‘The Big Truck That Went By’: A Journalist’s Account of the Earthquake and its Aftermath in Haiti

By ⋅ January 11, 2013 ⋅ Post a comment
Jonathan Katz's 'The Big Truck That Went By ' went on sale January 8, 2013.

Jonathan Katz's 'The Big Truck That Went By ' went on sale January 8, 2013.

Jonathan Katz was the Associated Press reporter in Haiti three years ago when an earthquake hit the country.

Katz spent the next few years documenting the quake and its aftermath.

Anchor Jeb Sharp talks to Katz about his new book on Haiti, “The Big Truck That Went By.”

Read the Transcript
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Jeb Sharp: I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World. The coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. This weekend marks three years since the earthquake in Haiti, the country and its people are still struggling to overcome the devastating blow. Johnathan Katz was the Associated Press reporter in Port au Prince the day the quake hit. Katz’ new book is called “The Big Truck That Went By” because he says, that’s what the quake sounded like.

Johnathan Katz: In that particular kind of quake the sound is a very salient feature of it, because you hear this rumble coming from the distance and for a long time after when I would hear any kind of rumbling since there so little time between when you hear that first rumble and that strike up afterward, it was very panicking, so even if a generator came on, or frankly if a big truck went by I would often have that same kind of fear.

Sharp: On January 12, 2010 Katz was in his house, which doubles as the AP Bureau, he says the building essentially crumbled around him.

Katz: When I emerged from the house, with my colleague my friend Evan Senon who was on the premises with me. We stopped and we looked up at this neighborhood that had been behind our house before, an area called Mortlesar and it was gone, been replaced basically by this dust cloud stretching from horizon to horizon and out of that cloud and all around us, there was this sound this this screaming this kind of wailing it’s a very particular sound, it’s honestly something I’ve only heard in Haiti, it’s usually from women its often the way people react to a tragedy of any scale, you know, the death of a child, it could be a horrific car accident it’s just this haunting wail, of just incredible sadness that I think I’ll probably spend the rest of my life actually trying to forget.

Sharp: You then go out to see what’s happened. And you have many scenes, many memories, many descriptions. Three years later is there an overriding one? Is there a sensation, is there a picture is there a person, who stays with you the most?

Katz: I mean the sensations of not being able to breathe of the dust clouds you know sorta feeling these particles, you know, scratching our throats, scratching my throat, scratching my lungs. There was a lot of really terrible stuff it was a horrible tragedy that was creditably pervasive. It struck so hard, and it struck so many people, it was so total, that everywhere you turned that night and when the sun came up the next morning, there was death everywhere and there was sadness everywhere. And a and even though those are things that it’s very important to note; don’t define Haiti forever they define this tragedy, if you’re talking about the tragedy itself yeah; those are unavoidable.

Sharp: You write in the book that you were actually totally done with Haiti,you were preparing to leave when the earthquake struck. And you decided to stay.

Katz: Look, clearly as a journalist I was now in the mist of a major story. it was a story that I knew, it was a place that I cared about and you know I felt that it was very important to stay there and be a witness and investigator, and and try to keep track of the reconstruction and and try keep an eye on the promises that were being made because there were very grandiose promises being made oversees to help rebuild the country. and I felt a responsibility, and desire to continue reporting there.

Sharp: And finally Johnathan you said “Don’t let the earthquake define Haiti”. What do you most miss about Haiti?

Katz: Haiti is wrongly looked at from the outside as this place that is just a story of unbroken sadness and unbroken tragedy, and even though tragedy is an important part of the country’s recent past and even though poverty is important thing to grapple with in terms of understanding the countries present and future. It’s also important to understand that even in the mist of these things, you know, people are having fun, people are falling in love, people are getting in fights over stupid things. And living lives like people live lives anywhere else. And I think by telling fuller stories and complicating our narratives a little bit I’m hoping some of what I was able to do in the book, that we can get a better understanding of one another then ultimately we can take a relationship writ large between you know large powerful countries such as the United States, and Haiti and other vulnerable countries like it – and really make something better in the future. I think there’s always a lot of optimism because the story is never over and there’s always a chance to start doing things better, but we need to start now.

Sharp: Johnathan thank you.

Katz: Thank you.

Sharp: By the way, the full title of Johnathan Katz book is “The Big Truck That Went By; How the World Came To Haiti and Left A Disaster Behind”. Katz write extensively about the money promised to Haiti and where it all went. You can hear that part of our conversation at THEWORLD.org

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Audio Extra:

Discussion

3 comments for “‘The Big Truck That Went By’: A Journalist’s Account of the Earthquake and its Aftermath in Haiti”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1678934628 Maki Moto San

    …It is an opportunity to rebuild constructively.

  • c_u_r_m_u_d_g_e_o_n

    “Jonathan Katz on Where The Money Went” is poorly organized, leaving me wondering whether the book is much better. But it succeeds in making these points.
     •  The U.S. government has been unforgiving in its generosity: before delivering any new value to Haiti, the U.S. pays itself back for its loans to defunct Haitian governments. 
     •  The U.S. government did not operate in Haiti on its its dime routinely spent for operation of the armed forces; rather, it took back for its own sustenance there much of what it proclaimed as relief and reconstruction. 

    Jonathan Katz does not tell us what the American Red Cross did with money the American people gave it with designation for Haiti. To get any more than what the Red Cross itself tells us, we evidently must pay or look elsewhere. In Google Books, the search function does not work for The Big Truck That Went By. 

    The Red Cross .pdf may be downloaded from http://www.redcross.org/what-we-do/international-services/haiti-assistance-program . They say they have expended $415 million out of $486 million donated for Haiti: 16% for emergency relief, 8% on livelihoods (providing income-generating opportunities to affected populations), 4% on the cholera epidemic, 12% on other sanitation and water supply, 16% on other health initiatives, 33% on housing and neighborhood recovery, and 11% on disaster preparedness and risk reduction. As time has passed, the fraction for relief has shrunk, of course, and the fraction for housing has increased correspondingly. The remaining $71 million is to be spent for Haiti later, mostly in the housing segment. It is not clear whether the $486 million is the 91% of any donation they typically spend for humanitarian services and programs, leaving $48 million for such purposes as administration and fundraising. 

    Shortly after the earthquake, complaints of contribution designations for Haiti being ignored by the Red Cross appeared in the press; if these are true, the amount designated might greatly exceed half a billion dollars. The ethical conundrum, honoring donors’ sentiments vs. doing the most good possible world-wide, probably lacks a solution since it pits ethics of property against ethics of charity. Red Cross Fundamental Principles include “..give priority to the most urgent cases of distress.” (http://www.redcross.org/about-us/mission) 

    But contributions to the American Red Cross are not the bulk of what was promised world-wide: $16.3 billion. Emergency relief cost $5.2 billion. Maybe Jonathan Katz can tell us (from behind his $12.99 pay wall on Google Books) what part of that was the cost of goods delivered to and services rendered upon Haitian soil. 
    When trying to help where the pillars of education, honest government and honest enterprise are missing, a donor (governmental or private) cannot deliver money to local entities and fruitfully demand an accounting for it. Buying locally what is needed, paying whatever it takes, is sure to attract international opportunists because no amount of money will buy what is not at hand to be bought. 

    Rather, the donor must give a little bit and lend a little bit here and there, judiciously choosing to empower certain local people to employ the labor of others. It must witness in person whether the ignorant recipient spends the money as if s/he were honest, educated and wise, whether the gifts benefit other local people, whether the loans are repaid. Those who perform can be trusted with more. The principles of micro-lending apply in disaster cleanup just as in normal development. Accounts are things built and people helped, not numbers. Nothing happens quickly. 

    The witnesses themselves must have been vetted: corruption is not unknown among the fortunate. Neither is neglect of accounting unknown among honest aid workers where circumstances are dire and there are too few to accomplish the hands-on work. 

    Elizabeth Abbott (2011) writes of Haiti’s kleptocratic society and government. “The relative dearth of literature on the Duvalier regime, especially for the Jean-Claude years, make[s] newspapers and periodicals essential literature.” Based on decades of press reports read by Americans, Haiti appears to be worst-case: a place where ignorant people were brought by greedy people and learned greed along with the rudiments of technology. “The colony became France’s richest, the envy of every other European nation. With its fertile soil and its thousands of sugar, coffee, cotton, and indigo plantations, it furnished two-thirds of France’s overseas trade, employing one thousand ships and fifteen thousand French sailors.” These enslaved people killed the greedy people who had brought them; they became independent. Yet never in two centuries did they rid themselves of the greed they had been taught. 

    But Haitians who emigrate to the United States are evidence to the contrary. According to Flore Zéphir (1996) p.94, ”In conclusion, Haitians’ responses to African Americans are class based. Haitians seek to disaffiliate themselves from African Americans of the underclass whose behavior and attitudes they find totally reprehensible. However, they show no resentment toward middle-class African Americans who[m] they perceive to have similar work ethics and values which presumably enable them to overcome adversity.” Perhaps these Haitians are so because they are the ones who have chosen to disaffiliate themselves from kleptocracy and leave their country. To get their visas and do this, they have to have somehow acquired a strong sense of right and wrong. 

  • johncdvorak

    Listening to this..I still do not hear about “where the money went” as promised. I’ll be reporting on this on http://www.noagendashow.com