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Who Will Rescue Haiti?
by Jamie Johnson
VF online
Two stories covering the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti caught my eye last weekend. The first was a piece in The New York Times describing how the natural disaster ignored distinctions in social class by claiming not only the nation’s poor and vulnerable citizens but also its richest and best established. And the second was a report from The Daily Beast, which published a letter Haiti’s former autocrat, Jean-Claude Duvalier, had addressed to the Haitian people following the disaster. In the letter, Duvalier, who has lived in France since being forced from power and exiled in 1986, offers his condolences to the nation and requests that $8 million worth of funds from a charitable foundation named for his late mother be directed immediately towards helping survivors.
A few years ago, I spent a couple of weeks on a friend’s yacht cruising in the Bahamas just south of the Exuma island chain. It was considerably remote territory, with plenty of open water and unsettled coastal land to make the trip feel like an adventure into a primitive tropical paradise. Only on rare occasions did other boats appear on the horizon. Mainly, they were commercial fishing outfits, heading to scour neighboring reefs for lobster, conch, and other local critters that are the cornerstones of the Bahamian seafood trade. That’s why it was especially surprising on one afternoon to see a dilapidated steel workboat drifting slowly toward us with the prevailing tide. Glances at the craft through binoculars quickly revealed that the crew was under some kind of duress, but the exact nature of the problem was difficult to determine.
Radio calls went unanswered, and the rickety old workboat flashed no signals or signs of distress. The ship failed even to display a proper name and location of homeport, which are standard markers for all seafaring vessels, and normally required by law. Eventually, when the troubled craft had moved within a reachable distance, the captain, another fellow, and I jumped into a launch and motored over to offer what assistance we were able to provide. But as we approached, a stern-looking man stepped aggressively out from the wheelhouse and marched up and down the deck, shaking his head and gesticulating emphatically with his arms for us to turn away.
Bare, rusted-out window frames that admitted patches of light into the ship’s nearly pitch-black cabin enabled us to see a sizeable group of people, packed together in tight quarters. Many of them were ill, vomiting inside and intermittently leaning their heads and backsides out of the rough-edged windows to discharge fluids overboard in what was clearly a desperate effort to preserve whatever sanitation remained. Despite explicit calls for us to leave from the one agitated man, who was probably in charge of the vessel and its passengers, we idled for a few moments, trying to figure out a reasonable course of action. And very shortly it became clear for a number of reasons, including the language we heard spoken and one woman repeatedly calling out to us the name of her homeland, that these individuals were from Haiti.
To this day, it is hard to be absolutely certain about the intent of the ship’s passengers and the events that brought them to a secluded anchorage in Bahamian waters. But everything that I witnessed, as well as informal analyses following the incident from the both the U.S. and Bahamian Coastguards, suggests that these men and women were migrants fleeing Haiti. Mechanical failures on their boat sent them off course and left them vulnerable to the elements, malnutrition, and deteriorating health.
Before completely giving up our attempts to provide serious help, we pulled together a survival kit that contained food, water, basic medical supplies, and cash. Ignoring the persistent reproaches from the Haitian vessel’s outspoken commander, we ran our launch along the gunwales of his boat for a second time and hurled the packaged provisions up onto the deck. And then we left. <span style="font-style: italic">Once back onboard our own vessel, we radioed Bahamian and U.S. authorities, requesting they intervene and rescue the beleaguered craft.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">But it was no use; no one seemed to care.</span> <span style="font-style: italic">The Bahamians don’t have adequate resources to patrol areas beyond their major ports, and the U.S. Coastguard simply cannot make every rescue situation a priority, especially on foreign seas.</span> So the situation was never resolved, and the fate of the passengers simply played itself out.
Virtually all stories out of Haiti now stress two things: the total devastation of the country’s society at all levels and the crushing poverty that has traditionally plagued Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. A small fraction of Haitians have known the comforts of affluence while millions have barely survived. Yet journalists have thought to report the tragedy with an eye toward its indiscriminating nature. It strikes me as ironic, but strangely understandable, that Haiti’s poverty causes people to think instinctively of wealth. Duvalier symbolizes the legacy of financial inequality because his family was believed to have embezzled hundreds of millions from the Haitian people in order to enjoy a lavish French Riviera lifestyle. And if that isn’t bitter enough for Haiti, reports indicate that Duvalier himself has no control over the foundation he is imploring to fund quake relief efforts, so his proclaimed support may fall short yet again. How Haiti will resolve its endemic problem while recovering from a horrific earthquake is becoming a very disturbing question
by Jamie Johnson
VF online
Two stories covering the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti caught my eye last weekend. The first was a piece in The New York Times describing how the natural disaster ignored distinctions in social class by claiming not only the nation’s poor and vulnerable citizens but also its richest and best established. And the second was a report from The Daily Beast, which published a letter Haiti’s former autocrat, Jean-Claude Duvalier, had addressed to the Haitian people following the disaster. In the letter, Duvalier, who has lived in France since being forced from power and exiled in 1986, offers his condolences to the nation and requests that $8 million worth of funds from a charitable foundation named for his late mother be directed immediately towards helping survivors.
A few years ago, I spent a couple of weeks on a friend’s yacht cruising in the Bahamas just south of the Exuma island chain. It was considerably remote territory, with plenty of open water and unsettled coastal land to make the trip feel like an adventure into a primitive tropical paradise. Only on rare occasions did other boats appear on the horizon. Mainly, they were commercial fishing outfits, heading to scour neighboring reefs for lobster, conch, and other local critters that are the cornerstones of the Bahamian seafood trade. That’s why it was especially surprising on one afternoon to see a dilapidated steel workboat drifting slowly toward us with the prevailing tide. Glances at the craft through binoculars quickly revealed that the crew was under some kind of duress, but the exact nature of the problem was difficult to determine.
Radio calls went unanswered, and the rickety old workboat flashed no signals or signs of distress. The ship failed even to display a proper name and location of homeport, which are standard markers for all seafaring vessels, and normally required by law. Eventually, when the troubled craft had moved within a reachable distance, the captain, another fellow, and I jumped into a launch and motored over to offer what assistance we were able to provide. But as we approached, a stern-looking man stepped aggressively out from the wheelhouse and marched up and down the deck, shaking his head and gesticulating emphatically with his arms for us to turn away.
Bare, rusted-out window frames that admitted patches of light into the ship’s nearly pitch-black cabin enabled us to see a sizeable group of people, packed together in tight quarters. Many of them were ill, vomiting inside and intermittently leaning their heads and backsides out of the rough-edged windows to discharge fluids overboard in what was clearly a desperate effort to preserve whatever sanitation remained. Despite explicit calls for us to leave from the one agitated man, who was probably in charge of the vessel and its passengers, we idled for a few moments, trying to figure out a reasonable course of action. And very shortly it became clear for a number of reasons, including the language we heard spoken and one woman repeatedly calling out to us the name of her homeland, that these individuals were from Haiti.
To this day, it is hard to be absolutely certain about the intent of the ship’s passengers and the events that brought them to a secluded anchorage in Bahamian waters. But everything that I witnessed, as well as informal analyses following the incident from the both the U.S. and Bahamian Coastguards, suggests that these men and women were migrants fleeing Haiti. Mechanical failures on their boat sent them off course and left them vulnerable to the elements, malnutrition, and deteriorating health.
Before completely giving up our attempts to provide serious help, we pulled together a survival kit that contained food, water, basic medical supplies, and cash. Ignoring the persistent reproaches from the Haitian vessel’s outspoken commander, we ran our launch along the gunwales of his boat for a second time and hurled the packaged provisions up onto the deck. And then we left. <span style="font-style: italic">Once back onboard our own vessel, we radioed Bahamian and U.S. authorities, requesting they intervene and rescue the beleaguered craft.</span> <span style="font-weight: bold">But it was no use; no one seemed to care.</span> <span style="font-style: italic">The Bahamians don’t have adequate resources to patrol areas beyond their major ports, and the U.S. Coastguard simply cannot make every rescue situation a priority, especially on foreign seas.</span> So the situation was never resolved, and the fate of the passengers simply played itself out.
Virtually all stories out of Haiti now stress two things: the total devastation of the country’s society at all levels and the crushing poverty that has traditionally plagued Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. A small fraction of Haitians have known the comforts of affluence while millions have barely survived. Yet journalists have thought to report the tragedy with an eye toward its indiscriminating nature. It strikes me as ironic, but strangely understandable, that Haiti’s poverty causes people to think instinctively of wealth. Duvalier symbolizes the legacy of financial inequality because his family was believed to have embezzled hundreds of millions from the Haitian people in order to enjoy a lavish French Riviera lifestyle. And if that isn’t bitter enough for Haiti, reports indicate that Duvalier himself has no control over the foundation he is imploring to fund quake relief efforts, so his proclaimed support may fall short yet again. How Haiti will resolve its endemic problem while recovering from a horrific earthquake is becoming a very disturbing question
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