The Olympic Village

So, this first post was kind of jacked by the slow internet connection at my parents' house. I uploaded a few photos and then it stopped working, and I couldn't really fix it until today, between there being no electricity and Mom grabbing me to go visit the neighbors. I was going to write a big introduction but I think I'll just caption these photos...

My cup of cafe con leche for breakfast at Sabor Latino, a small restaurant by the airport Mariott Hotel in Miami where I spent Friday night, sharing a room with Hannah. I had to take a photo of this because I've been craving me some Cuban coffee since I last went through Miami. It's the highlight of the long trip, let me tell you. I woke up an hour earlier than Hannah and walked over just to get a taste before we had to
catch the shuttle back to the airport for the last leg of the trip, into Port-au-Prince.


We went directly to the MINUSTAH (UN) compound from the airport. Hannah had hired a driver, Olga, who drove us over to the UN compound, which is actually right next to the airport. Mom had some trouble coming to get me so I tagged along with Hannah. They were going to attend a cluster socio-psyche ngo meeting, and then go up to Gwo Jan.
This is Hannah Hoover walking with psychologist Gary and anthropologist John, the two professors from her college in Chicago.


Where Hannah and profs had a cluster meeting with the social-psyche ngos. I sat in for a little bit but then decided to wander around until they were done. I was a little nervous that someone would stop me and ask what I was doing taking photos of the compound, but no one did. Maybe it's because I have ninja-like skills in creeping around places from my newspaper days.


This is the cafe for the ngo relief workers, soldiers, etc, that live and work in the UN compound. Hannah very cynically called this area the "Olympic Village."


A crane lifts a modular shelter into place in the MINUSTAH compound. It will serve as an office or dwelling for an NGO.


The UN soldiers' tents.


A sign listing methods of dealing with post-trauma. These posters were up all over the place.


On one side, Haiti, the other side, MINUSTAH. Barbed wire in between.


The United Nations flag, which Gary and I thought was very symbolically caught on the barbed wire that lines the wall surrounding the compound.


We didn't stop again until we reached Gwo Jan after we left the UN compound. I sniped this photo from the car of a building wrecked by the earthquake.


Another completely destroyed building.


A tent city. Everywhere people are afraid to sleep in their houses, especially if their roofs are made of cement. Even if their house is still standing, no one wants to take the chance.

Flight Plan

I leave Denver on the 26th at 3:45 p.m., land in Miami around 11 p.m. I plan on meeting up with a family friend, Hannah, who is graciously sharing her hotel room with me before our flight to Port-au-Prince the next morning. Hannah works for the Children's Place, a Chicago-based organization that works to help families living with HIV/AIDS. I am grateful to be able to tag along with her, and planned my trip around hers so that I could fly in with someone and wouldn't be completely flying solo into post-earthquake Haiti. Although I have done that before in better times, and felt perfectly safe doing that, I wouldn't feel great about it this time for obvious reasons. I think a lot of family members feel better about my going now that I will be meeting up with someone else.
Two days to go, and the preparations are pretty much occupying all of my free time. I have so many supplies to bring, mostly donated by coworkers and friends, that I don't really know how it will all fit in my suitcases. I think I need Mary Poppins' carpet bag.

The catastrophe before the catastrophe

Written by Carla Bluntschli

Loved ones of ours,

Today Feb 11, the day before the month marker of this "event" (as it is commonly referred to now) which will begin a 3 day national time of prayer and fasting, normally the pre-carnival time 12th-14th, was one of the lowest days so far for me.

I am deeply grateful as an undeserving human who was not buried in the rubble of a planetary shakedown. We were somehow spared even as the church just a few yards above our house crashed, pancaking on itself during those fatal seconds. Fortunately, no one was within its unsuspecting death-chamber-like walls, but I am still reeling from the truth of the real disaster as it reveals itself out of the dust.

The ensuing chaos continues to be upon us. It almost feels immoral or unjust to me (is this survival guilt?), having been spared death, physical suffering or any loss of property through the quake but now even more so as the threatening clouds of the rainy season promise more disaster for the thousands cast out unceremoniously into the streets by this catastrophic itch in the underskin of mother earth. This year those long awaited rains for the expectant farmers to plant and the welcome relief to the months of tongue coating dust film, (now mixed with cement and human remains), seems more like a death certificate awaiting those who have not been fortunate enough yet to get a tent or just a tarp. Many families are sleeping with only a cotton sheet and scraps of plastic between themselves, their children and the cold evening downpours that will surely provoke sickness and more suffering will inevitably follow.

These crushed concrete schools, churches, businesses, homes have turned into spontaneous tombs for the unretrievable bodies of loved ones decaying in undignified cricumstances. But, for me, the spiritual weight of all these instantaneously snuffed out lives is much heavier than the concrete and steel that smothers them.



This photo is of one of my best friend's front "yard", a place I've known for years, having visited a jillion times though always focusing on the beauty of laughter and the energy of life to blot out the sewage smell and uncleanable environment, the material deprivation in this ghostown ghetto was stark. This forced exodus from these once hot crowded spoonfuls of earth lay naked the truth of unbridled greed that crushed people into these conditions by an economic catastrophe that has been going on for generations. This photo is simple, but perhaps it can help tell the story of the lives and dreams of thousands of lives of loved ones crammed into the virtual fissures of bare cinderblock destined to having their bones and breath suffocated out of existence in a mere few seconds.


The uncomfortable question as to why an earthquake could kill the horrific numbers of people compared to earthquakes of equal seismic shock was asked during the Discovery program shown the other night. As the documentary camera zoomed into the rubble of Port-au-Prince, the condemning evidence of snapped off corner posts of schools and houses where too few bars of metal and sacks of cement were used in their construction gave some hints that should us squirm. The economic choices that parents in these types of neighborhoods are constantly pressured into making is that they literally sacrifice themselves to pay for their children's education at the expense of their own housing. This cosmic shudder exposed the worst of our human spiritual condition, stuffing a major part of humanity (most major cities have similar situations, but to a lesser degree) into indecent cracks and edges of life with no real choices. It has exposed an ancient catastrophe of racism, prejudice, exploitation and greed that exploded into this cataclysmic catastrophe of unjust proportions. There's no more hiding behind the thin curtains of laughter any more, the wails of grief have torn it away.

As I drove by a temporary shelter camp made up in a park in one of the richer neighborhoods of Petionville the other day, I saw an older man
stooping by the curb having found an unusually clean bit of water running in the gutter to scrub out his small washcloth. I thought about not looking at him allowing him my respect for his privacy in a somewhat humiliating circumstance, but I was impelled to see him and to have him see me understanding our mutual humanity in the seconds of our passing glances. He smiled with eyes glistening into my own and cast out his hands in simple resignation.

N a Sonje
"We Will Remember"
Carla

2 Rasin performing "Street Children"

Collapsed church

To go to Haiti

Th purpose of this blog is to inform family and friends about my trip to Haiti after the earthquake. My parents, who have lived in Haiti for 25 years, survived the earthquake and are now helping the community where they live to organize rebuilding and distributing aid. Their house, guesthouse and yard, all amazingly intact, are filled with people whose homes were destroyed. I am going to spend the month of March there with them, and do what I can to help. They live in Gwo Jan, which means "Big John" in Creole, a provincial area east of Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.