Haiti, do not despair

Port-Au-Prince is in ruins, it’s downtown a field of rubble. As many as 1.5 million are estimated to be homeless, at least 200,000 lost their lives, and officials say the reconstruction will take decades. I had many days of mind-bending scenes of utter destruction and human tragedy. It was shocking in it’s ferocity, and has gone on day after day, continuing even now. But I began to witness something else emerge from the seams of this apocalypse. It started in a tent city, where I saw a woman cooking food for more than the people in her family. Then again, as I came across a man getting a haircut, and another selling ice cream from a cooler. Haitians were coming to terms with this new “normal”, and were restarting their lives.

I went into another tent city on the grounds of Frere de l’inscription Chretienne monastery and found a group of artists, singers and rappers who  banded together in one little corner of the camp. Their energy was incredible; upbeat, vibrant — they were undeterred in their dreams despite the level of their personal tragedy. These young men and so many more Haitians had already begun to pick up the pieces to their lives and move on.

Haiti has known hardship for generations. When I drove across the border from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, I immediately noticed how much harder everything was. It became more crowded, the roads were worse, and the environment has taken a heavy hit from the human population. Even the landscape was steeper and more rugged, with concrete dwellings cemented in place on the hillside. A few days later I commented to my driver that when they divided Hispañola it seemed they gave Haiti the hardest part.

This country is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, and has left many doubting whether it can ever succeed as a state. I don’t know the answer to that; Haiti has many problems. What I do see is that Haitians are some of the most resourceful and resilient people in the world. They don’t wait to see what will happen, they decide for themselves and get to it. While many people saw looters, I saw people scavenging for anything they could use to survive. I saw people doing what they could to maintain their personal dignity, bathing in public even, just so they wouldn’t have to sleep filthy. So many men approached me, eager to put their English to use as interpreters, or offering their services as a driver. People who sold goods in the market, returned to the market. Men and women carried loads of wood to build cook fires or new homes.

Set against the stark context of this disaster was a glimmer of hope that despite so much suffering, Haitians will find a way to survive and dream, and to think of something for themselves that lies beyond this misery.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:43 pm. It is filed under fit to print, What's Going On and tagged with foreign, Haiti, news, photojournalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.