Stuart Clark reports from Haiti
On this, the second anniversary of the country's devastating earthquake, Stuart is on a week-long trip there with Concern Worldwide.
Stuart Clark, 11 Jan 2012
Thursday promises to be an emotional day in Haiti as the country commemorates the second anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, which killed 230,000 of its people and left a further 1.5 million of them homeless.
The government wasn’t exactly running smoothly before the disaster, but went into total meltdown after it. With no army, an undermanned police force and precious little in the way of other emergency services, it’s been left to relief agencies to stick a Band-Aid on the country’s gaping wound.
Haitians probably thought things couldn’t get any worse, but they did in October 2010 when an outbreak of cholera accounted for another 6,992-plus people being put into what by necessity have often been mass graves.
You’d forgive a country for giving up after all that, but Haitians have dealt with adversity numerous times before and took positive action last year by voting in Michel Martelly, a former pop singer and close friend of Wyclef Jean’s, as President.
Untainted by previous political scandals, Martelly is only new in the job but seems to have bolstered both the people and the international aid community who feel they finally have somebody they can do business with.
I’m currently in Port-Au-Prince with Concern Worldwide, the Irish charity which was on the ground here well-before the ‘quake struck and with over 400 local staff, many of whom will be mourning their own loved ones this week, are acutely aware of the rebuilding, both physical and social, that needs to be done.
If there are open spaces in Port-Au-Prince which aren’t covered in tents or makeshift shacks, I’ve yet to see them. Being an old-school Catholic country, Haitian families tend to be large and blindly respectful of a church that’s playing no visible role in relief efforts.
Nothing can prepare you for the scrum of humanity around the Haitian parliament, a mini-White House that collapsed in more ways than one on Tuesday January 12, 2010. It’s where frustrated locals – and there are a lot of them – protest on an almost daily basis. Usually, it’s the government that’s the object of their ire but there’s also been a lot of anger directed at the multinational United Nations peacekeeping force. Whether justified or not, Haitians blame Nepalese troops for starting 2010’s cholera outbreak and were scandalised when a group of Uruguayan soldiers allegedly raped an 18 year-old man and posted footage of it onto YouTube.
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