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It’s hard to imagine anything resembling winter here. I skipped it altogether this year.
The closest venture towards that moth-eaten semblance of feeling cold, that cob-webbed physical memory, is a nightly bucket shower beneath the stars, with blue tarpaulin cabins flapping about the semi-self-conscious, silent, black and white shapes. Since September I have not felt the cold. This is perhaps one reason why the Winter Olympics have seemed so far removed.
I have been on this island for six months, and at this field hospital in Fond Parisien for seven weeks camped on the front lawn of an orphanage 30 miles from Port au Prince. It houses around 280 patients and their family members and supports a sister refugee camp and a variety of local clinics. The dynamic of the camp and the needs of the people in it have changed a lot over the weeks: there are no more bus and helicopter loads of patients transferred in numerous times a day; patients are no longer dying from their injuries; pain is well managed. External fixators (scaffolding keeping broken bones fixed in place) are being removed, people are no longer bed-bound and in a few weeks we will receive and start fitting prosthetic limbs. Teams are providing physical therapy and psychosocial care – in short, we’re out of the acute phase of the disaster and the emphasis is now on rehabilitation.
The chalked lessons from the 12th of January are still on the blackboards; the date hangs there exerting a heaviness on the conscience, a strange spectre in the corner of our eyes as we work in the schoolrooms-cum-operating theatres, offices, supply rooms and pharmacies.
There was such abundant coverage of the earthquake and the ensuing tragedy that it has come to be something we accept and know only as tragic. I think this is a mistake. It’s impossible to maintain interest for longer than a short while in something that is purely a tragedy. And Haiti is a subject which has to keep generating interest. Wandering around the broken streets of Port au Prince is a surreal experience. The destruction is immense: almost everything will have to be rebuilt. A Chilean friend said to me it is as if the planet were developing an allergy to us.
To see people climbing over the rubble, clearing the debris, collecting bricks, one by one, stacking them up – just a single one weighty enough to break bones – and to imagine hundreds collapsing in on you sends an eerie shiver down my spine.
People were terrified when there were aftershocks in the weeks following the earthquake. Even in tents people injured themselves clamouring to get out. There was one while I was in the pharmacy with a few American doctors – the windows rattled and the ground shook briefly, everyone sprinted and stood outside looking helpless before turning round to a scene reminiscent of one from The Life of Brian; with twenty or so Haitians rolling around on the ground, nearly blue in the face with laughter at how terrified we all looked.
The Haitian people are so proud, so enchantingly, achingly stubborn. In a country so crippled by poverty there is some extra glimmer in their eyes and a musicality in their voices and their language, a faith that is so deep-rooted and certain, and so fundamental to everything – it is like nothing I have known.
The first week was completely exhausting; the day began at 7am and we didn’t eat or rest until 7pm. I would drink litres of water, and never see them again, not to be too descriptive. It culminated, as all good weeks do, in a Sunday.
The work schedule was similar but during the morning patients slowly made their way down from the wards to a clearing in the tents where benches had been assembled. Around nine o’clock the first sign I heard was the thump of a bass drum and the clattering of hi-hats and cymbals being shifted into place. Then there was a bass guitar, and finally an organ. When I got down to the clearing there were a few hundred people waiting for mass to start; patients and their families, medical staff, translators, children from the orphanage, people from the local community.
A voice crackled across the PA system, the crowd’s own voice quiet in comparison, chanting Creole prayers with this eyes-shut-tight brimming-over of belief in the midst of a sea of waving hands. People got up from the crowd and took the microphone, they would talk about what they had experienced, some had been trapped beneath their houses or in factories or offices for hours or days; they would lead a song and the band would join in with them. One woman in the camp made international headlines when she was pulled out of the wreckage after eight days. The congregation was singing: “Take me where you want to Lord / Even if I don’t want to go, / However you want / Even if I don’t want to / Take me where you want me Lord.”
We were all in tears of such happiness, wonder and sadness at these simple, humble but enormously heavy words. It was the first time that the full weight of what people had suffered hit home. The preacher’s voice began chanting, and people began wailing, the chant rose up, inciting the crowd, shrieking, until everyone was shouting: “Béni soit l’éternel! Béni soit l’éternel! Grace! Grace! Grace pour Haiti!” Exhausted, the chanting descended again into song, quieter this time. It was after midday when the ceremony drew to an end and people finally dispersed.
That evening, I walked past a tent where a woman was singing, “Dieu nous a quitté les chaussures…” It was sung with such joy and faith, such beauty and sadness…
I dare say the hospital is a happy place. There have been over 1,000 patients here now. There are lots of grinning, cheeky children running about, playing with kites, or footballs, clubs are organised with games and painting and drawing every day. Conditions are comfortable, there is regular, good food and there’s a lot of laughter. Haitian people (particularly the matron-esque women) have the most incredible capacity to look terrifyingly stern and unforgiving one minute and then morph their faces into a huge, warm grin the next.
I don’t want to create a glossy or false image of Haiti’s suffering, but Haiti has suffered in so many aspects of its existence and will almost certainly continue to suffer. Things had been relatively stable and conditions were slowly improving in Haiti before the earthquake – now everything has to start again from scratch. A friend here told me that Haitians don’t really think about the long term, but live from day to day and moment to moment, and I can understand it, because I think if you were to examine the past and then try and plan too far into the future for Haiti, you would just sort of grind to a halt in despair. The country will undoubtedly continue to suffer. There is a tremendous beauty to Haiti, and it is in part a beauty that is born out of sadness.
So I hope things will keep going from day to day here. There are amazing people working both here and back home and all over, raising money, sending volunteers, sending supplies and resources; there is a huge need for so many things. Yet I think the most important way to help is to stay interested in Haiti, find out information and keep up to date about what is going on. Tragedy is something that can be too easily forgotten or pushed aside.
