Well, the summer has come and is fast ending, I have been away on atrip for most of it. Alas all good things come to an end. The good news is that whilst I have been away, the committee has been busy.
The big news is that Ken Templeton has submitted the paperwork to the CRA and Industry Canada, such that we can move towards our charitable status. Thank you so much Ken, it is greatly appreciated, and we are waiting now to see if we are accepted by the authorities.
This will allow us to proceed with our canvassing the Membership for donations, and then we can move along with the aid.
We heard froma journalist, who has been going to Haiti, and who has written some good stuff, I will enclose some of her writing which I feel is worthy of the attention of interested parties.
One of the things she has advised us is that we believe 35 dental offices were lost in the earth quake.
We continue to correspond with Dr Prophete the Vice Dean of the dental school, and we are starting to get some dates together for travel to Haiti.
Thirty-five seconds.
Less time than I spend brushing my teeth in the morning. Or kissing my husband. Tucking my daughter into bed.
That’s how long the earth shook in southern Haiti in the early evening of Jan. 12. It took 35 seconds to crush mothers cooking dinner in their kitchens, smother students at their desks, buck terrified drivers into the air, shove buildings over cliffs onto buses packed with commuters.
In 35 seconds, a country was brought to its knees.
I often think of that. In less than a minute, you can lose everything. That’s one lesson Haiti has taught me.
I have travelled to Haiti four times since the earthquake. It’s been an emotional roller coaster, cranking me up to hope before careening me toward despair.
On my first trip, shortly after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, I was overwhelmed with sorrow. The rubble I stepped over was decorated with high heel shoes, computer chairs, framed baby pictures — intimate mementoes of all the lives lost. Death was everywhere. I carried toothpaste to smear under my nose when its overripe smell became sickeningly pungent. During an interview down one rubble-choked alley, a woman hobbling past said she’d lost two children and kept going. It was as if she was mentioning a TTC breakdown.
I noticed a sense of optimism almost immediately after arriving the second time. Where a single airport employee had roused to stamp my passport and wave me through a dark, abandoned terminal the first time, I was greeted by a four-man band. A stroll through the country’s biggest refugee camp revealed beauty parlours, restaurants, health clinics, bathroom areas where spigots spurted water from giant bladders. Schools had just reopened under tarps, many at the expense of principals like Marie Florvie Dorestand, who emptied her family’s bank account to remove the rubble. Stepping into her schoolyard, I was greeted by hundreds of little girls, white ribbons in their hair, bouncing and singing. They went on for more than an hour.
The country’s first post-disaster action plan, presented at the international donors conference in New York, painted an idyllic Haiti of the near-future: universal health care, free education, reforested countryside, decent housing for all, a strong economy with dependable clean electricity.
I returned from my most recent visit last month. By then, much of that optimism was gone. You can pee in a bucket in your sweltering shelter at night for fear of being raped enroute to the latrines only for so long before your spirit is crushed. The free bags of rice were long gone; replaced by “cash for work” programs, which pay men and women around $5 (U.S.) a day to throw rubble into dump trucks by hand or, if they’re lucky, shovel.
A doctor pulled me aside at that throbbing refugee camp and whispered, “Want the real story? Write about hunger. People are starving.”
The government hadn’t made good on its promise to pay teachers’ salaries, and many principals were threatening to close their schools.
Some 1.6 million people are still displaced, most crowded into impromptu camps along the sides of the road with no hope of a real home. Landowners squabble over the rubble removal, many demanding to be compensated. So, the roads remain clogged.
The UN estimates 135,000 temporary shelters of wood and metal need to be built to house the homeless. So far, only 5,660 have gone up.
I met a 2-pound baby who was rushed to one of the city’s main for-profit hospitals. The hospital lost $180,000 in the first month after the earthquake, treating patients for free. To survive, it started charging again and the baby’s panicked parents were told to pay $400 for ten days of treatment — more than many Haitians make in a year. We scrambled to find the money — volunteer nurses and pediatricians throwing in $20 each, knowing that otherwise, this baby would die.
All this makes me angry. There are many people to blame: the Haitian government for not taking enough leadership, international aid agencies set on heroism over cooperation, international donors that haven’t delivered on their promises.
I can’t understand why the Interim Reconstruction Committee, headed by former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive, has managed to meet only once in the months since the earthquake. What is taking them so long?
I concede a few points. Nigel Fisher, the deputy special representative of the UN secretary general in Haiti, who I met in a dusty resettlement camp, told The New York Times: “What hasn’t happened is worth noting. We haven’t had a major outbreak of disease. We haven’t had a major breakdown in security.”
Haitian President Rene Préval was visiting the camp that same day. He pointed out that recovering from natural disasters take rich countries years. Case in Point: Hurricane Katrina, where people were still homeless two years later.
“We are doing our best. You have to understand and be patient,” he said. “It’s not that easy to make good conditions right away.”
He is right. Except, it’s hard to be patient when your 2-pound baby is going to die without care you can’t afford.
Most experts I’ve spoken to predict it will take 10 years for Haiti to get back on its feet. Ten years to recover from 35 seconds.
That is too long. We must all do better.
Catherine Porter’s column usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. She can be reached at cporter@thestar.ca.
