I haven't been able to blog all weekend because all I can think about is this horror story.
Three weeks after it was confirmed for the first time ever in the Caribbean nation, the waterborne sickness has claimed at least 800 lives. The United Nations has warned that up to 200,000 Haitians could contract cholera as the outbreak spreads across the battered Caribbean nation of nearly 10 million.
The aid group Doctors Without Borders and the health ministry have set up tents inside the hospital. The sick are lined up in beds with clear IV tubes in their arms. Those too weak to turn their bodies get beds with holes and buckets in the centre.
My companion Sébastien is with a mobile medical team in the rural north looking for people too sick or poor to make it to a clinic or a hospital.
I haven't heard from him for four days so I have no idea what he's dealing with, but I know it must be awful. And needless to say I'm sick with worry.
I wish I could say it was just a question of donating more money. Although more money is desperately needed.
But the truth is the situation is beyond that. It's not just the health system that is broken. It's the country itself.
I have no idea how to heal a country. What I do know is that Canada played a major role in the overthrow of the Aristide government in 2004.
But because we were so concerned with sucking up to the Americans in Afghanistan, we didn't do enough to build up the Haitian state, in a country where so many people look up to us. And this is the bitter harvest.
Within a few hours, her father walks out of the hospital. Clercilia is again in his arms. Her stiff body is wrapped in a plastic bag. A death certificate is in her father’s right hand.
“It was night, I couldn’t take her until the morning,” he said. With no money to bury her, he wasn’t sure what he would do with her body. He straightened it in his arms and walked his daughter home, still draped in the yellow blanket.
We could have done so much. Unlike Afghanistan we could have made a difference. Building hospitals, or sewage treatment plants, instead of police stations.
We could have used our peacekeeping skills to help mediate this madness
But we didn't.
Remember the poor suffering people of Haiti, who deserve so much better.
Remember the heroic medical teams who are fighting so desperately to save them.
For they are my heroes...
I spent the weekend trying to avoid the sights and sounds of this human catastrophe.
But of course I couldn't, because to look away would be criminal. It's that awful.The devastation, the suffering, the lack of food, water and medicines.
And the worst thing of all. The cry of so many desperate survivors... where is the world?
"It has been four days since this thing," the man, Jean-Claude Hilaire, began. "And nobody has come yet. My area, Bel Air, is devastated. About 200,000 people have lost their homes. Twenty thousand – kids, pregnant women – are sleeping hungry in the local park. That's long enough. I need to know: is anybody coming? Is anybody going to do anything?"It's so frustrating and depressing. I know it's a logistical nightmare. I know a lot of good people are working their hearts out to help the Haitians.... even as some mourn their own.
The agency has lost dear loved ones. Many officials have lost all their belongings.Some United Nations section chiefs, officials said, are still sleeping in their cars. Water is so scarce that taking a bottle off someone’s desk can lead to hurtful confrontations. And workers said food was in such short supply the agency was considering charging for their daily rations.But it all seems so agonizingly slow.And my only consolation is the amazing strength of the Haitian people. Or, as Bob Herbert calls it, the resolve among the ruins.
Enslavement, murderous colonial oppression, invasions by powerful foreign armies, grotesque homegrown tyrants, natural disasters — all you have to do is wait a while in Haiti for the next catastrophe to strike.
And yet. No matter how overwhelming the tragedy, how bleak the outlook, no matter what malevolent forces the fates see fit to hurl at this tiny, beleaguered, mountainous, sun-splashed portion of the planet, there is no quit in the Haitian people.
They were brutally oppressed by their French colonizers, burned at the stake, buried alive, boiled in cauldrons of molasses. The United States tried to smother their baby republic in its crib. They have been betrayed by their own leaders, cheated, robbed, and worn down by poverty. They have been hit by one natural catastrophe after the other.But still they endure.Which is what I took away from one shiningly beautiful picture of a two-year-old boy who was pulled out of the ruins the other day.He was sobbing and miserable in the arms of one of his rescuers.Until he caught sight of his mum...
Love among the ruins.You know endurance is an awesome quality.But the Haitian people have endured too much for too long. And when this horror is finally over, they must NEVER be abandoned again...-------------------------------------------------------P.S. If you can help, here's a pretty good list of ways you can contribute.
