One Day in Port-au-Prince

“Rubble still lines the street of Port au Prince”, “people are still living in tents”, “millions of dollars of aid funding is still unspent”, “response is too slow” – all tag lines that we are all used to hearing at this stage since the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. It’s time for the external commentators to take a step back and break it down to the bones of what really happened.

Disaster – check.

Crisis – check.

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By Melissa Phillips

I tried to find as much information as I could prior to arriving in Haiti. I searched news websites, photo archives, Flickr, Youtube, Vimeo.

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With the onset of the earthquake in Haiti in last year, the use of technology in information sharing has been widely discussed within the international development and humanitarian community, and rightfully so. Three seemingly simple questions often come up. People want to know “Who is doing what? Where? Why?” On the surface the questions seem simple, but as you delve into the data world you quickly realize that these questions are quite difficult to answer, and how to access this information is often the center of a complex debate.

Most practitioners and donors can agree on one thing. Having readily accessible answers to these questions might be the key to improving aid delivery to millions around the world, and ultimately, help pave the path to eradicate hunger and poverty globally.

One thing that is often clear in the delivery of aid is that there is often a clear imbalance between supply and demand for various products, services and commodities, hence making some things more accessible and others less. The same is true for data. When available, we instinctively attempt to squeeze every last drop of information that can be derived from it. When scarce, we exhaust all resources, sometimes seeking innovative solutions or as we have seen from recent media reports, controversial methods to acquire data and information. Data’s ability to enhance our knowledge and understanding of a subject matter, and assist in visualization and decision making, makes it a highly prized commodity. To put it simply, data isn’t just for data geeks.

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By Tim Large

PORT-AU-PRINCE (TrustLaw) - In Courtroom No. 3, the prosecutor strained to make himself heard over the rattle of the air conditioner. He repeated his sum-up slowly as the scribe wrote in a notebook. The lead defence lawyer scoffed and the judge admonished him by tingling a little bell.

At the back of the room, the accused sat blankly. A young man in his late teens, he'd have understood more if the language of the court was Creole and not French.

He'd been awaiting this day for three years, all of them spent in an overcrowded prison, since the girl he claimed was his girlfriend filed a charge of rape.

The law is the law, said the prosecutor. The girl was 17 at the time of the alleged crime. Even though she and her father had subsequently withdrawn the charges, the wheels of Haitian justice could not be stopped.

Then it was time for the first defence lawyer to speak.

The case is a travesty, she said. The girl herself admitted it was the ninth time they had slept together. It was only after her brother caught them in her father's bed while the old man was at work that she cried rape. What is more precious to a Haitian girl than her honour? You can see why she felt she had to press charges...

Now the lead defence lawyer took to the floor -- in his crumpled robe, histrionic in his gestures. He held up a scrap of paper with scribbles on it: the medical certificate.

"Ah, the medical certificate!" he shouted. But not the medical certificate. A mere handwritten copy! The original was lost in the earthquake last year. And as everyone knows, it's not admissible if it's not the original.

And what does this worthless piece of paper say? Yes, there was intercourse. But were there bruises? Were there signs of violence? "No signs of violence," it says. "No signs of violence!"

Such was the scene at a recent trial at the new headquarters of the Prosecutor's Office of Port-au-Prince.

Many of the details were familiar features of the Haitian justice system: the hand-written record-keeping; the linguistic difficulties for non-French speakers; the lengthy detainment before trial; and the importance accorded to original copies of medical certificates in rape cases.

Even so, this was not a typical case.

Lest you think Haitian justice is rigorous to a fault in its pursuit of rapists, bear in mind that only a fraction of reported cases of sexual violence lead to prosecutions. And rights activists say only a fraction of rapes are reported.

Rape has long been a scourge in Haiti -- a political weapon in times of upheaval and only criminalised in 2005. Before that it was merely a crime against honour.

But rights groups say levels of sexual violence have reached epidemic proportions following the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which left more than a million people living in "tent cities" with little security for women and girls.

Lighting, police patrols and facilities for private bathing are almost non-existent, as are safe houses for those fearing reprisals from attackers if they go to the police. For a full picture of the scale of the problem, see Rape in the Camps: Sexual violence in Haiti after the quake.

Many of these issues came to the fore at a forum held in Port-au-Prince by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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luam kidane is a graduate student studying indigenous governance, transformative education and art as resistance at new york university. she is also a community organizer and the programming director for point youth media - an organization that provides free media arts training for indigenous, racialized and immigrant youth.the opinions expressed are her own. thomson reuters will host a live blog on march 8, 2011 for the centenary of international women's day.

destruction doesn’t always equal ruin, construction

doesn’t always signify healing.

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Whilst much is rightly written about older people in Haiti made more vulnerable by the disability or disease which sometimes comes with old age, far less is mentioned about the hundreds of thousands of active older people who are clamouring for the right to be included in the reconstruction of the country they love.

We automatically accept that statesmen and women can be in their 80s or even 90s but when it comes to the more physical side of things we assume that older people cannot play an effective role. HelpAge International has come across numerous cases of older people being excluded from cash for work programmes for reasons of age when they themselves have both the desire to help and the need to find a source of income to feed themselves and their families. Older people have the skills, the energy and the commitment to play a positive role in reconstruction and this is a combination which is sometimes lacking in their younger compatriots.

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One Day in Port-au-Prince puts you in the shoes of ordinary Haitians with extraordinary stories of the earthquake and its aftermath.

Combining stills and video with graphics and text, this multimedia experience transports you to the streets and tent cities of Haiti’s capital. The people featured tell their stories in their own words. Each story evokes issues centralto Haiti’s recovery.

“One Day in Port-au-Prince” is a multimedia documentary by AlertNet, the global humanitarian news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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Jasmine Artes features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - If you feel like a pampering in the Poasboy camp in east Port-au-Prince, shake a certain tent flap and ask for Jasmine Artes. She’ll emerge with a chair and a plastic basket of cosmetics, combs and powders. Sit back and let her make you look pretty.

“I do hair implants,” she said, brushing the thick locks of one of her female customers. “I also do nails. Men’s nails. I do the edges for men too.”

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A year after the Haiti earthquake killed about 250,000 people and left more than a million homeless, a multimedia documentary takes viewers to the streets and tent cities of the shattered capital.

From the homeless schoolgirl who studies science by candlelight to the doctor who built a makeshift operating theatre in the ruins of a hospital, One Day in Port-au-Prince tells stories of resilience, ingenuity and courage.

We'd like to add the experience of AlertNet readers. Perhaps you were directly involved, or maybe someone you know. Perhaps the catastrophe moved you to respond in a special way.

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Rose Ornilia Adne features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - The banner outside the St. Therese church in downtown Port-au-Prince translated as: “Include older people in the reconstruction. They know how the country was.”

Beneath it, almost 700 older people were singing hymns, dancing and carrying baskets of cabbages, bananas, pumpkins and plantains to symbolise the wisdom of traditional knowledge in agricultural production.

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Max Beauvoir features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - It’s a dangerous time to be a Voodoo priest in Haiti.

Since a cholera epidemic started in mid-October, at least 45 Voodoo priests have been hacked to death by lynch mobs, accused of casting spells to spread the disease, according to Max Beauvoir, the supreme leader of Haitian Voodoo.

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Jacques Dolce features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - Squatting by the kerbside on Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, surrounded by jerry cans and plastic bottles, Jacques Dolce shared his views on how best to help Haiti recover from the earthquake. Never mind aid – what people really need is jobs.

“Everybody in the country would like to work,” he said, echoing a sentiment you hear on street corners and in tent cities all over Port-au-Prince.

Jacques, 42, was a proud working man before the quake: a driver. The disaster destroyed the business, so he created a job for himself, buying and selling petrol by the roadside. His office is a stool in the gutter, where he sits and watches cars, trucks and U.N. armoured vehicles trundle by.

“Sometimes they bring me the gas,” he explained. “I buy it for $20 and sell it back for $22 or $23. I’m trying to get the $3 to have enough to feed my children, provide for their schooling and all other activities.”

Unlike chauffeuring, petrol-dealing is a resilient industry. Everybody needs fuel – to fill the tanks of the heavy vehicles used to clear rubble; to quench the thirst of gas-guzzling U.N. Land Crusiers; and to fire up generators in the camps, for recharging mobile phones or powering ghetto blasters.

The need for petrol was especially acute in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. For a week or so, fuel was like gold. The entire relief effort depended on it – for everything from delivering food to purifying water. And many of the newly homeless, desperate to get out of Port-au-Prince, needed it for their cars.

For a day or two, lines at petrol stations stretched around the block as people waited for hours in the sun to fill jerry cans. Then, abruptly, the forecourts were empty.

Until fuel tankers started coming in from across the border in Dominican Republic, the shortage hit everyone. Prices on the black market jumped as high as $200 a gallon, according to some reports.

“We weren’t able to work (as drivers) because everybody was moving,” Jacques recalled. “The cars couldn’t circulate. A few (of our) cars went to the countryside, and we gave up. We had no gas.”

Most of the 600,000 or so Haitians who fled the capital right after the quake are thought to have since returned. The countryside just doesn’t have the jobs, infrastructure, food or housing to support such an exodus.

These days, it’s business as usual at the capital’s petrol stations. If anything will stop you getting from point A to B, it’s not lack of fuel but the sheer number of cars on the road. A journey of a couple of miles can take three hours.

Meanwhile, street-side vendors like Jacques offer motorists a slight discount from the official prices at the big petrol pumps.

“Now I have to keep on working with this, but I know that some day, somehow, the country will change so that all the young ones can find work … I’d like to get out of this situation, to not be selling gas in the street. I’d like to have my licence to be able to work, to drive, whether it’s foreigners or Haitians, to find work the way it should be.”

Want to send a message to Jacques? We’d be happy to translate and deliver it. Please leave a comment below.

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Marie-Carmelle features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - There’s a sad irony in Marie-Carmelle Sainton’s story. She provides for her family by selling school textbooks but can’t afford to send her own six kids to school.

At a street stall in downtown Port-au-Prince, on the edges of the central market, she was carefully spreading out her stock for display: French primers, mathematics books, Creole dictionaries.

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See more stories like this in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - When the Jan. 12 earthquake sent a shockwave through his office, Mario Joseph thought it was a bomb attack. After all, Haiti’s most prominent human rights lawyer is used to coming under fire.

“Someone was shot in my office,” he said. “I receive a lot of threats.”

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Francoise Terminus features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - Since the earthquake demolished her home, Francoise Terminus has lived with her son and grandkids in the Tapis Rouge camp on a hill above Port-au-Prince.

On a sunny day, views over the harbour are postcard perfect, save for the wrecked houses on the long slope down. When it rains, water swamps the shacks and bivouacs of this suburban tent city.

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Evelyne Pierre features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - We “picked up” Evelyne outside a bar in downtown Port-au-Prince, where she was milling around with five or six other girls, propositioning passers-by.

Peter, our Haitian cameraman, explained to her about our documentary, then walked her to the hotel around the corner for the interview. He didn’t want her to be seen driving off with foreigners. Her pimps might expect her to come back with a lot of cash.

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See more stories like this in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - The kidnappers struck without warning - a gang of teenagers, a dozen at least, waving guns and shouting threats.

Marc “Eddy” Jean Francois had just stepped out of a shop in downtown Port-au-Prince, where he’d been ordering parts for his electronics business. It was a Tuesday evening in November 2005.

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Jude-Marie Banatte features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - It's hard to imagine a more thorough job of destruction than the quake's demolition of the St. Francois de Sales hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince.

The few remaining walls enclose a roiling heap of concrete, iron and every kind of detritus. Here and there are reminders that this was once a functioning clinic: a smashed sink, a broken bed, medical machinery crushed beyond recognition.

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Saint Hilaire Saint Louis features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - On a rickety-looking table set up on a sidewalk, dozens of bottles were sparkling in the sun: DSP Black Deluxe Whisky from India, Disaronno Amaretto from Italy, Andre Champagne from the United States. In the background was a crumpled building.

Saint Hilaire Saint Louis, 30, was leaning over his stall in downtown Port-au-Prince, discussing the booze business in the wake of the earthquake.

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Welcome to the One Day in Port-au-Prince blog, putting you in the shoes of ordinary Haitians with remarkable stories of the earthquake and its aftermath.

As cholera and political instability dominate headlines around the quake's one-year anniversary, this space is a reminder that even in the shadow of tragedy, life goes on. People do what they can to cope.

Over the next week, we'll be publishing 14 stories of earthquake survivors, taking you to the streets and tent cities of Port-au-Prince.

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Chanata Jean Francois features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - “See that woman over there? She’s a famous soccer player.”

Wilner, our translator, was pointing at a security guard standing by the entrance of a supermarket in the affluent Petionville district of Port-au-Prince. She wore jackboots and carried a truncheon.

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Rony Jean-Pierre features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - If you took all the rubble created by Haiti’s earthquake, you'd have enough material to make three Great Pyramids of Egypt. That's 20 million cubic metres (35 million cubic feet) of debris, according to the United Nations.

Within all that rubble is a vast amount of scrap metal: twisted girders and buckled sheets of corrugated iron; broken-off car doors and crumpled drainpipes; bent alloy beams and rusty grillwork.

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Christine Das features in One Day in Port-au-Prince, a multimedia documentary.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) - Christine Das couldn't recall the philosopher’s name but she remembered the quotation: “Education raises a man to the dignity of his being.” She continued in her own words: “If there is no education, if you don’t go to school to learn, you are nothing in this life.”

Christine, 14, was reflecting on her desire to go back to class after the Jan. 12 earthquake that destroyed her apartment, forcing her family to seek shelter in a camp by Port-au-Prince’s international airport.

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