Posted by Carwyn Hill at 12:06 pm, January 16th 2010.
Ambulance getting attention in Port-au-Prince
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On Tuesday night the tremors of Port au Prince’s devastating earthquake rippled through the whole country. Cap-Haitian, Haiti’s second largest city fell into a silent daze of disbelief, horror and fear. A long waiting game began as communication lines failed, and the majority of the city’s population wept for the news of loved ones in Port au Prince. After a day of mourning, the reality seemed to have sunk in, and the ever increasing scale of this disaster truly started unfolding.
Yesterday morning at 4am a small team from the Haiti Hospital Appeal (a UK registered charity based in London) set out from the North of Haiti to Port au Prince. For most of the long 7 hour journey we remained in silence, fearing what we would find before us.
As we drove further into the city, the scale of this atrocity began to unfold. Piled along many of the streets lay the rotting bodies of victims from the earthquake. Most were covered in old, dirty sheets scarcely large enough to hide the tragic images below. People passed by, some slowly as if out of a mark of respect, others quicker, jogging almost to avoid the mass of flies and the sickening smell. Make shift coffins occasionally weaved in and out of the crowds of people, carried by half a dozen men or so. Voluntary undertakers frantically passing from street to street. Some of these men seemed eager to have their photo taken, others not. Our translator faced the underlying bubbling tension of the grief when threatened by a devastated man with a machete in mourning over his mother. Terrified he ran, falling and cutting himself on the way, returning covered in dust. A thick concrete like dust that sticks to your skin, dries out your hair, and lines your nostrils. The tension is understandable to say the least, and looting has already been reported. What has caused many of our friends greater concern here is the reality that a number of criminals have escaped from broken prisons, guns have been stolen, and some shootings reported. That said, I have been truly amazed and humbled by the peaceful way the majority of this city has handled itself, especially in light of the normal reputation this city has.
We had been warned that the city stank of death, and such warnings hadn’t been false. The majority of the population walk around with masks covering their faces; others have smeared some form of ointment around their nose to avoid the smell. It is potent, and a constant and cruel reminder to all those who survived that beneath the piles of rubbish and destroyed houses, schools, offices and the like lay their loved ones. Having been to Port au Prince before, another thing that struck me was the eerie silence which replaced the normal vibrant hustle and bustle of this colourful Caribbean city. It was as if we’d walked into one large city sized morgue. Mass sites have already been used to burn the dead, and on the way in and out of Port au Prince the smoke and smell linger in the air.
Port au Prince has always had some of Haiti’s poorest slums, but now it seemed the whole city had transformed into a community of make do tents. Some small communities, just enough to fit a few families in, others huge, easily cramming in hundreds if not thousands. Many sit within these ever increasing make shift refugee camps beneath the blistering hot sun burning down upon them, resigned to the reality of their new lives. Many of these families will perhaps live in these tents for many months if not years to come, perhaps even forever.
One of our main objectives on travelling to Port au Prince had been to search for the children of one of our staff. Beneath the awesome scale of this disaster, with the destruction which looked liked the blitz in my mind, lay the tragic stories of individuals. Our employee Simone had waited three days to find out whether her four children had survived. The relief was incredible as she heard the news that her family were alive. There aren’t many glimmers of hope or flickers of light here amidst this great darkness, but when you find them, you cherish them. They are stories that offer a sweet aroma against the bitter tragic smell of death. Yet, just metres from her moment of salvation, others mourned over the loss of a family beneath a house, parts of their limbs protruding from the mass of rubble.
During our travels yesterday we came across a group of UK rescue workers from Lancashire, Manchester and Kent. It was a welcome moment of encouragement to stand besides these men and hear of their work, their sacrifice, searching through such mounds of rubble as I have described. I’m not a particularly patriotic guy, but in this instance I did stand proud witnessing the brave and dangerous work that some of our fireman and rescue teams from the UK were undertaking. Just earlier that day they had miraculously managed to rescue a two year old baby from beneath the rubble. She was one of a number they’d saved, though others they’d had to leave trapped beneath the debris because of a lack of equipment to save them. Thankfully these supplies had just been flown in, and the team were hopeful more lives could now be saved in the coming days.
Another reason we’d come had been as part of our charities emergency aid response. Our appeal’s ambulance had been filled with water sachets, medication, first aid equipment, clothes, and some small supplies of food rations. Such aid was but a speck of dust amidst this great ocean of suffering. However, with aid only just arriving from abroad, it was a welcome respite to many. Even over one sachet of water that costs less than 5p, I watched as women and children danced and sang before me singing their thanks to those who’d provided them with this welcome relief. It is always humbling in developing countries such as Haiti to witness what a profound and powerful affect the offer of one small humble gift can have on an individual or family. Yet, our little 4x4 ambulance soon became a powerful magnet of need. Women, children and men of all ages would stare through our window pleading even for one small bit of food. Our driver became agitated, fearful that some of these crowds in their desperation wanted our ambulance, and so we steadily progressed through the city, not hanging around in any one place for too long.
Having people beg for water was not an unusual experience for me having lived in Haiti for over a year. Just a few minutes from where my wife and I live in the North is our local market which sells clay cookies. Cookies literally made out of the dirt and filth in the ground, as some cheap means of filling the stomachs of the starving. What is important to recognise that beneath the surface of this atrocity, lies a nation that even before Tuesday was crippled with devastation. You cannot understand the true damage of Tuesday, until you understand the country for which this disaster has struck. It is already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. 1 in 5 children die before the age of 5 in Haiti, many from easily treatable or avoidable illnesses. Today was not the first time I had seen images of such tragic death. Our appeal had been founded on witnessing the death of an 11 year old girl called Julia in 2005, poignantly the year of the Make Poverty History Campaign. Most Haitians wake up each day as if they were awaking on the aftermath of a disaster. Disasters that go unreported, but which are still just as sickening. It shames me, but I have become hardened here, I wonder where my heart is, why it is I don’t cry at the injustices of this nation so much anymore. Of course my heart still pours out as much as it ever has, more so today, and deep down I ache and grieve as anyone who works here does. However, it is a true but sad reality that the disaster of Haiti happened a long time before Tuesday.
What pains me most, even beyond the immediate devastation, the need for food, clothing, medication, water and the like which our appeal is actively sourcing and distributing, is the long term suffering ahead. Not only for Port au Prince, but for this desperately broken little nation as a whole. When the images fade from our televisions, as they did from the hurricane devastation of 2008, this country will continue living day by day on a knife edge. It is why our aid response doesn’t just include immediate emergency relief, but also the desire to complete an urgently needed hospital facility in the North; to provide hope and desperately needed health care for the future. Our desire is that the response of the world to Haiti will not be short and swift, but that this tragedy will move us to make a stand against the continuing spiral of injustice here for many years to come, that if we choose to we can stop. It takes courage for men like those firemen from the UK to leave their families and put themselves in danger for the sake of others. It takes more than courage, it takes sacrifice. And it is sacrificial support which I would plea for this day on behalf of the whole nation of Haiti. It isn’t easy, it does come with a price, but the sacrifices made by us today will be but a speck of dust in comparison to the sacrifice those in Haiti will have to suffer if we don’t act.
If you’d like to support the work we’re undertaking in Haiti in response to this earthquake, please visit www.haitihospitalappeal.org
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