The Cruel Country: Haiti’s Earthquake

It struck with savagery and killed indiscriminately. But Haiti, a land plagued by cruelties manufactured by humans and engendered by nature, has seen something that must crown its long list of misfortunes. And they have been many. Hurricanes and storms, all given curiously domestic names (Jeanne, George, Flora, Hazel) have killed thousands in its history. The country has also hosted spectacularly sadistic regimes, none more infamous than that of François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his vicious offspring, Jean-Claude ‘Bébé Doc’ Duvalier. All this paled before the earthquake that struck on January 12 at 4.53 in the afternoon that might have killed tens of thousands of residents. Such figures will remain speculative for days, maybe even weeks.

The appalling structures, most of them dangerously unreliable in a building environment allergic to regulation, were an open invitation to disaster. In November 2008, the mayor of Port-au-Prince, after assessing the collapse of a school in Petionville, had a grim assessment to make: 60 percent of buildings in the country were unsafe.

Natural disasters are not merely instances where lives are ruined and infrastructure destroyed. They also pose rich opportunities. The field of disaster relief is prone to scandal and scam and the latest disaster to befall Haiti is no exception. Even as the corpses are being carried out of the rubble, and traumatized survivors found, online scamming outfits have mushroomed. The networked and rapid nature of donations in the modern world of communications has also changed the way relief is delivered. The world of texting and online donations are potentially hazardous to the unwary donor. The effort to funnel funds to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were beset by various similar problems.

The US Department of State has made its suggestions on which organizations can be trusted, though as advice from bureaucrats is consumed at risk. ‘HAITI’ to ‘90999’ for donating $10 to the Red Cross is given the seal of approval. Another outfit which has passed muster is YELE, which can be texted on ‘501501’. It was established by the musician and native Haitian Wyclef Jean.

We can only hope that the humanitarian relief is swift and generous. But generosity, when given to unstable governments and unreliable bureaucrats, tends to run dry after sometime. While it is true that Haiti has had constitutional rule since May 2006, old habits, not to mention impressions, are hard to shake. One is left with profiteering buccaneers wanting to make a swift buck from misery, and unreliable officials, all equally distasteful. As this happens, Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 8 out of 10 residents living below the poverty line. It must now live with even less.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com