Reporter’s Notebook: Return to Haiti, Part II

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Reporter Amy Bracken is currently in Haiti on assignment. She knows the country well, having lived and worked there in the past. We asked her to keep a notebook of her experiences during her current reporting trip. This is her second entry. Read the first entry.

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Foreign doctors working in Haiti have coined a new expression: ‘Haitian up!,’ meaning ‘Toughen up!’ It comes, of course, from the doctors’ experiences operating on patients with minimal anesthesia and hearing few complaints. Everyone I mention this to loves it, especially other foreigners here, perhaps because they, like me, often have to tell themselves to do just that.

I rarely get sick, but when something strikes me, I slip into a state of shameful self-pity. When I took a trip into the countryside and recklessly consumed a plateful of salad and a few classes of ice lemonade at a restaurant, I paid for it several hours later. I moaned in misery, curled up on the bathroom floor. My roommate brought me cool bottled water. A friend later made me plain white rice. I lay under a fan and slept for about a day and a night.

And then I was all better. I had cereal and coffee for breakfast and headed to a downtown ‘internally displaced person’s camp to do some reporting. Weaving between makeshift shelters, I approached a statue where a group of children played. Behind them I noticed a boy of about 10 lying in the hot sun on the concrete pedestal and vomiting. The orange liquid flowed like a river down the steps below him. No one brought him water. There was no bathroom, or fan, or bed. I imagined there would be no complaining either.

I’ve been sharing other humbling moments with fellow foreign journalists. One common and deeply humiliating one is crying in an interview. It catches us by surprise and often happens when we’re hearing one of those now familiar stories – yet another person lost several family members and their home and still went to work the next day and hasn’t stopped. What happens is an image flashes in your head – of your own parent or sibling or cousin or friend. And then it’s all over. You have to look away, pretend you dropped something or start taking scrupulous notes. One photographer friend said she once let the tears roll, and then she got her subject weeping, and a crowd formed.

Some Haitian friends who lived through it say they cry sometimes. This is told as a confession and seems almost intended to shock. I haven’t seen any tears on this trip.

What I have seen, in certain circles, is drinking. When I first arrived in Port-au-Prince days after the earthquake, I was surprised by a couple of people who seemed to have lost everything. They were lying on a blanket on the street and sharing a bottle of moonshine. I had somehow imagined that food and water and shelter would be their only concerns. But after about 24 hours I completely understood the need for soothing and escape.

Now, more than two months out, nightlife is coming back in some areas, and developing in camps. For some, drinking remains the farthest thing from their minds, but for others it is a li pa ka pa la, or sine qua non.

Two of Haiti’s pride and joys, Barbancourt Rum and Prestige Beer, were hard hit by the earthquake, but they are coming back, and there are plenty of imports from the Dominican Republic and elsewhere.

Bottles are sold at IDP camps, and neighbors have been complaining about the late night noise.

Up in the suburb Petion-Ville, some restaurants and bars are packed in the evening, with foreign NGO employees and well-off Haitians. On Monday night, a wine-tasting was on at La Terrace (a diner suggested it might be more appropriate to call it a ‘wine distribution,’ given the situation). But by the time the glasses and palate cleansers were elegantly laid out, a portion of the clientele was too drunk to appreciate the gourmet (and free) affair.

I wondered out loud to a friend how a newly opened night club was going to survive in this climate. Apparently misunderstanding me (after a few drinks), he asserted that he can either mourn and be miserable the rest of his life, or he can go out and have fun and contribute to the economy. ‘I believe in the latter.’

I liked the idea of partying as a civic duty or a Haitian act of defiance against the onslaught of suffering. But I also noted the defensiveness in his voice. It reminded me of an interview I had had with some young men in a camp who were passing around a joint. The conversation had turned to the importance of marijuana, and one of the men said it helps with symptoms common to earthquake survivors, like sleeplessness and anxiety, but when I suggested the drug was a kind of medication, he looked deeply offended, and said, ‘This is nothing like medication.’

Listen to Amy’s coverage on Haiti:

• The World: Amy’s coverage from her previous trip to Haiti (Jan. 19, 2010)
• The World: Amy reflects on post-earthquake Haiti (January 14, 2010)