Haitian Notes

Haitians living elsewhere than in their country of birth gather in worried numbers, hoping to hear from kith and kin, hoping that their family members will have been spared. Depends, one imagines, on where they live. Since it's mostly the capital, Port-au-Prince that was cataclysmically struck, not the countryside outside the capital.

In yesterday's paper, a photograph of young men gathered for comfort at a local hair salon, anxious to hear something positive. One of the men complained, said the Government of Canada, instead of going off on a responsive tangent by sending off the emergency-trained and -equipped DART team to help rescue desperate survivors from the ruins of public and private buildings in the capital, they should first have consulted with them, the Haitian community in Ottawa. They were young, and strong, and motivated, they should be sent over there by Ottawa, to help their countrymen.

Seems those who have the governmental initiative, the professional skills and the official wherewithal to assist are never quite given credit for what they are capable of accomplishing. In Haiti itself, the government and the police appear to be mostly absent. While international humanitarian and emergency groups, both governmental and NGOs are desperately attempting to reach the city there little evidence of Haitian government agencies at work.

Even a corrupt government, one more concerned with its own entitlements than its peoples' existence, is expected to do something practical to assist its people in torment of survival. One would think. And how about neighbours, even poor ones like the Dominican Republic, like Cuba, with all its well trained doctors? What about closer neighbours, say for example, Haitians themselves, not affected by the earthquake?

Oddly, eerily, in the countryside, as described by Peter Goodspeed from Port-au-Prince, life goes on as though nothing untoward had occurred. He describes aid workers, journalists, ambulance crews attempting to cross into Haiti from the Dominican Republic - routed there because Haiti's airport and its control tower cannot handle the traffic - are up against cab drivers trying to charge $400 for the 45-minute drive from the border to the capital.

Clearing Haitian immigration, a guard insists on knowing what hotel those seeking to pass through will be staying at. All the hotels in the devastated capital have been destroyed. This reporter describes the outskirts of the city as appearing normal despite a cloud of grey dust, with crowds of people thronging the streets, vendors selling noodles, shoes, plastic packages of water from makeshift stalls. Traffic snarls and drivers are irritated.

The God's Love Beauty Studio, he writes, is still functioning; its owner and a customer "casually watching the funeral process" that embarked from a severely damaged house, after having collected a casket. Those within the city under severe duress, snarl they would prefer to see more doctors, fewer journalists from the international community. In fact, there appear to be more reporters circulating than rescue crews.

Everything is chaotic. Bodies are piled everywhere, and angry Haitians, frantic with grief and angry beyond normal comprehension have piled up cadavers to form a barricade across major roadways as an expression of their rage and contempt. There are claims that foreign rescue crews are focused on rescuing foreigners primarily. News filters directly to the outside world and newspapers devote pages upon pages of reportage, of photographs of the grim disaster.

Shocked individuals are quick to donate to any number of charitable groups, advertising, cajoling, anxious to collect funding to enable them to mount their rescue operations. Governments pledge substantial sums for infrastructure reconstruction, and ship huge containers of water and food and tents and medical supplies. Once arrived, they cannot be unloaded, there are no available mechanisms for unloading and safe storage. Looting is a problem.

Haitians, two days after that devastating movement of the earth underneath them, are still using bare hands and crude implements in desperate attempts to save those whose weakening voices may soon be stilled. The potential for the scourge of dread diseases that so often follow these disasters looms large. And children, comprising a huge number of the city's population are the most vulnerable.

It is to weep, and to wail, and to wring helpless hands. Hoping to rescue people who inhabit hell from yet another hell.