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.