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January 25, 2010

“Ahhh Geoff…. Haiti is destroyed.” Those are the words Cajuste, our Director in Haiti, greeted me with as I arrived in Port-au-Prince last week after crossing over by bus from the Dominican Republic. Since then, there has been little time to make sense in my mind of what has happened. But from the beginning I believed that there a meaning in this: a lesson for humanity, a challenge about how to live and about shaping culture.
In my view the meaning is this: lack of sensitivity. And the challenge is this: to develop a profound sensitivity to the ramifications of our own life and those who we are connected with.
I myself worry about my own insensitivity. Even before I arrived in Haiti I felt somewhat numb to the crisis. My own friends here were suffering – I didn’t even know if they were alive – and yet I was able to go on with my life as before.
(I’ll be writing about insensitivity and how I think we can change that, via PINP and in many other ways, in future entries.)
I was already used to the devastation in Haiti slums like Cite Soleil, with families living in makeshift shelters, with little food, water and other necessities. But I had never seen loss of life at a massive scale, never seen dead bodies or seen rotting corpses.
As we drove down the arterial Delmas road, I saw the collapsed buildings for the first time. At intersections there were homemade signs asking for help for people in that area. Side roads were entirely occupied by families sleeping under tarps. We arrived at our office, when the entire first floor was missing, and the other floors (our was the third floor) were precariously hanging there more or less intact. And I slept on the grounds of the building along with the other refugees.
Since then, I’ve traveled around the city, on tap-taps (communal taxis and mini-buses), as we’ve tried to reestablish our office, and create a food aid program. I’ve spoken with many people who lost their homes, work, and have very little food and water (even now, two weeks after the earthquake, aid has barely begun to trickle throughout the city, and has not reached most places at all). In many ways it all seems like Cite Soleil, the slum where half our partners live. Now all of Port-au-Prince is Cite Soleil. (a massive refugee camp, with hundreds of tarp cities, large and small.)
The main difference is death: more than 100,000 dead. How do people cope with that?

Two responses to death
In spite of its reputation, Haiti is remarkably peaceful, gentle, kind. (True, there are bandits at night, but they are mostly looking for food; and there has been a scourge of kidnapping, yet that was mostly created by foreign interference.) I think this is part of an ethic that insists on sharing, presence, spirituality, community, and refuses to participate in virulent materialism. They have made this choice though it means being ostracized from the global economic system, and are accustomed to extreme poverty.
People have warned us not to distribute food without a secure system. But I’ve found so far a remarkable gentleness among every person I’ve seen – at every tarp city, even the largest – and even in the face of death. Yet I’ve noticed two distinct responses to the death of family members.
The first is exemplified by Edward, a man I spoke with yesterday who is a former teacher of one of our staff members. He introduced himself, shook my hand and asked me how I was. When I asked him the same question, he said that his wife and two children had died. And when I asked him about , he said simply, "I can't grieve.” He explained that now he just wants to help, translating for journalists, or anything necessary. He has relatives in the US who are asking him to come there, but all his focus now is on being of service.
Boni’s attitude is different. He’s a friend of Cajuste and someone who had previously struck me as being self-effacing and uncompetitive. His wife and only child also died in a collapsed building. He is overwhelmed with misery, his mind is dark, his eyes are bleak. He can only say how terrible it is.
A similar attitude was expressed by a man I met in front of the Canadian embassy. He had lost his parents and wife. He asked me if there was any help available for a person who had lost everything. I had to explain that, no, there is no help. Overall, we inhabit a culture in which each is for his own. That glint of brutality underlies civil behavior.
Different responses – yet each is responding with gentleness and humility.
The effects – physical, psychological, spiritual – on Haiti will be permanent. How we will respond, here and everywhere, of course, is up to us. For the time being, most of us are in a state of shock. It is crucial that we don’t let the shock lapse into yet more insensitivity. It is a call to sensitivity: greater and greater awareness of our interconnections, open and hidden, and the origin of our own being: what makes us alive.