It's the middle of the night and I'm trying unsuccessfully to locate friends in Port-au-Prince over the Internet. Nothing's getting me anywhere. I'm imagining the apartment building where I last saw Renald Clerisme, a former priest who was a hard worker in the cause of democracy and who was foreign minister under Rene Preval for a time. Renald is an old friend of mine and one of the great analysts of the Haitian scene, humorous and caustic even, and always quick to rip through hypocrisy. His place was in a new and modern apartment building, and I am finding it hard, as I scroll through Google Earth and the New York Times before-and-after photos, to believe it survived. I'm hoping he wasn't home when the earthquake struck.
I'm sitting right now under a painting I bought at the Hotel Oloffson in late January, 1986, on my first visit. The Duvalier dynasty was about to fall. The painting is by Pierre Joseph Valcin and it features the personifications (although I didn't know it at the time) of the voodoo figures Cousin Zaka and Baron Samedi. Zaka is a central agricultural figure, the god of the fields, and Baron is the lord of the cemetery. In the painting the two are meeting in a wooded but solitary grove, Baron atop a white horse. Both men are barefoot and the trees that surround them seem alive and full of a kind of spirited menace. The two men seem to be arranging something between them -- now when I look at it the painting seems to have some new awful meaning, and I've just noticed for the first time that Zaka has under his arm a tiny coffin. Read one way, it's a farmer leading the lord of the cemetery through the last forest of Haiti.
And of course one reason there are so many dead in Haiti is that agriculture in the countryside was no longer providing a livelihood for Haitian peasants; they moved in the thousands to the capital, they built shanties on the sides of canyons; all gone now. I won't go over the arguments against globalization for countries like Haiti here. Suffice it to say that Haiti, once the Pearl of the Antilles, once France's most valuable and productive colony, and still into the 19th century at least an important provider of the world's sugar, rum, and coffee, is now a net importer.
The earthquake did some very bizarre things, things that we can see very clearly, while Haitians on the ground may not realize what's gone. The absolute deflation of the National Palace -- one doesn't know how to feel about it, properly. So many bad things went on there. Papa Doc Duvalier did much of his wretched planning and conniving in that giant white behemoth. Baby Doc had parties there and lived in regal splendor with his babe of a wife, the witchy Michele Bennett.
After Baby Doc fled with Michele, I attended the installation of the National Council of Government (more like a US-installed junta, for all the fancy name) and watched in amazement as a panic tore through a ceremony and people knocked over their gold-painted, red-cushioned chairs as they tried to flee the room. When Aristide came into power, he spoke from the steps of the building to a huge crowd of Haitians who gathered behind the Palace fence.
A few days later, he took me on a tour, and showed me Michele Bennett's disco dressing room, as big as an American living room, and her refrigerated fur closet (in a tropical country!). There were always great fat geese wandering around the palace grounds in the back, and big men with guns patrolling. Now this imposing triple-domed edifice looks like three fat pillows that have lost their stuffing.
The earthquake has erased both the personal and political past. It's a terribly strange sensation, as if memory has been ripped away. Port-au-Prince's charm was always ramshackle. There were still gingerbread houses, as of Monday, and some old wooden construction downtown that had escaped fire and flood. Downtown, especially on Grande Rue, there was a kind of cacophony and chaos that still seemed to work; the people of Haiti are very very busy all the time because to cobble anything together there, anything of sustenance, takes a tremendous amount of energy. Now whole neighborhoods are gone. I read in the Tweets of friends in Haiti that all the places where we lived are flattened, and hundreds of the residents killed. One Tweet I read yesterday from Richard Morse, who sometimes blogs here and who runs the Oloffson, read simply "Bodies. Bodies. Bodies. Bodies...."
In the old days when I talked to my friend Renald, I would laugh at his optimism. It didn't matter who had been assassinated recently, or what economic crisis was happening, what flood. It didn't matter who was in jail or who'd been let out. Or which American president had imposed or removed what key tariff, or what Jesse Helms (a real hater of the Haitian people, like Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh) had said or done that day, that week, that year. Renald would just laugh his sibilant little laugh and drink his ginger tea and proclaim that things would get better and that Haiti would survive. He had a former priest's Christian attitude about resurrection and renewal, while I advocated for a kind of militant Jewish pessimism.
But now I'm on Renald's side. I don't see where you go with this kind of catastrophe, since the earthquake has made the choice so stark between despair and hope. I've decided to opt for optimism. Haitians have incredible reserves of defiance, resilience, and perseverance. I'm trusting that these sterling qualities -- combined of course with water, food, and proper medicine, all beginning to come into the country as I write -- will help the quake's hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of survivors get through the first weeks and pull the country out of the depths of this darkness.
Follow Amy Wilentz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/amywilentz
Caroline Gluck: Dispatch from the Ground in Haiti
The needs in Haiti now are enormous, as most basic services just aren't functioning. At the best of times, daily life in Haiti for the 80% or so of the population, who have to live on less than two dollars a day, is a daily struggle.
It is obvious that Haitians know "God Made Me. God doesn't make junk". Then, to all Haiti, let this be your blessing, "When rebuilding, "Don't settle for anything less than the best---Build the Haiti that Haitians Desire and Deserve.
The earthquake did not discriminate between the haves and the have-nots. If some of the more well-to-do Haitians get aid, I say Let 'em!
I know I would not want to have to pass before a "wealth panel" to see if I qualified as very needy in order to get water, food and medical attention.
Rev. Robertson I hear your charities are in Haiti. I sincerely pray that the people they encounter will not first be asked about their religious beliefs before they are helped.
BTW: 85% of Haitians are Roman Catholics. Vodun (not voodoo) is an off-shoot of beliefs practiced in western African nations and is NOT witchcraft. They also do not turn people into ZOMBIES...that was Hollywood.
Rev. Robertson I hear your charities are in Haiti. I sincerely pray that the people they encounter will not first be asked about their religious beliefs before they are helped.
This is the issue I have with christian groups helping out in time of disaster .It appears they use for their benefit when a person is in desperation to try and convert them to christianity . Why can't they just help out like everyone else instead of always trying to convert people .
Amy I hope you find your friend ! I do believe that now that Haiti is on the radar sceen this could be a turn about for the country for the better.
I will paraphase:
I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; was thirsty and you gave me drink; you invited me in; you gave me clothes you helped me when I was sick. Whatever you did for the least of my brothers you did for me.
To the others Christ said; When I was hungry, thirsty, needed clothing or was a stranger you did not help me.
Each group asks: When did this happen...and Christ answers, Whatever you did to help or did Not do to help those who needed it the most you did to me.
There is nothing in that passage that requires the person being helped to FIRST accept Christ, but many Christian groups seem to forget this.
It doesen't make them wrong, but it does make them misguided.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMbDYNDC3sA
I'm willing to help the island rebuild, as long as it is rebuilt for ALL its citizens. With those at the top leading the way. Now THAT would be a world model! Dare I hope?
Only the heartless can whine or complain or use this tragedy for any but humanitarian purposes. That said, I can see ahead to six , 12 , 24 months down the road. I pray that with needed assistance and attention, this earthquake can be the start of something good for Haiti. A modest rebuilding for ALL, now that all is gone.
your quote:(The absolute deflation of the National Palace -- one doesn't know how to feel about it, properly.)
Answer: Properly feel sad that it did not happen years ago with the Duvaliers inside of it .
All was just a big white thing that represented one of the world's most brutal and greedy dictatorships in man's history.Do not be getting teary eyed at it's demise.It is where for many years most of the financial aid to Haiti was stolen from the people who needed it.It's destruction is the silver lining in ths tragedy
your quote:(The absolute deflation of the National Palace -- one doesn't know how to feel about it, properly.)
Answer: Properly feel sad that it did not happen years ago with the Duvaliers inside of it .
All was just a big white thing that represented one of the world's most brutal and greedy dictatorships in man's history.Do not be getting teary eyed at it's demise.It is where most of the financial aid to Haiti for many was stolen from the people who needed it.It's destruction is the silver lining in ths tradegy.
The world is going to have to prop up Haiti to get them on the road to recovery.
There could be all kinds of people to teach them how to plant and conserve the soil for them to be self sufficient, there is so much that can be done for them. They need to plant Trees too ...
If we as regular citizens can think of the ways to make things better for them why can't the professionals do this ????
All they are going to go through is so unnecessary ....
Email it to Bill Clinton at his Global Initiative
or to Clinton and Bush at their new Haiti website.
I've been thinking of floodproof/earthquakeproof housing too lately.
I'm thinking geodesic domes covered with chicken wire and adobe.
Somehow, we here in the United States have been fooled into believing that the abortion of a fetus is murder. (This is not a biblical belief - quickening was known in ancient times.) The same people seem to believe that use of condoms is also sinful - With a world-wide epidemic of AIDS, powerful religious groups prevent the use of condoms either as a preventative or for birth-control .
Beyond the basics of all the selfish regimes and the steady decline of the nation, my knowledge of Haiti is very limited.
My prayers and my support go without saying. May the good get to those who need it as quickly as possible.
God's Grace on them.
Peter Bright