Pierre Larousse, One Year Later, In School, Doing Homework
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The former Haitian ruler Jean Claude Duvalier once said, "It is the destiny of the people of Haiti to suffer."
That was one of the things I read among my notes as we traveled down to Haiti on the night of Jan. 12, 2010. The quote sounded fatalistic and unfair. How can an entire population be destined to suffer?
But the more you learn about Haiti, the more you realize the situation most Haitians are born into is a cruel semblance of life in the Western hemisphere. There are mobile phones and internet connections and television programs. There's an understanding of what life is like in most Western nations, but life doesn't look like that in the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, and Haitians are well aware of that fact.
When we landed on the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, one of the first planes to arrive that morning, the first person I saw was a woman in a wheelchair whose head was completely bandaged in bloody rags. She was one of the lucky ones. She was being flown to the Dominican Republic for medical help. I asked her companion where she had been when the earthquake struck. "She worked at the Citibank building," he told me. It's been flattened." We decided to drive there and set up for our broadcast.
Haiti's President Rene Preval was also on the tarmac. He wasn't wounded, but seemed lost and wondered aloud when help would arrive.
It had been 14 hours since the 7.0 quake had struck. The tarmac was eerily empty.
We met up with Sebastian Petion, our driver, an all-around great person I have stayed in touch with, and he took us through the streets of Port-au-Prince. It's so hackneyed to say it looked like a disaster film, but when that's your only frame of reference, it's difficult to come up with adjectives other than "surreal." A building completely intact stood next to one that had pancaked. People were working with tiny pick axes in a slow, painstaking effort to dig through the rubble. Some walked through the streets on a kind of mass exodus to nowhere. It was strangely silent. No ambulances, fire trucks or rescue workers. As I quickly learned, these kinds of services don't exist in Haiti. And then, of course, there were the bodies lying everywhere. Some were covered by blankets. Others were wrapped in aluminum siding. They seemed as commonplace as strewn litter on the streets and sidewalks. One side street was transformed into a makeshift morgue as someone lined up body after body, death with no dignity. I will never forget the image of one woman, lying face down, stacked on other bodies, her arm sticking straight up. She was wearing black underwear.
The Citibank overlooked a makeshift tent city, a place where some of the 1.5 million people who became homeless in an instant set up a temporary dwelling. That first night, shortly after the broadcast, people in the camp below us were singing songs that sounded joyful, like gospel music but in Creole.
Sebastian told us they were singing because they were happy to be alive.
Within walking distance, Doctors Without Borders had set up a medical tent. What I found there were patients without doctors. At that point very few had arrived, and the personnel and supplies they had were no match for the carnage and devastation on the ground.
I walked into a Belgian clinic set up by B-Fast, emergency responders from Belgium. Under the hospital tent I saw people on stretchers on the grass in front of a hospital. There I met Pierre Larousse, who was 13 at the time, a skinny kid with a handsome face, wearing boxers and a T-shirt. His eyes were swollen, he had a big scrape on his forehead and he was clearly in excruciating pain. Doctors were trying to reset his broken leg, no anesthesia and no plaster cast available. His parents were dead. His cries penetrated all else. They were deafening. "Why, God, why?" he screamed in Creole.
All I could think to do was to hold his hand and calm him as I would my own child.
We left four days later, and the next week we ended up in Miami to meet some of the injured who were evacuated to hospitals like Jackson Memorial, which I knew well from my days as a reporter for local TV in that city.
I met Romel Joseph at that hospital. He's a Haitian man who has loved Tchaikovsky since he was a child. Romel plays violin and made it to Miami, where he raised his lovely daughter Victoria and started a music school. But he also runs a school in Haiti and was there when the ground shook on Jan. 12. Many of his students, and his new wife, were killed. He was crushed under debris and when I met him it was unclear if he would ever play again.
Further up the Florida coast I met Erin Kloos. She had gone to Haiti as a volunteer, and on the day of the earthquake her brother Ryan was there for a visit. Erin was trapped in rubble for 12 hours, sustaining crushing injuries. She lived. Ryan died.
I returned to Haiti six months after the quake and found little had changed. Of the 1.5 million people displaced, fewer than half have found a new home. Many still live in refugee camps. In fact, as we approach the one-year anniversary, Oxfam reports only 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared. In the tent cities, cholera and crime threaten the already devastated populations. Amnesty International found that more than 250 rapes occurred in just the first five months after the quake.
On this one-year anniversary, Sebastian wrote to me to say he's still very worried about life in Haiti. He said 80 percent of the schools were destroyed in the quake and many people, particularly those in tent cities, see no way to resume normal life or to attend school. He also complains that there is little leadership among the government or the NGOs there to assist in the reconstruction.
It's a mammoth undertaking. But progress seems painfully, ridiculously slow. Oxfam also found just 15 percent of the required temporary housing needed for those left homeless has been built. Of the $2.1 billion pledged by governments for reconstruction in 2010, just 42 percent has been allocated.
But, as Haiti marks the first anniversary of the quake, there have been signs of hope and recovery.
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Romel Joseph is playing violin again, and reopened his school in Haiti.
Erin Kloos is in her first year of medical school in Phoenix. Her parents continue to mourn the loss of their son and celebrate the miracle of their daughter's recovery.
One of the doctors from Jackson Memorial and the University of Miami, Barth Green, through Project Medishare, has established a pharmacy, operating rooms and a clinic serving at least 200 patients a day in Haiti.
Partners in Health, with co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer and a dedicated team including a woman named Dr. Louis Ivers who I met on both trips to Haiti, are continuously providing healthcare and support to more than one million Haitians.
And then there's Pierre. He is just one of the two million children whose lives, homes and schools were destroyed, but he is one I met and became attached to. I'm happy to report that right now he is in school and doing very well. In fact, he was skipped up a grade because he is learning so quickly. He lives with his grandmother now in a town 30 minutes north of Port-au-Prince. The image of him in my mind's eye has shifted from one of anguish and pain, to a young man with a beatific smile and a more hopeful, if uncertain, future.
A year ago today an earthquake killed nearly a quarter of a million people. It left more than a million people homeless, and it was an horrific setback for a nation that had seen enough suffering already.
The quake and its aftermath may have receded from the headlines, only to reemerge on the obligatory anniversaries. But the images of a devastated Haiti and a nation, lurching in fits and starts on the road to recovery, will be with me forever. I hope and pray Jean Claude Duvalier was wrong, and now that billions of dollars have been pledged and countless, well-meaning individuals have been delivered to this perpetually bruised and battered nation, Haiti and its people will eventually receive the deliverance they deserve.
The "CBS Evening News" will catch up with Pierre on Wednesday's broadcast.
Katie Couric: The Human Face of Haitian Tragedy
Mark Hanlon: Street-Level Compassion, Street-Level Delivery in Haiti
Linda Mason: Can Cell Phones Rescue Haiti?
There is nothing in the Duvalier family's lengthy history to suggest that their return is nothing less than the hope of seizing power and profit from the present turmoil. God save Haiti cherie.
Regarding recent events in Haiti, hopefully, in her private thoughts, she questioned her country's dedication to principles of democracy after the US kidnapped the democratically elected president of Haiti and dumped him in Africa, and then insisted that the largest, most popular political party be excluded from the 'elections'.
Maybe, just maybe, she'll speak out on the hypocrisy of Washington's rhetoric and actions. I doubt it though. Like most members of the mainstream media who understand these truths, she values her high paying, cush job more than principles of democracy. Questioning authority isn't for the weak of heart.
Earthquake, Cholera and now Jean Claude!
Interesting that Katie would quote this horrendous dictator just days before he arrived back on the impoverished island. He says, "the Haitian people were destined to suffer." - well, he and his father saw to that while they were in office.
Jean Claude made out pretty well 25 years ago when he was exiled to the French Rivera and now he's returned to bring more suffering to this island of people just trying to keep their heads above water.
This man doesn't care about the people of Haiti. He just cares to fill his pockets! I am shocked they allowed him back. One person said, "it's his country, he can come home anytime." The man was exiled for a reason. Those old enough to remember his reign of terror will not welcome him home. He had his chance to make things better and he did nothing but torture!
This is truly a sad day in Haitian history.
...and he was right, as long as he was cashing the generous American aid checks, giving nothing to help the Haitian people. Generations of aid workers and groups have 'used' Haiti. Hear these words, because "Haiti is that place on Earth where suffering is manufactured and poverty is a cash crop."
Gambling on the ignorance and complicity of the international community and the UN, Washington and Paris have manipulated Haitian freedom since its independence. The dictators son, and heir to the most deadly regime in the western hemisphere, is welcome, and Father Aristide is banished - without trial - so 'occupation' could return.
This is part of the travestry and tapestry of lies being exposed every day.
From humble beginnings, come great things.
But, first things first: How is their food, and water? Medicine? Do they have enough doctors and other medical specialists? How's the literacy? Do they have enough people that are competent in management? How about basic resources, tools, raw materials, so forth, and so on? In other words, just HOW 'screwed' are they, and can they UNscrew it for themselves? If they can unify, organize, and make best use of the talents they do have, they can surmount any obstacle. But, first, they need to get in the habit of having regular meetings, and all that jazz. So, what was the result of the last one?
I'd also like to see the internal reviews conducted by all the aid agencies and charities and so forth, to try and gain a better understanding of the overall situation. Apologies to Ms. Couric, but this story really doesn't do a lot to provide that kind of information. Maybe the Haitians need to learn how to write their own news stories, also.
Because they are on the drug trade route from South America to the US.
Haiti will never become a country because a country would either take a cut of the profits or stop the trade.
That is why the US told President Jean Bertrand Aristide he would die if he did not go with them, then flew him to South Africa, while they flew in a Florida resident to become President of Haiti.
27% unemployment, if the 15 million 99ers were included.
Hunger, homeless, suicides....and the politicians degrading their constituents.
Fix America, before trying to hightlight another country.
If you have not noticed....your own is turning to vomit.
And DC spews lies and rhetoric against fellow Americans.
Many 99ers are vets........is THAT not a shame????????????
They fought, came home to no jobs, lost homes, families breaking up, suicides,
...................and THEY fought for the politicians rights to call them names.
What a grand situation...............
Here you go though, your very own link to Katie Couric - Jobless in America
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-20013037-500803.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody
Now surely you do not expect Katie Couric to fix U.S.A. by itself? What have you done to counteract the problems you describe?
Sorry, but the answer to that should be pretty obious:
Profit
Bottom line
Luxury
Stock prices
Look at any nation on earth where US commerical interests took all natural resources as if we owned them. South America, Asia, Africa, .. - no matter where You look there is immeasurable suffering. - And it always has the same reason: Money that they work for but that the rich somewhere else get.
An earthquake is something these parasites see as an opportunity. Katrina was the same. They privatized building and education in New Orleans fafter it. The Tsunami? - Made the holiday industry rich by letting them keep the fishermen off their beaches. - The beaches they needed to feed their family by going fishing.
Yes, the earthquake was a terrible desaster. A far graeter desaster is what corporate America makes of it.Because their opportunity to make profit inevitably means a guaranteed loss in income, safety, and life for the people. No matter where.
As if that is their goal and not just an incidental effect of making money.
A lot of money is stashed on the sidelines from the outpouring of response that still waits to be applied. It seems the cause is lack of coordination and the spectre of lack of transparency in handing any of it over to corrupt Haitian officials.
It will be some kind of model of miracle-making to pull Haiti up to functional. Their government to start with and their infrastructure will be fundamental in their long-term recovery.
A more-than-tall order but lacking that, Haiti will remain mired in dysfunctionality.