PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 23, 2010 (IPS) – A cacophony of murmurs and cries echoed through the neighbourhoods of Haiti’s capital city Monday night as a violent aftershock shook people awake. Ten minutes later, another tremor rocked the ground, this time more smoothly back and forth.
The 4.7 magnitude tremors were a momentary distraction from pressing concerns over Haiti’s oncoming season of heavy rains, said to begin in March and last three months.
Shelter is now the top priority for relief groups, ahead of food and water distribution. They are rushing to supply thick plastic tarps, rather than tents, to over 500,000 internally displaced people in Port-Au-Prince – many still living under bedsheets tied over sticks in crowded settlements.
At a shelter distribution by CARE International at a camp in a Petionville public square, the tarps were received with a mixture of confusion and disappointment.
“It’s not clear for us. We can’t set them up because they don’t send anyone to give an explanation,” said Joseph Jean-Ones, whose family lives in the camp, as he tried to fit one metal pole on top of another. Read more →
This is my reply to an open letter and response concerning the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism in Mexico, which I attended as a student. It’s written in the same spirit as my open letter to Democracy Now!: we must continually evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of independent media in order to be effective. Read more →
Update: Also big thanks to Valparaiso for adding Japanese captions to the YouTube video! Check out his Caracas Cafe blog for continuing independent coverage of Venezuela, Honduras, and Haiti (in Japanese).
Finally sorted out some video editing problems last night. Here’s a dispatch I completed a few days ago, focusing on an aid distribution near Cite Soleil last week. Read more →
GRAND GOAVE, Jan 28, 2010 (IPS) – Two gray 23-million-dollar hovercrafts sitting in the middle of a sandy tropical beach look like they are from another world. A pair of 15-foot-wide propeller fans sticks out from the back of each behemoth.
Along the narrow dirt road to this seaside town’s centre, families live under blankets stretched over sticks.
A tent city occupies the town’s main square, surrounded by crumbling buildings. Joseph Jean-Pierre Salam, the mayor of Grand Goave, about 15 kilometres west of Port-au-Prince, estimated that some 70 percent of the city’s important structures fell during the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan. 12.
“They have made many promises, but we don’t see the action yet,” Salam said, referring to the international community. “We have a lot of people suffering. There is an expectation that help will come.”
Little food and water has been distributed by the dozens U.S. troops milling about the beach since the earthquake, according to local leaders. Read more →
Jerry called me a few days after the quake, huddled with hundreds of people in a space without food and water. I was lining up a profile story with him before the catastrophe. But he’s already back at work, it appears. See some of his pre-disaster work here. He even tackled the problem of Haiti’s deforestation with his art, in an amusing way. Read more →
The radio hooked up outside my moto driver’s house
Here’s my story for yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News newscast, about Haitian radio broadcasters doing their best to stay on the air in the quake’s aftermath without any outside support. MP3. Video later.
Kudos to the BBC for making its broadcasts available in Creole for free. Didn’t get a chance to check out Signal FM, but the Committee to Protect Journalists has an interesting account of how they stayed on the air during the quake. MediaShift reports that only 10 out of 50 Port-Au-Prince radio stations are currently broadcasting.
Here’s my story for yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News newscast. Some horrific sights at both Cannape-Vert Hospital and the Doctors Without Borders Clinic in Cite Soleil.
MP3. Video probably coming later. It’s really an inefficient medium, from what I see here. Journalists go out, shoot footage, then come back mid-day to begin an hours-long editing process, when they could be out reporting. By tradition they go to the trouble of hiding cuts in interviews with b-roll, instead of doing simple, honest jump-cuts to which the YouTube generation is totally accustomed. There’s no innovation…
Update: Big thanks to the Quixotess in Seattle for transcribing! Global media collaboration FTW. Text below the jump. Read more →
