Bodies pile up at Port-au-Prince general hospital morgue

A situation has been developing at the morgue of the general hospital in the capital. Down for several months, bodies continue to arrive by the dozens every day in Haiti's largest hospital and are being left in the courtyard decaying and posing a health hazard for workers, patients and citizens.

According to information obtained by Haiti Press Network which spoke to a source at the State University Hospital (HUEH), the cooling system of the morgue is down.

"The bodies can not be kept." Some bodies were deposited in mass graves dug hastily in the locality Titanyen on National Highway #1, learned HPN.

"It is an alarming situation. corpses continue to arrive at the morgue who can no longer keep them. Bodies are rotting and endanger the health of crews in the morgue," said an official of the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH) which was alerted about the situation.

Facing this situation developing in the morgue HUEH, health authorities of the Ministry of Public Health and Population have asked not to receive the bodies. But problem! This is the public morgue reference where police continue to carry the victims of insecurity.

"Sometimes the bodies are placed in the courtyard of the hospital, and nobody knows what to do when families come to claim the body their families, we can not say that they are buried in pits," a source told to Haiti Press Network.

United Nations Peacekeepers assist

With a current total of nearly 36 000 U.S. dollars, the containers were made available to the morgue by MINUSTAH following a request made last night by the Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSPP) . Indeed, the country's health authorities have closed the morgue, where hundreds of bodies to carry out the repair of cold rooms and their refrigeration system.

The two containers previously belonged to the Japanese contingent of MINUSTAH, which left the country in December. "This rapid initiative is part of our ongoing efforts to support and support the Haitian authorities in their efforts to serve the people," said Sophie Boutaud de la Combe, spokesman for MINUSTAH.

Thursday 13 June 2013

http://www.defend.ht/news/articles/community/4514-bodies-pile-up-at-port-au-prince-general-hospital-morgue

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Haiti quietly marks quake's 3rd anniversary

President Michel Martelly urged Haitians to recall the tens of thousands of people who lost their lives in a devastating earthquake three years ago, marking the disaster's anniversary yesterday with a simple ceremony.

Martelly also thanked other countries and international organizations for their help after the Jan. 12, 2010 disaster.

"Haitian people, hand in hand, we remember what has gone," Martelly said as a gigantic Haitian flag flew half-mast before him on the front lawn of the former National Palace, a pile of tangled steel reinforcement bars nearby. "Hand in hand, we're remembering, we're remembering Jan. 12."

Clad in black, several dozen senior government officials gathered where the elegant white palace had stood before it collapsed in the temblor and was later demolished. Foreign diplomats and Czech supermodel Petra Nemcova, earlier named by Martelly as one of Haiti's goodwill ambassadors, were also there.

In the speech, Martelly announced a government contest seeking designs for a monument to honor those who died in the quake. He also said the government had just released a new construction code aimed at ensuring new buildings are seismically resistant but didn't provide details.

Later in the day, Martelly, Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and former US president Bill Clinton placed a wreath at a mass burial site north of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Crosses that once spiked the makeshift grave have since vanished.

Haiti's previous presidential administration said 316,000 people were killed but no one really knows how many died. The disaster also displaced more than a million others.

Most of the rubble created by the quake has since been carted away but more than 350,000 people still live in grim displacement camps.

Many people had hoped the reconstruction effort would have made more headway by now, but progress has been stymied by political paralysis, the scale of devastation and a trickle of aid.

Jan. 12 was observed as a national holiday the last two years to remember the quake. This year, the government said the day would no longer be a holiday but called for the Haitian flag to be flown at half-mast and for nightclubs and "similar establishments" to close.

The anniversary this year has been used by Haiti observers to criticize the reconstruction process and by foreign aid groups to promote their work and raise money.

But for some Haitians, it was just another day.

"We can't remain focused on Jan. 12th," said Asaie St. Louis, a 56-year-old teacher and devout church-goer, Bible in hand. "It's passed already."

Saturday 12 January 2013

http://www.philstar.com/breaking-news/2013/01/13/896467/haiti-quietly-marks-quakes-3rd-anniversary

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Deadly fall rainstorms add to misery in Haiti

The rain has tapered off and floodwaters no longer claw at houses, but the situation across much of Haiti remained grim on Tuesday following an autumn of punishing rains that have killed scores of people and that threaten to cause even more hunger across the impoverished nation.

In places such as Croix-des-Missions, on the northeastern edge of the Haitian capital, the walls of dozens of homes along a pale brown river have been broken or ripped away, exposing clothes, bedding and everything else to the repeated downpours.

Heavy rains began falling in southern Haiti even before Hurricane Sandy passed just west of the country's southern peninsula the night of Oct. 24, dropping more than 20 inches of rain within a 24-hour period.

"It took away my whole home. Now I don't have anything," said Solange Calixte, a 56-year-old mother of two whose home in Croix-des-Missions was largely destroyed by floodwaters of the nearby Gray River.

One of 21,000 people the U.N. says were left homeless by Sandy, Calixte was forced to move with her belongings beneath a tarp at a neighbor's home.

And the rains have kept coming. Another front soaked much of the north late last week, causing more flooding and leaving at least a dozen dead.

So far the back-to-back storms have killed up to 66 people and the crisis is likely to worsen in coming months. Humanitarian workers anticipate a food shortage brought on by the massive flooding that destroyed yam and corn fields.

The United Nations says that as much as 90 percent of Haiti's current harvest season, much of it in the south, was lost in Sandy's floods, and the next harvest season won't begin until March. The World Food Program estimates that more than 1.5 million people are now at risk of malnutrition because they were either displaced or lost crops, forcing Haitians to rely heavily on more-expensive imports.

"This means massive inflation, hunger for a lot of people and acute malnutrition," said Johan Peleman, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Haiti. "Basically, the cushion is gone."

Soaring food costs have rattled Haiti before. In 2008 a jump in prices sparked more than a week of deadly rioting and ended in the ouster of the prime minister and his Cabinet.

The U.N. and Haitian government are now launching an emergency appeal to raise $39 million in hopes of stemming what they foresee as Haiti's next humanitarian crisis. This money is supposed to help 1.2 million people by providing shelter and food, repairing water, sanitation systems and schools.

Calixte, who sells clothes on the street for a living, had seen flood waters seep into her concrete house before. It sits at the edge of a wide river that cuts through the northern side of Haiti's capital. But Sandy did more. The storm led the caramel-colored river to claw away at the banks, and it ripped apart the home she had lived in since 1999.

The river has since receded and people can safely walk across through the water.

But Calixte, wearing a black T-shirt with the letters NYC in white, said life is anything but normal.

"I'm at the mercy of other people," she said, her eyes tearing up.

In the north, just outside Cap-Haitien, night-long rains from a cold front caused a river to burst its bank Thursday night. The U.N. base in town was flooded, but the real damage was at the edge of ravine where floodwaters swept away cinderblock homes and the people inside them. City Hall asked aid groups for body bags.

The rains pounded the northern coast of the country through the night. The bodies of five children and a woman in her 30s were found in a village on the outskirts of Cap-Haitien and laid out in a tight row the next day.

The country's civil protection office counted 10 dead that morning, and added two more several days later. But officials such as the mayor of Cap-Haitien believe the toll could rise now that floodwaters are receding to reveal bodies trapped in thrashed homes.

"Every few hours they will call you and say, 'We found a body and need you to come collect the body,'" Jean Cherenfant said. "That's the way it has been happening the past few days: The bodies keep surfacing."

The government and foreign aid groups have responded by handing out hot meals but humanitarian workers fear it may be hard to find food down the road.

For some, the search for food is already underway.

"I'm waiting for the government to help me," Calixte said. "If they don't, I have to go out and beg for food."

Wednesday 14 november 2012

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2012/11/13/fall-rain-storms-floods-haiti/1702931/

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Floods claim as many as 16 lives in Haitian city

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Nov 9, 2012 (AFP) - Flood waters inundated impoverished areas of Cap Haitien, Haiti's second largest city, killing as many as 16 people, including three children, city officials said Friday.

"The city has been struck by disaster. There are many dead and major damage. All the populous areas are flooded," Cap Haitien Mayor Wilborde Beon told AFP by telephone.

Beon said many people had to be rescued and given shelter from the high waters, which swept through the northern city Thursday night amid heavy rains in the region.

"The entrance to the city is completely flooded, all the rivers and ravines are swollen," he said, appealing for aid and support.

Preliminary estimates put the number of dead at 16, most of them when their homes collapsed in the flooding and heavy rains, the city's police chief, Kenel Pierre, told AFP.

"Haitian police patrols found a number of bodies in the streets. We have seen the bodies of three children aged two or three," Pierre said.

Four members of a family of eight were found dead Friday morning by rescue workers. Three children were unaccounted for and their father was in the hospital, officials said.

"There are effectively many victims that we have not been able to confirm because it is difficult to move around," Beon said.

The latest disaster to befall Haiti, which was devastated by a 2010 earthquake that killed some 200,000 people, comes just two weeks after it was hit by Hurricane Sandy, which claimed the lives of at least 54 people.

"We ask the private sector to help us because it continues to rain," said Beon. "All other sectors of the state have been mobilized."

Friday 9 November 2012

http://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/floods-claim-many-16-lives-haitian-city-officials

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Hurricane Sandy’s death toll rises to 65 as flooding continues in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As Americans braced Sunday for Hurricane Sandy, Haiti was still suffering.

Officials raised the storm-related death toll across the Caribbean to 65, with 51 of those coming in Haiti, which was pelted by three days of constant rains that ended only on Friday.

As the rains stopped and rivers began to recede, authorities were getting a fuller idea of how much damage Sandy brought on Haiti. Bridges collapsed. Banana crops were ruined. Homes were underwater. Officials said the death toll might still rise.

“This is a disaster of major proportions,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told The Associated Press, adding with a touch of hyperbole, “The whole south is under water.”

The country’s ramshackle housing and denuded hillsides are especially vulnerable to flooding. The bulk of the deaths were in the southern part of the country and the area around Port-au-Prince, the capital, which holds most of the 370,000 Haitians who are still living in flimsy shelters as a result of the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Santos Alexis, mayor of the southern city of Leogane, said Sunday that the rivers were receding and that people were beginning to dry their belongings in the sun.

“Things are back to being a little quiet,” Alexis said by telephone. “We have seen the end.”

Sandy also killed 11 in Cuba, where officials said it destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of houses. Deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. Authorities in the Dominican Republic said the storm destroyed several bridges and isolated at least 130 communities while damaging an estimated 3,500 homes.

Jamaica’s emergency management office on Sunday was airlifting supplies to marooned communities in remote areas of four badly impacted parishes.

In the Bahamas, Wolf Seyfert, operations director at local airline Western Air, said the domestic terminal of Grand Bahamas’ airport received “substantial damage” from Sandy’s battering storm surge and would need to be rebuilt.

28 October 2012

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/hurricane-sandys-death-toll-rises-to-65-as-flooding-continues-in-haiti/2012/10/28/4cb94900-2101-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html

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Haitians turning to Islam in wake of quake

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — School teacher Darlene Derosier lost her home in the 2010 earthquake that devastated her country. Her husband died a month later after suffering what she said was emotional trauma from the quake. She and her two daughters now live in tents outside the capital of Port-au-Prince, surrounded by thousands of others made homeless and desperate by the disaster.

What’s helped pull her through all the grief, she said, has been her faith, but not of the Catholic, Protestant or even Voodoo variety that have predominated in this island country. Instead, she’s converted to a new religion here, Islam, and built a small neighbourhood mosque out of cinderblocks and plywood, where some 60 Muslims pray daily.

Islam has won a growing number of followers in this impoverished country, especially after the catastrophe two years ago that killed some 300,000 people and left millions more homeless. A capital where church attendance is so prevalent that the streets echo with Christian hymns on Sundays now has at least five mosques, a Muslim parliament member and a nightly local television program devoted to Islam.

The disaster drew in aid groups from around the world, including Islamic Relief USA, which built 200 shelters and a secondary school with 20 classrooms.

"After the earthquake we had a lot of people join," said Robert Dupuy, an imam or Islamic spiritual leader in the capital. "We were organized. We had space in the mosques to receive people and food to feed them."

Derosier said she was drawn to the religion’s preaching of self-discipline, emphasis on education and attention to cleanliness. The constant washing, she said, helps her and other Muslims avoid cholera, the waterborne illness that health officials say has sickened nearly 600,000 people and killed more than 7,500 others since surfacing after the quake.

"This is a victory for me," the 43-year-old woman said about her post-quake conversion. The former Protestant spoke in the tent-filled courtyard of her home, her face framed by a clean, black head scarf. "It’s a victory that I received peace and found guidance."

In part, the Muslim community’s growth can be attributed to the return of expatriates who adopted the faith in the U.S., said Kishner Billy, owner of the island’s Telemax TV station and host of the nightly program "Haiti Islam."

Billy and some others believe that Islam’s Haitian past goes back before the country’s independence in 1804, and that a Jamaican slave and Voodoo priest named Boukman who led the slave revolt that ousted French colonizers was actually a Muslim.

"Islam is coming back to Haiti to stay," said Billy, who says he converted from Christianity 20 years ago. "Future generations, my sons and daughters, will speak about Islam."

There are no firm statistics on the number of Muslims in Haiti, just as there are no reliable figures for many things in the country, including Port-au-Prince’s exact population.

A 2009 study by the Pew Research Center on the world’s Muslim population estimated that Haiti had about 2,000 devotees. Islamic leaders in the country insist the figure is much higher and growing.

Islam is hardly unknown in the Caribbean; countries such as Trinidad & Tobago, Suriname and Guyana have significant Muslim populations. Many of those nations have strong roots in countries such as India and Indonesia where Islam is widespread.

The ancestors of Haitians, by contrast, were brought largely from non-Muslim areas of Africa. Haiti’s French colonial rulers also imported their Christian beliefs.

The recent growth of Islam, as well as other new religions, shows Haiti is modernizing and becoming more pluralistic, said Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"Inroads made by Islam (and by extension, by Mormonism and Rastafarianism) tell me that Haiti is very much a product of this century, subject to all winds, ill-winds and otherwise, that blow over the Caribbean nation-states," Bellegarde-Smith wrote in an email.

Rosedany Bazille, a 39-year-old teacher who converted several months after the earthquake, said she had felt rudderless before embracing the religion and was looking for a way forward.

"Islam can put people on the right path and show them who’s God," she said.

Some Haitian Muslims belong to the Nation of Islam, a U.S.-based branch of the religion that preaches black self-determination. Some local members converted while serving time in U.S. prisons before being deported back to Haiti. The group’s leader, Louis Farrakhan, visited the country for the first time last year.

The decision to convert has made some targets of discrimination.

The Haitian government doesn’t recognize Islam as an official religion, nor does it honour Muslim marriages. Wearing the skullcaps or flowing head scarves typical of the religion can draw stares and finger-pointing. Derosier said her neighbours gossip that she’s evil.

Voodoo, a blend of West African religions created by slaves during the colonial period, has long been a popular faith in the country, with elements followed even by some of the 85 per cent of the population who claim Christian beliefs. Voodoo was once so commonly embraced that the notorious dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier used it to terrify and control the masses.

Most Christian Haitians identify themselves as Roman Catholics. A priest, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected president in 1990 by opposing the hereditary dictatorship that continued with Francois’ son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

With so much still wrong in Haiti, the need for Islam couldn’t be greater, said Billy. Two months ago, he launched his live talk show to educate his compatriots about his adopted faith.

"Haiti has gone astray. It can’t produce anything," said Billy. "Right now Haitians just want a visa to go the United States, to Canada. They don’t want to stay in Haiti."

With a tapestry of Mecca and praying crowds as a backdrop to his TV show one recent evening, Billy and his co-host Ruben Caries invited watchers to send questions about Islam via text messages.

Billy’s BlackBerry buzzed with missives, including this one in Creole: "M vle vini Muslim" — "I want to be a Muslim."

Friday 12 October 2012

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/life/Haitians+turning+Islam+wake+quake/7371374/story.html#ixzz295Csi77c

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Hispaniola death toll from Isaac climbs to 10

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haitians began to dig themselves out of the mud on Sunday, one day after Tropical Storm Isaac doused the Caribbean nation and killed eight people here and another two in neighboring Dominican Republic.

With a reported total of 10 deaths for the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by the two countries, the scale of devastation was less than many people had feared.

But the capital and countryside of disaster-prone Haiti did suffer sporadic flooding, fallen poles and scores of toppled tents that housed people who lost their homes in the massive 2010 earthquake.

Joseph Edgard Celestin of Haiti's Civil Protection Office offered few details on the storm-related deaths, but said one man was swept away as he tried to cross a river in a village in the country's north.

Haiti's Civil Protection Office said in a separate report that a 51-year-old woman was killed in the southern coastal town of Marigot after a tree fell on her home. A 10-year-old girl was killed in the village of Thomazeau after a wall collapsed on her.

In neighboring Dominican Republic, police reported that two men were swept away by flooded rivers that burst their banks. One victim was identified as Pedro Peralta, a former mayor in Villa Altagracia, a town northwest of the capital of Santo Domingo. His body was recovered Sunday by rescuers on the banks of the Haina River.

Another male victim, whose identity was not disclosed, was swept away by the Yaguaza River, Dominican police said.

Across Haiti, the number of people evacuated due to flooding rose over the weekend. More than 14,000 people had left their homes and another 13,500 people were living in temporary shelters until Saturday night, the Civil Protection Office reported. Some 8,400 evacuees were in the country's western department, the most populous and where the capital of Port-au-Prince is located.

The World Food Program had distributed two days of food to 8,300 of the people who had left their houses for 18 camps.

The Haitian government reported that a dozen houses were destroyed and another 269 damaged.

Impoverished Haiti is prone to flooding and mudslides because much of the country is heavily deforested and rainwater rushes down barren mountainsides. It's not uncommon for storms to turn deadly; a storm in the Caribbean last year unleashed mudslides that killed more than 20 people in the capital.

In Fourgy, a hardscrabble neighborhood in the northern part of Port-au-Prince, residents used buckets and brooms to clean out mud from their homes and courtyards as chocolate-color flood waters from the nearby Grise River began to recede.

The water arrived early Saturday morning, rising up to the waist of an average adult, but by Sunday it had dropped to about shin high. Still, it was enough to destroy the few belongings of some people.

Rene Stevenson readily gave an inventory of possessions lost to the flood: bed, radio, TV set, plastic chairs.

"Everything's totally lost," fumed Stevenson, a 24-year-old cab driver with dried mud on his bare chest.

If mud caused anguish in Fourgy, wind was the source of despair down the street in Pwa Kongo neighborhood. Isaac blew down rows of tents and other temporary shelters people had lived since they lost their homes in the 2010 earthquake.

Displaced again, the several dozen occupants took their belongings and spent Saturday night sleeping on the wooden pews of a small church next door.

"There's a church so we're here," said Arel Homme Derastel, a 32-year-old father of three. "All's broken."

Monday 27 August 2012

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/hispaniola-death-toll-isaac-climbs-10

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At least six dead in rain-ravaged Haiti

AFP - At least six people, including a child, were killed in Haiti when their homes collapsed during heavy rains that have ravaged Haiti for several days, the Civil Protection Office said Friday.

The victims were members of two families living in a neighborhood erected on a hill in the Petionville suburb of the capital.

Nadia Lochard of Haiti's Civil Protection Office said that three women, two men and a girl died "when their homes collapsed as they were carried away in a mudslide."

"It was difficult to find their bodies buried under much mud," she told AFP.

Three more bodies were also found in another neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, but the authorities could not confirm whether they had been killed by the rains.

Several neighborhoods of the capital were flooded and streets were heavily damaged following the rains still hitting Haiti.

The humanitarian community launched a plea for urgent help to obtain funds for the needy still living in often squalid camps over two years after a devastating 2010 quake.

Over half a million Haitians still live in camps for the displaced, where they are threatened by flooding at the start of a rainy season that has already ravaged streets and roads.

31 March 2012

http://www.france24.com/en/20120331-least-six-dead-rain-ravaged-haiti

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Haiti lorry carnage: 26 killed in Port-au-Prince

Haiti - Social : Traffic accident in Delmas 33, Martelly calls for solidarity
Michel Martelly, the President of the Republic, went, on the evening of Monday, January 16, 2012, to the Television Nationale d'Haiti (TNH) in Delmas 33, to see the extent of damage caused by a terrible traffic accident.

Around 10 pm, a truck [ZA 12655], whose brakes apparently dropped, hit in its path pedestrians, vehicles, motorcycles, among others, before finishing its run in the premises of the State television. The first findings gave to count, several casualties and wounded. [according to the latest information that accident would have been 26 victims and 56 wounded].

"It appears that the driver lost control of the vehicle, claiming the lives of many merchants which offer food on the sidewalks and many passers-by, before finishing his wild ride in the premises of the National Television of Haiti," indicated the National Director of Traffic Services, Will Dimanche.

Arrived on site, the Head of State quickly issued a call for solidarity of emergency to the medical staff (doctors and nurses) to go to the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (General Hospital) OFATMA hospital, Doctors Without Borders (Sartre) and the hospital La Paix, in order to help the victims.

The President of the Republic while deploring the unfortunate events that once again mourning the Haitian families, renews its commitment to work to correct a set of behaviors and practices often very damaging to the community.

HL/ HaitiLibre
Haiti - Social : Traffic accident in Delmas 33, Martelly calls for solidarity
17/01/2012 08:00:49

http://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-4730-haiti-social-traffic-accident-in-delmas-33-martelly-calls-for-solidarity.html

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Haiti: Reflections On Overcoming 2 Years Of Disaster

On Thursday, Haiti marked the second anniversary of the devastating 2010 earthquake. NPR's Jason Beaubien was back in the Caribbean nation for the quake memorials and he sent us this reporter's notebook about covering Haiti over the last few years.

Haiti is a land haunted by ghosts. My translator, Jean Pierre, won't shut up about the ghosts. He points toward some men plodding up the dusty street hauling huge bags of charcoal on their heads.

"Zombies," he declares. "Dead dudes are everywhere."

Haiti makes you believe in spirits, in resurrection. Fallen presidents rise up, they return in waves. Baby Doc Duvalier; Jean Bertrand Aristide; Ousted into exile but now home.

When I first came to Haiti in 2008, the city of Gonaives was under water. Over the course of a month, Gonaives was hit by two hurricanes, two tropical storms and it flooded twice.

When I came back in 2010, Port-au-Prince was under piles of rubble. Entire hillside slums had slammed down onto their neighbors below. Grey powdery dust covered everything; fires burned across the city.

Two years later, I still can't pull into the driveway of the Hotel Villa Creole without seeing the ghosts lying there. Right after the quake, the hotel driveway was covered with dying and injured Haitians. Children lay on sheets and blankets on the ground. A visiting gynecologist was sewing up a girl's head wound by flashlight.

As a reporter, some quotes get burned into your mind. "There isn't a family in Haiti that isn't crying right now," a woman told me in English.

Maybe those words stuck with me because I'd been crying myself. That morning my translator and I had been standing on a field of earthquake debris talking to an old woman. Tears streaked all our faces as the woman recounted how the walls of her house had started to wobble, and how her grandchildren didn't get out.

And then there were the bodies — piles of bodies — stacked like cord wood beside the road, dumped at the morgue, burned in the streets, shoveled with front-end loaders into trucks and dropped into mass graves at an old gravel pit just outside the city.
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Some of the men clearing debris could have been zombies, ghosts who'd wormed their way up to the surface. They were everywhere, stoically pounding away with sledge hammers at what looked like insurmountable piles of rubble.

Just days after the quake, people gathered in front of destroyed churches to sing, to pray, to praise a God that appeared to have abandoned them.

Over the coming weeks and months, spaces cleared. Tarps and tents went up. Shacks were built.

But like the double flooding of Gonaives, Haiti can't seem to get just one catastrophe at a time.

A cholera outbreak spread across the entire island, sickening a half a million people and killing thousands. More dead; more ghosts.

There's a lot of bad news in Haiti. Earthquake victims — 500,000 of them — are still living in squalid camps. There are entire neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince with no toilets, no electricity and no clean water. Cholera is now endemic.

But I left this time feeling like the country is at least moving forward. New universities, hospitals and hotels are being built. There's a government in place.

Haiti's ghosts seem to hang over the country whispering about its long tragic history. But even so, the streets of Port-au-Prince fill every day with chaotic traffic jams and freewheeling commerce.

It's reassuring that despite everything, people have somewhere to rush to. They have things they need to do, lives to live.

by Jason Beaubien
January 15, 2012

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/15/145267505/haiti-reflections-on-overcoming-a-year-of-disaster

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