A lucky heart
By Swoan Parker
Beating on average 72 times a minute some two and a half billion times during a lifetime, the human heart fascinates me. At just 14 years old, Fabien Destine’s heart still has a long way to go. She was born with a hole in hers, but was one of the few lucky patients in Haiti to be accepted by the international medical mission to fix it.
Of the 40 hopeful Haitian children with serious heart problems waiting in line outside the Clinique Degand where the mission was based, only Fabien and ten others would be admitted for surgery. The others were deemed to have problems too complex to be fixed in Haiti. Some would be referred to other programs through Gift of Life International, and others would await the next mission. Many likely will never be helped.
I had learned of the week-long medical mission comprised of volunteer surgeons, doctors, technicians and nurses from France’s La Chaine de L’Espoir and the Montefiore Medical Center in New York. They would be coming to Haiti armed with equipment and supplies to perform lifesaving cardiac surgery on 11 children suffering from cardiovascular diseases (CVD). The Clinique Degand is the only facility in Haiti equipped for this type of surgery.
I once witnessed a kidney transplant, the most incredible thing I had ever seen. But now the opportunity to see surgery to repair a human heart just fascinated me.
Strength born of calamity
By Swoan Parker
Everything was in its place. Knick-knacks of varying shapes perfectly lined the dresser as the dearly loved treasures from a literally broken home. Aline Deispeines’ concrete home was destroyed in the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12, 2010. Her new home, spotlessly kept, was a tent. Her life, like that of so many who survived the calamity, was changed forever. She, like so many other Haitians, had lost her home, her loved ones, her business, and all feeling of security for her future.
I came to know Aline, 44 and a single mother to daughter Tina, 13, and adopted daughter Herby, 24, after hearing about OFEDA, the Organization of Dedicated Women in Action. OFEDA is a grassroots organization of women in support of women. It is run by Aline, who against incredible odds formed the group just weeks after the quake. OFEDA, I would later learn, is a symbol of strength, hope and endurance.
When I was asked for story ideas related to International Women’s Day, I immediately thought of her.
I set out on the back of my motorbike and traveled to the grounds of a government-run school on Rues des Freres, an area outside of Port-au-Prince. Aline greeted me with a warm smile and welcoming hug. She escorted me to her office inside a tent located a couple hundred feet from the school building. As we sat down and began to talk, I told her of the story that I was working on and how I thought that OFEDA would be ideal. As we were talking other members of the organization began to enter the tent, curious to know what was going on. After brief introductions they sat down and listened as Aline told me how OFEDA came to be.
As I looked out through the tent office I noticed that there were several other tents erected just behind the school. Some were in better shape than others, but all were occupied by people whose homes were destroyed in the quake, including Aline.
I am glad Aline and the others affected by the earthquake in Haiti have you to publicize their plight and to encourage those around the world for support.
Thank You,
Swoan Parker
From the Quake to the Cup
By Mariana Bazo
Nearly 300 Haitians are stuck in Inapari, a tiny Peruvian village on the border with Brazil. They are victims of the 2010 earthquake in their country and traveled weeks chasing their dream of simply getting a job. They believe that in Brazil the upcoming World Cup is creating great opportunities.
Some 3,000 kilometers after leaving home, they reached the Brazilian border only to find it shut to them, closed to stop the wave of their compatriots that began to arrive after the disaster.
They wait in the middle of the jungle and understand little. They’ve bet everything on this chance, selling or just abandoning all their belongings back home to make it this far. They now have nothing in Haiti and can’t reach their destination, nor can they return. They even asked me why they’re not allowed to cross the border, assuring that they are good workers and are willing to work hard to live better.
Inapari is a lowland village of immigrants from the Andean highlands. A few years back it was opened up to the world with the construction of the Interoceanic Highway uniting the Pacific with the Atlantic across Peru and Brazil. With that road came many things good and bad. First came illegal logging. Then came illegal mining and smuggling. But at the same time Brazil and Peru are now united, commerce is more fluid and Machu Picchu is now only 12 hours away by road.
It’s so sad and heartbreaking to see a human being in this condition… I understand that the level of employment in Brazil is growing, good news! Let’s have these mens get in, what could we do to accelerate the process of legalization?
Two faces of the same drama
A year ago, I was part of the Reuters team that covered Haiti’s massive earthquake, which claimed some 250,000 lives, and left a million people living in makeshift camps. This year, I was part of the team that covered another natural disaster– the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan’s northern coast and brought on a nuclear crisis.
The two events were very different. They occurred on opposite sides of the globe, in completely different countries, in different cultural contexts. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with a turbulent political history. On the other hand, Japan is one of the richest and most modern countries in the world– the third largest economy and, actually, one of the first to send help to Haiti.
But in covering these two catastrophes, I was struck by a few similarities.
Walking through the rubble of Kessenuma, in Japan, looking for a way to convey the scale of the destruction, I found myself almost in a situation like one year ago in Haiti.
There was a woman alone, who paused and stood still, looking at the remains of her house. I had a flash back to a man I had photographed walking alone in the devastated Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
I realized that situation after situation, similar scenes repeated themselves.
Truly amazing. This is very good work.
Frankie.
BruneitheBeautiful.blog.com
Slow change in Haiti
In the weeks since I arrived in Port-au-Prince to cover the earthquake, the streets have been cleared of debris and thousands of bodies have been removed from the rubble. But in many ways, the changes seem incremental.
In Cite Soleil a small improvised camp looks a lot the same, only it’s grown in size. Thousands of families continue living under blue plastic tarps, and they receive food from aid groups fighting against time as the rainy season approaches. When I left, on March 1, the food distribution at least was much more organized, watched over by American soldiers. The food just goes to women now, in an attempt to get aid to nuclear families instead of those who shove the hardest.
About a month after the earthquake, on a trip to Titanyen, the site where some 100,000 were buried in mass graves north of the city, I saw a small group of Haitians with sticks and stones. They were trying to mark off land in order to build there in the future. There was nothing else, just gravel. No services at all.
I went back right before leaving Haiti and I discovered, like fruit trees that grow on arid land, a hundred or so tents. It seemed like the birth of a village. I wondered if one day it might grow into a city.
The Devil on the loose in Haiti
The incessant drone of the motorcycle under me becomes distant as my mind creates images from the words of an elderly woman in the camp I just visited. “The Devil is on the loose in Haiti. He turns into a dog, a pig or a hen, to move unnoticed in the camps and devour life. Last night he appeared as a dog and took the life of a child.” In the camp everyone knows and speaks of the death, and the strange disappearance of the boy’s mother.
Every form that I have ever imagined devilish beings to take are banished from my mind when this Devil appears. He has become a 7-day diarrhea that “devoured” the life of the child. Is it easier to explain death in the hands of a demon instead of looking around and thinking that it might have been the lack of water, hygiene and food that snatched the life?
The destitution of the Haitian people hits me everywhere I turn. In none of the camps I visited is there a face that doesn’t show the mark of poverty. “The city looks like it was bombed,” says the security expert who accompanies me daily. There is no building, house or street that doesn’t show the effects of nature’s strength. They really were bombed – bombarded by political violence, illiteracy, unemployment, AIDS and extreme poverty. The quake did nothing more than expose to the world the indigence of an entire nation.
The three-day-long Mass held to remember the earthquake’s first month moves me in every way. Without realizing it I find myself swaying to the rhythm of the music sung by the throng of mourners dressed in white. The innocent faces of children contrast brutally with the cold stares of looters on Route National #1, the scene of the most dramatic images of the disaster.
Well written,bring tears to my eyes. Most of the world has forgotten about Haiti and move on to other news headline
Haiti, destroyed and desperate
I crossed the border into Haiti from the Dominican Republic 36 hours after the earthquake hit. As we drove closer to Port-au-Prince, we began to see scenes of destruction and suffering, which only multiplied as we entered the city covered in smoke and in shock.
My first sensation was of absolute powerlessness; the pain, chaos and destruction were so overwhelming it seemed impossible to register it all. It was hard to know where to start, to find the exact words to describe everything that was happening and continues to happen. To translate all that it into images is a huge challenge.
I had never been in a tragedy of this magnitude, or seen anything close. Every day that passed we realized the dimension of the destruction was even greater. Every time I explored what was behind a wall, in a garden or a plaza, inside a field hospital or in the ruins of a house, there would be more children who urgently needed food and medicine, more desperate men and women with no hope for the future.
The whole city is an immense refugee camp without basic services, water, electricity, or toilets, that disappears at night in the darkness of ruins. There is the impression of statelessness, of an absence of institutions to help or oversee. The extreme poverty of Haiti compounds the problem. An earthquake here may be worse than practically anywhere on earth, because the houses were constructed with cheap materials, on dangerous slopes, without building codes. There were no emergency services capable of responding.
Many people ask if journalists help in disasters. I don’t think we help directly. Our job is to trigger the response from institutions that do. This is what motivates us to come to these places, to point the eyes of the world toward people who are suffering and clamoring for help. We have to sensitize people to the situation through our pictures.
I don’t know if the worst is over. All those who have died or are missing represent a deep loss. But the real sadness and concern now revolves around the challenges to come for the survivors who will have to fight to keep going in a destroyed country, where the help that is arriving seems like a drizzle in the desert.
Scenes from Haiti
The numbers from Haiti are staggering. Authorities say the death toll is likely to be between 100,000 and 200,000. Already, 75,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves. 1.5 million residents are homeless . Families have been torn apart. Neighborhoods have been flattened. The government has nearly ceased to exist. But numbers can tell only a small part of the story. Scenes of the devastation in Haiti are filling airwaves and newspapers around the world, triggering a flood of compassion and donations.
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
So great Swoan!!! Amazing pics and very moving!