house before his eyes. The noise he said was unlike anything he had heard before.
We passed building after building pancaked by the quake, now mass graves for the those lost inside, buried under slabs of thick concrete and re-bar. For how long is anybody’s guess as rescuers have stopped searching for survivors and recovery of the dead is painfully slow.
At a clinic, where a member of Pastor Bob’s family was killed, three twisted and decomposed bodies lay in a heap as a tractor digs through the rubble.
It was a place many came to find healing but where many would end up dead.
Although you couldn’t see all the dead under the rubble, you were never far away from them. The suffocating stench of death filled the hot air.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs building no longer exists. About a dozen workers picked through the concrete graveyard as American troops land military helicopters at the port across the street. A mass of Haitians watching through the gate are blasted by a storm of red earth.
Port Au Prince’s only post office was obliterated and its major prison released the country’s most dangerous onto the streets. The numbers aren’t clear but it is estimated 2,000 hardened criminals escaped.
Pont Rouge refugee camp holds over ten thousand survivors and the misery cannot be measured. Paramedics brought in by Heartline Ministries out of Boston treated a throng of injured. The serious ones were loaded onto a caged truck and taken to a hospital nearby. One paramedic said she was disgusted there wasn’t any other aid agencies around to help.
As darkness fell, we retreated to a damaged house where security guards passed a shotgun between them at shift changes. Broken and smashed belongings still peppered the property and the family had retreated to another house. Even though I checked an escape route, I was convinced I would not make it out if another quake hit. I left it to fate as I drifted off.
The next day with Pastor Bob was another day of despair. Our armed police officer guard stayed close as we took in more of the devastating effects of the killer quake.
St. Gerard University, An eight story university collapsed during classes entombing hundreds of students and at a downtown lawyers practice, Haitian workers continued their grisly search while one masked man collected judicial forms and paper work in a rusty wheelbarrow.
At Petit Place Cazeau, it is estimated that there is 800 children dead under the rubble and the Palace of Justice was set on fire after the quake because of the massive amount of bodies rotting in its interior.
There were no shortages of horror stories from survivors, some who lost everything: children, mothers, fathers, relatives, friends.
Port Au Prince resident Serge Vixamar, a friend of Pastor Bob’s and a director of a children’s charity called Mercy and Sharing lost five family members but remains composed as he surveys the wreckage.
“I am use to helping people and now I need help myself. More people will die here because of the disease. We are surrounded by the dead, the dogs are trying to get at the bodies at night,” Vixamar said.
Our tour took us through destroyed and desperate city where hope is fading for countless thousands of people. The humanitarian crisis will only get worse before it gets better.
With a heavy heart we escaped the horrors of Haiti but the grim reaper has decided to stay awhile.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where 80 per cent of the people live in abject poverty. They have a strong will to survive, but they are no match for the deadly crisis. It’s the children that suffer the most. It’s the strong that survive and the weak are left to starve and die.
Pastor Bob stayed back in Port Au Prince to help his people. Tents, food and water are the main necessities needed right now.
On a positive note the British Columbia doctors, nurses and paramedics were a huge help to the injured and were praised by other countries at the makeshift hospitals in Jimini. Glen and Debbie Lahey of Kids Explore made the disaster mission possible like they have many times before. They are looking to send another team of professionals to help with post operative care and rehabilitation.
If you can help please e-mail: kidsexplore@shaw.ca
CBC: Early Edition radio interview with Real World Image on Haiti:
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/bcearlyedition_20100210_27312.mp3
See also: http://www.kelowna.com/2010/01/30/kelowna-photographer-finds-hell-on-earth-in-haiti/
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What do people want to know about Haiti? The overwhelmingly chaotic reality or the success stories being achieved by the international community led by the U.S.? Well, I'll provide the chaotic and inadequate (by a factor of about ten) reality as balance to your mainstream TV watching. Six reports and some extra stuff and thoughts at the end.
((Update: Consider donating to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, the AFSC, Doctors Without Borders, the UN, Partners in Health, Tex-Mex Shelter Box, and/or, larger picture here, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and Canada Haiti Action.))
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1. AP reports -- in U.S. halts airlifts of Haiti patients, citing space -- that all flights carrying earthquake victims out of Haiti have been suspended. An American doctor warns 100 critically ill patients may die if they are not transported to U.S. hospitals within 48 hours:
fairleft :: Haiti relief: chaotic, massively inadequate
The U.S. military has halted flights carrying Haitian earthquake victims to the United States because of an apparent dispute over where seriously injured patients should be taken for treatment.
An American doctor treating victims in Port-au-Prince warned that at least 100 patients needed to get to better hospitals or they could die, while the U.S. government said it was working to expand hospital capacity in both Haiti and in the U.S.
It was unclear exactly what prompted the Wednesday decision by the U.S. military to suspend the flights, or when it would end. Military officials said some states were refusing to take patients, though they wouldn't say which states.
"There has been no policy decision by anyone to suspend evacuee flights," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "This situation arose as we started to run out of room." . . .
"We have 100 critically ill patients who will die in the next day or two if we don't Medevac them," said [Dr. Barth] Green, chairman of the University of Miami's Global Institute for Community Health and Development.
2. AP reported on Saturday afternoon - Latrines join food, water on Haiti's crisis list -- that about a tenth of the needed sanitation facilities are being provided Haiti's earthquake victims:
A lack of sanitation threatens to create killer diseases in the vast refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors have crammed in together, relief officials said Saturday, as the need for latrines increasingly joined food and water and shelter as major concerns.
Just one portable toilet serves about 2,000 people in a sprawling camp across from the collapsed National Palace, forcing most to use a gutter next to where vendors cook food and mothers struggle to bathe their children.
Nearly three dozen organizations are joining in a U.N.-led effort to build latrines and handle solid waste disposal, said Dr. Jon Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization. Authorities also plan to build more permanent resettlement camps with plumbing and sewage and have identified some locations.
The results of these efforts aren't yet evident in many places.
"I haven't seen sanitation at any of the camps," said Dr. Louise Ivers, Haiti clinical director for Partners in Health. She fears "a mass outbreak of measles, which would really be potentially devastating for a camp where there are 10,000 people living."
The same article points out the pathetically tiny supply of tents provided quake victims:
Few tents have been supplied to the quake's survivors, exposing people to the elements. Signs begging for help in English - not Haitian Creole - dot nearly every street corner in Port-au-Prince.
It could take weeks to get the 200,000 tents needed for Haiti's homeless, said Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, the culture and communications minister. Haiti now has fewer than 5,000 donated tents and coordinating the aid operation remains a problem.
Some Haitians are so fed up with the camps that they are making a risky return to their destroyed homes - often the only semblance of property they have left.
"The situation is only getting worse," said Josielle Noel, 46, who was among dozens of people pooling their labor to start rebuilding in the concrete slum of Canape Vert, an area devastated by the Jan. 12 quake. . . .
3. Friday morning, AP reported - in Haiti, food aid still falls short -- that food, water and shelter continue to be simply absent most places:
The newly homeless of the rubble-strewn Bizoton slum say they haven't gotten food, water or help with shelter in the two weeks since the earthquake.
"If it rains now, that's it," Wilson St. Ellis, 50, a father of eight, said Wednesday amid plastic sheets stretched here and there as flimsy shields against the elements. . . .
Food remains scarce for many of the neediest survivors despite the efforts of the United Nations, the U.S. military and dozens of international aid groups. Relief experts say the scale of this disaster and Haiti's poor infrastructure are presenting unprecedented challenges, but Haitian leaders complain coordination has been poor. . . .
The [U.N. World Food Program] says rising tensions and security incidents - "including people rushing distribution points for food" - have hampered deliveries. But since the massive relief effort's first days, other problems have also delayed aid - blocked and congested roads, shortages of trucks, a crippled seaport and an overloaded Port-au-Prince airport.
"The unblocking of the logistical bottlenecks is an absolute priority," the European Commission said Wednesday, describing a seven-day backlog of 1,000 relief flights seeking permission to land at the single-runway airport.
4. Friday night, the BBC -- in Construction slow on Haiti's 'tented villages' -- reports that more than two weeks after the quake, there are still no signs of tented villages promised by the Haitian government.
At least one million people were left homeless by the quake, which flattened most of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Only aid workers have so far succeeded in the construction of a ''tented village'' for 3,000 refugees.
5. On Thursday, Paul Farmer, UN deputy special envoy to Haiti, stated in the Miami Herald's Inept government, past U.S. policy seen hampering Haiti relief effort that the effort to clear the rubble was one-tenth what it needs to be, that there were numerous other inadequacies in the relief effort, and cast blame in various directions:
. . . Paul Farmer, the United Nations deputy special envoy to Haiti, told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Thursday that there was a mismatch between relief efforts and Haiti's ability to absorb them.
"Where we are creating 4,000 jobs in cleaning rubble, we must create 40,000 jobs," Farmer said. "We must hasten our efforts to get tents, tarpaulins and latrines or composting toilets to Haiti."
Without better sanitation, he said, thousands of displaced Haitians are at risk for cholera and other diseases.
The inability of Haiti's government to respond and to speed the work of the aid organizations has its roots in years of corruption, the mushrooming of slums, deforestation and faulty U.S. policy, he said.
Farmer said the Bush administration had bypassed the Haitian government repeatedly to deliver aid and humanitarian services to the Caribbean country. The consequence was a poorly funded and inadequate public sector, he said. Over-reliance on private aid organizations also weakened the country's food security. As a result of these failed policies, the Haitian government is unable and underprepared to coordinate the relief and reconstruction efforts today, Farmer said. . . .
Farmer also took aim at aid organizations, saying they had stripped a share of available funds from the Haitian people.
"The aid machinery currently at work in Haiti keeps too much overhead for its operations and still relies overmuch on NGOs" - nongovernmental organizations - "or contractors who do not observe the ground rules we would need to follow to build Haiti back better," he said.
6. Bill Quigley, Loyola University New Orleans law professor and longtime activist with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, wrote on Friday from Port au Prince - in Hell and Hope in Haiti -- that there is no real government and that help hasn't really gotten to most of the city, but that Haitians are creating order and self-help communities on their own.
. . . Troops and heavy machinery are only seen in the center of the city.
After days in Port Au prince I have seen only one fight - two teens fighting on a streetcorner over a young woman. No riots. No machetes.
Hope is found in the people of Haiti. Despite no electricity, little shelter, minimal food and no real government or order, people are helping one another survive. . . .
The same article speaks to St. Clares, Port au Prince, activist Lavarice Gaudin:
What should outsiders do, I asked Lavarice Gaudin? Lavarice, who helps the St. Clares community feed thousands each day through their What If Foundation, said, "Help the most poor first. Some who labored their whole lives to make a one bedroom home will likely never have a home again. Haiti needs everything. But we need it with a plan. Pressure the Haitian government, pressure US AID to help the poorest."
International volunteers who work hand-in-hand with Haitians are welcomed. Others not so much.
Lavarice saw the Associated Press story that reported only one penny of every US aid dollar will go directly in cash to needy Haitians. "I can understand that they distrust the government, but why not distribute aid through the churches and good community organizations?"
"We hope this will help us develop strong leadership that listens and responds to the people." . . .
Lavarice touches on why the relief effort has been so chaotic and inadequate. First of all, the Haitian government is not being allowed to coordinate the relief effort - see Haitian President Preval bemoans lack of coordination in aid relief -- and where it does get involved, there is corruption and bribery. Also, the militarized U.S. response prioritizes security over relief - see Mark Weisbrot's Security Kills and Peter Hallward's Securing Disaster in Haiti, both from Counterpunch. Obsession with security also hampers the big NGOs from getting to the majority of the victims - see Tonya Golash-Boza's Struggling for Dignity and Survival in Haiti and Sasha Kramer's Letter From Port au Prince. Golash-Boza writes:
There are a lot of soldiers all over the city. It is unclear what is their function might be. They patrol the streets with big guns at the ready, yet I have not seen any soldiers engaged in the clean up effort. And, it is clear that the function of the US soldiers is security. Some soldiers protect food deliveries, but there are far too few deliveries. Food distribution is a major problem in Haiti, in part because of widespread concern over security issues. There are not enough armed guards to protect food shipments on the street, so they do not go out.
The international community has to include the Haitian community in the food distribution system. That is the best way to maintain security. Part of the reason Haitians have not been organized in distribution efforts is a lack of confidence in Haitian people to organize themselves effectively and to share resources. Despite this perception, which is fueled by mass media portrayals of Haitians as looters and desperate, I have seen plenty of evidence that Haitians are capable of organizing themselves and distributing resources. Unfortunately, the calm streets and civic organization of Haitians does not seem to be newsworthy for mainstream media.
Another way to look at the Haitian conundrum/crisis/dilemma is that it is the product of decades of neo-colonization informed by neo-liberal, 'government is the problem' thinking. The result, Haiti doesn't have but needs a functioning sovereign government that is not afraid of the Haitian people and puts their needs first. The U.S. certainly is not going to supply one. Hallward sum up:
. . . it's now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor. . . .
A final thought is how the U.S. response to Katrina echoes through the U.S.-led Haiti earthquake relief effort. It's the response of a government that has been so thoroughly privatized that the only relief coordinating agency we can provide is our military. Which doesn't work, but that is being ignored: hard to criticize the military here in the States.
