I am astounded at how people in such catastrophic circumstances strive to maintain their dignity. On a patch of street, a woman spreads a blue piece of plastic and puts food in one corner, her kids in another, their clothes in a third. Then she sweeps the street around her. She is sweeping garbage in a neat square around her space even as they settle down in the middle of thousands of people, rubble and trash. This is her way of keeping order, sanity, and grace in the face of horror.
The people of Haiti are often described as resilient because they have weathered coups and terrible violence, poverty and miserable injustice. But what I am seeing today is what I saw at the tsunami and Katrina, human dignity on proud display, the gut-wrenching ability of human beings to press on in the face of tragedy. The cultures are different but the fundamental strength comes from the same place. There is no cavalry on the hilltop. Tomorrow may not be a better day; it may be worse. They have only themselves and their fellow survivors. They have the power of one. A home collapses into ten thousand piles of brick and a mother picks them up one by one until she finds her beloved child. A man can’t find his wife but searches alone, without sleep or water, because he will be propelled by hope until hope runs out. Children wander the streets at risk because there is no one to care for them, but they wander nonetheless, looking for the next best thing. We can exclaim our anger at governments or curse the sky at our own God, but there are moments when the higher power must come from within.
We make our way to this ugly monument that rises far above the city’s tallest building. It was supposedly built to honor the return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide after years in exile following a coup. The concrete has fallen off the metal staircases that crisscross up into the sky The entire thing is just one big exposed stairway to nowhere. We decide to walk up to the top because no one has yet gotten a good look at the center of the city from this key vantage point. At the top we all stand there breathless, initially from the climb, then from what we see. As we saw from the ground, the presidential palace has collapsed, and there are great slabs of stone scattered like playing cards. We get a sense of the vast expanse of homeless people surrounding it. A single crane is plowing into the government’s tax building, where people, and money, are trapped inside. There are little puffs of smoke from fire and dust clouds of concrete rising into the air.
We pull out equipment to do a live shot from on high. I look out onto Port-au-Prince as the hot sun crashes into a haze of dust. The skyline is this orange yellow, and Haiti delivers perhaps the only ugly sunset I’ve ever seen. Down below us I see tens of thousands of families out in the unforgiving heat, frightened and helpless and in shock. They have no place to go. I turn the camera toward them and begin to report.
The heat is so intense it hangs in the air like a heavy blanket. I lay faceup, feeling the heat press down on top of me. I am sleeping on a damp bed in La Plaza, on the main square, where the tent city has evolved. I am wearing most of my clothes. My shoes and a flashlight are next to the bed. The place is designed like a motor inn with doors opening onto big open courtyards and parking lots, so it is one of the only reasonably safe places to sleep outside—or so we think.
The night before, Rose and I had filed for CNN.com, sent video, done live shots, driven through horrible wreckage, walked deep inside a sprawling tent city of survivors and filed a story, all on no food. We are wiped. We returned to La Plaza with our cameraman, Orlando, to this intense operation. Anderson, Sanjay, a flotilla of reporters and technicians are scattered around this dismal pool writing into laptops fired by generators. CNN has brought in boxes of PowerBars and water and the hotel is cooking up something that smells great but looks dreadful. The hotel has a small window of generator power and water, but none of us are touching the showers. Anderson and Sanjay look thin, burnt, and anxious. We give each other half hugs and then vent about the stress, which is nothing compared to that of the Haitians who surround us.
Sadness hangs over all of us. The reports have drawn rescue workers, aid, inspired enormous acts of heroism, even some by our own staff. But there is no shaking the feeling of having walked through a city littered with bodies and consumed by unbearable grief. My mind can’t register how many schools we went by today, completely crushed, with tiny desks and notebooks sticking out from beneath rubble. Someone’s children are in those buildings. Just outside our door families are sleeping on dirty concrete with no food or water or peace of mind. This is a tragedy far beyond anything that any of us has experienced, even with all our grim worldwide treks as reporters for an all-news network. In our courtyard, a man sits with a bleeding child hoping an aid worker will appear. A woman walks about with a wounded leg. The bartender has lost most of her family and asks if we can spare anything that could be used as a tent.
I go to bed trying to shut down my brain, calm my spirit, get a few hours of sleep so I can face another grim day. The hotel is full so we share a room, though neither of is brave enough to sleep alone anyhow. Rose insists on showering in the darkened room, but I can’t bring myself to step in the tub, which looks dirty and dank from humidity. I take a bath with baby wipes and brush my teeth with bottled water. We place flashlights and food in bags we can grab quickly, then we turn off the biggest flashlight and vow to get some sleep.
We are both aware that neither of us is sleeping. A mouse tangles with a PowerBar and Rose throws something at it. I could care less. I can barely breathe deeply enough to conjure sleep. We try texting each other’s families. The only way we know it is the twenty-first century is that in a place where there’s no food or water and a quarter million dead people around us—our BlackBerrys are working just fine. I go in and out of sleep until my neck is sore. At 5 a.m. we both finally just get up and start talking about all the stories that need to be told. I am in midsentence when Rose interrupts me and says breathlessly: “What’s that?”
“Run,” I scream.
We race out the door barefoot. I feel like I am running on a waterbed. I had lived in California so I know the feeling of an earthquake, but I’ve felt nothing like this. Rose beats me out the door and turns her head to me.
“Run! Run!” Rose yells as loud as she can for the benefit of anyone still asleep. I yell “Run” too. The walls move, trees shake, and glasses crash from the bar. Doors burst open and half-naked people emerge. “Run, run, run!” Our hall opens right onto the open-air courtyard, but you need to go through another hall to get to the parking lot. Just as we take the turn leading outside, a man crashes to the ground behind me. He screams in pain. I hesitate, then turn back to see if I can help. I can barely stand up. The aftershock isn’t stopping. I can hardly reach him. My mind flashes to a news report. I’ve died because I went back for something. I can’t believe I’m thinking that way It feels real, like it happened. “Run, run!” There is blood spilling from the man’s head. A woman in scrubs falls by his side. She screams to everyone to keep running. I barely make it into the parking lot when the shaking finally, mercifully, suddenly, stops.
No one says anything. There is wailing in the distance. The Haitians look terrified; the foreigners stunned. No one even notices that CNN’s Karl Penhaul is outside pacing around wearing only his briefs. I am amazed at how many photojournalists are carrying their cameras. CNN has a platform with a concrete room on the second floor, where we are doing live shots. There is no way down but a metal spiral staircase. I am minutes away from my first live shot. Anderson Cooper is up there already, as are reporter Jason Carroll and his producer Justin Dial, my producer from Hurricane Katrina. The risk here is unthinkable. My heart beats so quickly it is throbbing. Is it over? I slowly head back with Rose and we hover over the guy who fell.
“He tripped?” someone asks. “He jumped,” a woman says. Medics are wrapping his bleeding head. He is moaning. He was so scared he leapt from the second-floor balcony. We walk past him to the CNN space, where they are frantically counting heads. Someone has braved the spiral staircase to confirm that the half dozen journalists u
p there are frightened but okay. A manager pulls a list of CNN staff and room numbers and all of us begin to go door to door checking everyone out.
I sit around with everyone after it’s over, waiting for the next one. Sanjay looks at me over the breakfast table and says: “It’s time to go, but not, huh?” I totally agree. I have no guts. I don’t want to die here like the people whose bodies are sprawled out in the sun. It’s so dehumanizing. I don’t want to die like that. I don’t want to die at all.
I hop into a minivan with a team of photographers, producers, security people, and drivers. We go nowhere in Haiti without a lot of people. Our van moves slowly through the city of zombies. The destruction is overwhelming; not a city block appears untouched. Piles of rubble cover entire streets. I am on my way to visit Haiti’s orphanages. The country is famous for them. They are houses or buildings where people just drop off their kids out of desperation. Their parents just can’t afford to raise them. The children are not all technically orphans, although that is what they are called. The country has an estimated 380,000 of these orphans, and no one knows how many more there are following the earthquake. The United States only allowed 330 adoptions of Haitian kids in the prior year. Now American parents seeking to adopt Haitian children are pressing the U.S. government to expedite the adoption process.
The first place I go sits on a steep slope and the houses are built one atop the other. The choice of this site is frightening considering the seismic activity The children are mostly sitting out in the sunlight, dirty and hungry A large room inside is lined with playpens. Babies of all ages sleep and cry as flies menace them. A few of the infants look very sick and thin. A woman is jabbing a very thin baby with a needle over and over trying to get an IV going. A nurse ignores the baby’s weak scream.
“She won’t survive if we don’t get her fluids,” she says with no panic in her voice. I try to help hold the child. Then our security guard offers to help with the line. He can’t do it, either. The baby is barely strong enough to move but we hold her down. The process is excruciating to watch. It seems like an eternity before the nurse finally takes over and gets it on the third try
I feel as if I am on some kind of misery tour. I visit another place called Maison des Enfants de Dieu—House of the Children of God. The house is still standing, but the children are afraid to go back inside. The toddlers, barefoot and covered with dust, are huddled under a huge tarp. Most sit calmly, but a few come and wrap their arms around our legs and smile. There are bugs everywhere and not much to eat. Armed bandits scaled the walls twice this week and found so little to steal that they left empty-handed. The director, Pierre Alexis, tells me he is afraid children will get sick and die if they don’t get help soon. Even as Americans are pressing the State Department to allow adoptions, people are arriving, a dozen or more each day, to drop off more and more children. The building seems sound, and there is a lot of staff. The director has charities in the United States that help him. We play with the kids and shoot some video.
Then we come upon the truck. Twenty-five babies under a year old are in the back, lying on cardboard and paper. The orphanage keeps running out of formula, so they have fed them water and powdered milk. As we talk to one of the caretakers, a girl erupts with diarrhea. The woman wipes the girl off with the dress of another little girl. One baby gags. Others spit up. It’s hot. Flies settle on the kids’ faces and heads. These babies are very vulnerable. All of us working this particular story have children, so we have a frame of reference. We all murmur that these children will dehydrate quickly. They will become feverish. They will be bitten by mosquitoes. Pierre Alexis has reason to be frightened.
It brings to mind the Superdome in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The desperate people trapped in this watery urban hell on U.S. soil. I expect nothing of Haiti, yet there are aid workers roaring by in rented trucks and water bottles dropping from the sky A legion of people from around the world—many unconnected to any relief agency—seems to be descending on Haiti. This makes it all the more remarkable that our government allowed its people to languish in New Orleans. I feel as if the Americans here are the same ones who materialized in Louisiana once they realized that the government wasn’t up to the task. They are kindhearted missionaries, lefties and righties, union folks and off-duty law enforcement, rich guys in search of meaning, individuals who live for a chance to help out.
It is almost as if the Americans are responding to a disaster in this nearby foreign country as a way of making up for Katrina. The land is peopled by another group of black folks crying out for help. There is something about this that feels a bit redemptive, like folks who just took matters into their own hands and collectively screamed: We care. Help is on the way. If only they know where the help is needed.
That night I go live using the power from a generator in front of the truckload of babies. I spell out how dire the situation is. I have American parents calling my office who have nearly completed adoptions of some of the children. The adoptions are such a fraction of the solution of this problem, but you don’t think like that when you are waiting to bring your baby home. I receive word from an adoptive mother in the United States asking me to look in on her son. I find him and he brightens when I tell him I have spoken to her. He asks if I will read him his Bible. I open it to Matthew 27:46 and read to him: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I stop and look to his questioning eyes and I begin to cry He doesn’t understand why I can’t make it past that line. I do some live reporting from the orphanage that night. As the anchors ask me questions about the conditions, I pan our lights toward the babies, who are retching, wheezing, lying listless from lack of formula. The world is watching. I want the world to see.
The next day we cannot bear to see more orphans and I volunteer us to go check out Jacmel, Haiti’s cultural capital, on the Caribbean coast. The trip takes a day and requires us to drive through the curving roads that cut through Leogane, the earthquake’s epicenter. Our pickup struggles up hills littered with fallen rock and snakes around boulders until the beach appears. I have come to measure the intangible loss of the earthquake, the art and life on the beach that gives Haiti part of its cultural side. The nation’s only film school has lost two buildings. The huge, colorful papier-mache floats for Carnival, just ten days away, are crushed. The mountains of sheet music for the classes at Ecole Musique are scattered in the ruins of a street named La Berenthe, the labyrinth. It’s estimated that 10 percent of the town’s residents have perished. They have taken with them a country’s film festival, its music studios, the paintings and masks that draw tourists and Haitians to this seaside town of forty thousand.
Left behind are crushed limbs and brain injuries, nursed in an open-air hospital that replaced the real one. Cuban doctors had been working with Haitians when the earthquake hit, and they have continued their collaboration outside. “Where there is life, there is hope,” says Dr. Silda Del Torro of Cuba while standing over a four-year-old girl who has drifted in and out of consciousness. Del Torro says the head injuries are very hard to treat under these conditions, and she worries they will be left with crippling injuries. The doctors working in the open air also fear they have reached the limits of their abilities. They aren’t orthopedists or anesthesiologists, and some patients with crushed limbs are developing gangrene. There are so many surgeries that need to be done.
This seaside town is just over an hour’s drive from the epicenter of the earthquake. It has an airport and a port to bring in tourists. But much of the growing international relief effort has been focused on Port-au-Prince until now. The residents dug out trapped neighbors largely on their own for days. But intrepid Jacmel residents got out word they needed help through the Internet, texts, on Facebook andYouTube. The Cine Institute was left homeless, but its young filmmakers pulled their equipment from the rocks and moved into a building next to the airport. They set up generators, powered up laptops, and started moving images across oceans in a cry for help. “We jus
t got the information out. Our filmmakers just went out and started shooting and sent it away even as their own families were being affected, their homes being lost,” says David Belle, the institute’s director.
Their plea was heard, and Colombian rescue workers arrived just in time to pull a child from the rubble. Chile sent doctors. Sri Lanka sent security The French assembled a clinic where parents had dug for a trapped child unsuccessfully for days. Canada brought in the big guns—a navy ship and army helicopter with engineers and supplies. “We brought in light engineering equipment, drills, the jaws of life, anything that can be carried portably,” said Robert Brown, a naval commander from Halifax, Nova Scotia. The United States joined the effort, announcing they would fly in C 130s with supplies to assist the Canadians in making Jacmel’s airport the center of the rescue efforts to southern provinces not touched by the aid sent to Port-au-Prince. The world is coming together in the face of this tragedy America’s ability to play a vital role in the relief effort is on keen display This is possible when nations come together as friends.
But this town needs so much more than just immediate relief. The days without aid wore down their psyche and hampered relief efforts. “We could have saved so many more people with these guys,” remarked a film student as he watched the French set up tents and begin treating a growing line of wounded. Yards away, a teenage music student searches for his flute amidst the remains of his flattened house. So many of the colorful buildings are crushed and damaged. So much of the artistry that made Jacmel special is gone.
The Next Big Story: My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities Page 21