101 Things To Do Before You Graduate Living In History ... - Alumni

Diary From Haiti
By Sophie Paris ’97
I
was standing on 50th and First when the faint
ring of my cell phone reached my ears through
the din of Manhattan traffic. It was a corner I
know well, from my years of coming and going
into the photo unit on the ninth floor of the United
Nations.
I was heading to the UN offices to meet and
shoot the secretary general, one of the many kinds
of assignments on my docket. I was running late, but
juggled my heavy bag of camera bodies and lenses
as I considered whether to answer my phone. It was
my father — an odd time for him to call.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“On my way to a shoot; why, what’s wrong?”
“It’s all over the news. Haiti’s had a terrible earthquake.
I don’t want to alarm you, but it sounds bad.”
He didn’t have to say more for me to realize the
harsh implications. During my eight years of working
my way up from darkroom assistant to staff
photographer, I’d spent two-and-a-half of them
documenting MINUSTAH, the UN’s mission to bring
security, reduce political turmoil, and facilitate elections
in Haiti. I had lived on the island, crisscrossing
its mountains, learning Creole and French, and falling
in love with its kind, spirited people. That assignment
had ended three years ago, but of the 300 UN
civilian staff still in Port au Prince [PAP], I knew half
of them well. A dozen remained close friends. I heard
myself exhale as my head became crowded with
questions. But of one thing I was certain: I had to get
to Haiti.
The following entries are excerpted from my
notes and e-mails about the journey that ensued.
Clockwise, from top: A young boy tries to break through the
rubble of his home in the Haitian slum of Nerette.
Workers in the U.N. Development Programme’s Cash
for Work program line up to receive payment at the Sant
Triyaj Fatra in the Kafoufey neighborhood of Port-au-
Prince. Every 15 days, a new batch of 1,500 people is hired;
with a 6,000-person wait list for street cleaner jobs, they
cannot work for the program again. Each is paid a little over
minimum wage, 180 Haitian Gourdes per day.
Mourning the loss of more than 230,000 people, a
commemoration of the one-month anniversary of the
earthquake began with prayer services throughout
Port-au-Prince. On Champs de Mars, thousands of people
crowded around the square, dancing and singing their
prayers, led by a preacher over a loudspeaker.
Nearby, a boy prayed in front of the collapsed National
Palace.
1/12/10
New York City
A confounding, dark blur of updates arrives hour by
hour: A 7.0 earthquake has ripped across the capital
city of Haiti. Seventy percent of the buildings are
in rubble. Scarce gasoline and food supplies are
now gone. The airport is damaged and shut down.
Churches, schools, hospitals — even the maximum
security prison — are badly damaged. Looting is getting
out of control. A million people are homeless; up
to 200,000 are trapped inside buildings or have been
crushed to death. Late into the night, I hover over
a small television with my coworkers. No one asks
the cutting question out loud, but it gnaws at our
silence. What about the UN headquarters, housed in
the relatively modern and sturdy Christopher Hotel?
Did our colleagues survive? Then, at close to midnight,
CNN breaks the news. The UN headquarters
had collapsed at 4:56 p.m., while the building was
humming with staff. It is simply too hard to accept,
too hard to comprehend. Before I go to bed, I write
an e-mail:
Dearest Family – As you all have heard, there has
been a massive earthquake in Haiti. Thank God most
of my friends have been accounted for (Gille’s fam,
Gaelle, Cyril, Logan, and many others); however,
many of my colleagues are unaccounted for … Just
spoke to Logan, the UN photog who replaced me,
and it is really bad … a lot of people evacuated the
UNHQ building before it crumbled, but a lot were
still in it. … I am literally begging my boss to send me
down there to cover the situation …
Trying to get in with OCHA, the UN’s emergency
management arm … I have two friends from the
graduate program I attended last year at the International
Center of Photography who are going, so we
decided that we would go together … Most journalists
I know left tonight for Santo Domingo to get
into PAP by dawn. Amazingly, Getty called me and
asked me for contacts/fixers etc. in PAP. Just makes
me want to get there that much more… xoxooxoxox
1/13/10
I have 12 hours to rearrange my life — convince the
UN that they have to send me. I argue that I know
the city and country well, speak the languages,
and, as a photographer and photo editor, know the
demands of working in dangerous situations among
people in crisis. I’ve survived muggings, gun fights,
robberies, and a few bouts of malaria. In the process,
I’ve taken my emotional hits and have seen my share
of death and decimation, but it’s also taught me my
limits — how to get through it and keep going.
For the next 36 hours, when not lobbying for my
departure, I establish a relay from a computer on a
military desk in Haiti. Logan Abassi and our second
UN photographer, Marco Dormino, will send me
their images via satellite in New York. Logan tells me
that he’d been inside the entrance of the UN headquarters
when the terrible cracking and shaking
began. With only a camera bag on his shoulder, he
leapt outside and was among the last to escape. He
tells me about trying to pull others out of the towering
stacks of concrete before his instincts to just go
shoot take over…He tells me that he traveled by foot
and whatever means he could along the decimated
streets of the city to his apartment at the Montana
Hotel, but found nothing but wreckage. Marco
and Logan are on an adrenaline-fueled odyssey of
shooting without food or sleep. I stay up with them,
editing and feeding their images of the first hours of
the tragedy to the best publications in the world.
1/15/10
It is clear to me that Logan and Marco will soon
collapse from exhaustion and the psychic toll of living
through so much tragedy. David Wimhurst, the
chief of the public information office in Haiti, has
sent an urgent request to UNHQ for me to be sent
as soon as possible. Together, we’ve been lobbying
every bigwig involved. Unsure if it will be approved,
I pack my duffel bag anyway with the essentials to
survive what could be an indefinite ordeal: mosquito
repellent, lighters, batteries, medicines (especially
to avoid malaria, dysentery, and dehydration), knife,
soap, precious toilet paper, sleeping bag, and my
well-used but dependable hiking boots that will let
me walk through blood, excrement, and mud. I add
to that my requisite iPod, two novels, a few candles,
my Powerbook, and as much photo equipment as I
can carry. Last but not least, I throw in a corkscrew. I
haven’t forgotten my Colgate roots. But I wonder if
I’ll ever taste another bottle of wine.
1/16/10
At last, it’s happening. I’m leaving for Haiti tomorrow.
I show up at UN headquarters at 5:00 a.m. and
join Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s carpool to JFK.
How did this happen? I wouldn’t hear “no.” Maybe
everyone got tired of fighting me. I hope I wasn’t
obnoxious. But it worked, and I am keyed up and
frightened beyond belief to reach Haitian soil.
1/17/10
Sent from temporary UN headquarters, end of the
runway, PAP airport
Dearest Fam– It’s a total hellhole here and we might
as well be at war in terms of sleeping arrangements.
Nowhere to even pitch a tent! … I’m fine though, just
hot, mosquitoes everywhere, lots of dirt and dust
and people who are miserable. My UN colleagues
are NOT ok, I repeat they should all be evacuated and
new staff flown in. They pulled two guys out of the
UN building today, one of them while the SG was
here so shot that. So exhausted I will sleep fine on a
floor, have my mat and sleeping bag. Nighty night
and will give you much more of an update tomorrow.
LOVE YOU ALL! xoxoxoox
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