Photos: Christopher Sun
Above: Presidential Palace in Port au Prince before the earthquake.
Below: Port au Prince before the earthquake.
Above: Presidential Palace in Port au Prince before the earthquake.
Below: Port au Prince before the earthquake.
A devastating blow to a country already so poor
Christopher Sun
The Province
January 15, 2010
pg. A.18
Every time I see pictures of the devastation in Port-au-Prince and hear about the latest death toll estimates after Tuesday's 7.0 earthquake, I shake my head in disbelief.
In December I visited Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and many of the buildings and roads were already crumbling. Tap water was unsafe to even rinse your mouth with and electricity was far from stable. In fact, the power went out at the airport shortly after my plane landed.
Many streets had no real sidewalks and even four-wheel-drive vehicles had difficulties on some of the part-asphalt, part-gravel, part-garbage-covered roads.
The numerous potholes were large and deep and had often become cesspools of every nasty thing you can think of thanks to the liquid sewage that ran down most streets. The smell of rotting garbage and human waste roasting under the penetrating tropical sun, mixed with diesel fumes in the humid environment, often left a permanent unintentional frown on my face.
On my first day in Port-au-Prince, I met Natacha, my local host in a shantytown that formed one of the poorest areas of the city.
Only 29, she has been running a school and nearby orphanage for some years. The orphanage housed about half a dozen children and teens who were brought there because their parents couldn't afford to keep them. Natacha and her siblings were orphans, too.
I was given a tour of both the orphanage and school. When school ended in the afternoon, the teachers all came into this one large room to sort out the hundreds of new Nike shoes that had been donated to the children as Christmas gifts from the United States.
I returned to the school and orphanage a few days later and participated in a Sunday school Christmas gathering, where I took pictures and videotaped the children and played the footage back to them.
I also took many pictures around the city. Looking at them they appear so unreal.
When I first heard about the earthquake, I wondered if all those children and people I met and took pictures of were dead.
The presidential palace has looked structurally durable, but after hearing that it had collapsed and then seeing the pictures of it, I was floored. I concluded that the school, at least four storeys high, and the orphanage are more than likely just rubble now.
I have emailed Natacha and I hope to hear from her. School would have been out when the earthquake hit in the late afternoon.
But then, she is a bit of a workaholic.
A United Nations worker from Quebec told me during my visit that only a few years before he wouldn't have dared leave his home without armed guards because of all the kidnappings. But when I was there, the fear of kidnapping never crossed my mind.
After generations of political turmoil, the only country in the world to have had a successful slave revolt (in 1791), things were improving.
It is surreal to see pictures of Port-au-Prince now and compa re them to the photographs I took less than a month ago of smiling children and Haiti's few iconic buildings.
The poorest country of the Americas had so little before. Now it seems its inhabitants are even worse off.
