I thought I would give a personalized update. Many have been devastated but I have been working in Haiti each year over the last five years. So to one small aspect to this story...
The guest house where our group stays is called St. Joseph's Home for Boys whose work involves rescuing street boys and others to escape abusive homes. Its work has been ongoing for 25 years and they just finished new renovations in celebrating this. It was a very structurally sound building in Petionville, part of the capital city. Communication is very difficult but our latest update from St. Joseph's U.S. network is that the house has completely collapsed. Bill Nathan, the young director there, was on the sixth floor when the house collapsed underneath him. Bill came to the house when he was eight and developed into a world class drummer and now in his early twenties took over the directorship of the house operations. He managed to jump to a neighbouring roof and is injured but stable. The other boys are safe and everyone has been accounted for. However most of the houses in the neigbouring community are built into the surrounding ravine with floors stacked on top of each other. One can only imagine what has happened to them.
We've no contact as yet with our school project in cite soleil and since the quake struck around 5:00pm the students would not have been there. We had just started investing in the second floor last May and the community there were carrying on construction as much as they could over this last year. We still plan to go in May this year and will continue building or re-build as necessary. The Haitian people have tremendous will and spirit and do not defeat easily. It is terrible that new reports are only reporting chaos in the streets when I know from experience that there are thousands of community members coming together to help each other since that is a common necessity of life in Haiti. Especially in Port au Prince. Relief will be slow which is the lesson we keep learning from other disasters. A lot of money promised for the tsunami in 2004 never arrived or was used for other purposes. Our charity has received offers of help but we can't ship large quantities of food, medicine or clothing. It is better to take time to reflect where help should go and how it is delivered.
It must be mentioned that this is a horrific blow to Haiti. Canada has contibuted to the suffering there having essentially backed the coup d'etat and helped install a dictatorship for two years. Canada has boasted that it has helped invest in disaster relief and prevention yet four years after Hurricane Jean in 2004 Gonaives, one of the largest cities, still had not recovered completely by 2009. If Canada's complicity in Haiti was off most media and Canadian's radar before then you can count on the fact that it will be knocked off forever after this. One of the great losses in this recent tragedy will be the truth of what happened five years ago. Canada now, and more repulsively, the conservative government will get to go in and play hero. It will be played up as just more Canadian compassion responding to disaster.
Canada is not a hero in Haiti. It owes Haiti every cent of recovery money and human effort. All Canadians who donate will do so out of genuine compassion but the Canadian government is not.