In desolate Haiti, rich few escaped quake unscathed

Poet urges fellow Haitians to ride out their misery
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Feb 13, 2010 - The wall supporting his bookcase partially collapsed but the books were saved. The Haitian poet and painter Franketienne sees in the January 12 "apocalypse" a chance for a "collective awakening." "We often waver or fall," the white-bearded playwright said in an interview, speaking slowly a syllable at a time. "But we then have to learn how to ride out our fall." "Transforming your fall into a horse" -- the metaphor was born long before the "monster" quake crashed through Franketienne's impoverished country, killing over 200,000 people and leaving 1.2 million others homeless. The tremor shook his home, nearly killing the 73-year-old poet and his wife, Marie-Andree.

Already in December, weeks before the latest disaster to hit Haiti, Franketienne placed a devastating quake at the heart of a "premonitory" play, "Melovivi" (The Trap). "The ground sways, the ground staggers, the ground zigzags," the blue-eyed poet recited under the barely standing patio of his home in the Delmas neighborhood of the capital Port-au-Prince. "The ground turns and capsizes. It twitches with fright and derails with terror. There's gangrene in the opera, the rats' macabre opera." The visionary playwright, born on April 12, 1936 to a young farm woman and an American industrialist who "adopted" her before sending her back to Haiti, has penned around 30 volumes. They include "Les chevaux de l'avant-jour" (The Horses of Dawn, 1966), "Mur a crever" (A Wall to Die, 1968) and "Ultravocal" (1972).

A true renaissance man, the poet, novelist and dramatist has also painted several thousands of works and received the Netherlands' Prince Claus Award in 2006. He has put his life on the line in defying the regimes that have ruled Haiti in the past. In 1975, he wrote "Dezafi," an allegorical work about the political oppression that prevailed under Papa Doc's regime. "These areas that were ravaged, it's sinusoidal," Franketienne said, pointing to parallels in the political realm. "The minute this ravaging event took place, we saw the failure and the foolishness of our leaders, who have never had foresight and let people build any old way because they feared anger from the population." The temblor that Franketienne foresaw and ultimately struck Haiti was a confirmation of the "esthetics of chaos" he has heralded for the past 40 years through the "spiralist" movement, he said. But he saw in the disaster a unique chance to rebuild everything.

"It's the first time since 1804 (when Haiti gained independence from France) that all of the country's structures have collapsed," Franketienne said. "We are at a turning point... either we wake up or it's a total collapse." The Caribbean intellectual rejected the claims of some fellow Haitians that the massive influx of international aid is a threat to the country's sovereignty. "Let's write, let's negotiate," he recommended. "I am not against your personal interests but make sure that mine are not completely ignored." As for the pessimists who see in Haiti -- battered for centuries by natural disasters, political upheaval and poverty -- a land forever cursed, Franketienne shot back: "That's clearing the names of those who are truly at fault."

"When we allude to this, we are just this close to saying that it's voodoo's fault," he added. Voodoo practices are widespread in deeply spiritual Haiti. The poet respects signs and symbols. On January 10, just two days before the quake, a voice called out at him in the early morning, enjoining him without explanation to purchase a medallion of Saint Andrew. The darkened medallion, which Franketienne still wears around his neck like a talisman, was found by his driver in a city next to Port-au-Prince where Saint Andrew is the patron saint. The city was Leogane, the quake's epicenter.

by Staff Writers
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Feb 12, 2010
They drink French water, buy Camembert from Normandy and fine olive oil from Italy, but Haiti's rich are among the lucky few to have escaped unscathed from the killer earthquake a month ago.

In upscale Petionville, in the foothills of Port-au-Prince, several markets run by Syrians are stocked with an inventory of products that far surpasses the basic needs that are still largely unmet for many in this impoverished country.

Some of the customers' whims, like products and recipes to lose weight, seem like a slap in the face for a society where famine remains widespread.

"Selling food you can never go wrong. People are always buying things to eat," said Moussa Aballa Nahra, the 70-year-old owner of Royal Market.

The storefront looks deceptively simple, but step inside and fragrant, exquisite delicacies meet the eye everywhere: European chocolates, Portuguese olives, Chilean wines. All carry pricetags equivalent, and sometimes even higher, than in the United States.

Nahra arrived in Haiti in 1961 and has never looked back.

"This country was a paradise, very pleasant and very prosperous, with lots of hope for the future," he said in French alongside his wife, also from Tartus in northwestern Syria.

"Nothing's missing here. I don't have security problems and business is good."

The couple expressed pride that their three children -- a son and two daughters -- were Haitians.

The Nahras may be one of the few Syrian families whose son married a Haitian woman.

These families of traders and hotel and land owners are among the richest five percent of the nearly nine million people who live in Haiti, an upper class that has hardly felt the impact of the January 12 earthquake from their homes perched on pine hills overlooking the Caribbean Sea.

"I live here only for business," said Joseph Hanna, 28, who speaks more Spanish than French because he lived in Venezuela before coming to Haiti three years ago.

"This is a quiet place, people here are very good," he said at Olympia Market, where he even sells food and accessories for dogs and other pets, symbols of prosperity in a nation that has been wracked for centuries by natural disasters, political upheaval and crippling poverty.

Haiti's upper crust also includes Haitians of mixed race, or mulattos, whose grandparents included not only natives to the Caribbean nation but also foreigners, including the Polish Jewish and Lebanese family of Alicia Bigio, owner of the Villa Creole hotel, which nearly collapsed in the quake.

"We will take the time to think about what we will do" after closing the hotel on February 21, Bigio said.

"But we are not losing hope because we can start anew thanks to government credits."

She traveled to Port-au-Prince after the tremor and her eyes filled with tears as she recalled the scenes of utter chaos and destruction following the disaster that killed some 217,000 people and left 1.2 million homeless.

"When I was young, in the 1960s and earlier, when our father was a doctor and our mother started the hotel, we had universities in Haiti with good professors," Bigio said.

Her hotel today hosts much of the international press covering the aftermath of the tremor, as well as her employees, who are living in tents in the gardens.

Wealthy and highly educated Haitians tend to live in the hills, have their children studying abroad and were able to leave the country quickly via private flights or land routes to neighboring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.

"Luckily, my two children are studying in Bordeaux," said Patricia Steed Attie, the Haitian owner of Papaya.

In the restaurant-lounge, her European customers, martini in hand and electropop music playing in the background, try to forget the crowds of desperate people fighting for their lives among roofless rubble just a few miles (kilometers) away.

"I closed shop for nearly three weeks, but I decided to reopen," said Attie, whose home was destroyed in the temblor, along with the college run by her French husband in the center of the capital.

"I think it's a way to keep from losing hope. My employees have started working again. It's a way to help and not give up."

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Rains add new misery to quake-hit Haiti
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) Feb 11, 2010
The first heavy rains since a devastating earthquake four weeks ago brought new misery to Haitians Thursday with hundreds of thousands of people still living in flimsy homemade shelters. The downpour a day ahead of the one-month anniversary of the quake served as a warning of the coming rainy season and the need to provide adequate shelter for an estimated 1.2 million still sleeping in the s ... read more

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