Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
MAR 26: "KEEPING PEOPLE ALIVE ANOTHER DAY", UPI REPORTS ON LAST WEEK'S DOWNPOUR AND BEGINNING OF RAINY SEASON
full article via
UPI
Haiti's Homeless Beset By Rainy Season
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 26 (UPI)
The 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by an earthquake more than two months ago face torrential rains flooding their makeshift housing, aid workers said.
A downpour lasting several hours Thursday sent sheets of water down sloping terrain, flushed out latrines and turned homeless camps into quagmires, The Times of London reported Friday.
"It was a nightmare. I was very frightened," Alide Orelice, who lives in a tent city on a golf course, told the newspaper.
Government officials estimate at least 200,000 of the people left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake are particularly vulnerable, and thousands more are at risk from unsanitary conditions.
"We could have a huge second wave of casualties," former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, said recently.
"This has the makings of major humanitarian disaster," Alex Wynter, spokesman in Haiti for the International Federation of the Red Cross, told the British publication. "The rainy season for us boils down to a simple imperative of keeping people alive another day."
The original plan was to build large transitional settlements for the homeless on safe sites outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, which was devastated by the earthquake. That hasn't happened and the Haitian government has been accused of corruption in its distribution of humanitarian aid, The Times said.
International aid workers have been handing out 100,000 tarps and tents every week, officials said.
© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
UPI
Haiti's Homeless Beset By Rainy Season
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 26 (UPI)
The 1.3 million Haitians left homeless by an earthquake more than two months ago face torrential rains flooding their makeshift housing, aid workers said.
A downpour lasting several hours Thursday sent sheets of water down sloping terrain, flushed out latrines and turned homeless camps into quagmires, The Times of London reported Friday.
"It was a nightmare. I was very frightened," Alide Orelice, who lives in a tent city on a golf course, told the newspaper.
Government officials estimate at least 200,000 of the people left homeless by the Jan. 12 earthquake are particularly vulnerable, and thousands more are at risk from unsanitary conditions.
"We could have a huge second wave of casualties," former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, said recently.
"This has the makings of major humanitarian disaster," Alex Wynter, spokesman in Haiti for the International Federation of the Red Cross, told the British publication. "The rainy season for us boils down to a simple imperative of keeping people alive another day."
The original plan was to build large transitional settlements for the homeless on safe sites outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, which was devastated by the earthquake. That hasn't happened and the Haitian government has been accused of corruption in its distribution of humanitarian aid, The Times said.
International aid workers have been handing out 100,000 tarps and tents every week, officials said.
© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
MAR 25: RAISE FUNDS AND AWARENESS / APPLY SOME PRESSURE
"Tragedy will strike when the rain comes."
A group of US Senators wrote in a letter to President Barack Obama urging the immediate relocation of Haitians to safer ground.
(February 19, The Guardian UK)
"When the rain comes, it will be a public health disaster. It could easily be on the scale of the earthquake itself."
Oscar-winning actor and director Sean Penn, who has been in Haiti running an aid organization he established following the quake.
He has been driving a campaign called Beat The Rain.
(February 19, Hollywood News)
"We're running out of time."
John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian chief in Haiti, as new camp sites have yet to be opened to relocate some of the 1.3 million people made homeless by the quake. Haiti's largest landowners, the Preval government and the UN have been unable to reach agreements on the needed land sites for over two months.
(March 19, The Associated Press)
"The US is an hour and a half from here. We can help everyone if we get our priorities straight."
Former Georgetown Hoya, NBA All-Star and Olympic gold medalist Alonzo Mourning interviewed while in Port-au-Prince right after the quake, clearing rubble from a medical aid site and helping care for children with Project Medishare, a charity he has supported for many years.
(January 18, The Times London)
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
MAR 23: EX-PRESIDENTS VISIT HAITI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former President George W. Bush, center, stretches his hand to shake it with an unidentified man next to Haiti's President Rene Preval, left, and former President and U.N. special envoy for Haiti Bill Clinton at a homeless earthquake survivors camp in Port-au-Prince, Monday, March 22, 2010. Clinton and Bush are on a one-day visit to Haiti to assess recovery needs, after being tapped by President Barack Obama to spearhead U.S. fundraising in response to the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Photograph by Jorge Saenz / APASSOCIATED PRESS, Presidents Bush, Clinton Visit Devastated Haiti
article details via AP:
- The two former leaders, who were tapped by President Barack Obama to spearhead U.S. fundraising for the crisis, made their first joint visit as part of the mission to raise aid and investment for the impoverished Caribbean nation.
- Clinton and Bush later greeted quake survivors camped on the Champ de Mars, the national mall filled with 60,000 homeless people.
- About 100 supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide staged a protest outside the national palace, burning tires and demanding the return of their exiled leader.
- Clinton and Bush visit as the country struggles to feed and shelter victims of the magnitude-7 quake, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Another 1.3 million quake survivors are homeless, with many living in camps prone to dangerous flooding in the April rainy season.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has also announced he would cancel Haiti's debt to his country, which the IMF had listed at more than $200 million.
- The nonprofit Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has raised $37 million from 220,000 individuals including Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who gave $1 million, and Obama, who among other donations gave $200,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize. About $4 million has gone to such organizations as Habitat for Humanity, the University of Miami/Project Medishare mobile hospital in Port-au-Prince and the U.S. branch of the Irish charity Concern Worldwide. The rest has yet to be allocated.
MAR 23: DEMOCRACY NOW ON BUSH, CLINTON VISIT TO HAITI
via "Headlines" on
DEMOCRACY NOW
Haitians Protest Bush, Clinton in Port-au-Prince
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited Haiti on Monday in their roles as co-chairs of the US relief effort there. Dozens of Haitians took part in a protest in the capital Port-au-Prince to denounce the former presidents’ policies toward Haiti while in office. Bush cut off desperately needed aid to Haiti and backed the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, supported the first coup against Aristide in 1991. Clinton, meanwhile, helped restore Aristide, but only on condition that he accept harsh neoliberal reforms. Protester Elizabeth Pierre singled out Bush, who was making his first-ever visit to Haiti.
Elizabeth Pierre: “I hear that former President George Bush is here. I am asking President Clinton to excuse himself so I can talk to George Bush, because George Bush is President Aristide’s kidnapper.”
On Monday, Clinton said he and Bush discussed Haiti’s reconstruction needs and pledged to seek congressional backing for a law granting trade preferences to Haitian products.
Bill Clinton: “We spent most of our time talking today about what needs to be done now so that the economic plan and the donor conference to be held at the end of this month has a chance to work. So we pledged to do what we could to get the changes adopted by Congress that would enable you to make maximum use of this law, and I think could create more than 100,000 jobs in Haiti in short order.”
DEMOCRACY NOW
Haitians Protest Bush, Clinton in Port-au-Prince
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton visited Haiti on Monday in their roles as co-chairs of the US relief effort there. Dozens of Haitians took part in a protest in the capital Port-au-Prince to denounce the former presidents’ policies toward Haiti while in office. Bush cut off desperately needed aid to Haiti and backed the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, supported the first coup against Aristide in 1991. Clinton, meanwhile, helped restore Aristide, but only on condition that he accept harsh neoliberal reforms. Protester Elizabeth Pierre singled out Bush, who was making his first-ever visit to Haiti.
Elizabeth Pierre: “I hear that former President George Bush is here. I am asking President Clinton to excuse himself so I can talk to George Bush, because George Bush is President Aristide’s kidnapper.”
On Monday, Clinton said he and Bush discussed Haiti’s reconstruction needs and pledged to seek congressional backing for a law granting trade preferences to Haitian products.
Bill Clinton: “We spent most of our time talking today about what needs to be done now so that the economic plan and the donor conference to be held at the end of this month has a chance to work. So we pledged to do what we could to get the changes adopted by Congress that would enable you to make maximum use of this law, and I think could create more than 100,000 jobs in Haiti in short order.”
MAR 23: "RE-THINK STARVATION WAGES", HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE ON THE NEED TO INCREASE PAY FOR HAITI'S GARMENT WORKERS
As Bill Clinton is pushing his economic plan for Haiti, one that entails luring garment manufacturers back to the country from China and other Asian countries based on a cheap work force being right on the US doorstep, many critics are calling this plan little more than a return to the sweatshop practices that did little to improve the lives of Haitians when their textile industry was booming. Currently garment workers earn $3 per day and work six day weeks. The Haitian Parliament tried to increase the minimum wage to $5 per day but Preval backed down when the existing garment manufacturers who produce for the US complained.
full article via
THE HUFFINGTON POST
Haitian Garment Workers Should Get At Least $5 A Day
By Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy
Americans want to help Haiti; Democrats control the U.S. Congress; the Haitian Parliament has passed legislation saying Haitian workers should be paid at least $5 a day; and specific legislation that provides preferential access to the U.S. market to garments from Haiti is already U.S. law. Therefore, the following policy reform ought to be a slam dunk: Haitian garment workers whose products receive preferential access to the U.S. market under the HOPE II Act ought to be paid at least $5 a day.
The international community is dusting off a plan to expand Haiti's low-wage garment assembly industry as a linchpin of recovery, AP reports. The Obama Administration is on board, encouraging U.S. retailers to obtain from Haiti at least onr percent of the clothes they sell. Garments are central an economic growth plan commissioned by the UN and promoted by former President Clinton, the UN's special envoy for Haiti.
In 2008, Congress passed the "HOPE II" Act, which lets Haiti export textiles duty-free to the U.S. for a decade.
Currently, the minimum wage in Haiti for garment workers who produce for the U.S. consumer market is $3.09 a day. Last year the Haitian Parliament passed legislation to raise the minimum wage for all workers from $1.72 a day to $5 a day. But factory owners in the export sector producing for the U.S. consumer market complained to Haitian President Preval, and he refused to implement the law. A compromise was reached: the minimum wage is now $5, except for the garment workers; they get $3.09 a day.
AP gives the example of Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca, a garment worker:
Rebeca ... guides a piece of suit-jacket wool and its silky lining into a sewing machine...If she does this for eight hours, she will earn $3.09. Her boss will ship the pinstriped suit she helped make to the United States, tariff-free. There a shopper will buy it from JoS. A. Bank Clothiers for $550.
AP says that even the factory owners concede that garment-industry wages are too low to feed, clothe and house workers and their families.
As for Rebeca:
Rebeca ... sleeps on the street and barely eats. With a day's pay she can buy a cupful of rice and transport via group taxi, and pay down debt on her now-destroyed apartment. Anything left over goes to cell phone minutes to call her boyfriend, who was evacuated to the Dominican Republic with a leg fracture sustained in the quake, or her 4-year-old son, Mike, whom she sent to live with relatives in the countryside.
Should a worker in Haiti whose job is supported by U.S. consumer demand, whose product has preferential access to the U.S. consumer market, be forced to live like this?
The U.S. Congress could raise Rebeca's daily wage from $3.09 to $5 - a 60% increase - simply by enacting into U.S. law the benchmark established by the Haitian Parliament. Indeed, it is likely that if Democrats in Congress merely signaled their willingness to enact this benchmark into law, Haitian parliamentarians could do the rest. They could go to President Preval and say: "Look, the Americans want this." And President Preval would have to listen.
Suppose that it takes Rebeca a day to produce that suit, an assumption that the AP article seems to imply is plausible. Is it too much to ask that she get an extra $2 for making a $550 suit? If we could ask the customer in the U.S. who purchased the suit for $550 for a $2 donation so Rebeca could have something to eat, how many people would say no?
Following the earthquake, the U.S. granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the U.S. One of the arguments in favor of doing this was that remittances from Haitian workers in the U.S. support people in Haiti, and this support was even more needed now in the wake of the earthquake. Doesn't this logic also apply to increasing the wages of workers in Haiti supplying the U.S. consumer market? Wouldn't this be a straightforward way to get U.S. dollars into deserving hands close to the ground?
We have a principle in the U.S. - not always honored in practice - that if you work full-time, you ought to be able to feed and clothe yourself and put a roof over your head. This principle ought to apply to workers in Haiti who produce for the U.S. consumer market.
This is a policy that labor, aid and Haiti solidarity groups should be able to unite on. Labor wants to raise labor standards. Aid groups want trade to support development. These are two great tastes that would taste great together.
Establishing this policy would set a good precedent. U.S.-supported international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have long used their influence to obstruct government efforts to raise wages in countries like Haiti. But the IMF has recently reversed itself on other long-held dogmas - embracing capital controls and moderate inflation in developing countries, for example. If the IMF can re-think capital controls and moderate inflation, maybe it can re-think starvation wages.
Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman
full article via
THE HUFFINGTON POST
Haitian Garment Workers Should Get At Least $5 A Day
By Robert Naiman, Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy
Americans want to help Haiti; Democrats control the U.S. Congress; the Haitian Parliament has passed legislation saying Haitian workers should be paid at least $5 a day; and specific legislation that provides preferential access to the U.S. market to garments from Haiti is already U.S. law. Therefore, the following policy reform ought to be a slam dunk: Haitian garment workers whose products receive preferential access to the U.S. market under the HOPE II Act ought to be paid at least $5 a day.
The international community is dusting off a plan to expand Haiti's low-wage garment assembly industry as a linchpin of recovery, AP reports. The Obama Administration is on board, encouraging U.S. retailers to obtain from Haiti at least onr percent of the clothes they sell. Garments are central an economic growth plan commissioned by the UN and promoted by former President Clinton, the UN's special envoy for Haiti.
In 2008, Congress passed the "HOPE II" Act, which lets Haiti export textiles duty-free to the U.S. for a decade.
Currently, the minimum wage in Haiti for garment workers who produce for the U.S. consumer market is $3.09 a day. Last year the Haitian Parliament passed legislation to raise the minimum wage for all workers from $1.72 a day to $5 a day. But factory owners in the export sector producing for the U.S. consumer market complained to Haitian President Preval, and he refused to implement the law. A compromise was reached: the minimum wage is now $5, except for the garment workers; they get $3.09 a day.
AP gives the example of Jordanie Pinquie Rebeca, a garment worker:
Rebeca ... guides a piece of suit-jacket wool and its silky lining into a sewing machine...If she does this for eight hours, she will earn $3.09. Her boss will ship the pinstriped suit she helped make to the United States, tariff-free. There a shopper will buy it from JoS. A. Bank Clothiers for $550.
AP says that even the factory owners concede that garment-industry wages are too low to feed, clothe and house workers and their families.
As for Rebeca:
Rebeca ... sleeps on the street and barely eats. With a day's pay she can buy a cupful of rice and transport via group taxi, and pay down debt on her now-destroyed apartment. Anything left over goes to cell phone minutes to call her boyfriend, who was evacuated to the Dominican Republic with a leg fracture sustained in the quake, or her 4-year-old son, Mike, whom she sent to live with relatives in the countryside.
Should a worker in Haiti whose job is supported by U.S. consumer demand, whose product has preferential access to the U.S. consumer market, be forced to live like this?
The U.S. Congress could raise Rebeca's daily wage from $3.09 to $5 - a 60% increase - simply by enacting into U.S. law the benchmark established by the Haitian Parliament. Indeed, it is likely that if Democrats in Congress merely signaled their willingness to enact this benchmark into law, Haitian parliamentarians could do the rest. They could go to President Preval and say: "Look, the Americans want this." And President Preval would have to listen.
Suppose that it takes Rebeca a day to produce that suit, an assumption that the AP article seems to imply is plausible. Is it too much to ask that she get an extra $2 for making a $550 suit? If we could ask the customer in the U.S. who purchased the suit for $550 for a $2 donation so Rebeca could have something to eat, how many people would say no?
Following the earthquake, the U.S. granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the U.S. One of the arguments in favor of doing this was that remittances from Haitian workers in the U.S. support people in Haiti, and this support was even more needed now in the wake of the earthquake. Doesn't this logic also apply to increasing the wages of workers in Haiti supplying the U.S. consumer market? Wouldn't this be a straightforward way to get U.S. dollars into deserving hands close to the ground?
We have a principle in the U.S. - not always honored in practice - that if you work full-time, you ought to be able to feed and clothe yourself and put a roof over your head. This principle ought to apply to workers in Haiti who produce for the U.S. consumer market.
This is a policy that labor, aid and Haiti solidarity groups should be able to unite on. Labor wants to raise labor standards. Aid groups want trade to support development. These are two great tastes that would taste great together.
Establishing this policy would set a good precedent. U.S.-supported international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have long used their influence to obstruct government efforts to raise wages in countries like Haiti. But the IMF has recently reversed itself on other long-held dogmas - embracing capital controls and moderate inflation in developing countries, for example. If the IMF can re-think capital controls and moderate inflation, maybe it can re-think starvation wages.
Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman
Monday, March 22, 2010
MARCH 22: THUNDERSTORMS AND RAIN STRIKE FEAR INTO HAITI CAMPS, RED CROSS REPORT
full report via
AMERICAN RED CROSS
Thunderstorms And Rain Strike Fear Into Haiti Camps
By Alex Wynter
in the Champs De Mars, Port-au-Prince
Monday, March 22, 2010 — Early morning in the Champ de Mars plaza, downtown Port-au-Prince, one of the five biggest of the improvised settlements housing Haiti’s acutely vulnerable homeless population.
Hundreds of soaked, sleepless residents who lost their houses in the January 12 earthquake are lining up in the fading drizzle for a distribution run by the U.S. military.
Spectacular thunderstorms over Port-au-Prince the previous evening drenched the city and the hundreds of camps that fill its open spaces and cling to its hillsides.
About twelve hours of virtually unbroken rain followed overnight.
The Champ de Mars, where an estimated 16,000 people cluster in a mishmash of shelters in front of the ruined presidential palace, has become the most emblematic of all the quake settlements.
The statues of the great figures of Haiti’s past—Tooussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion, and the Marron inconnu—are still visible close up from the flimsy shelters of the people whose ancestors they helped liberate.
Filthy water
Across the paved plaza, the day after weather-watchers may judge the 2010 rainy season began, people are mopping up the filthy water that swept around their homes overnight—and into some.
There were no reports of casualties citywide; no major floods or landslides.
But across town at the Terrain Golf settlement—by far the biggest, housing nearly 40,000 displaced people—people were said to be frantically digging drainage channels with their bare hands.
All over Port-au-Prince, people in the improvised settlements adopted the now familiar tactic of standing up under their tarpaulins, clutching children and clothes and precious belongings as they waited for the deluge to end.
But a quick survey of several of the largest camps provided one small encouraging sign: the tarpaulins held. The ramshackle shelters did not collapse under the weight of water.
“As far as we know none of the tarps here gave way,” said Michel Louis, a civil engineer with the Haitian National Red Cross Society, who supervises humanitarian projects at the Automeca camp, near the Red Cross base.
Gable top
Most of the tarp shelters at Automeca, for one, are constructed correctly—with a gable top, not a flat one.
Louis is sloshing his way round the camp with Jean Gilardi, team leader of the British Red Cross mass sanitation Emergency Response Unit (ERU), which has been working at Automeca, home to nearly 10,000 people, since the start.
The pair wrench their feet out of the gluey mud with every step, but to the delight of both, their new latrines are also intact.
“When we first came to Automeca in the immediate aftermath of the quake, we put in 60 pit-latrines with pre-fab cubicles—standard practice in an emergency,” says Gilardi. “But they’re vulnerable to flooding.
“As the rainy season approached, we rushed to start replacing the pit latrines with small, buried septic tanks that are more or less flood-proof.
“Now we’ve got eight new flood-proof latrines in, and with any luck the other 50-odd will be replaced within a few weeks—building up to a total of a hundred.”
Shelters
The humanitarian community had been hoping a significant number of quake-affected people would be moved from the desperately overcrowded settlements ahead of the rainy season, which is usually dated from April 1.
It isn’t going to happen.
There has been some movement on the crucial land issue in recent weeks. Surveying work has begun at two of the five locations named by the government as resettlement sites.
Last Saturday saw the official opening of the first new transitional settlement for 1,400 people at Santo 17 in Croix des Bouquets, on land made available by the local authorities.
The Red Cross, meanwhile, is negotiating with mayors for agreement to start building emergency “core” shelters—12-square-metre wood-frame houses—at several small sites in Port-au-Prince.
Deadly flood
“Clearly we shared the hope that people could be moved in time,” said Iain Logan, head of operations for the global Red Cross network in Haiti.
“But as the Red Cross we have to stand ready to help people wherever they are—even if that means wading through mud to get to them.
“And we may have to do just that.”
Haiti has already seen one deadly flood this year after heavy rain swept through the western end of the southern promontory, leaving parts of the city of Les Cayes under five feet of water and claiming at least 12 lives.
Blocked storm drains and sewers were thought to have made those floods worse.
About the American Red Cross:
The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies nearly half of the nation's blood; teaches lifesaving skills; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a charitable organization — not a government agency — and depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit www.redcross.org or join our blog at http://blog.redcross.org.
AMERICAN RED CROSS
Thunderstorms And Rain Strike Fear Into Haiti Camps
By Alex Wynter
in the Champs De Mars, Port-au-Prince
Monday, March 22, 2010 — Early morning in the Champ de Mars plaza, downtown Port-au-Prince, one of the five biggest of the improvised settlements housing Haiti’s acutely vulnerable homeless population.
Hundreds of soaked, sleepless residents who lost their houses in the January 12 earthquake are lining up in the fading drizzle for a distribution run by the U.S. military.
Spectacular thunderstorms over Port-au-Prince the previous evening drenched the city and the hundreds of camps that fill its open spaces and cling to its hillsides.
About twelve hours of virtually unbroken rain followed overnight.
The Champ de Mars, where an estimated 16,000 people cluster in a mishmash of shelters in front of the ruined presidential palace, has become the most emblematic of all the quake settlements.
The statues of the great figures of Haiti’s past—Tooussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion, and the Marron inconnu—are still visible close up from the flimsy shelters of the people whose ancestors they helped liberate.
Filthy water
Across the paved plaza, the day after weather-watchers may judge the 2010 rainy season began, people are mopping up the filthy water that swept around their homes overnight—and into some.
There were no reports of casualties citywide; no major floods or landslides.
But across town at the Terrain Golf settlement—by far the biggest, housing nearly 40,000 displaced people—people were said to be frantically digging drainage channels with their bare hands.
All over Port-au-Prince, people in the improvised settlements adopted the now familiar tactic of standing up under their tarpaulins, clutching children and clothes and precious belongings as they waited for the deluge to end.
But a quick survey of several of the largest camps provided one small encouraging sign: the tarpaulins held. The ramshackle shelters did not collapse under the weight of water.
“As far as we know none of the tarps here gave way,” said Michel Louis, a civil engineer with the Haitian National Red Cross Society, who supervises humanitarian projects at the Automeca camp, near the Red Cross base.
Gable top
Most of the tarp shelters at Automeca, for one, are constructed correctly—with a gable top, not a flat one.
Louis is sloshing his way round the camp with Jean Gilardi, team leader of the British Red Cross mass sanitation Emergency Response Unit (ERU), which has been working at Automeca, home to nearly 10,000 people, since the start.
The pair wrench their feet out of the gluey mud with every step, but to the delight of both, their new latrines are also intact.
“When we first came to Automeca in the immediate aftermath of the quake, we put in 60 pit-latrines with pre-fab cubicles—standard practice in an emergency,” says Gilardi. “But they’re vulnerable to flooding.
“As the rainy season approached, we rushed to start replacing the pit latrines with small, buried septic tanks that are more or less flood-proof.
“Now we’ve got eight new flood-proof latrines in, and with any luck the other 50-odd will be replaced within a few weeks—building up to a total of a hundred.”
Shelters
The humanitarian community had been hoping a significant number of quake-affected people would be moved from the desperately overcrowded settlements ahead of the rainy season, which is usually dated from April 1.
It isn’t going to happen.
There has been some movement on the crucial land issue in recent weeks. Surveying work has begun at two of the five locations named by the government as resettlement sites.
Last Saturday saw the official opening of the first new transitional settlement for 1,400 people at Santo 17 in Croix des Bouquets, on land made available by the local authorities.
The Red Cross, meanwhile, is negotiating with mayors for agreement to start building emergency “core” shelters—12-square-metre wood-frame houses—at several small sites in Port-au-Prince.
Deadly flood
“Clearly we shared the hope that people could be moved in time,” said Iain Logan, head of operations for the global Red Cross network in Haiti.
“But as the Red Cross we have to stand ready to help people wherever they are—even if that means wading through mud to get to them.
“And we may have to do just that.”
Haiti has already seen one deadly flood this year after heavy rain swept through the western end of the southern promontory, leaving parts of the city of Les Cayes under five feet of water and claiming at least 12 lives.
Blocked storm drains and sewers were thought to have made those floods worse.
About the American Red Cross:
The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies nearly half of the nation's blood; teaches lifesaving skills; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a charitable organization — not a government agency — and depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit www.redcross.org or join our blog at http://blog.redcross.org.
MAR 22: CLINTON PUSHES TEXTILE INDUSTRY AND TRADE FOR HAITI RECOVERY, REUTERS
REUTERS, Improved U.S. Terms For Haiti Textile Imports Sought
article details:
- Former President Bill Clinton is the UN's coordinator of relief efforts.
- He visited Haiti with ex-President George Bush on Monday.
- Clinton is seeking changes to U.S. trade laws to change the cap on Haiti textile imports.
- He wants to attract foreign investors to Haiti's apparel sector.
- Bill Clinton told Haiti's Preval ""We pledged to do what we could to get the changes adopted by Congress that would enable you to make maximum use of this law, and that I think could create more than 100,000 jobs in Haiti in short order."
related articles offering a different point of view on this economic recovery plan:
Mark Schuller via Huffington Post, Clearing The Rubble, Including The Old Plan For Haiti
Tope Folarin via Common Dreams, Sweatshops Won't Save Haiti
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
MAR 19: "WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME", RAIN HITS A CAMP OF 45,000 QUAKE SURVIVORS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
article details
- 1.3 million people homeless
- rains starting to hit Haiti, causing swamping of camps wrecking makeshift tents and latrines
- disease outbreak looms due to lack of proper sanitation
- there is standing water and mud in massive camp sites
- for two months the Haitian government and the UN have not been able to secure relocation sites from the landowners of Haiti
ASSOCIATED PRESS / THE WASHINGTON POST
Heavy Rains Swamp Camps Holding Haiti's Homeless
By Mike Melia
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- One of the heaviest rainfalls since Haiti's Jan. 12 earthquake swamped homeless camps Friday, sweeping screaming residents into eddies of water, overflowing latrines and panicking thousands.
The overnight downpour sent water coursing down the slopes of a former golf course that now serves as a temporary home for about 45,000 people.
There were no reports of deaths in the camp, a town-size maze of blue, orange and silver tarps located behind the country club used by the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne as a forward-operating base.
But the deluge terrified families who just two months ago survived the collapse of their homes in the magnitude-7 earthquake and are now struggling to make do in tent-and-tarp camps that officials have repeatedly said must be relocated.
"I was on one side (of the tarp), the children were on the other side and I was trying to push the water out," Jackquine Exama, a 34-year-old mother of seven, said through tears.
"I'm not used to this," she said.
Aid workers said people were swept screaming into eddies of water and flows ripped down tents an Israeli aid group is using to teach school.
"They were crying. There was just fear down there. It was chaos," said Jim Wilson of the aid group Praecipio, who came running from his own shelter up the hill when he heard the screams.
After the sun rose Friday, people used sticks and their bare hands to dig drainage ditches around their tarps and shanties.
Marie Elba Sylvie, 50, could not decide whether it was worth repairing damage to her lean-to of scrap wood and plastic.
"It could be fixed but when it rains again it will be the same problem," said the 50-year-old mother of four.
Standing water and mud also pervaded a tarp-and-tent city on the outskirts of Cite Soleil, several miles away. Residents waded through the shallow flood collecting their belongings.
Officials know they must move many of the 1.3 million people displaced by the earthquake before the rainy season starts in earnest in April. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the golf-course camp Sunday that the people living there were in particular danger.
But after two months of searching and wrangling with landowners, the government has still not opened any of the five promised relocation sites that are better able to withstand rain and aftershocks on the capital's northeastern outskirts.
Aid groups are also struggling to open their own camps.
"It's been frustrating to us because we need to have those sites in order to build something ... better. Until we can do that people have no incentive to move," U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes told The Associated Press during Ban's visit.
"We're running out of time, honestly," Holmes said.
---
Associated Press Writer Jonathan M. Katz and Associated Press Photographer Ramon Espinosa contributed to this report.
MAR 19: IT IS "TOO LATE"
full article via
THE SYNDEY MORNING HERALD / AFP
Too Late To Avert Second Haiti Disaster
Despite billions of US dollars in pledges and an unprecedented humanitarian drive, it is likely too late to avert a second disaster in quake-hit Haiti, a top US aid co-ordinator has warned.
Tents and tarpaulins are simply not enough to protect tens of thousands of Haitians from the coming rains and hurricanes, and a new wave of quake survivors could perish in a second "catastrophe", InterAction chief Sam Worthington predicted.
"Having observed camps on very steep slopes and that you cannot simply relocate hundreds of thousands of people easily, we anticipate that the rainy season will lead, to a certain degree, to another catastrophe that despite the hard work of the international community will be hard to avoid," he told AFP.
"Deaths, landslides and so forth," he explained, adding: "What we can do is work with the UN to create shelters that people can find refuge in, but there simply isn't the time."
In Haiti for a week for meetings with top government officials, including President Rene Preval, Worthington is co-ordinating the massive US NGO effort but is realistic about what can be achieved.
"We're in a race against time and even though a large number of people will be moved, I do anticipate that, sadly, many will be affected by the fact that they are living in areas that are dangerous.
"One could get a tent, one could get plastic sheeting but to get people in temporary shelter in such a way that it will withstand a hurricane or rains and ultimately rebuild, we are talking about an effort that will take years."
Teams from the International Organisation for Migration are laboriously trawling hundreds of camps to register the particulars of each family, while other UN agencies draw up emergency plans for flood and hurricane prevention.
Some 218,000 Haitians are deemed to be in "red camps", those considered at gravest flood risk, and the race is on to find them alternative shelter before the rain and possibly calamitous landslides.
There have already been a few nights of torrential downpours in the past week and sustained rains could spell disaster in Port-au-Prince where countless people subsist in wretched conditions perched on treacherous slopes.
"Our community is talking about a second disaster happening when the rains hit," said Worthington. "I am not sure to what extent that can be avoided."
"Unfortunately, many of the camps are in areas that have no drainage whatsoever and many of the shelters are on slopes that are 20 degrees or steeper," he told AFP after a briefing at the UN logistics base.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti as dusk fell on January 12 was one of the worst natural disasters of modern times, if not the worst. It left at least 220,000 people dead and affected three million Haitians.
© 2010 AFP
THE SYNDEY MORNING HERALD / AFP
Too Late To Avert Second Haiti Disaster
Despite billions of US dollars in pledges and an unprecedented humanitarian drive, it is likely too late to avert a second disaster in quake-hit Haiti, a top US aid co-ordinator has warned.
Tents and tarpaulins are simply not enough to protect tens of thousands of Haitians from the coming rains and hurricanes, and a new wave of quake survivors could perish in a second "catastrophe", InterAction chief Sam Worthington predicted.
"Having observed camps on very steep slopes and that you cannot simply relocate hundreds of thousands of people easily, we anticipate that the rainy season will lead, to a certain degree, to another catastrophe that despite the hard work of the international community will be hard to avoid," he told AFP.
"Deaths, landslides and so forth," he explained, adding: "What we can do is work with the UN to create shelters that people can find refuge in, but there simply isn't the time."
In Haiti for a week for meetings with top government officials, including President Rene Preval, Worthington is co-ordinating the massive US NGO effort but is realistic about what can be achieved.
"We're in a race against time and even though a large number of people will be moved, I do anticipate that, sadly, many will be affected by the fact that they are living in areas that are dangerous.
"One could get a tent, one could get plastic sheeting but to get people in temporary shelter in such a way that it will withstand a hurricane or rains and ultimately rebuild, we are talking about an effort that will take years."
Teams from the International Organisation for Migration are laboriously trawling hundreds of camps to register the particulars of each family, while other UN agencies draw up emergency plans for flood and hurricane prevention.
Some 218,000 Haitians are deemed to be in "red camps", those considered at gravest flood risk, and the race is on to find them alternative shelter before the rain and possibly calamitous landslides.
There have already been a few nights of torrential downpours in the past week and sustained rains could spell disaster in Port-au-Prince where countless people subsist in wretched conditions perched on treacherous slopes.
"Our community is talking about a second disaster happening when the rains hit," said Worthington. "I am not sure to what extent that can be avoided."
"Unfortunately, many of the camps are in areas that have no drainage whatsoever and many of the shelters are on slopes that are 20 degrees or steeper," he told AFP after a briefing at the UN logistics base.
The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti as dusk fell on January 12 was one of the worst natural disasters of modern times, if not the worst. It left at least 220,000 people dead and affected three million Haitians.
© 2010 AFP
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
MAR 17: PHOTOGRAPHY_"TENT CITY" BY LA TIMES
With the rains approaching and threatening to bring even more tragedy to those living in the vast tent cities of Haiti, a link to the LA TIMES photography story from late January seems appropriate to post now.
A Haitian boy flies a kite above the Daihatsu camp, which is named for an adjoining car dealership. The tent city marches up a rocky, snake-infested hillside not far from the Port-au-Prince airport. Photograph by Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES TIMES, Audio Slide Show "Tent City"
A Haitian boy flies a kite above the Daihatsu camp, which is named for an adjoining car dealership. The tent city marches up a rocky, snake-infested hillside not far from the Port-au-Prince airport. Photograph by Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles TimesLOS ANGELES TIMES, Audio Slide Show "Tent City"
MAR 17: STORM CLOUDS ON HAITI HORIZON
full article via
COMMON DREAMS / TORONTO STAR
Storm Clouds On Haiti Horizon Threaten Earthquake Refugees
By Kenneth Kidd
PORT-AU-PRINCE – With the United Nations and aid agencies still scrambling to provide adequate shelter for those displaced by the earthquake, the potential for a second major crisis looms with the imminent arrival of torrential rains.
A woman stands next to makeshift tents at a camp set up for earthquake survivors left homeless in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010, one month after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) More than 200,000 people in Port-au-Prince are living in makeshift camps that sit on flood plains, ahead of a rainy season that typically begins in earnest in April.
But work only started Monday preparing the first of five new sites outside the city where those most at risk could be relocated.
And the Haitian government is still in negotiations to purchase or lease three of those sites from their private landowners, UN officials say.
It generally takes 4 to 6 weeks to prepare a new site, which includes setting up drainage and sanitation facilities.
"It's a huge challenge," says UN spokesperson Kristen Knutsen. "It's going to be a massive campaign."
The UN hopes to have the first new site ready by April 15.
In an average year, this part of Haiti gets close to 400 mm of rain during April and May.
The UN has identified 21 existing camps in the city that are at varying degrees of risk. No estimates were as yet available on how many people could be similarly vulnerable elsewhere in Haiti.
Some at-risk sites could be stabilized with berms and other ways of diverting floodwaters, allowing some or all of the inhabitants to stay if they wish, depending on the site.
Others have been deemed completely unsafe, but UN officials refuse to identify those sites – or the number of people affected – for fear of creating panic.
In total, the new camps outside the city will only have the capacity to take in about 100,000 people.
So the UN is also encouraging those in flood-threatened camps to consider other options. These include moving in with friends or relatives, or going back to the original site of their ruined homes and erecting new shelters there.
Yet there could be other complications.
Many of the concrete floodways that do exist within the city, ones aimed at carrying heavy rainwater safely away, are now filled with all manner of refuse as impromptu dumpsites.
The magnitude-7 quake hit Haiti Jan. 12.
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2010
COMMON DREAMS / TORONTO STAR
Storm Clouds On Haiti Horizon Threaten Earthquake Refugees
By Kenneth Kidd
PORT-AU-PRINCE – With the United Nations and aid agencies still scrambling to provide adequate shelter for those displaced by the earthquake, the potential for a second major crisis looms with the imminent arrival of torrential rains.
A woman stands next to makeshift tents at a camp set up for earthquake survivors left homeless in Port-au-Prince, Tuesday Feb. 16, 2010, one month after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) More than 200,000 people in Port-au-Prince are living in makeshift camps that sit on flood plains, ahead of a rainy season that typically begins in earnest in April.
But work only started Monday preparing the first of five new sites outside the city where those most at risk could be relocated.
And the Haitian government is still in negotiations to purchase or lease three of those sites from their private landowners, UN officials say.
It generally takes 4 to 6 weeks to prepare a new site, which includes setting up drainage and sanitation facilities.
"It's a huge challenge," says UN spokesperson Kristen Knutsen. "It's going to be a massive campaign."
The UN hopes to have the first new site ready by April 15.
In an average year, this part of Haiti gets close to 400 mm of rain during April and May.
The UN has identified 21 existing camps in the city that are at varying degrees of risk. No estimates were as yet available on how many people could be similarly vulnerable elsewhere in Haiti.
Some at-risk sites could be stabilized with berms and other ways of diverting floodwaters, allowing some or all of the inhabitants to stay if they wish, depending on the site.
Others have been deemed completely unsafe, but UN officials refuse to identify those sites – or the number of people affected – for fear of creating panic.
In total, the new camps outside the city will only have the capacity to take in about 100,000 people.
So the UN is also encouraging those in flood-threatened camps to consider other options. These include moving in with friends or relatives, or going back to the original site of their ruined homes and erecting new shelters there.
Yet there could be other complications.
Many of the concrete floodways that do exist within the city, ones aimed at carrying heavy rainwater safely away, are now filled with all manner of refuse as impromptu dumpsites.
The magnitude-7 quake hit Haiti Jan. 12.
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2010
MAR 17: USNS COMFORT MAKES RETURN TO THE USA
full article via
BALTIMORE SUN / AP
Hundreds of Navy personnel have disembarked from the hospital ship USNS Comfort in Norfolk, Va., as it returns from a seven-week mission treating earthquake victims in Haiti. The hospital ship arrived at Naval Station Norfolk on Saturday. It's scheduled to leave Thursday and arrive at its home port in Baltimore on Friday. Navy officials say 500 of the ship's 700 personnel disembarked over the weekend.
Hundreds of Navy personnel have disembarked from the hospital ship USNS Comfort in Norfolk, Va., as it returns from a seven-week mission treating earthquake victims in Haiti. The hospital ship arrived at Naval Station Norfolk on Saturday. It's scheduled to leave Thursday and arrive at its home port in Baltimore on Friday. Navy officials say 500 of the ship's 700 personnel disembarked over the weekend.
MAR 17: "A RACE AGAINST TIME" SAYS UN SEC-GEN BAN KI-MOON
via DEMOCRACY NOW
statement from the head of the UN on Haiti's upcoming rainy season:UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
“So far, we have distributed tents and tarpaulins to nearly 700,000 people among 1.3 million displaced persons. We will reach the rest by the end of next month. We have also identified five alternative sites around the capital, where we can move IDPs and where they will be safer and better cared for. But let me be clear, we are in a race against time.”
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
MAR 16: "NEWS FILLED WITH FEAR AND DESPAIR", WORLDPRESS ON HAITI'S URGENT SITUATION TWO MONTHS AFTER JAN 12
article stats:
- 230,000 deaths from the earthquake.
- 1.2 million people homeless
- 280,000 orphans before the quake with 20,000 additional after
- 6,000 to 8,000 lost limbs from the quake, number could rise due to lack of post-op care
- 700 teachers, staff and principals were killed, the education system is in collapse
- only half of all Haitians will see the inside of a classroom
full article via
WORLDPRESS
Haiti's Rising Urgency
By Teri Schure
Two months after a 7.3 magnitude quake struck Haiti on January 12, leaving approximately 230,000 people dead and more than 1.2 million people homeless, there are many questions. How are the people coping? Is the aid getting through? Where will Haiti's displaced people find new homes, and how fast will they get there?
In order to get some answers, I combed through the international press, and I was dismayed at the lack of updated information. After reaching out to Worldpress readers through Twitter, asking for Haiti updates, I received hundreds of emails from Haitians and visitors to the country, and they all expressed that the situation in Haiti grows more urgent with each passing day.
While some of the emails were full of hope, many were full of fear and despair. One aid worker stressed the dire need for humanitarian help, especially as seasonal rains could threaten those left homeless with an outbreak of disease.
An orphanage worker said that there were 280,000 orphans before the disaster struck, and now an estimated 20,000 or more since. More than two months later, thousands of children are still separated from their parents. Aid is still desperately needed in some of the more remote areas in Haiti, and one email mentioned that machete-armed gangs are still lurking about.
In early March, the Batey Relief Alliance sent a team of dental and medical specialists from the United States to barely accessible communities like Anse-a-Pitre to deliver much-needed dental and medical care to children and their families living in horrendous conditions. Many Haitians are living in inaccessible communities and are completely isolated from medical services and international aid.
The emails from and about amputees were the hardest to read. According to one, between 6,000 and 8,000 people have lost limbs, and the numbers continue to grow as people suffer untreated infections. Thousands more suffered complicated fractures, some of which could turn into amputations if not managed properly.
A recent amputee was full of fear because the disabled are often treated as pariahs and isolated from society in Haiti. "Disabilities are ridiculed and thought of as a curse," she wrote.
One man said that in Haiti three out of four people are unemployed, and the work that does exist requires physical labor, making the situation very scary for him. He said that he couldn't get work when he had two legs, so how would he survive with just one? "You are a not a person if you are handicapped," he wrote.
Haiti, a country of 9 million that had limited capacity to treat an estimated 800,000 disabled people before the quake, lost two of its three prosthetics labs when the buildings were destroyed or damaged. A smaller lab remains in the south, but it desperately needs materials to make prosthetic devices.
Many amputees remain in fly-swarming hospital tents, and those who have been discharged have little hope, with no rehabilitation facilities, few physical therapists, and no chance of getting a prosthesis. A scant supply of crutches, canes and wheelchairs are trickling in through donations, but there are few paved roads, making navigating a wheelchair nearly impossible.
Michel Pean, Haiti's secretary of state for the integration of the disabled, recently said that Haiti's disabled—about 8 percent of the population even before the quake—had long been treated as second-class citizens, but the government has recently taken legal steps to recognize their rights and opened offices to serve them in the countryside. Ideally, Pean said, post-earthquake reconstruction could provide the impetus to make Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, more accessible to the disabled and create a national institute for rehabilitation.
For the moment, the focus is on making sure the thousands who underwent lifesaving amputations have a future.
"The situation for newly disabled persons is very delicate," Pean said. "They urgently need not only medical care, but food and a place to live. Also, we cannot forget those disabled before the disaster who, because of their handicap, are having trouble getting access to humanitarian aid."
"Haiti is trying to go back to normality, but several years will pass before everything goes back to the way it was before January 12," one aid worker wrote. "And excuse my negativity, but the way the Haitians lived before January 12 shouldn't really be considered normal."
Thanks to international aid, thousands of families have received tarps or tents that give them shelter, but it is not nearly enough given the huge demand, and many men and women wander around the city looking for wood, brass or nylon to build weak living structures they sadly call home. Families who aren't as lucky to find building materials simply form tents out of bed sheets.
Almost all the capital's parks, soccer fields, school yards and even a country-club golf course in suburban Pétionville are packed with people living in flimsy structures under terrible conditions. They have no water, electricity or a sanitation system that could prevent the spread of epidemics.
Haiti's inhabitants, as well as its authorities, are more concerned about the upcoming hurricane season, which begins on June 1, than rain, since none of the provisional settlements have conditions to withstand the strong winds of a hurricane. Despite the efforts of the international community, thousands of Haitians will have no shelter during the hurricane season.
Around 200,000 tents have been delivered in Haiti, and the number might reach 240,000, but those shelters are too weak to deal with tropical cyclones. The massive distribution of tarps—and to a much lesser extent, tents—has reached 53 percent of the 1.3 million people in need of shelter, according to a March 11 U.N. report.
Educators say that classes do not have a set date to begin. They were supposed to start by April, which would be almost impossible since more than 80 percent of the schools in the earthquake zone were destroyed or severely damaged. Nearly 4,000 students and more than 700 teachers, principals and staff were killed during afternoon classes. All that's left of the Ministry of Education's main building is a crater filled with torn workbooks and lost teachers' ID cards.
A petition has been delivered to President Preval demanding that schools reopen immediately, be they in tents, temporary buildings or other makeshift facilities. But others are urging caution before rushing back into a system that never really worked in the first place. The problems are monumental: Just one in 10 Haitian teachers is a qualified educator, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, and a third have not even completed ninth grade.
The government is unable to support more than a handful of schools, leaving the system dominated by fly-by-night, for-profit storefront schools whose onerous fees and other costs keep half of Haiti's children from enrolling at any given time. Wealthy Haitians and foreigners opt out entirely, putting their children in upscale schools that cost some $8,000 per year—more than most Haitians will spend on food and basic necessities in 20 years.
Buildings were so unsafe that one school collapsed on its own in 2008, killing 100 students and adults. Two months after the earthquake, Port-au-Prince still has thousands of constructions that are partly destroyed or about to roll down the hillsides.
Another devastating reality is that Haiti's best and brightest were lost in the earthquake. They were the educated few of Haiti, an up-and-coming generation of nurses, technicians, office managers and college students. These people kept the books, educated the young, fixed the computers and were an integral part of building up Haiti. Now they're gone, just when their struggling country needs them most. Because the earthquake struck just before 5:00 pm, it annihilated office buildings and disproportionately killed the young professionals who were working in them. "So many of those bright young people who were going the extra mile to make Haiti work were crushed at their desks," a nurse wrote me.
"It is a generation that decided not to leave the country. They chose to work for the country," said Dieusibon Pierre-Merite, a Haitian sociologist with a United Nations anti-gang program that lost several staffers in the quake. "They are the ones who died." It will impact our culture, the future of Haiti."
The list of those lost is long. It includes judges who investigated violations of law in a country where street justice still rules; the Foreign Ministry's point man on relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic; at least 10 agronomists working at the agricultural ministry to restore Haiti's farm sector; and three of Haiti's leading women's rights advocates, Magalie Marcelin, Myriam Merlet and Anne Marie Coriolan.
Preparations for the next disaster will have to go on without Ginna Porcena, the dynamic director of the National Geospatial Institute, who was part of a group of scientists who wanted to establish seismology stations in Haiti. The earthquake also killed many foreign aid workers and businesspeople who cared deeply about Haiti and would have been the first to pitch in after the disaster. The United Nations lost 101 staffers, including the mission's top two officials.
Compounding the loss of Haiti's best and brightest is a quickening brain drain, as people with the ability and means to leave are abandoning the ravaged country. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press he has watched with dismay as educated youths boarded planes to the United States and elsewhere. They leave because Haiti, always a difficult place to live, became impossible after the quake, he said.
"I was looking at their faces: They were escaping a country and they had no intention to go back," Bellerive said. "I feel love for the people that have lost family ... but I believe it's even harder for the country to see living people that could do so much to rebuild Haiti, leaving Haiti."
Only half of Haitians ever see the inside of a classroom, and only 2 percent complete high school, according to UNICEF.
Haiti has gone through such losses of talent before, usually in times of political upheaval. Many fled or were killed under the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorships from 1957 to 1986. People also escaped reprisals under the U.S.-backed junta of General Raoul Cedras in the early 1990s, under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and in the violent chaos that followed Aristide's 2004 ouster.
But the losses this time are far more significant. The destruction was so widespread and instantaneous—gutting the capital and its institutions at precisely the moment when help, guidance and new ideas were most needed—that the absence will be felt for decades.
One email asked if I knew what preparations would be made to arrange a presidential contest before President Préval's term expires early next year. Most if not all polling stations in the quake zone were damaged or destroyed, and the hundreds of thousands of voters who were not killed were displaced or left without ID cards.
Most of the emails I received contained more questions than updates. Who will take care of the orphaned children? Where will Haitians live? When will the children be able to go back to school? What will happen to the amputees? Is the departure of U.S. troops a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people? With each week, and a looming spring rainy season that could bring devastating flooding to low-lying camps, the answers to those questions grow more urgent.
Ms. Teri Schure is the founder of Worldpress.org, lectures on issues pertaining to publishing, and is a consultant in the magazine, web development and marketing industries.
- 230,000 deaths from the earthquake.
- 1.2 million people homeless
- 280,000 orphans before the quake with 20,000 additional after
- 6,000 to 8,000 lost limbs from the quake, number could rise due to lack of post-op care
- 700 teachers, staff and principals were killed, the education system is in collapse
- only half of all Haitians will see the inside of a classroom
full article via
WORLDPRESS
Haiti's Rising Urgency
By Teri Schure
Two months after a 7.3 magnitude quake struck Haiti on January 12, leaving approximately 230,000 people dead and more than 1.2 million people homeless, there are many questions. How are the people coping? Is the aid getting through? Where will Haiti's displaced people find new homes, and how fast will they get there?
In order to get some answers, I combed through the international press, and I was dismayed at the lack of updated information. After reaching out to Worldpress readers through Twitter, asking for Haiti updates, I received hundreds of emails from Haitians and visitors to the country, and they all expressed that the situation in Haiti grows more urgent with each passing day.
While some of the emails were full of hope, many were full of fear and despair. One aid worker stressed the dire need for humanitarian help, especially as seasonal rains could threaten those left homeless with an outbreak of disease.
An orphanage worker said that there were 280,000 orphans before the disaster struck, and now an estimated 20,000 or more since. More than two months later, thousands of children are still separated from their parents. Aid is still desperately needed in some of the more remote areas in Haiti, and one email mentioned that machete-armed gangs are still lurking about.
In early March, the Batey Relief Alliance sent a team of dental and medical specialists from the United States to barely accessible communities like Anse-a-Pitre to deliver much-needed dental and medical care to children and their families living in horrendous conditions. Many Haitians are living in inaccessible communities and are completely isolated from medical services and international aid.
The emails from and about amputees were the hardest to read. According to one, between 6,000 and 8,000 people have lost limbs, and the numbers continue to grow as people suffer untreated infections. Thousands more suffered complicated fractures, some of which could turn into amputations if not managed properly.
A recent amputee was full of fear because the disabled are often treated as pariahs and isolated from society in Haiti. "Disabilities are ridiculed and thought of as a curse," she wrote.
One man said that in Haiti three out of four people are unemployed, and the work that does exist requires physical labor, making the situation very scary for him. He said that he couldn't get work when he had two legs, so how would he survive with just one? "You are a not a person if you are handicapped," he wrote.
Haiti, a country of 9 million that had limited capacity to treat an estimated 800,000 disabled people before the quake, lost two of its three prosthetics labs when the buildings were destroyed or damaged. A smaller lab remains in the south, but it desperately needs materials to make prosthetic devices.
Many amputees remain in fly-swarming hospital tents, and those who have been discharged have little hope, with no rehabilitation facilities, few physical therapists, and no chance of getting a prosthesis. A scant supply of crutches, canes and wheelchairs are trickling in through donations, but there are few paved roads, making navigating a wheelchair nearly impossible.
Michel Pean, Haiti's secretary of state for the integration of the disabled, recently said that Haiti's disabled—about 8 percent of the population even before the quake—had long been treated as second-class citizens, but the government has recently taken legal steps to recognize their rights and opened offices to serve them in the countryside. Ideally, Pean said, post-earthquake reconstruction could provide the impetus to make Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, more accessible to the disabled and create a national institute for rehabilitation.
For the moment, the focus is on making sure the thousands who underwent lifesaving amputations have a future.
"The situation for newly disabled persons is very delicate," Pean said. "They urgently need not only medical care, but food and a place to live. Also, we cannot forget those disabled before the disaster who, because of their handicap, are having trouble getting access to humanitarian aid."
"Haiti is trying to go back to normality, but several years will pass before everything goes back to the way it was before January 12," one aid worker wrote. "And excuse my negativity, but the way the Haitians lived before January 12 shouldn't really be considered normal."
Thanks to international aid, thousands of families have received tarps or tents that give them shelter, but it is not nearly enough given the huge demand, and many men and women wander around the city looking for wood, brass or nylon to build weak living structures they sadly call home. Families who aren't as lucky to find building materials simply form tents out of bed sheets.
Almost all the capital's parks, soccer fields, school yards and even a country-club golf course in suburban Pétionville are packed with people living in flimsy structures under terrible conditions. They have no water, electricity or a sanitation system that could prevent the spread of epidemics.
Haiti's inhabitants, as well as its authorities, are more concerned about the upcoming hurricane season, which begins on June 1, than rain, since none of the provisional settlements have conditions to withstand the strong winds of a hurricane. Despite the efforts of the international community, thousands of Haitians will have no shelter during the hurricane season.
Around 200,000 tents have been delivered in Haiti, and the number might reach 240,000, but those shelters are too weak to deal with tropical cyclones. The massive distribution of tarps—and to a much lesser extent, tents—has reached 53 percent of the 1.3 million people in need of shelter, according to a March 11 U.N. report.
Educators say that classes do not have a set date to begin. They were supposed to start by April, which would be almost impossible since more than 80 percent of the schools in the earthquake zone were destroyed or severely damaged. Nearly 4,000 students and more than 700 teachers, principals and staff were killed during afternoon classes. All that's left of the Ministry of Education's main building is a crater filled with torn workbooks and lost teachers' ID cards.
A petition has been delivered to President Preval demanding that schools reopen immediately, be they in tents, temporary buildings or other makeshift facilities. But others are urging caution before rushing back into a system that never really worked in the first place. The problems are monumental: Just one in 10 Haitian teachers is a qualified educator, according to the Inter-American Development Bank, and a third have not even completed ninth grade.
The government is unable to support more than a handful of schools, leaving the system dominated by fly-by-night, for-profit storefront schools whose onerous fees and other costs keep half of Haiti's children from enrolling at any given time. Wealthy Haitians and foreigners opt out entirely, putting their children in upscale schools that cost some $8,000 per year—more than most Haitians will spend on food and basic necessities in 20 years.
Buildings were so unsafe that one school collapsed on its own in 2008, killing 100 students and adults. Two months after the earthquake, Port-au-Prince still has thousands of constructions that are partly destroyed or about to roll down the hillsides.
Another devastating reality is that Haiti's best and brightest were lost in the earthquake. They were the educated few of Haiti, an up-and-coming generation of nurses, technicians, office managers and college students. These people kept the books, educated the young, fixed the computers and were an integral part of building up Haiti. Now they're gone, just when their struggling country needs them most. Because the earthquake struck just before 5:00 pm, it annihilated office buildings and disproportionately killed the young professionals who were working in them. "So many of those bright young people who were going the extra mile to make Haiti work were crushed at their desks," a nurse wrote me.
"It is a generation that decided not to leave the country. They chose to work for the country," said Dieusibon Pierre-Merite, a Haitian sociologist with a United Nations anti-gang program that lost several staffers in the quake. "They are the ones who died." It will impact our culture, the future of Haiti."
The list of those lost is long. It includes judges who investigated violations of law in a country where street justice still rules; the Foreign Ministry's point man on relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic; at least 10 agronomists working at the agricultural ministry to restore Haiti's farm sector; and three of Haiti's leading women's rights advocates, Magalie Marcelin, Myriam Merlet and Anne Marie Coriolan.
Preparations for the next disaster will have to go on without Ginna Porcena, the dynamic director of the National Geospatial Institute, who was part of a group of scientists who wanted to establish seismology stations in Haiti. The earthquake also killed many foreign aid workers and businesspeople who cared deeply about Haiti and would have been the first to pitch in after the disaster. The United Nations lost 101 staffers, including the mission's top two officials.
Compounding the loss of Haiti's best and brightest is a quickening brain drain, as people with the ability and means to leave are abandoning the ravaged country. Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told The Associated Press he has watched with dismay as educated youths boarded planes to the United States and elsewhere. They leave because Haiti, always a difficult place to live, became impossible after the quake, he said.
"I was looking at their faces: They were escaping a country and they had no intention to go back," Bellerive said. "I feel love for the people that have lost family ... but I believe it's even harder for the country to see living people that could do so much to rebuild Haiti, leaving Haiti."
Only half of Haitians ever see the inside of a classroom, and only 2 percent complete high school, according to UNICEF.
Haiti has gone through such losses of talent before, usually in times of political upheaval. Many fled or were killed under the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorships from 1957 to 1986. People also escaped reprisals under the U.S.-backed junta of General Raoul Cedras in the early 1990s, under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and in the violent chaos that followed Aristide's 2004 ouster.
But the losses this time are far more significant. The destruction was so widespread and instantaneous—gutting the capital and its institutions at precisely the moment when help, guidance and new ideas were most needed—that the absence will be felt for decades.
One email asked if I knew what preparations would be made to arrange a presidential contest before President Préval's term expires early next year. Most if not all polling stations in the quake zone were damaged or destroyed, and the hundreds of thousands of voters who were not killed were displaced or left without ID cards.
Most of the emails I received contained more questions than updates. Who will take care of the orphaned children? Where will Haitians live? When will the children be able to go back to school? What will happen to the amputees? Is the departure of U.S. troops a sign of dwindling international interest in the plight of the Haitian people? With each week, and a looming spring rainy season that could bring devastating flooding to low-lying camps, the answers to those questions grow more urgent.
Ms. Teri Schure is the founder of Worldpress.org, lectures on issues pertaining to publishing, and is a consultant in the magazine, web development and marketing industries.
Monday, March 15, 2010
MAR 15: SEAN PENN AND HIS NEW AID ORGANIZATION ON THE GROUND IN HAITI SINCE JANUARY
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (l.) met with Sean Penn during a visit to a makeshift camp for earthquake survivors set up at the Petionville Golf Club in Port-au-Prince.Photograph by Paris/Getty
full article via
NY DAILY NEWS / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sean Penn In Haiti Since January Helping Earthquake Victims: "The Efforts Have Been Extraordinary"
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Look closely at the foreigners buzzing around a hospital tent above one of Haiti's biggest earthquake-refugee camps and a face stands out: There, carrying the box of supplies, that's Sean Penn.
Now he's guiding a Haitian girl to waiting doctors. Now he's lobbying the chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide better security for the camp's 45,000 people. And now he's talking to the press.
"These people are going to have nowhere to go, by and large, in the rainy season," the Oscar-winning actor told The Associated Press. "The efforts that we've seen ... have been extraordinary - down the line. But this is an impossible kind of situation."
The 49-year-old actor came to Haiti about a week after the Jan. 12 quake killed a government-estimated 230,000 people and made 1.3 million homeless. He's left just a a few times since - mostly for Haiti-related meetings, he said, and to present the Oscar for best actress - and doesn't plan to leave again until mid-April.
His blue-shirted workers with the newly formed Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Organization provide medical care, water filters and food. On Sunday, they opened a health clinic for mothers and victims of a growing sexual assault epidemic.
"As long as this camp is here, we'll stay here. When this camp's not here anymore then we'll have to be where we are accessible to people," Penn said.
The ridge where the group is based is a short but taxing walk uphill from an increasingly fetid sprawl of makeshift tarp-and-tent homes. Thousands of families came to the valley golf course in the days after the quake, following the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division and its food distributions onto the steep country club grounds.
The group got a major boost Sunday in a visit by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. He toured the facilities with Penn and actress-turned-aid worker Maria Bello - best known among the thinning crowd of U.S. soldiers for her turn in "Coyote Ugly."
Penn had never been to Haiti before - "It was just, you know, I saw ten minutes of news and we started organizing," he said. - but after two months he talks like a veteran volunteer.
"I don't think that anybody who hasn't been in places like this really understands what poverty is, and what a real lack of infrastructure is," he said.
But he speaks more freely than most aid workers do, decrying disaster profiteers and corrupt local officials who siphon aid, calling for more floored tents to help families at risk for disease and floods, and warning that recent outbursts of violence in the camp could be signs of rising tension.
When a Haitian reporter walks up and asks him about his personal accomplishments in Haiti, the actor cringes.
"What have I been doing? Well, I've spent the last 20 minutes talking to you."
He turns around, and goes back to work.
Donate to Sean Penn's J-P HRO at www.BeatTheRain.org
MAR 15: "THEY ARE SWEATSHOPS AND NOTHING MORE", CLINTON'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN FOR HAITI AND THE ROLE OF CHEAP LABOR
full article via
COMMON DREAMS
Sweatshops Won't Save Haiti
By Tope Folarin
The United Nations will host a Haiti donors' conference at the end of March.
This conference will be quite different from last year's event, of course, coming as it does on the heels of the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries. An agenda has already begun to take shape: It's already clear that a future Haiti must be populated with environmentally sustainable, earthquake-resistant buildings, for example, and it's also clear that the international community must do something to ease Haiti's massive debt burden.
Former President Bill Clinton, currently serving as the UN's envoy to Haiti, and economist Paul Collier have another idea that could prove disastrous. They think Haiti needs to leverage its "cheap labor."
In other words, they think Haiti will solve its problems by opening up more sweatshops.
Of course Clinton and Collier don't call them sweatshops. They talk about "garment factories" or "manufacturing centers" or simply "workshops," but they are sweatshops and nothing more.
For Haiti to join the ranks of developed nations, they argue, Haitians must first work as many hours as possible for paltry wages so that their economy can grow.
Congress seems to agree. It has passed several bills that provide Haitian garment-makers preferential access to American consumers. According to conventional knowledge, Haiti was on the road to economic success--as a result of these legislative reforms--before the earthquake. Now, the logic goes, Haitians must rebuild their collapsed "workshops" and produce as many cheap T-shirts as possible.
All this ignores the most important point: sweatshop labor's inherent inhumanity. Sweatshop labor proponents have never worked in the conditions they so enthusiastically endorse for others. When advocating such solutions, they often offer compelling numbers as proof of their effectiveness. But what about the human costs: the extra hours workers spend away from their families, the risk of injury that accompanies repetitive movements, and the loss of morale as some boss demands that you produce even more?
In Haiti, there are a few plausible alternatives to sweatshop labor. In the lead-up to last year's donors' conference, progressive Haitian civil society organizations suggested a development program that focuses on local production and agriculture. They argued, convincingly, that the benefits from sweatshop labor often end up somewhere else, since the clothes are constructed on-site; the material for the clothes are shipped in, and the clothes are shipped out upon completion.
A focus on locally produced goods, however, would have the opposite effect. Haitian entrepreneurs would produce according to Haitian needs, and every part of the manufacturing process--from the development of materials to the production of goods--would take place in Haiti and benefit Haitians.
In addition, building up the capacity of Haitian farmers is crucial in the coming months and years. Haiti has been dependent on food aid for many years now, and a national program that focused on sustainable agriculture would not only have the effect of providing a livelihood and locally produced food for countless Haitians, it would also allow Haiti to address the environmental degradation that has crippled its economy for generations.
The link between these two suggestions is infrastructure development. Better roads and better transportation generally mean a much more stable and efficient economy.
All three of these proposals would require funding from the international community and expertise from abroad as well. All three proposals, if enacted, would benefit Haitians enormously.
The upcoming donors' conference is an incredibly important forum. We have an opportunity to help Haitians rebuild in a manner that simultaneously respects their humanity and enables them to become more productive.
We have an opportunity to heed the voices of concerned and knowledgeable Haitians. Now isn't the time to subsidize foreign investors' sweatshops.
Distributed by Minuteman Media
Tope Folarin is the 2010 Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. www.ips-dc.org
COMMON DREAMS
Sweatshops Won't Save Haiti
By Tope Folarin
The United Nations will host a Haiti donors' conference at the end of March.
This conference will be quite different from last year's event, of course, coming as it does on the heels of the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in two centuries. An agenda has already begun to take shape: It's already clear that a future Haiti must be populated with environmentally sustainable, earthquake-resistant buildings, for example, and it's also clear that the international community must do something to ease Haiti's massive debt burden.
Former President Bill Clinton, currently serving as the UN's envoy to Haiti, and economist Paul Collier have another idea that could prove disastrous. They think Haiti needs to leverage its "cheap labor."
In other words, they think Haiti will solve its problems by opening up more sweatshops.
Of course Clinton and Collier don't call them sweatshops. They talk about "garment factories" or "manufacturing centers" or simply "workshops," but they are sweatshops and nothing more.
For Haiti to join the ranks of developed nations, they argue, Haitians must first work as many hours as possible for paltry wages so that their economy can grow.
Congress seems to agree. It has passed several bills that provide Haitian garment-makers preferential access to American consumers. According to conventional knowledge, Haiti was on the road to economic success--as a result of these legislative reforms--before the earthquake. Now, the logic goes, Haitians must rebuild their collapsed "workshops" and produce as many cheap T-shirts as possible.
All this ignores the most important point: sweatshop labor's inherent inhumanity. Sweatshop labor proponents have never worked in the conditions they so enthusiastically endorse for others. When advocating such solutions, they often offer compelling numbers as proof of their effectiveness. But what about the human costs: the extra hours workers spend away from their families, the risk of injury that accompanies repetitive movements, and the loss of morale as some boss demands that you produce even more?
In Haiti, there are a few plausible alternatives to sweatshop labor. In the lead-up to last year's donors' conference, progressive Haitian civil society organizations suggested a development program that focuses on local production and agriculture. They argued, convincingly, that the benefits from sweatshop labor often end up somewhere else, since the clothes are constructed on-site; the material for the clothes are shipped in, and the clothes are shipped out upon completion.
A focus on locally produced goods, however, would have the opposite effect. Haitian entrepreneurs would produce according to Haitian needs, and every part of the manufacturing process--from the development of materials to the production of goods--would take place in Haiti and benefit Haitians.
In addition, building up the capacity of Haitian farmers is crucial in the coming months and years. Haiti has been dependent on food aid for many years now, and a national program that focused on sustainable agriculture would not only have the effect of providing a livelihood and locally produced food for countless Haitians, it would also allow Haiti to address the environmental degradation that has crippled its economy for generations.
The link between these two suggestions is infrastructure development. Better roads and better transportation generally mean a much more stable and efficient economy.
All three of these proposals would require funding from the international community and expertise from abroad as well. All three proposals, if enacted, would benefit Haitians enormously.
The upcoming donors' conference is an incredibly important forum. We have an opportunity to help Haitians rebuild in a manner that simultaneously respects their humanity and enables them to become more productive.
We have an opportunity to heed the voices of concerned and knowledgeable Haitians. Now isn't the time to subsidize foreign investors' sweatshops.
Distributed by Minuteman Media
Tope Folarin is the 2010 Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice, and the environment in the U.S. and globally. www.ips-dc.org
Friday, March 12, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
MAR 11: "THE FAILURES OF THE RELIEF EFFORT ARE HEARTBREAKING", NY TIMES EDITORIAL ON HAITI TWO MONTHS AFTER QUAKE
full article via
THE NEW YORK TIMES
With every day that passes in the mud and rubble of Haiti, the failures of the relief effort are heartbreaking. There are four main strands to the campaign to make sure 1.2 million homeless people are sheltered and safe as the weather turns fierce. All are inadequate.
THE MAJOR PLAYERS The United Nations and foreign countries and aid organizations have dispatched tents, tarps, food, water, medicine and doctors, as they should. They have done a lot of good, particularly the United States, which rushed supplies, a troop force that peaked at about 20,000 and a hospital ship. Many lives were saved. After meeting with Haiti’s president, René Préval, this week, President Obama pledged continued aid.
But after nearly two months, it’s not enough. Only half of those displaced have received even the crudest means of emergency shelter: plastic tarps and tents that will hardly protect them when floods start in earnest next month, and the hurricanes come in June. In hundreds of crowded settlements around the country, like the ones sheltering more than 600,000 in Port-au-Prince, food, water, medical care and security remain spotty.
Large swaths of the earthquake zone remain untouched by aid. They are choking in rubble, and trucks and volunteers have barely begun to scratch out safe places in the wreckage for people to live.
Relief agencies have overcome staggering obstacles, starting with the fact that the quake demolished the United Nations mission, killing much of its leadership and employees. The United Nations is in high gear now, but it has been rightly criticized for disorganization. Last month, in a scathing e-mail message, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, John Holmes, blasted his colleagues for having been too slow to step up to the challenge. Weeks after the disaster, he said, several of the agency “clusters” in charge of handling needs like food and shelter had not even developed a basic overview of what they had to do, much less a plan.
THE HAITIAN GOVERNMENT The quake ruined the presidential palace and the best managers and workers were still on the job when the tremors hit. President Préval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive have not been able to resume strong or even visible leadership.
The government has not made decisions or has made confusing ones. It has, for instance, refused to allow undamaged or lightly damaged schools to reopen with a full curriculum until all schools can reopen — letting children languish. Mr. Préval was visible at the White House on Wednesday, but in Haiti the question “Where is Préval?” draws a shake of the head.
THE N.G.O.’S Existing charity mechanisms have been revved up to try to match the staggering scale of the earthquake, and new ones are being invented. The big multinational nongovernmental organizations are providing vital support to the United Nations.
But there are thousands of others, like the small rural mission churches and other groups that right now are offering just pinpricks of relief.
THE PEOPLE Haitians are eager to help themselves. Refugees are forming settlement councils and electing representatives to collaborate with the nongovernmental organizations. They are building homes themselves, clearing rubble themselves, burying the dead themselves, organizing security brigades themselves. But they are as overmatched as everyone else by the scale of the disaster.
There is a burning need to tap the energies of Haitians — not just the devastated national government. That means at the grass-roots, church, business and neighborhood groups that know the country, speak its languages, and are deeply committed to its rebirth.
Efforts to do so have been negligible so far. A report by Refugees International, an advocacy group in Washington, says that Haitians have been excluded from major planning at the United Nations compound because they don’t know about meetings, aren’t allowed in or don’t have the staff to send. The United Nations Development Program has hired more than 70,000 Haitians to clean debris. Much more is needed.
Haiti should be able to count on American technical expertise, security and money, especially as energy shifts to rebuilding. Everyone should keep improving basic efforts to keep refugees safe and in good health. But, ultimately, it is the United Nations that must take responsibility to lead and coordinate the relief efforts.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
MAR 06: NY TIMES PHOTOGRAPHY_HAITI'S SCHOOL CHILDREN
Haitian children are languishing in camps or working in menial jobs. Markeny Saint Valin, 10, with his grandmother, Luciene St. Louis, washing clothes in Port-au-Prince.Photograph by Lynsey Addario / The New York Times
Basing estimates on talks with government officials, Unicef said that more than 3,000 school buildings had been destroyed or damaged. Jimmy Pierre Louis, 10, carrying aluminum chairs from a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times
Children attending a math class at a camp in Port-au-Prince. Photograph by Lynsey Addario / The New York TimesFull photography story:
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Among The Ruins, Education Is Also Lost
MAR 06: THE COLLAPSE OF HAITI'S EDUCATION SYSTEM, NY TIMES
THE NEW YORK TIMES, With Haitian Schools In Ruins, Children In Limbo
Story details:
- Children make up 45 percent of Haiti's population.
- Haiti needs $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
- 3,000 schools in the earthquake zone have been destroyed.
- Even before the JAN 12 quake, only about half of Haiti's school-age children were enrolled in classes.
After Haiti’s quake: children in Pétionville danced at a day care program run by the French Red Cross. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Times
full article and photography via
Story details:
- Children make up 45 percent of Haiti's population.
- Haiti needs $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
- 3,000 schools in the earthquake zone have been destroyed.
- Even before the JAN 12 quake, only about half of Haiti's school-age children were enrolled in classes.
After Haiti’s quake: children in Pétionville danced at a day care program run by the French Red Cross. Photograph by Todd Heisler / The New York Timesfull article and photography via
THE NEW YORK TIMES
With Haitian Schools In Ruins, Children In Limbo
By Simon Romero
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Thousands of schools in and around this devastated capital could remain closed for months or never reopen, according to Haitian and United Nations education officials. That leaves vast numbers of children languishing in camps or working in menial jobs as they struggle to survive.
Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, only about half of Haiti’s school-age children were enrolled in classes, a glaring symbol of the nation’s poverty.
Unicef, basing its estimates on talks with government officials, said that more than 3,000 school buildings in the earthquake zone had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students were killed, and officials are questioning the safety of the remaining buildings after violent aftershocks in recent weeks, making the goal of Haitian education officials to reopen many schools by April 1 seem increasingly remote.
“We have six engineers in the Education Ministry to survey more than 10,000 schools to see if they’re safe,” said Charles Tardieu, a former education minister who is pushing for schools to reopen in tent camps. “Let’s face the reality that many schools are never going to be used again, and that we urgently need other ways to revive the system,” he said.
With their options limited, thousands of children are toiling on this city’s streets instead of going to school. Marckin Sainvalier, 10, helped his grandmother wash clothes one recent morning alongside the rubble of Rue Bonne-Foi in the central commercial district. As for school, “that was before the earthquake,” he said, explaining that his mother left him in his grandmother’s care in the chaotic days after the quake struck. “A lot has happened since then.”
On another street in the commercial district, Dieuvenson Semervil, 12, scavenged for padlocks in a collapsed hardware store. Before the quake, Dieuvenson said, he dreamed of becoming a mechanic. A body decomposed next to him to as he picked through the rubble. Near the ruins of the partly destroyed Lycée Alexandre Pétion, one of the city’s public schools, Samanta Louis, 11, swept the sidewalk, work she said helped support her nine siblings and parents who lived in the tent camp of Champs de Mars. A former student at the Lycée, Jean Pierre Lestin, 15, scavenged brick from a collapsed wall to sell. “I would like to be an engineer someday,” he said.
Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp.
“The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,” Ms. Thompson said.
The government here has recognized the urgency of reopening schools to provide some structure to those picking up the pieces of their lives. But its efforts to do so have faltered. Officials declared schools open in unaffected areas as of Feb. 1; some students have trickled into those schools, but many have not, say education specialists.
Here in the capital, symbols of the devastated education system lie scattered throughout the city. Metal scavengers are still picking through the wrecked Collège du Canapé-Vert, where as many as 300 students studying to become teachers died in the earthquake.
Foreign aid groups here say that Haiti differs from other poor nations recently struck by natural disasters, like Pakistan and Bangladesh, in that the quake gutted the education system of the capital in a highly centralized country. In New Orleans, more than half of the public schools remained shut a year after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, said Marcelo Cabral, an education specialist with the Inter-American Development Bank.
Haiti’s education system was already dysfunctional before the earthquake. Only about 20 percent of schools were public, with the rest highly expensive for the poor. Even in public schools, poor families struggled to pay for uniforms, textbooks and supplies. While other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spend about 5 percent of their gross domestic product on education, Haiti was spending just 2 percent, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
“The quality of education was very low, with about a third of teachers having nine years of education at best,” Mr. Cabral said in an interview here, after a recent meeting with Haitian officials in an attempt to come up with a plan to reopen schools. Mr. Cabral said the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that Haiti needed $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
Children make up about 45 percent of Haiti’s population, and they are flooding the camps. Hundreds of children milled about the latrines of a camp at the prime minister’s office complex one day at the end of last month. “I have nothing to do,” said Belle-Fleur Merline, 11, who lives at the camp with her father and two siblings.
Placid Francoise, 17, said she had hoped to become a nurse before the earthquake destroyed her family’s home and forced them into a camp in front of the ruins of the presidential palace. Her mother, a street vendor, had used her meager savings to pay Ms. Francoise’s tuition at the Frères Monfort school.
Now Ms. Francoise lives in a one-room shack with more than a dozen relatives. She said she had no idea when she would return to school. “I work for my mother each day now, so that we may eat,” she said, pointing to the bags of charcoal they sell in front of their hovel.
Some educators and relief officials are not waiting for the government to act, deciding to open their own schools on a piecemeal basis in some camps.
Alzire Rocourt, a headmaster at a private school here before the earthquake, opened a school last month under tents donated by the Israeli Army in the sprawling Pétionville Club camp. She teaches reading, math and geography. The students play volleyball on the dirt outside during recess. And they sing, with vigor, Creole folk songs.
“Apran yon ak lot,” the children sang, beaming. “Learning together.”
“Renmen yon ak lot,” they ended. “It means, ‘Loving each other,’ ” Ms. Rocourt said.
She smiled, too, until she recalled how much more needed to be done. Of the more than 25,000 children living in the Pétionville camp, just 260 are in her school.
With Haitian Schools In Ruins, Children In Limbo
By Simon Romero
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Thousands of schools in and around this devastated capital could remain closed for months or never reopen, according to Haitian and United Nations education officials. That leaves vast numbers of children languishing in camps or working in menial jobs as they struggle to survive.
Even before the Jan. 12 earthquake, only about half of Haiti’s school-age children were enrolled in classes, a glaring symbol of the nation’s poverty.
Unicef, basing its estimates on talks with government officials, said that more than 3,000 school buildings in the earthquake zone had been destroyed or damaged. Hundreds of teachers and thousands of students were killed, and officials are questioning the safety of the remaining buildings after violent aftershocks in recent weeks, making the goal of Haitian education officials to reopen many schools by April 1 seem increasingly remote.
“We have six engineers in the Education Ministry to survey more than 10,000 schools to see if they’re safe,” said Charles Tardieu, a former education minister who is pushing for schools to reopen in tent camps. “Let’s face the reality that many schools are never going to be used again, and that we urgently need other ways to revive the system,” he said.
With their options limited, thousands of children are toiling on this city’s streets instead of going to school. Marckin Sainvalier, 10, helped his grandmother wash clothes one recent morning alongside the rubble of Rue Bonne-Foi in the central commercial district. As for school, “that was before the earthquake,” he said, explaining that his mother left him in his grandmother’s care in the chaotic days after the quake struck. “A lot has happened since then.”
On another street in the commercial district, Dieuvenson Semervil, 12, scavenged for padlocks in a collapsed hardware store. Before the quake, Dieuvenson said, he dreamed of becoming a mechanic. A body decomposed next to him to as he picked through the rubble. Near the ruins of the partly destroyed Lycée Alexandre Pétion, one of the city’s public schools, Samanta Louis, 11, swept the sidewalk, work she said helped support her nine siblings and parents who lived in the tent camp of Champs de Mars. A former student at the Lycée, Jean Pierre Lestin, 15, scavenged brick from a collapsed wall to sell. “I would like to be an engineer someday,” he said.
Children staying in the camps face trials beyond laboring in the streets. Health workers in the camps are reporting a rising number of young rape victims, including girls as young as 12. Alison Thompson, an Australian nurse and documentary director who volunteers at a tent clinic on the grounds of the Pétionville Club, said she had cared for a 14-year-old girl who was raped recently in the camp.
“The entire structure of the lives of these children has been upended, and now they’re dealing with the predators living next to them,” Ms. Thompson said.
The government here has recognized the urgency of reopening schools to provide some structure to those picking up the pieces of their lives. But its efforts to do so have faltered. Officials declared schools open in unaffected areas as of Feb. 1; some students have trickled into those schools, but many have not, say education specialists.
Here in the capital, symbols of the devastated education system lie scattered throughout the city. Metal scavengers are still picking through the wrecked Collège du Canapé-Vert, where as many as 300 students studying to become teachers died in the earthquake.
Foreign aid groups here say that Haiti differs from other poor nations recently struck by natural disasters, like Pakistan and Bangladesh, in that the quake gutted the education system of the capital in a highly centralized country. In New Orleans, more than half of the public schools remained shut a year after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, said Marcelo Cabral, an education specialist with the Inter-American Development Bank.
Haiti’s education system was already dysfunctional before the earthquake. Only about 20 percent of schools were public, with the rest highly expensive for the poor. Even in public schools, poor families struggled to pay for uniforms, textbooks and supplies. While other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spend about 5 percent of their gross domestic product on education, Haiti was spending just 2 percent, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
“The quality of education was very low, with about a third of teachers having nine years of education at best,” Mr. Cabral said in an interview here, after a recent meeting with Haitian officials in an attempt to come up with a plan to reopen schools. Mr. Cabral said the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that Haiti needed $2 billion over the next five years to rebuild its education system.
Children make up about 45 percent of Haiti’s population, and they are flooding the camps. Hundreds of children milled about the latrines of a camp at the prime minister’s office complex one day at the end of last month. “I have nothing to do,” said Belle-Fleur Merline, 11, who lives at the camp with her father and two siblings.
Placid Francoise, 17, said she had hoped to become a nurse before the earthquake destroyed her family’s home and forced them into a camp in front of the ruins of the presidential palace. Her mother, a street vendor, had used her meager savings to pay Ms. Francoise’s tuition at the Frères Monfort school.
Now Ms. Francoise lives in a one-room shack with more than a dozen relatives. She said she had no idea when she would return to school. “I work for my mother each day now, so that we may eat,” she said, pointing to the bags of charcoal they sell in front of their hovel.
Some educators and relief officials are not waiting for the government to act, deciding to open their own schools on a piecemeal basis in some camps.
Alzire Rocourt, a headmaster at a private school here before the earthquake, opened a school last month under tents donated by the Israeli Army in the sprawling Pétionville Club camp. She teaches reading, math and geography. The students play volleyball on the dirt outside during recess. And they sing, with vigor, Creole folk songs.
“Apran yon ak lot,” the children sang, beaming. “Learning together.”
“Renmen yon ak lot,” they ended. “It means, ‘Loving each other,’ ” Ms. Rocourt said.
She smiled, too, until she recalled how much more needed to be done. Of the more than 25,000 children living in the Pétionville camp, just 260 are in her school.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
MAR 3: "I JUST HOPE TO FIND SOME WAY OF SURVIVING", THE TIMES UK REPORTS ON THE NEEDS AND CHALLENGES FACING HAITIAN AMPUTEES
full article via
THE TIMES ONLINE UKDancer Who Lost Her Leg In Haiti Earthquake: ‘I Want To Dance Again’
In the chaos of Haiti, our writer came across a dancer whose leg was amputated after her home collapsed. Could she be a symbol of hope for the nation’s recovery?
By Will Pavia, THE TIMES
He had spent all day asking questions in Creole and turning the answers into English. They were mostly the same questions: How did you lose your leg? Is your house still standing? What will you do now? But there came a moment when our translator stopped mid-sentence and refused to continue.
He was a French teacher from a secondary school in Port-au-Prince: he had a quiet, vaguely paternal, manner and his ability to remain calm in fraught situations had proved invaluable again and again.
Our short interview with Fabienne Jean, a dancer from the Haitian national theatre, was the only time I saw him lose his temper.
Jean, 31, is quite famous in Haiti: he had seen her in some big shows and in television commercials for the mobile-phone company Voila. We found her stretched out on a mattress on the concrete floor of a primary school classroom that was serving as an overflow ward for the city hospitals.
The doctors who amputated her right leg below the knee said that she had borne the pain with great dignity and expressed a determination to dance again. She was trying to remain upbeat when we found her, but she had lost her leg, her home had fallen down, her parents had lost their house too, she had nowhere to go and no way to get there.
As we spoke, a nurse came to change the dressing on her stump and she lent back on the mattress and breathed in sharply, her eyelids fluttering. Did she still hope to dance again? “Yes,” she said. “If it’s possible. But I don’t know if it is.”
How difficult would it be to live with this kind of disability in a country such as Haiti?
This was the question our translator could not stand.
“Don’t talk to her about these things!” he shouted, shaking his head at me. “Don’t talk to her about Haiti. They can do nothing for her here. Talk about something else. Please!” There was an awkward silence, in which I tried to think of something else to say. Then Jean started talking. “She says she wants to know if there is anything you can say or do to help her situation,” said our translator, resuming normal service once more.
The interview was proceeding like a three-person polka: it was no longer clear who was leading or where we were going. But there was something I could say.
I know dancers who have suffered crippling injuries and resumed their careers and I know dancers who were born with physical or learning disabilities who have become professional dancers, breaking various preconceptions along the way.
My brother was born with Down’s syndrome. He began dancing at an early age, choreographing routines culled from Take That videos and performing them on the living-room rug with all the solemnity of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. He now plays to packed theatres, touring the world with a company of able-bodied and disabled dancers called StopGap.
Among them is Laura Jones, who was starting out as a dancer when she suffered a spinal bleed. She learnt to dance again: she was the first person in a wheelchair to gain a dance A level.
I told Jean about David Toole, one of StopGap’s directors, a performer who continues to astonish audiences all over the world. Toole has no legs: he springs out of his wheelchair and dances on the palms of his hands. His career began with Candoco, a company founded by Celeste Dandeker in 1991. Dandeker, a leading light in contemporary dance, had broken her spine while performing a flip on stage. Her company blazed a trail for disabled dancers from the niche “haven’t they done well?” sphere of community projects into the mainstream of professional dance.
This was what Haiti needed, I said, crouching beside Jean’s mattress. If someone such as her could return to the stage, she could show people what was possible. There is a new generation of amputees, some 3,000 of them. She could help to prevent them from being stigmatised — she could be the face of Haiti’s recovery.
I was getting carried away, of course. Dandeker took years to return to dance, Jones needed a year of physiotherapy, both spoke of the crushing sense of grief that they felt for the body they had lost.
“I had to relearn everything,” Jones said. “And you are putting yourself in a position where you can see what other people are capable of — things that you were once capable of.”
And she was living in Berkshire, not Port-au-Prince. Jean’s aspirations at that moment were the same as those of the amputees on the surrounding mattresses. “I just hope to find some way of surviving,” she said. “I’ve got no house, nothing.”
She hoped to get a prosthetic limb, but she was not particularly confident that this would happen. Beside her lay Myrlene Samedi, 29, a student of computer science. “They promised her another leg,” said her husband, Polycarpe Schiller, 27. “I think this will be a difficult thing in Haiti.”
Conflicting expectations over what happens next for Haiti’s amputees were colliding in the city’s operating rooms.
That same day in the general hospital, Christopher Bulstrode, a trauma surgeon from Oxford flown in by Médecins du Monde, was cleaning the stump of the left leg of a 16-year-old girl. “This can’t take an artificial limb,” he said. “We need a plastic surgeon to do a skin graft, or we need to re-amputate higher up. If one of my doctors in Oxford did that I would have his guts for garters.”
The professor had just had a furious argument with a Haitian doctor. “He had left the amputation wide open with the bone showing. I said you can’t do that. He said: ‘We can, she’s never going to walk on it again’.”
In Britain, surgeons would leave a large flap of skin to be folded over the stump. “We put on prosthetics 24 hours afterwards, which is very important psychologically speaking,” he said. “We say let’s get you up and moving and signed up for the ParaOlympics. But this kind of work costs thousands of dollars per limb. This Haitian doctor was saying: ‘You’re in Haiti now chum.’ The subtext was: ‘You guys are going to get bored and go home.’ We have a huge battle on our hands because here, if you lose a limb, people think: ‘That’s it for you’.”
I spoke to Bulstrode again this week. “After I spoke to you I stormed back to Médecins du Monde and said: ‘There is no point in closing stumps if we don’t get the second phase going’,” he said.
He is back in Oxford now, but he believes the message got through. Plastic surgeons arrived in Port-au-Prince last week. Handicap International advertised for 30 British physiotherapists and the charity is opening a prosthetics factory in Haiti that it hopes to staff with amputees. I spoke to Jean down a crackly phone line on Monday evening: she said that she was getting about on crutches, and her situation was “bad”. Would she get a prosthetic? “I think there is no chance,” she said.
I am a little more hopeful. I have passed on her number to Handicap International, and to StopGap and Candoco. Both dance groups said that they would be keen to work with her: both work on similar projects around the world.
StopGap is now in Albania, helping to establish dance projects, while Stine Pedro, artistic director of Candoco, is corresponding with Liu Yan, an acclaimed Chinese classical dancer who was paralysed by a fall as she rehearsed her solo role in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. She is starting to dance again.
“We are always looking for dancers,” said Pedro. “Though we are not the national ballet. It’s a big jump from being a dancer at a big institution to possibly coming to work for us.”
Jean has coped with larger reversals. She was watching television when her house fell down with her inside it. She was carried into the general hospital, where amputees were sedated with ketamine, the horse tranquiliser.
“It gives them the most horrible nightmares afterwards,” Bulstrode said, and things did not look that rosy when they woke up. There were no painkillers in the tents that passed for wards. Some were given midazolam, otherwise known as a date-rape drug, so that even if they were awake during operations they would not remember anything about it.
Now they are negotiating a ruined city on crutches: it almost seems perverse to worry about whether one of them will dance again. The British Council felt it was too soon to run a dance project in a city where “basic survival is still the priority”. It is probably right.
But I hope something can be done for Fabienne Jean. I remember squatting beside her mattress, after the translator’s outburst and my speech about people in other countries who danced in wheelchairs. She pulled out pictures of herself in all her glory, she sat up, she seemed happy for a moment. I hope that she will find a way back to the stage.
In the chaos of Haiti, our writer came across a dancer whose leg was amputated after her home collapsed. Could she be a symbol of hope for the nation’s recovery?
By Will Pavia, THE TIMES
He had spent all day asking questions in Creole and turning the answers into English. They were mostly the same questions: How did you lose your leg? Is your house still standing? What will you do now? But there came a moment when our translator stopped mid-sentence and refused to continue.
He was a French teacher from a secondary school in Port-au-Prince: he had a quiet, vaguely paternal, manner and his ability to remain calm in fraught situations had proved invaluable again and again.
Our short interview with Fabienne Jean, a dancer from the Haitian national theatre, was the only time I saw him lose his temper.
Jean, 31, is quite famous in Haiti: he had seen her in some big shows and in television commercials for the mobile-phone company Voila. We found her stretched out on a mattress on the concrete floor of a primary school classroom that was serving as an overflow ward for the city hospitals.
The doctors who amputated her right leg below the knee said that she had borne the pain with great dignity and expressed a determination to dance again. She was trying to remain upbeat when we found her, but she had lost her leg, her home had fallen down, her parents had lost their house too, she had nowhere to go and no way to get there.
As we spoke, a nurse came to change the dressing on her stump and she lent back on the mattress and breathed in sharply, her eyelids fluttering. Did she still hope to dance again? “Yes,” she said. “If it’s possible. But I don’t know if it is.”
How difficult would it be to live with this kind of disability in a country such as Haiti?
This was the question our translator could not stand.
“Don’t talk to her about these things!” he shouted, shaking his head at me. “Don’t talk to her about Haiti. They can do nothing for her here. Talk about something else. Please!” There was an awkward silence, in which I tried to think of something else to say. Then Jean started talking. “She says she wants to know if there is anything you can say or do to help her situation,” said our translator, resuming normal service once more.
The interview was proceeding like a three-person polka: it was no longer clear who was leading or where we were going. But there was something I could say.
I know dancers who have suffered crippling injuries and resumed their careers and I know dancers who were born with physical or learning disabilities who have become professional dancers, breaking various preconceptions along the way.
My brother was born with Down’s syndrome. He began dancing at an early age, choreographing routines culled from Take That videos and performing them on the living-room rug with all the solemnity of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic. He now plays to packed theatres, touring the world with a company of able-bodied and disabled dancers called StopGap.
Among them is Laura Jones, who was starting out as a dancer when she suffered a spinal bleed. She learnt to dance again: she was the first person in a wheelchair to gain a dance A level.
I told Jean about David Toole, one of StopGap’s directors, a performer who continues to astonish audiences all over the world. Toole has no legs: he springs out of his wheelchair and dances on the palms of his hands. His career began with Candoco, a company founded by Celeste Dandeker in 1991. Dandeker, a leading light in contemporary dance, had broken her spine while performing a flip on stage. Her company blazed a trail for disabled dancers from the niche “haven’t they done well?” sphere of community projects into the mainstream of professional dance.
This was what Haiti needed, I said, crouching beside Jean’s mattress. If someone such as her could return to the stage, she could show people what was possible. There is a new generation of amputees, some 3,000 of them. She could help to prevent them from being stigmatised — she could be the face of Haiti’s recovery.
I was getting carried away, of course. Dandeker took years to return to dance, Jones needed a year of physiotherapy, both spoke of the crushing sense of grief that they felt for the body they had lost.
“I had to relearn everything,” Jones said. “And you are putting yourself in a position where you can see what other people are capable of — things that you were once capable of.”
And she was living in Berkshire, not Port-au-Prince. Jean’s aspirations at that moment were the same as those of the amputees on the surrounding mattresses. “I just hope to find some way of surviving,” she said. “I’ve got no house, nothing.”
She hoped to get a prosthetic limb, but she was not particularly confident that this would happen. Beside her lay Myrlene Samedi, 29, a student of computer science. “They promised her another leg,” said her husband, Polycarpe Schiller, 27. “I think this will be a difficult thing in Haiti.”
Conflicting expectations over what happens next for Haiti’s amputees were colliding in the city’s operating rooms.
That same day in the general hospital, Christopher Bulstrode, a trauma surgeon from Oxford flown in by Médecins du Monde, was cleaning the stump of the left leg of a 16-year-old girl. “This can’t take an artificial limb,” he said. “We need a plastic surgeon to do a skin graft, or we need to re-amputate higher up. If one of my doctors in Oxford did that I would have his guts for garters.”
The professor had just had a furious argument with a Haitian doctor. “He had left the amputation wide open with the bone showing. I said you can’t do that. He said: ‘We can, she’s never going to walk on it again’.”
In Britain, surgeons would leave a large flap of skin to be folded over the stump. “We put on prosthetics 24 hours afterwards, which is very important psychologically speaking,” he said. “We say let’s get you up and moving and signed up for the ParaOlympics. But this kind of work costs thousands of dollars per limb. This Haitian doctor was saying: ‘You’re in Haiti now chum.’ The subtext was: ‘You guys are going to get bored and go home.’ We have a huge battle on our hands because here, if you lose a limb, people think: ‘That’s it for you’.”
I spoke to Bulstrode again this week. “After I spoke to you I stormed back to Médecins du Monde and said: ‘There is no point in closing stumps if we don’t get the second phase going’,” he said.
He is back in Oxford now, but he believes the message got through. Plastic surgeons arrived in Port-au-Prince last week. Handicap International advertised for 30 British physiotherapists and the charity is opening a prosthetics factory in Haiti that it hopes to staff with amputees. I spoke to Jean down a crackly phone line on Monday evening: she said that she was getting about on crutches, and her situation was “bad”. Would she get a prosthetic? “I think there is no chance,” she said.
I am a little more hopeful. I have passed on her number to Handicap International, and to StopGap and Candoco. Both dance groups said that they would be keen to work with her: both work on similar projects around the world.
StopGap is now in Albania, helping to establish dance projects, while Stine Pedro, artistic director of Candoco, is corresponding with Liu Yan, an acclaimed Chinese classical dancer who was paralysed by a fall as she rehearsed her solo role in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. She is starting to dance again.
“We are always looking for dancers,” said Pedro. “Though we are not the national ballet. It’s a big jump from being a dancer at a big institution to possibly coming to work for us.”
Jean has coped with larger reversals. She was watching television when her house fell down with her inside it. She was carried into the general hospital, where amputees were sedated with ketamine, the horse tranquiliser.
“It gives them the most horrible nightmares afterwards,” Bulstrode said, and things did not look that rosy when they woke up. There were no painkillers in the tents that passed for wards. Some were given midazolam, otherwise known as a date-rape drug, so that even if they were awake during operations they would not remember anything about it.
Now they are negotiating a ruined city on crutches: it almost seems perverse to worry about whether one of them will dance again. The British Council felt it was too soon to run a dance project in a city where “basic survival is still the priority”. It is probably right.
But I hope something can be done for Fabienne Jean. I remember squatting beside her mattress, after the translator’s outburst and my speech about people in other countries who danced in wheelchairs. She pulled out pictures of herself in all her glory, she sat up, she seemed happy for a moment. I hope that she will find a way back to the stage.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)