One of my colleagues, a photographer called Nick Stern, emailed me today with an idea. Nick was also in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake and was thinking we could hold a small exhibition of our work in Los Angeles, around 10-15 photographs each, and hopefully raise some money for one of the charities we encountered in Port-au-Prince. I’ve never actually exhibited any of my work, apart from an image which was part of the BPPA’s ‘The Press Photographer’s Year’ exhibition in London a couple of years ago, so it’s completely new to me. If anybody has any ideas or suggestions about doing this I’d like to hear them. We’ll need space somewhere in LA and possibly some sponsorship. Watch this space.
ON THE LONG flight back to Los Angeles I had a lot of time to think about the eight days I spent in Haiti. I learnt a lot about a country I knew very little about before the earthquake, and I feel an urge to return in the not too distant future. I’ve always considered myself to be fairly hardened emotionally – but nothing has opened my eyes like this trip. I met a four-year-old girl in a refugee camp that’d lost both parents in the earthquake and she simply would not let go of my hand. I honestly didn’t know how to react or what to do. You can’t just detach yourself and pry your hand away but at the same time you’re powerless to really do anything. It felt like a real kick in the stomach.
In the desperately deprived area of downtown Port-au-Prince, fires were breaking out everywhere as scavengers, looters and police played out a running battle in what looked like a real war zone. One lady stood crying in front of the smoldering remains of what used to be her small store. She told me that the earthquake had taken almost everything she had, and the fires took the rest. I was speechless. I had to just walk away.
The Sunday Telegraph published the story I worked on with staff reporter Nick Allen in Port-au-Prince. This is his story.
The young woman hesitated for just a moment before she offered me the child for adoption.
Guerda Charles, a homeless victim of the earthquake, did not want money. Instead she wanted to give the girl to a good home in America – away from the chaos of Haiti, in a place where she had a chance of a decent future.
As human traffickers scour the squalid camps of Port-au-Prince in search of children to sell, the fate of Haiti’s orphans can depend on the adults that chance brings their way.
Three year-old Trassy Vieulloud, and Semelus Beonelove Kendy, aged 10, had lost their parents in the earthquake like so many of Haiti’s children. But instead of falling into the grasp of a stranger who would sell them, they were in the care of Mrs Charles, a 26-year-old neighbour.
Like thousands of others she has lost almost everything in the earthquake. Now her fear is what lies ahead for the ravaged land. So when foreigners arrived at her camp, a stone’s throw from Haiti’s ruined presidential palace, she could not resist an offer to send them abroad.
Having heard disturbing reports of traffickers operating on the island, I had decided to test the ease with which they could obtain their prey and suggested that an American friend might like to adopt Trassy, the younger child – a girl with a sad and beautiful face. Mrs Charles asked who the friend was, and wanted to know whether the child would go to a “nice” couple.
Reassured, she quickly called Semelus across, and asked if he could go too. He was not related to Trassy, and his own family had died in a different tragedy.
He said he didn’t like his life in the camp. “I’m hungry and I miss my mother and father,” he said. The disaster had not quite crushed his hope for the future, though. “I want to be a doctor,” he said. “I want to take care of the Haitian people.”
Asked if she wanted money for them, Mrs Charles said no. “I want to give them away so they can have a better life,” she said, and asked if our friends could return the next day to collect the children.
There was no doubting her good intentions; she clearly wanted the best for the two children, and she knows her own family faces a terrifying battle for survival in the months ahead. They can ill-afford the burden of two extra mouths to feed.
But as Haitians like her are faced with desperate decisions in the aftermath of the earthquake, predatory figures are on the
prowl.
Click to read the full article at the Telegraph website
4:50AM. The alarm on my phone started ringing. I’d had my first decent night of sleep and with it being unusually chilly I was actually reluctant to leave my cozy camp. I dragged myself up and went to wake up my colleague, Nick, who’d moved into one of the undamaged rooms that’d become available at the hotel, so I could use the shower. For some reason he didn’t seem pleased to see me, banging on the door at 5am! With everything packed and ready to go, I made my decision. I was going to head to the airport and try to blag my way onto the United flight.
In the driver and translator I’d made two friends. We knew about each other’s family, children and hopes for the future. Barvi, a teacher before the earthquake destroyed the school he worked in, is engaged to a Haitian-American woman who is a nurse in New York. His face was full of excitement as he told me about their plans to marry as soon as it’s safe for her to return to Haiti, and then their plans of a new life together in Brooklyn, New York. I joked with him that he wasn’t going to be able to handle the cold winters there but the truth is these incredible resilient people can handle almost anything thrown at them, sadly out of necessity. We spotted a Chelsea football shirt and Barvi’s eyes lit up again – they’re his favorite team. I tried to explain to him the merits of Plymouth Argyle, but ultimately I couldn’t really even convince myself given their form of late. We arrived at the airport and said our goodbyes; they saw my firmly British handshake and raised me a big Haitian hug. I felt genuinely sad to be leaving and wondered what the future held for all the kind Haitian people I’d met along my journey. Throughout the world, the kindness, humility and compassion shown by people to their fellow man in times of extreme adversity is something that is humbling to witness first-hand and will stay with me for a long time.
I joined the line for security at the destitute airport and with the bag scanner and metal detector out of action I was through security with a simple peek by a Haitian official inside one of my two bags. Moments later my passport had its departure stamp and I was stood on the edge of runway with a few other people and no idea what was going on. After waiting a few hours I spotted Garry arrive – it was good to see a friendly face. We waited a few more hours, watching aircraft come and go, delivering their aid. A French military cargo plane touched down and began unloading. Half its cargo was boxes that were neatly stacked inside waiting military trucks, and the other half was crates and crates of bottles of 7-UP. Just as long as they get their fizzy drinks! At around 11:30am a huge, brand new United aircraft touched down on the runway to the applause of the awaiting passengers. United officials came over and started checking names against the manifest. Loune and Garry spoke to them and managed to get them to write my name down on the list. It depended on the US Customs and Border Patrol officers waiting by the plane, but it looked like I was getting out of Haiti. We made our way across the runway and I, along with a Canadian medic, was cleared to board the plane. United had just delivered a large consignment of aid from the city of Chicago and were allowing people to take the empty returning flight free of charge – a very noble gesture. The cynic in me wondered if they were bringing one of their newest and most shiny planes as a prop for photographs – but either way it doesn’t really matter, it’s still a good job done.
I slept for most of the flight with my dreams intersected with the people I’d met and a loved one I was looking forward to being reunited with. It’s strange, in my job I travel a lot and yet I felt although on this trip I’d been away forever. It was a truly epic adventure under the saddest of circumstances. Once I landed in Chicago the Salvation Army, American Red Cross and Travelers Aid groups were out in force with blankets, food and water as well as having set up shelters with warm showers and beds nearby. I wasn’t one of the ones who needed to take advantage of any of that, but at least those returning to the USA with nothing were being well cared for. I did take advantage of a cheap rate they’d negotiated at the adjourning Hilton and after re-booking my onward flight to Los Angeles for the morning I headed to the hotel for a night in a real bed.
MY FINAL night in Haiti was spent at the Villa Creole where I’d been staying, in a tent, in the grounds of the hotel. For years now the Creole has hosted passing journalists visiting Port-au-Prince, and quite a little community developed from the large contingent of media that converged on its doorstep overnight.
I met Garry, who runs the Haitian Times in New York, and ended up being my lifeline in getting out of the city. Getting out was something I’d remained worried about. Earlier in the day our gracious driver and translator, Barvi, had taken me to a bus company near the airport to enquire about purchasing tickets for the long route over the border to the Dominican Republic and Santa Domingo. From there my route was to have been a flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico, a night there, then a flight to Miami and finally a flight to Los Angeles. It was a journey I wasn’t exactly relishing. Garry told me that United Airlines were running a charter flight directly into PAP airport from different locations throughout the US, taking it in turn to deliver aid from each city and then returning. He said he’d managed to get on a flight making a roundtrip back to Chicago for the following day and kindly gave me the contact details for Loune Viaud, the lovely lady coordinating the flights in Haiti. I emailed her and heard back almost right away that the manifest for the flight had already been sent but I could turn up at the airport at 7am and take my chances. I had a real decision to make as if I wanted to take the more guaranteed route out – the bus – I needed to be there at 7am also. It was time for a couple of cans of Prestige, the Haitian national beer.
Nick, from the Daily Telegraph in London and Kim, from the Independent, arrived at the Creole to join us for beers. They were also planning on leaving the following day, Sunday, and we discussed the options. We were joined by two more British journalists from Reuters who had just checked in to the hotel after spending a couple of weeks camping at the airport and UN compound. It was good to hear everybody’s tales about their previous assignments and postings from Afghanistan to Iraq, Chechnya to Georgia and Russia. Talk then turned to the present and we each shared what we’d learned in Haiti, and I gave the Reuters chaps a full briefing on what is going on at the mass graves in Titanyen, which they were eager to follow-up on. I hope they do as I think the story really needs to be told. In years to come, Haitians will wonder why in the midst of this disaster some of their people were denied the right to even the crudest form of burial and instead left, dumped off the back of a truck, to decompose in the blazing heat.
With a car arriving to pick me up at six in the morning, I headed off to my tent for my final night, delaying the final decision on my travel plans until then.
I’ve been having really bad problems connecting to the internet out here which is why I didn’t update yesterday. I had an assignment for the Sunday Telegraph which should be published tomorrow. Off to downtown Port-au-Prince today to cover the looting and violence which I’ve been told has got far worse over the past two days…
TO BE HONEST, I’m not really sure what to write today. I had a commission yesterday for a British newspaper, so my whole day was tied up at the UN compound at the airport. More on that when it’s published. But that’s not the reason I’m stumped for words. After spending the morning photographing another UN food drop at a refugee camp, this afternoon I was sent to photograph one of the largest of the mass graves that has been created to bury some of Haiti’s estimated 200,000 dead. We asked our driver if he knew where Titanyen was. Of course he did. The town holds a special significance for Haitians as one of the most feared places in the country. During the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s the area around the village was the dumping ground of “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s political opposition. Haitian mothers warn their naughty children that they’ll be “sent to Titanyen” if they do not behave.
Before we headed there I did some research on Titanyen’s location. I needn’t have bothered. I’d anticipated the smell but nothing could have prepared me for it. With a surgical mask underneath a tight bandana covering my nose and mouth, the stench of the mass graves alerted me to their presence with a knockout jolt. However, whatever protection I’d used to mitigate the effects of the smell offered absolutely no protection to my eyes. I was absolutely stunned. I’ve seen and photographed dead bodies before, but never bodies dumped, piled high, and left to rot in the blazing hot Caribbean sun. The smell left me retching a few times and not for the first time on this trip I entered a daze – my thoughts racing too fast trying to make sense of the situation.
Suffice to say, I didn’t eat dinner tonight. I had joked with the friend I made on the flight from Philadelphia to Santa Domingo that I’d save a couple of the miniature bottles of rum they were handing out in case I really needed it. Tonight I drank them.
THE SLUMS of Canape Vert Mountain were virtually flattered during the Jan. 12th 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Already one of the most deprived areas of the city, concern has now shifted to the residents of these areas who are left with nothing.
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ONCE I’d filed all my pictures from the morning food run with the UN a colleague and I hired a driver for the afternoon. We wanted to head to the downtown area of Port-au-Prince, notoriously dangerous before the earthquake with drugs, rape and murder common, and presumably even worse now. It was amongst the worst hit areas of the city with wide scale devastation. Almost every other building was collapsed and the area was all but abandoned to its own devices with security practically non-existent. Survivors desperately searched through the collapsed remains for anything they could salvage and were elated with anything they found – even just a couple of bottles of shampoo. Small groups of Haitian police tried to stop people looting, or salvaging, depending on how you look at it, but their battled was in vain against such large numbers. Our drivers were incredibly nervous, and kept reminding us that it was not a safe area of town to be in, particularly with very little protection. Every time somebody spoke to us they stepped in to make sure everything was OK – we definitely learned that their concern for a couple of Western journalists was genuine.
After a couple of hours, US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne started to enter the area to try to secure it. Their presence was largely welcomed with Haitians greeting the Americans as their “saviors”. Signs and graffiti across the area proclaimed that the French help was not needed, the US are their saviors – a bitter testimony to Haiti’s colonial past.
An overwhelming stench of decaying bodies plagued everywhere we went, and unlike what you’d image the smell was sweet, not to be confused with the stink of human excrement in the gutters.
