"One refugee camp was built in a car dealership parking lot." Damon Winter, The New York Times
At 4:53 pm today, Haitians paused for a moment of silence to commemorate the first anniversary of the January 12 earthquake that killed over 200,000 people and left 2 million homeless. After this pause, Haitians will resume whatever they were doing; some will go back to their jobs, or their schools.
But most will go back to doing absolutely nothing.
Tonight PBS ran three specials to mark the anniversary of the earthquake. The
first deals with the science of accurately predicting earthquakes, and what little progress has been made in achieving that goal over the past 50 years. It was more or less a standard
Nova episode, although one quote stood out to me: "Earthquakes don't kill people. Buildings do."
"The Supreme Court building was largely ignored as it burned after the earthquake" - Damon Winter, The New York Times
The second program (which you can watch in its entirety
here) focuses on the rule of law in Haiti after the earthquake. On Jan 12, over 4,000 prisoners in Haiti's national penitentiary escaped and have assimilated themselves into the loosely organized DP camps where the majority of those affected by the quake now live. These escaped thieves, rapists and murderers now impose their own martial law over the homeless majority. What's even more affecting to watch is the broken and ineffective Haitian police force raiding areas, arresting 50 people at a time, only to hold two or three suspects based on an informant's memory. The episode reveals that the Haitian political structure is as much a gang as the gangsters are. As one Haitian said in the report "honest people don't go into politics in Haiti."
"A man and his son lived in a shelter on the median of a road in Carrefour, a suburb of Port-au-Prince," Ruth Fremson, New York Times
The majority of
the third special was filmed before the earthquake, and follows three Haitian boys who live on the streets of Cap Haitien (the nation's second largest city).
The Children of Haiti was the film that most reminded me of
Ti-Jean and captured the spirit of what our production wants to say. We see Haiti through the eyes of newest generation; the generation that can lead Haiti out of destitution and into stability -- yet by the end of the film hopelessness seems to find its grip on two of the young protagonists. (The third, the idealistic Denek finds peace and hope through his new family. Sound familiar?)
Untitled acrylic, oilstick and spray paint on canvas painting, Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981
All three of these programs combined have left me with new thoughts on the situation in Haiti, and ideas of how our production can best serve that situation. Since I started working on this project I've tried to fill this blog with bold, bright and idyllic images of Haitian life. I wanted to imbue this story with the spirit of the folkloric Haiti, the ancestral Haiti, the Haiti of our dreams. But the more I look at the state of the Haitian people, the more I'm convinced that the Dream Haiti doesn't exist -- is Dream Haiti just a collective ideal?
It's here that Megan's notion of the group-devil rings truest. Were 200,000 Haitians killed by an act of God or crushed under the weight of their own poverty? It seems the more I learn about the intricacies and redundancies of the self-interested relief effort, the corrupt Haitian political system and the helpless and unmotivated Haitian populace, the easier it becomes for me to lose hope for the country. Give up. Start over. Move somewhere else.
But that would be the worst indignity.
"A man walked through the rubble after finding the body of a neighbor and burning it," Todd Heisler, The New York Times
The Dream Haiti is there, buried beneath the rubble and the corruption, the crime and the cholera. You can see it in the way Denek speaks about Haiti in the beginning of the documentary. What excites me about our production NOW is that overcoming -- to look the Devil in the eye and turn his tools of destruction into construction materials: to turn the rubble into art.
That, after all, is the only way that Haiti can make a full recovery. Over the last few months, the media has slowly picked up on the corruption and insider trading of the NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and various international relief efforts. The key to rebuilding Haiti (as we see in Ti-Jean) is with Haitian hands.
Damon Winter, The New York Times
As we pass the one year anniversary, we also pass another milestone; the beginning of the rehearsal process. It is with this spirit of resilience that I hope to move forward - to unite the soul with the debris and make them one.
