Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon
Jeff Kravitz/MTV Hope for Haiti Now, via Getty Images
George Clooney, right, spoke at the Hope For Haiti Now telethon on Friday in Los Angeles.
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By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Published: January 22, 2010
George Clooney is the un-Jerry Lewis of celebrity telethons. The star-studded fund-raiser on Friday that he organized for victims of the Haiti earthquake was a study in carefully muted star power. More than 100 of the most famous actors and music stars in the world went on stage pretending to be nobody.
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ArtsBeat: In Song, Trying to Convey the Scope of a Tragedy
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
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Hollywood telethons tap into the best and worst in people: unstinting generosity, and an obsessive fascination with celebrities. Viewers are drawn to famous faces but at the same time turned off by too much piety and self-congratulation. Especially when the tragedy is as dire as Haiti's, success is measured not just in the many millions of dollars raised, but by the degree of restraint. Friday night's event, shown on dozens of networks and streamed across hundreds of Web sites, was a case study in giving it all while holding back.
Mr. Clooney, who has put together these kinds of gala charity drives before, notably the telethon for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, explained to viewers that this was their opportunity to help neighbors in desperate need with "swiftness and expertise."
It was expertly swift and deliberately unglamorous — stars wore varying shades of brown and black and studiously avoided the "I" word. Beyoncé, Madonna and Sting, sang without being identified; stars like Mr. Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio (who have each already donated $1 million) were not introduced. Mostly, they told vignettes about people in Haiti — brave survivors and rescue workers. The most showbiz-y of all was the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who chimed in live from Haiti, describing the misery there framed by images of desperation, sometimes with a little too much bathos for a newsman.
There were a few concessions to viewers' curiosity. Occasionally, the camera swooped to the rows of celebrities manning phone banks, from Reese Witherspoon to Robert Pattinson and Taylor Swift. When it zoomed in on a star talking to a donor, both sides of the conversation could be heard. And the stars were intent on being just plain folks. Julia Roberts, chatting companionably with the mother of small boys, said, "Fantastic, it's such a great age, isn't it?" A woman told Steven Spielberg that it was "cool" to be on the phone with him, and he replied, "It's so cool to talk to you!"
People tune in to be entertained as well as educated. At times the telethon was perhaps a little too self-consciously low-key and somber. At the end of the night, even the Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean broke off his own mournful ode to his homeland and said, "Enough of this moping, man, let's rebuild Haiti," and he and his band began rocking out.
But overall, it was an effective tradeoff: an excess of restraint in the pursuit of extravagant generosity.
Haiti Adds Resonance to Sundance Documentaries
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"A Small Act," Jennifer Arnold's movie about sponsoring children in Africa, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. More Photos >
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By BROOKS BARNES
Published: January 22, 2010
PARK CITY, Utah — Unscrupulous charities, Sally Struthers and those ubiquitous "dollar a day" commercials on cable networks have made sponsoring a child in Africa a joke to many people. It was certainly that for Jennifer Arnold, the director of a documentary on child sponsorship that had its premiere on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival here.
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Opening night on Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival. More Photos »
"It's gotten to this place where you just roll your eyes because you feel so manipulated by those commercials," she said. "Most of them so overly victimize the African kids in need that you get immune."
But when Ms. Arnold started to investigate sponsorship programs — she was interested in participating but was leery of falling victim to a scam — she turned up an extraordinary story that casts this corner of philanthropy in an entirely new light. Her film "A Small Act" looks at how an impoverished Kenyan boy's life was drastically changed when an anonymous Swedish woman sponsored his primary and high school education for $15 a term.
The boy, Chris Mburu, grew up to attend Harvard and become a human-rights lawyer for the United Nations. One twist Ms. Arnold explores in the film, among others, involves Mr. Mburu's discovering his sponsor's identity: she is a Holocaust survivor named Hilde Back.
"A Small Act," which Sundance officials say could be a strong contender for an audience award, seems to have taken on added resonance because of the devastation in Haiti and the outpouring of giving in response.
"We're all sitting here wondering if a text message with a small donation can really make a difference — well, maybe it can," said Lisa Heller, vice president for documentary films at HBO, which has already acquired the documentary and plans to show it this summer.
For Mr. Mburu, 43, the celebratory whirl of Sundance has been diminished by personal loss. He learned in recent days that a close friend died in the Haitian earthquake. It helps that Ms. Back, 87, traveled to Utah for the premiere. The pair have been wandering Main Street hand in hand. "She has become like my second mom," Mr. Mburu said.
Of course, "A Small Act" has considerable competition for attention in the festival's documentary field. Sundance is known for showcasing controversial films, and this year is no different. "The Tillman Story" looks at how the family of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the N.F.L. star and Army Ranger, took on the United States government following his death from his own troops' fire in Afghanistan. "Bhutto" delves into Pakistani politics, and the abortion debate rages in "12th & Delaware."
And other documentaries have gained new urgency and context because of Haiti. "The Shock Doctrine," based on the book by Naomi Klein, looks at the exploitation of moments of crisis in vulnerable countries by governments and big business; if not exactly exploring a parallel to the situation in Haiti, the documentary "Climate Refugees" focuses on large-scale population displacement.
This year a documentary was the festival's first official sale. Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman," a withering assessment of America's public education system that was produced by Participant Media, sold to Paramount Pictures for a modest sum the parties refused to disclose.
"It's an exceptionally strong year for documentaries," said Diane Weyermann, the executive vice president for documentary production at Participant, which has four films at the festival, including "Casino Jack and the United States of Money," a portrait of Washington corruption and the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "The key is story. These films work when they have an emotional impact."
As is often the case in this genre, "A Small Act" started by happenstance. Ms. Arnold had spent a year studying at the University of Nairobi during college and met Jane Wanjiru Muigai. The two women kept in touch and, years later, when a wary Ms. Arnold contemplated sponsoring a child, she sought her friend's advice. As it turned out, Ms. Muigai was starting a scholarship fund for needy Kenyan children with her cousin — Mr. Mburu — and filled her in on his tale.
Three months later Ms. Arnold was shooting in the African countryside, with her companion, Patti Lee, serving as director of photography and a producer. Ms. Arnold spoke a touch of Swahili, so she figured that she would be fine without a translator.
Wrong. "We had no idea what people were saying, so we tried to gauge people's emotions and film that way," Ms. Arnold said. "Then we would bring it back to Nairobi and have it translated, and it would turn out that the entire scene was about feeding the cow."
Ms. Back was another challenge, preferring only to correspond with the filmmakers by letter. A retired schoolteacher, Ms. Back said she was stunned that Mr. Mburu tracked her down. "Honestly, I had forgotten him until they phoned me from the embassy in Nairobi, telling me he was searching for me," she said.
The finished film looks at how Mr. Mburu found Ms. Back and discusses her decision to sponsor a child. (The charity she used is now defunct.) Much of the picture then chronicles his efforts to replicate her generosity by starting his own charity, which he names the Hilde Back Education Fund. As he is doing so, Kenya falls into ethnic-based election violence; fund officials help to protect the students.
Despite the happy events of "A Small Act," charity experts warn that donors should be wary of programs that claim to sponsor children in Africa. "There are still a lot of scams out there, and unfortunately, making a difference in one child's life is not usually this easy," said Trevor Neilson, president of the Global Philanthropy Group, a leading charitable advisory organization.
At the very least, Ms. Arnold is pleased that a different kind of African documentary is getting attention. "I wanted to show something positive," she said. "There are a lot of stories in Africa aside from refugee camps and child soldiers."
HBO
"A Small Act," Jennifer Arnold's movie about sponsoring children in Africa, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. More Photos >
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By BROOKS BARNES
Published: January 22, 2010
PARK CITY, Utah — Unscrupulous charities, Sally Struthers and those ubiquitous "dollar a day" commercials on cable networks have made sponsoring a child in Africa a joke to many people. It was certainly that for Jennifer Arnold, the director of a documentary on child sponsorship that had its premiere on Friday at the Sundance Film Festival here.
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Robert Galbraith/Reuters
Opening night on Thursday at the Sundance Film Festival. More Photos »
"It's gotten to this place where you just roll your eyes because you feel so manipulated by those commercials," she said. "Most of them so overly victimize the African kids in need that you get immune."
But when Ms. Arnold started to investigate sponsorship programs — she was interested in participating but was leery of falling victim to a scam — she turned up an extraordinary story that casts this corner of philanthropy in an entirely new light. Her film "A Small Act" looks at how an impoverished Kenyan boy's life was drastically changed when an anonymous Swedish woman sponsored his primary and high school education for $15 a term.
The boy, Chris Mburu, grew up to attend Harvard and become a human-rights lawyer for the United Nations. One twist Ms. Arnold explores in the film, among others, involves Mr. Mburu's discovering his sponsor's identity: she is a Holocaust survivor named Hilde Back.
"A Small Act," which Sundance officials say could be a strong contender for an audience award, seems to have taken on added resonance because of the devastation in Haiti and the outpouring of giving in response.
"We're all sitting here wondering if a text message with a small donation can really make a difference — well, maybe it can," said Lisa Heller, vice president for documentary films at HBO, which has already acquired the documentary and plans to show it this summer.
For Mr. Mburu, 43, the celebratory whirl of Sundance has been diminished by personal loss. He learned in recent days that a close friend died in the Haitian earthquake. It helps that Ms. Back, 87, traveled to Utah for the premiere. The pair have been wandering Main Street hand in hand. "She has become like my second mom," Mr. Mburu said.
Of course, "A Small Act" has considerable competition for attention in the festival's documentary field. Sundance is known for showcasing controversial films, and this year is no different. "The Tillman Story" looks at how the family of Cpl. Pat Tillman, the N.F.L. star and Army Ranger, took on the United States government following his death from his own troops' fire in Afghanistan. "Bhutto" delves into Pakistani politics, and the abortion debate rages in "12th & Delaware."
And other documentaries have gained new urgency and context because of Haiti. "The Shock Doctrine," based on the book by Naomi Klein, looks at the exploitation of moments of crisis in vulnerable countries by governments and big business; if not exactly exploring a parallel to the situation in Haiti, the documentary "Climate Refugees" focuses on large-scale population displacement.
This year a documentary was the festival's first official sale. Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for Superman," a withering assessment of America's public education system that was produced by Participant Media, sold to Paramount Pictures for a modest sum the parties refused to disclose.
"It's an exceptionally strong year for documentaries," said Diane Weyermann, the executive vice president for documentary production at Participant, which has four films at the festival, including "Casino Jack and the United States of Money," a portrait of Washington corruption and the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "The key is story. These films work when they have an emotional impact."
As is often the case in this genre, "A Small Act" started by happenstance. Ms. Arnold had spent a year studying at the University of Nairobi during college and met Jane Wanjiru Muigai. The two women kept in touch and, years later, when a wary Ms. Arnold contemplated sponsoring a child, she sought her friend's advice. As it turned out, Ms. Muigai was starting a scholarship fund for needy Kenyan children with her cousin — Mr. Mburu — and filled her in on his tale.
Three months later Ms. Arnold was shooting in the African countryside, with her companion, Patti Lee, serving as director of photography and a producer. Ms. Arnold spoke a touch of Swahili, so she figured that she would be fine without a translator.
Wrong. "We had no idea what people were saying, so we tried to gauge people's emotions and film that way," Ms. Arnold said. "Then we would bring it back to Nairobi and have it translated, and it would turn out that the entire scene was about feeding the cow."
Ms. Back was another challenge, preferring only to correspond with the filmmakers by letter. A retired schoolteacher, Ms. Back said she was stunned that Mr. Mburu tracked her down. "Honestly, I had forgotten him until they phoned me from the embassy in Nairobi, telling me he was searching for me," she said.
The finished film looks at how Mr. Mburu found Ms. Back and discusses her decision to sponsor a child. (The charity she used is now defunct.) Much of the picture then chronicles his efforts to replicate her generosity by starting his own charity, which he names the Hilde Back Education Fund. As he is doing so, Kenya falls into ethnic-based election violence; fund officials help to protect the students.
Despite the happy events of "A Small Act," charity experts warn that donors should be wary of programs that claim to sponsor children in Africa. "There are still a lot of scams out there, and unfortunately, making a difference in one child's life is not usually this easy," said Trevor Neilson, president of the Global Philanthropy Group, a leading charitable advisory organization.
At the very least, Ms. Arnold is pleased that a different kind of African documentary is getting attention. "I wanted to show something positive," she said. "There are a lot of stories in Africa aside from refugee camps and child soldiers."
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins
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By SIMON ROMERO
Published: January 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When a three-story building in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods collapsed last week, a 21-year-old tailor who lived there was counted among the estimated tens of thousands of Haitians killed by the earthquake.
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Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Emmanuel Buteau, 21, rests at an Israeli medical camp in Port-au-Prince after being rescued on Friday.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Severe Aftershock
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Related
Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Except by his mother.
Marie Yolène Bois de Fer, 46, who had been living in a camp for displaced people in a park across from the wrecked presidential palace, returned Friday to the shattered apartment building, still hoping to find some sign of him.
"I heard my son calling me," she said. "At that moment, I knew it was possible to save him."
She began frantically alerting everyone she could find — police officers, journalists, aid workers — that her son was trapped beneath the rubble of her home in Bel-Air. Ten days after the quake, he was still alive.
Soon, American and French medical experts arrived, followed by Israelis in two teams of five people each. Renowned for their rescue work after disasters in Turkey, Greece and Armenia, the Israelis had sent a 120-person rescue and hospital team in the days after the earthquake.
Rescuers cut through rebar, tore away rubble and broke through pieces of furniture to reach the son, Emmanuel Buteau. One of the Israelis was able to touch his hand. Mr. Buteau asked for water.
"Hearing his voice was a very encouraging sign," said Lt. Col. Rami Peltz, 43, of the Israeli Army. "Touching his hand was even better. We knew he could move that limb."
Once they removed enough debris to grasp Mr. Buteau's shoulders, Maj. Zohar Moshe, 47, an engineer who leads the Israeli rescue unit, was able to pull him out. "I pulled him out and he weighed like nothing because he was so thin," said Major Moshe. "Then he was free."
Mr. Buteau was severely dehydrated, dusty and hungry, but otherwise apparently without any serious injuries. The Israelis whisked him to their field hospital, where late on Friday he was recuperating under a tent next to his mother and sister. An Israeli doctor said that he might have had access to a bit of water while he was trapped, enabling him to endure the long ordeal.
For days, Mr. Buteau thought he was going to die.
"I thought I'd been taken away to another world, perhaps," he said. "At times I would fall asleep. At other times I could feel the tremors from beneath me."
Sometimes he could hear faint voices, sometimes a distant siren from beyond the wreckage that used to be his home. Still, he said, he did not know if the sounds were real. Under the blistering Haitian sun, the sounds of Hebrew mixed with Creole and French, and Mr. Buteau nodded in and out of consciousness.
"There were moments of horror while I was trapped," he said. "Once I heard people outside talking about burning the bodies they had found. I wondered what they could have been talking about."
Ms. Bois de Fer, who in normal times sells clothes as a street vendor, said that the challenges of her life seemed to lift on Friday. Her home was destroyed, her family was living in a camp in the street, but none of that was important.
"My baby is alive," she said softly, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I know that God is watching over us now."
The rescue offered a glimmer of hope that there could still be other survivors alive beneath the wasted city, even now.
An 84-year-old woman was also rescued Friday from a site near the main soccer stadium, bringing the number of survivors pulled from the rubble by international rescue teams to more than 120. She was reported to be in critical condition.
At the Israeli field hospital, Mr. Buteau appeared to be coming to grips with the possibility that he just might be alive.
"I guess God wasn't ready for me to die yet," he said.
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By SIMON ROMERO
Published: January 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — When a three-story building in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods collapsed last week, a 21-year-old tailor who lived there was counted among the estimated tens of thousands of Haitians killed by the earthquake.
Enlarge This Image
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Emmanuel Buteau, 21, rests at an Israeli medical camp in Port-au-Prince after being rescued on Friday.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Severe Aftershock
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Related
Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Except by his mother.
Marie Yolène Bois de Fer, 46, who had been living in a camp for displaced people in a park across from the wrecked presidential palace, returned Friday to the shattered apartment building, still hoping to find some sign of him.
"I heard my son calling me," she said. "At that moment, I knew it was possible to save him."
She began frantically alerting everyone she could find — police officers, journalists, aid workers — that her son was trapped beneath the rubble of her home in Bel-Air. Ten days after the quake, he was still alive.
Soon, American and French medical experts arrived, followed by Israelis in two teams of five people each. Renowned for their rescue work after disasters in Turkey, Greece and Armenia, the Israelis had sent a 120-person rescue and hospital team in the days after the earthquake.
Rescuers cut through rebar, tore away rubble and broke through pieces of furniture to reach the son, Emmanuel Buteau. One of the Israelis was able to touch his hand. Mr. Buteau asked for water.
"Hearing his voice was a very encouraging sign," said Lt. Col. Rami Peltz, 43, of the Israeli Army. "Touching his hand was even better. We knew he could move that limb."
Once they removed enough debris to grasp Mr. Buteau's shoulders, Maj. Zohar Moshe, 47, an engineer who leads the Israeli rescue unit, was able to pull him out. "I pulled him out and he weighed like nothing because he was so thin," said Major Moshe. "Then he was free."
Mr. Buteau was severely dehydrated, dusty and hungry, but otherwise apparently without any serious injuries. The Israelis whisked him to their field hospital, where late on Friday he was recuperating under a tent next to his mother and sister. An Israeli doctor said that he might have had access to a bit of water while he was trapped, enabling him to endure the long ordeal.
For days, Mr. Buteau thought he was going to die.
"I thought I'd been taken away to another world, perhaps," he said. "At times I would fall asleep. At other times I could feel the tremors from beneath me."
Sometimes he could hear faint voices, sometimes a distant siren from beyond the wreckage that used to be his home. Still, he said, he did not know if the sounds were real. Under the blistering Haitian sun, the sounds of Hebrew mixed with Creole and French, and Mr. Buteau nodded in and out of consciousness.
"There were moments of horror while I was trapped," he said. "Once I heard people outside talking about burning the bodies they had found. I wondered what they could have been talking about."
Ms. Bois de Fer, who in normal times sells clothes as a street vendor, said that the challenges of her life seemed to lift on Friday. Her home was destroyed, her family was living in a camp in the street, but none of that was important.
"My baby is alive," she said softly, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I know that God is watching over us now."
The rescue offered a glimmer of hope that there could still be other survivors alive beneath the wasted city, even now.
An 84-year-old woman was also rescued Friday from a site near the main soccer stadium, bringing the number of survivors pulled from the rubble by international rescue teams to more than 120. She was reported to be in critical condition.
At the Israeli field hospital, Mr. Buteau appeared to be coming to grips with the possibility that he just might be alive.
"I guess God wasn't ready for me to die yet," he said.
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts
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By MARC LACEY
Published: January 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The only sound inside Haiti's National Palace comes from the crunch underneath one's soles. Its ornate reception rooms are strewn with rubble. The stench of decaying bodies, a week and a half after the earthquake, still wafts in the air.
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Damon Winter/The New York Times
Haitians lined up for food being distributed Friday outside the National Palace in Port-au-Prince. The badly damaged building lies empty and abandoned now.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Severe Aftershock
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Related
Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Usually a bustling place full of officials and attendants as well as a tight net of security, it is a ghost palace now, abandoned, eerily silent and profoundly destroyed. Its majestic white domes have collapsed atop the lower floors, becoming symbols of a hobbled Haiti. The wings that are still standing have wide cracks in the walls, buckled ceilings and detritus-filled office suites.
A furious recovery effort is under way at the palace and other key government buildings around Port-au-Prince that are the country's administrative lifeblood. At the Finance Ministry, computers were hauled out on Thursday that contained all the tax information for the country, which is the poorest in the hemisphere. After an inspection tour at the palace on Friday, workers will begin scavenging through the wreckage soon to get at national security documents and other confidential paperwork that officials say are filed away there.
When the earthquake hit on the afternoon of Jan. 12, presidential aides dropped what they were doing and ran, with most but not all of them succeeding in getting out. The precarious conditions that remain allowed for only a cursory glimpse of the presidential lair, where coups have been fended off with varying degrees of success and where the management, and mismanagement, of the country has long been carried out.
A walk through the building with an American structural engineer on Friday morning revealed a lockbox on the second floor. It was toppled but still protecting whatever was hidden inside. Thick reports on the country's struggling educational and health systems were in heaps not far from an elegant chandelier that was slung so low it nearly touched the floor.
In the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake, one presidential aide who had hid under his desk as his office collapsed around him managed to flee amid what he described as a thick plume of smoke. Aides said that President René Préval's sister and assistant went back inside the building on the morning after the quake to secure some material.
The debris has hidden many things but revealed others. Aides said that the earthquake exposed hideaways in the palace that were apparently constructed by past presidents and that current aides said they knew nothing about.
The palace, facing Place Louverture near the Champ de Mars, was often full of pomp and circumstance, with elegant receptions held there for visiting dignitaries. A broken rum bottle littered the floor of one reception area on Friday, along with a slew of gift bags. Elegant chairs were lined up in the main ceremonial receiving area. The limbs from an artificial Christmas tree lay in an entryway.
Most Haitians, of course, have never been inside. Outside the gates of the palace on Friday, hundreds of displaced people lined up for food and water, with United Nations peacekeeping troops stationed at regular intervals to keep things orderly. Eventually, a voice rang out over a megaphone saying that the high-energy biscuits being distributed were finished and that only water remained. "Be patient," the voice said. "More food will come in the days ahead."
On the lawn of the palace, a furious meeting was taking place. Top aides to Mr. Préval, who was at his private residence elsewhere in the city when the earthquake struck, sought to get into the damaged palace to recover documents they said were highly sensitive. A hard-hatted structural engineer from California, Kit Miramoto, went over the floor plans of the building and helped them plan the safest route in. As for Mr. Préval's own office, it was a total loss.
Haiti has had a rough time when it comes to its palaces, with at least four different residences sitting on the same grounds since the 18th century. One was destroyed in 1869 during a rebel revolt that brought down a president. One was bombed in 1912 in an attack that killed another president.
The decision on rebuilding the current palace, whose classical design by Georges H. Baussan was chosen in 1912 after a national competition, remains a long way off, said Haitian government officials, who have relocated to a humble police station across the capital.
First, materials essential to governing have to be recovered from collapsed public buildings, the officials said. Mr. Miramoto, who personally recovered the Finance Ministry computers, was traveling from one key building to another to provide his expert assessment of whether they were stable enough for someone to enter.
After finding a way into a sensitive area of the palace through a second-floor window by ladder, hustling past shaking rooftops in a sprint and trudging up trash-strewn staircases, Mr. Miramoto, invited to Haiti by the Pan American Development Foundation, declared the structure badly damaged but not a lost cause. He said there were materials that could be used to reinforce the portions of the palace still standing so that they could be built upon.
"This is a symbol of the country for you, so you should salvage it," he advised presidential aides. "If you tear it down, it's like you're saying, 'We're defeated.' "
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By MARC LACEY
Published: January 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The only sound inside Haiti's National Palace comes from the crunch underneath one's soles. Its ornate reception rooms are strewn with rubble. The stench of decaying bodies, a week and a half after the earthquake, still wafts in the air.
Enlarge This Image
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Haitians lined up for food being distributed Friday outside the National Palace in Port-au-Prince. The badly damaged building lies empty and abandoned now.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Severe Aftershock
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Related
Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Usually a bustling place full of officials and attendants as well as a tight net of security, it is a ghost palace now, abandoned, eerily silent and profoundly destroyed. Its majestic white domes have collapsed atop the lower floors, becoming symbols of a hobbled Haiti. The wings that are still standing have wide cracks in the walls, buckled ceilings and detritus-filled office suites.
A furious recovery effort is under way at the palace and other key government buildings around Port-au-Prince that are the country's administrative lifeblood. At the Finance Ministry, computers were hauled out on Thursday that contained all the tax information for the country, which is the poorest in the hemisphere. After an inspection tour at the palace on Friday, workers will begin scavenging through the wreckage soon to get at national security documents and other confidential paperwork that officials say are filed away there.
When the earthquake hit on the afternoon of Jan. 12, presidential aides dropped what they were doing and ran, with most but not all of them succeeding in getting out. The precarious conditions that remain allowed for only a cursory glimpse of the presidential lair, where coups have been fended off with varying degrees of success and where the management, and mismanagement, of the country has long been carried out.
A walk through the building with an American structural engineer on Friday morning revealed a lockbox on the second floor. It was toppled but still protecting whatever was hidden inside. Thick reports on the country's struggling educational and health systems were in heaps not far from an elegant chandelier that was slung so low it nearly touched the floor.
In the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake, one presidential aide who had hid under his desk as his office collapsed around him managed to flee amid what he described as a thick plume of smoke. Aides said that President René Préval's sister and assistant went back inside the building on the morning after the quake to secure some material.
The debris has hidden many things but revealed others. Aides said that the earthquake exposed hideaways in the palace that were apparently constructed by past presidents and that current aides said they knew nothing about.
The palace, facing Place Louverture near the Champ de Mars, was often full of pomp and circumstance, with elegant receptions held there for visiting dignitaries. A broken rum bottle littered the floor of one reception area on Friday, along with a slew of gift bags. Elegant chairs were lined up in the main ceremonial receiving area. The limbs from an artificial Christmas tree lay in an entryway.
Most Haitians, of course, have never been inside. Outside the gates of the palace on Friday, hundreds of displaced people lined up for food and water, with United Nations peacekeeping troops stationed at regular intervals to keep things orderly. Eventually, a voice rang out over a megaphone saying that the high-energy biscuits being distributed were finished and that only water remained. "Be patient," the voice said. "More food will come in the days ahead."
On the lawn of the palace, a furious meeting was taking place. Top aides to Mr. Préval, who was at his private residence elsewhere in the city when the earthquake struck, sought to get into the damaged palace to recover documents they said were highly sensitive. A hard-hatted structural engineer from California, Kit Miramoto, went over the floor plans of the building and helped them plan the safest route in. As for Mr. Préval's own office, it was a total loss.
Haiti has had a rough time when it comes to its palaces, with at least four different residences sitting on the same grounds since the 18th century. One was destroyed in 1869 during a rebel revolt that brought down a president. One was bombed in 1912 in an attack that killed another president.
The decision on rebuilding the current palace, whose classical design by Georges H. Baussan was chosen in 1912 after a national competition, remains a long way off, said Haitian government officials, who have relocated to a humble police station across the capital.
First, materials essential to governing have to be recovered from collapsed public buildings, the officials said. Mr. Miramoto, who personally recovered the Finance Ministry computers, was traveling from one key building to another to provide his expert assessment of whether they were stable enough for someone to enter.
After finding a way into a sensitive area of the palace through a second-floor window by ladder, hustling past shaking rooftops in a sprint and trudging up trash-strewn staircases, Mr. Miramoto, invited to Haiti by the Pan American Development Foundation, declared the structure badly damaged but not a lost cause. He said there were materials that could be used to reinforce the portions of the palace still standing so that they could be built upon.
"This is a symbol of the country for you, so you should salvage it," he advised presidential aides. "If you tear it down, it's like you're saying, 'We're defeated.' "
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Clenette Cermot screamed in pain as doctors treated her leg at a field hospital set up by Cuban doctors in Port-au-Prince. Rescue efforts wound down on Friday as the focus shifted from rescue to delivering shelter, water and medical care to injured, hungry and displaced Haitians.
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By RAY RIVERA
Published: January 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The relief effort in Haiti could end up being the most difficult, faith-testing recovery from a modern disaster, perhaps even exceeding that from the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to United Nation officials and aid groups with experience in large-scale catastrophes.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Severe Aftershock
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Related
Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Enlarge This Image
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Alsius Zillifette washed his 5-year-old son, Ashley Alsius, in a Doctors Without Borders field hospital in Port-au-Prince on Friday. The boy lost an arm when their house collapsed in the quake.
Enlarge This Image
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Men ran for water in an American Army convoy on Thursday in Port-au-Prince. Soldiers jumped out and fended them off.
Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, was barely showing signs of recovery from the 2008 hurricane season when the earthquake flattened its capital, Port-au-Prince, crippling the country's already weakened transportation and service delivery network.
Local aid groups that would normally help guide international efforts were damaged themselves, while the United Nations lost at least 70 staff members, and 146 more remain unaccounted for.
"You're talking about a country that pre-earthquake had limited resources and capability, and what resources it did have were concentrated in the capital," said Kim Bolduc, who is coordinating the relief effort for the United Nations. "This context helps explain why this emergency is probably the most complex in history, more than the tsunami, more than the Pakistan earthquake" of 2005.
The difficulties have confounded aid workers across the country, even those who have dealt with some of world's worst disasters in recent years. At a first aid tent in the middle of a soccer field where hundreds of people are now living in Jacmel, a coastal city that was among the worst-hit, a French doctor threw his hands in the air.
"I am very, very surprised," the doctor, François Sarda, a volunteer with Aides Actions Internationales Pompiers, said of the three days it took the aid group to get in and the chaos he found when he finally arrived. The group was forced to fly to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and take a boat from there. "At least in the tsunami we had some infrastructure," he said.
To help manage the chaos, the United Nations and the United States signed a two-page memorandum of understanding on Friday to formalize their roles and end the tensions that flared earlier in the week. The United Nations had complained about the American military's handling of flights at the airport here, saying critical deliveries of food from the World Food Program were being unnecessarily delayed.
Under the memorandum, Haiti maintains overall control of the aid and rescue efforts, though the United Nations is in charge of coordinating the work. But the memorandum does not put American soldiers or other personnel under United Nations command. The Americans remain focused on delivering aid, while the United Nations handles peacekeeping.
Still, the United States is known for throwing its considerable weight around in international aid efforts, so it is unclear if the new agreement will solve the earlier problems.
Doctors Without Borders has complained about the American military's running of the airport. The group has landed some planes, but has had others diverted, forcing it to truck in supplies from the Dominican Republic, according to Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue, deputy director for operations for Doctors Without Borders in Paris.
"It's a very confusing situation and difficult to understand," Ms. Rodrigue said. Jason Cone, a spokesman in New York, said much of the confusion involved who was coordinating matters. He said airport access had improved in recent days through direct contact with the Pentagon and the United States Agency for International Development.
Maj. Nathan Miller, with the Air Force's 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, said that the military was not playing favorites, and that military planes now arrived during off-peak night hours to make more room for international aid flights.
The challenges faced by some Haitian organizations are confounding. Danièle Magloire, a senior director of Fokal, a Haitian human rights organization, began working from an empty room in a friend's apartment building after her own home and office were damaged. The room still lacks electricity and water, like most buildings in the city. Residents of the neighborhood whose homes were destroyed camp outside on the street.
"We cannot possibly make it alone in the struggle to rebuild," Ms. Magloire said. "The United Nations, with its immense bureaucracy, cannot make it alone. We need all the help we can get, and we know that it must come from the United States at this critical moment."
Despite the troubles, the recovery effort is finding better footing by the day. Though rescuers are still hoping to defy the dwindling chances of finding anyone alive in the mountains of rubble 10 days after the earthquake, aid workers are shifting their focus to delivering shelter, water and medical care to hundreds of thousands of injured, hungry and displaced Haitians. They are racing against the approach of the rainy season, which aid groups fear could unleash disease.
United Nations officials said Friday that most surviving supermarkets would reopen next week, and that cellphone service should be fully restored by Saturday, with 40 banks also reopening. Lines for gasoline have also eased, with officials reporting that 30 percent of the city's gas stations were now operational and that there was no longer a shortage of gasoline.
But problems persist bringing in diesel fuel, hobbling efforts to gear up aid distribution, Edmond Mulet, the chief United Nations official in Haiti, said in a videoconference with reporters.
Although enough food is on hand to reach many more people, only 100,000 received such aid on Thursday because of a lack of trucks and fuel, he said.
"We have the food to be distributed," he said. "We just don't have the vehicles."
The United Nations needs to bring in 10,000 gallons of diesel per day from the Dominican Republic just to keep water trucks circulating, Mr. Mulet said.
Ms. Bolduc is coordinating the humanitarian efforts, but how many aid groups are now roaming the country is anybody's guess, she said. About 375 have registered with her office, but she says she believes that there are many more that have found their own way into the country and are providing relief.
American rescue teams were among the first to experience the knot of troubles. Usually, when they set down in a country after a natural disaster, the local government has already identified buildings where there are known survivors so they can race to the scene. But here, without government input, they had to drive through the city themselves, making snap assessments about where survivors were likely to be found.
They had trouble getting their equipment; its arrival at the airport was delayed for several days. Then they faced a shortage of vehicles, gas and drivers at the United States Embassy.
"We have zero infrastructure here," said Louie Fernandez, one of 80 rescuers from Miami-Dade County in Florida. "What are you supposed to do?"
Despite the monumental obstacles that must be overcome, Ms. Bolduc said, "It's not mission impossible, if all the players work together."
Reporting was contributed by Damien Cave and Simon Romero from Port-au-Prince, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations, and Doreen Carvajal from Paris.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Clenette Cermot screamed in pain as doctors treated her leg at a field hospital set up by Cuban doctors in Port-au-Prince. Rescue efforts wound down on Friday as the focus shifted from rescue to delivering shelter, water and medical care to injured, hungry and displaced Haitians.
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By RAY RIVERA
Published: January 22, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The relief effort in Haiti could end up being the most difficult, faith-testing recovery from a modern disaster, perhaps even exceeding that from the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to United Nation officials and aid groups with experience in large-scale catastrophes.
Multimedia
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Video
Haiti Quake Day 9: Severe Aftershock
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Related
Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
A Parish Tested: Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Interactive: The Missing | Connecting to Those Affected
More Multimedia on the Haiti Earthquake
Enlarge This Image
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Alsius Zillifette washed his 5-year-old son, Ashley Alsius, in a Doctors Without Borders field hospital in Port-au-Prince on Friday. The boy lost an arm when their house collapsed in the quake.
Enlarge This Image
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Men ran for water in an American Army convoy on Thursday in Port-au-Prince. Soldiers jumped out and fended them off.
Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, was barely showing signs of recovery from the 2008 hurricane season when the earthquake flattened its capital, Port-au-Prince, crippling the country's already weakened transportation and service delivery network.
Local aid groups that would normally help guide international efforts were damaged themselves, while the United Nations lost at least 70 staff members, and 146 more remain unaccounted for.
"You're talking about a country that pre-earthquake had limited resources and capability, and what resources it did have were concentrated in the capital," said Kim Bolduc, who is coordinating the relief effort for the United Nations. "This context helps explain why this emergency is probably the most complex in history, more than the tsunami, more than the Pakistan earthquake" of 2005.
The difficulties have confounded aid workers across the country, even those who have dealt with some of world's worst disasters in recent years. At a first aid tent in the middle of a soccer field where hundreds of people are now living in Jacmel, a coastal city that was among the worst-hit, a French doctor threw his hands in the air.
"I am very, very surprised," the doctor, François Sarda, a volunteer with Aides Actions Internationales Pompiers, said of the three days it took the aid group to get in and the chaos he found when he finally arrived. The group was forced to fly to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and take a boat from there. "At least in the tsunami we had some infrastructure," he said.
To help manage the chaos, the United Nations and the United States signed a two-page memorandum of understanding on Friday to formalize their roles and end the tensions that flared earlier in the week. The United Nations had complained about the American military's handling of flights at the airport here, saying critical deliveries of food from the World Food Program were being unnecessarily delayed.
Under the memorandum, Haiti maintains overall control of the aid and rescue efforts, though the United Nations is in charge of coordinating the work. But the memorandum does not put American soldiers or other personnel under United Nations command. The Americans remain focused on delivering aid, while the United Nations handles peacekeeping.
Still, the United States is known for throwing its considerable weight around in international aid efforts, so it is unclear if the new agreement will solve the earlier problems.
Doctors Without Borders has complained about the American military's running of the airport. The group has landed some planes, but has had others diverted, forcing it to truck in supplies from the Dominican Republic, according to Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue, deputy director for operations for Doctors Without Borders in Paris.
"It's a very confusing situation and difficult to understand," Ms. Rodrigue said. Jason Cone, a spokesman in New York, said much of the confusion involved who was coordinating matters. He said airport access had improved in recent days through direct contact with the Pentagon and the United States Agency for International Development.
Maj. Nathan Miller, with the Air Force's 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, said that the military was not playing favorites, and that military planes now arrived during off-peak night hours to make more room for international aid flights.
The challenges faced by some Haitian organizations are confounding. Danièle Magloire, a senior director of Fokal, a Haitian human rights organization, began working from an empty room in a friend's apartment building after her own home and office were damaged. The room still lacks electricity and water, like most buildings in the city. Residents of the neighborhood whose homes were destroyed camp outside on the street.
"We cannot possibly make it alone in the struggle to rebuild," Ms. Magloire said. "The United Nations, with its immense bureaucracy, cannot make it alone. We need all the help we can get, and we know that it must come from the United States at this critical moment."
Despite the troubles, the recovery effort is finding better footing by the day. Though rescuers are still hoping to defy the dwindling chances of finding anyone alive in the mountains of rubble 10 days after the earthquake, aid workers are shifting their focus to delivering shelter, water and medical care to hundreds of thousands of injured, hungry and displaced Haitians. They are racing against the approach of the rainy season, which aid groups fear could unleash disease.
United Nations officials said Friday that most surviving supermarkets would reopen next week, and that cellphone service should be fully restored by Saturday, with 40 banks also reopening. Lines for gasoline have also eased, with officials reporting that 30 percent of the city's gas stations were now operational and that there was no longer a shortage of gasoline.
But problems persist bringing in diesel fuel, hobbling efforts to gear up aid distribution, Edmond Mulet, the chief United Nations official in Haiti, said in a videoconference with reporters.
Although enough food is on hand to reach many more people, only 100,000 received such aid on Thursday because of a lack of trucks and fuel, he said.
"We have the food to be distributed," he said. "We just don't have the vehicles."
The United Nations needs to bring in 10,000 gallons of diesel per day from the Dominican Republic just to keep water trucks circulating, Mr. Mulet said.
Ms. Bolduc is coordinating the humanitarian efforts, but how many aid groups are now roaming the country is anybody's guess, she said. About 375 have registered with her office, but she says she believes that there are many more that have found their own way into the country and are providing relief.
American rescue teams were among the first to experience the knot of troubles. Usually, when they set down in a country after a natural disaster, the local government has already identified buildings where there are known survivors so they can race to the scene. But here, without government input, they had to drive through the city themselves, making snap assessments about where survivors were likely to be found.
They had trouble getting their equipment; its arrival at the airport was delayed for several days. Then they faced a shortage of vehicles, gas and drivers at the United States Embassy.
"We have zero infrastructure here," said Louie Fernandez, one of 80 rescuers from Miami-Dade County in Florida. "What are you supposed to do?"
Despite the monumental obstacles that must be overcome, Ms. Bolduc said, "It's not mission impossible, if all the players work together."
Reporting was contributed by Damien Cave and Simon Romero from Port-au-Prince, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations, and Doreen Carvajal from Paris.
Haiti's Aftershocks Felt at a School in New York
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Emotions poured out in the students' artwork. In Sierra Griffin's drawing, three people are in a house, and one of them is dead.
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By ANNE BARNARD
Published: January 22, 2010
To make sense of the earthquake, the eighth-grade science class analyzed plate tectonics, used computer animation to simulate tremors of different magnitudes, and browsed satellite images to zero in on their family villages in Haiti. Down the hall, a kindergarten teacher took a lower-tech approach: piling Legos on two cardboard squares and bumping them together until the toy buildings crashed down.
A Parish Tested
Painful Lessons
Multimedia
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Related
A Parish Tested: Haitian New Yorkers Hold On to Their Hope (January 18, 2010)
City Room: Candles for the Dead Bathe a Church in Light
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
TV Watch: Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Enlarge This Image
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Joshua Joseph, 10, in Haiti when the quake hit, has returned to the Queens school.
In the fourth grade, a skinny, bright-eyed boy, dressed up for his first day back at his old school in a sweater-vest, tie and jeweled cross, needed no simulation to visualize the catastrophe. Joshua Joseph, 10, was playing Twister at his aunt's house in Port-au-Prince when the world shook, sending him on an odyssey — sleeping outside, riding through streets that reeked of corpses, flying on an Air Force plane — that brought him back to SS. Joachim and Anne, the parish school he left two years ago when his parents sent him to Haiti to get to know their home country.
Last week's earthquake has devastated Haiti, and prompted a massive relief effort. In a smaller but almost equally intense way, the disaster has pervaded every part of the school day for the 510 students — 80 percent of them Haitian — at SS. Joachim and Anne, the Roman Catholic elementary school in Queens Village, Queens, a hub of New York's Haitian community.
They pray. They scrounge up donations. The quake informs class discussions about politics, about helping the poor, about the afterlife. And when the children are not talking about it, their teachers suspect, they are thinking about it.
As classmates played with cubes on Wednesday, learning to add, Michael Constant, 6, squirmed in his seat. His mother had just left for Haiti that morning to bury his father.
As 250,000 Haitian-Americans in the New York area mourn, children bear their own burdens. Many feel as much at home in Haiti as in New York. They struggle to picture the houses where they spent summers now in rubble, grandparents and cousins dead, missing, homeless. For others, Haiti exists in tales parents tell — a place they long to visit and now wonder if they will ever see.
And, as three days this week at the school make clear, a subtle but evident role reversal is under way, as child after child feels responsibility to take care of parents bewildered by grief.
Sitting on kindergarten-size chairs in the library, one seventh grader told a counselor she felt "wrong inside" when, for the first time, she heard her mother cry. Another said that in a culture where mourning often means wailing, what most terrified her was her grandmother's quiet, insistent prayer.
"We do the best we can to make them feel safe," said Sal Violo, the counselor. But, he said, with aftershocks still hitting Haiti, he cannot promise them that nothing like the disaster will happen again.
SS. Joachim and Anne is an old-school school, with towering ceilings, school uniforms, an ancient public-address system, and a principal, Linda Freebes, who acts as a kind of air-traffic controller not just for the school but for the neighborhood.
On Tuesday, the sense of chaos was growing as more families got bad news; one boy said he lost 30 cousins. Mrs. Freebes's toy Yorkie, Faith, trotted the hallways in a pink barrette, cheering people up. Outside the principal's office sat James Augustin, a 12-year-old altar boy in trouble for talking back. "It's very unlike James," she said. His grandmother, who cooks him chicken and rice after school when not wintering in Haiti, was still missing.
Mrs. Freebes sent money to Michael Constant's mother for the funeral trip; two alumni had already called wanting to help newly strained families pay the $3,400 tuition.
One was Brian Simon, 28, a Congressional aide with a Haitian mother. The other was Rich Winters, 58, whose wife, Cecilia, an economist, studies the roots of Haitian poverty. Both said the school fostered discipline, morality and lasting bonds. It is unchanged since his childhood, Mr. Winters said, "just now everyone's a different color."
The first Haitians to join the parish were political refugees, some leaving behind servants and mansions. Then came the "boat people," desperately poor.
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Emotions poured out in the students' artwork. In Sierra Griffin's drawing, three people are in a house, and one of them is dead.
Sign In to E-Mail
Single Page
Reprints
Share
Close
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: January 22, 2010
To make sense of the earthquake, the eighth-grade science class analyzed plate tectonics, used computer animation to simulate tremors of different magnitudes, and browsed satellite images to zero in on their family villages in Haiti. Down the hall, a kindergarten teacher took a lower-tech approach: piling Legos on two cardboard squares and bumping them together until the toy buildings crashed down.
A Parish Tested
Painful Lessons
Multimedia
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Related
A Parish Tested: Haitian New Yorkers Hold On to Their Hope (January 18, 2010)
City Room: Candles for the Dead Bathe a Church in Light
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
TV Watch: Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
Enlarge This Image
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
Joshua Joseph, 10, in Haiti when the quake hit, has returned to the Queens school.
In the fourth grade, a skinny, bright-eyed boy, dressed up for his first day back at his old school in a sweater-vest, tie and jeweled cross, needed no simulation to visualize the catastrophe. Joshua Joseph, 10, was playing Twister at his aunt's house in Port-au-Prince when the world shook, sending him on an odyssey — sleeping outside, riding through streets that reeked of corpses, flying on an Air Force plane — that brought him back to SS. Joachim and Anne, the parish school he left two years ago when his parents sent him to Haiti to get to know their home country.
Last week's earthquake has devastated Haiti, and prompted a massive relief effort. In a smaller but almost equally intense way, the disaster has pervaded every part of the school day for the 510 students — 80 percent of them Haitian — at SS. Joachim and Anne, the Roman Catholic elementary school in Queens Village, Queens, a hub of New York's Haitian community.
They pray. They scrounge up donations. The quake informs class discussions about politics, about helping the poor, about the afterlife. And when the children are not talking about it, their teachers suspect, they are thinking about it.
As classmates played with cubes on Wednesday, learning to add, Michael Constant, 6, squirmed in his seat. His mother had just left for Haiti that morning to bury his father.
As 250,000 Haitian-Americans in the New York area mourn, children bear their own burdens. Many feel as much at home in Haiti as in New York. They struggle to picture the houses where they spent summers now in rubble, grandparents and cousins dead, missing, homeless. For others, Haiti exists in tales parents tell — a place they long to visit and now wonder if they will ever see.
And, as three days this week at the school make clear, a subtle but evident role reversal is under way, as child after child feels responsibility to take care of parents bewildered by grief.
Sitting on kindergarten-size chairs in the library, one seventh grader told a counselor she felt "wrong inside" when, for the first time, she heard her mother cry. Another said that in a culture where mourning often means wailing, what most terrified her was her grandmother's quiet, insistent prayer.
"We do the best we can to make them feel safe," said Sal Violo, the counselor. But, he said, with aftershocks still hitting Haiti, he cannot promise them that nothing like the disaster will happen again.
SS. Joachim and Anne is an old-school school, with towering ceilings, school uniforms, an ancient public-address system, and a principal, Linda Freebes, who acts as a kind of air-traffic controller not just for the school but for the neighborhood.
On Tuesday, the sense of chaos was growing as more families got bad news; one boy said he lost 30 cousins. Mrs. Freebes's toy Yorkie, Faith, trotted the hallways in a pink barrette, cheering people up. Outside the principal's office sat James Augustin, a 12-year-old altar boy in trouble for talking back. "It's very unlike James," she said. His grandmother, who cooks him chicken and rice after school when not wintering in Haiti, was still missing.
Mrs. Freebes sent money to Michael Constant's mother for the funeral trip; two alumni had already called wanting to help newly strained families pay the $3,400 tuition.
One was Brian Simon, 28, a Congressional aide with a Haitian mother. The other was Rich Winters, 58, whose wife, Cecilia, an economist, studies the roots of Haitian poverty. Both said the school fostered discipline, morality and lasting bonds. It is unchanged since his childhood, Mr. Winters said, "just now everyone's a different color."
The first Haitians to join the parish were political refugees, some leaving behind servants and mansions. Then came the "boat people," desperately poor.
Wednesday morning, Mrs. Freebes assigned the daily sacrifice for Haiti: Say "Glory Be to the Father," then do something special for your teacher. Then she had good news: James's grandmother had been found.
Enlarge This Image
Ruby Washington/The New York Times
At SS. Joachim and Anne Catholic Church, a Mass for quake victims; most children at the parish school are Haitian-American.
A Parish Tested
Painful Lessons
Multimedia
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Related
A Parish Tested: Haitian New Yorkers Hold On to Their Hope (January 18, 2010)
City Room: Candles for the Dead Bathe a Church in Light
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
TV Watch: Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
In a kindergarten classroom plastered with cheerful posters — "L is for Lollipop" — Yariela Thomas talked through the disaster. "A lot of people died. But who is always taking care of people?" she asked. "God," the children answered.
They drew pictures to comfort their parents. Sierra Griffin drew a house. Inside were three people, one of them lying down, with x's for eyes. That one was dead.
Sniegouca Laconte drew her mother and baby brother. Visa problems have separated them for most of her life. She dictated a caption: "My mommy is in Haiti but she is O.K."
Sniegouca's cousins, Naila and Andy Zephyr, had had a stressful week. "My mom, she's really dramatic," said Naila, 12, and so is her little sister. "So me and my brother have to comfort both of them."
Naila spoke dreamily of summers in Haiti, eating spicy seafood from street vendors, going to beaches that are "blue and clear and nice." Now her mother's best friend was dead. Naila remembered the woman, who sang a beautiful dirge at her grandfather's funeral.
Now, she said, her mother screams that she cannot live without her.
"We tell her that she's in a better place," Naila said.
"And we bring her tea," said Andy, 11.
In the science class, Rod Beauplan, 13, pointed the satellite map to his village, Belle Fontaine, relatively unscathed, where his relatives — except an uncle — had been.
"Have you heard from your uncle?" the teacher asked.
"He's dead," said Rod.
"How can you hear from him if he's dead?" a classmate scoffed.
It was still eighth grade.
Joshua Joseph, just airlifted from Haiti, told his story in a rapid-fire patter, as though if he kept talking, he could ward off the experience. "My whole body was shaking," he said. "My aunt was yelling, 'Joshua, come!' and she had a baby in her hands."
They stood under an archway as a wall tumbled down. Downtown, buildings fell all around Joshua's young cousin.
"He saw people die. He saw blood," Joshua said. And, he believed, the cousin saw the hand of God: when a nearby house teetered, "God holded the house for him."
Most of all, Joshua feared for his mother in Queens. The disaster was so enormous, he said, "I thought the earthquake was in New York too."
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Ruby Washington/The New York Times
At SS. Joachim and Anne Catholic Church, a Mass for quake victims; most children at the parish school are Haitian-American.
A Parish Tested
Painful Lessons
Multimedia
Audio Slide Show
Exodus From Port-au-Prince
Interactive Feature
Perspectives on Haiti's Earthquake
Related
A Parish Tested: Haitian New Yorkers Hold On to Their Hope (January 18, 2010)
City Room: Candles for the Dead Bathe a Church in Light
Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters (January 23, 2010)
Thousands Fleeing Disaster Receive a Welcome to America (January 23, 2010)
Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile (January 23, 2010)
Haitian Mother Didn't Give Up on Son, Who Eventually Was Pulled From Ruins (January 23, 2010)
TV Watch: Celebrities Go Low-Key, and Sometimes Nameless, in the Haiti Telethon (January 23, 2010)
Haiti's Icon of Power, Now Palace for Ghosts (January 23, 2010)
Times Topics: Haiti
Haiti Disaster Relief: How to Contribute | Tips on Donating
In a kindergarten classroom plastered with cheerful posters — "L is for Lollipop" — Yariela Thomas talked through the disaster. "A lot of people died. But who is always taking care of people?" she asked. "God," the children answered.
They drew pictures to comfort their parents. Sierra Griffin drew a house. Inside were three people, one of them lying down, with x's for eyes. That one was dead.
Sniegouca Laconte drew her mother and baby brother. Visa problems have separated them for most of her life. She dictated a caption: "My mommy is in Haiti but she is O.K."
Sniegouca's cousins, Naila and Andy Zephyr, had had a stressful week. "My mom, she's really dramatic," said Naila, 12, and so is her little sister. "So me and my brother have to comfort both of them."
Naila spoke dreamily of summers in Haiti, eating spicy seafood from street vendors, going to beaches that are "blue and clear and nice." Now her mother's best friend was dead. Naila remembered the woman, who sang a beautiful dirge at her grandfather's funeral.
Now, she said, her mother screams that she cannot live without her.
"We tell her that she's in a better place," Naila said.
"And we bring her tea," said Andy, 11.
In the science class, Rod Beauplan, 13, pointed the satellite map to his village, Belle Fontaine, relatively unscathed, where his relatives — except an uncle — had been.
"Have you heard from your uncle?" the teacher asked.
"He's dead," said Rod.
"How can you hear from him if he's dead?" a classmate scoffed.
It was still eighth grade.
Joshua Joseph, just airlifted from Haiti, told his story in a rapid-fire patter, as though if he kept talking, he could ward off the experience. "My whole body was shaking," he said. "My aunt was yelling, 'Joshua, come!' and she had a baby in her hands."
They stood under an archway as a wall tumbled down. Downtown, buildings fell all around Joshua's young cousin.
"He saw people die. He saw blood," Joshua said. And, he believed, the cousin saw the hand of God: when a nearby house teetered, "God holded the house for him."
Most of all, Joshua feared for his mother in Queens. The disaster was so enormous, he said, "I thought the earthquake was in New York too."
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