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

1/20/10
Hi Dad – I’m absolutely exhausted … Too busy to not
sleep at logbase. Also roads are not very clear, so
hard to get anywhere unless you are on a motorcycle.
Most of the dead have been picked up from
the streets, though you see an occasional body and
you can certainly smell bodies that are still stuck in
the buildings … lots of UN people died, people who I
still can’t believe are gone … going to the Christopher
Hotel is just too painful. I went when Ban Ki-moon
was here, but was able to put it out of my head and
just shoot but it smelled of rotting corpses and to
think that some of my friends died because they
were walking down the stairs at the wrong time
is just unfathomable. Anyway, I’m dealing with it
because everyone around me is … We watched (and I
photographed) 17 Brazilian military who died put on
a plane today after a ceremony. There will be many,
many more memorial services to go to. Tomorrow, I
will tell you about the people of Haiti, who are faring
much worse than the UN people. xoxoxooxo
1/21/10
Hi All – We had a 6.1 earthquake this a.m., but I am
fine. I was sleeping in my tent with a colleague and
she and I panicked fumbling with the zipper on the
door but by the time we got out of the tent it was
over … This is exactly why we are all sleeping outside.
xoxoxoxo
1/26/10
Dear Friends and Family – Unfortunately my
Blackberry was taken from a pocket in my cargo
pants yesterday when Pres. Preval decided to appear
on the lawn of the collapsed presidential palace.
There is a camp full of thousands of people who
Left to right, top to bottom: Bodies of unidentified earthquake
victims were brought from the morgue in Port-au-
Prince to be buried in eight mass graves in an area called Ti
Tanyen. A Catholic priest oversaw the burials.
Marie Jose, one of several citizen supervisors of the
U.N. Development Programme’s Cash for Work program
in the Kafoufey neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, stands
in the rubble that was once her house. The author tells her
story on page 41.
About 50,000 internally displaced people made a
makeshift tent camp on the golf course of the Petionville
Club, a private golf and tennis club in Port-au-Prince.
Teetering in the remains of the Christopher Hotel,
formerly the headquarters of MINUSTAH (the United Nations
stabilization mission in Haiti), an engineer removes
photographs of officials that were still hanging on their
hooks, including the mission’s leaders, who were among the
96 staff members who perished in the earthquake.
Protection for recipients of food aid like this woman
and her 20-kilogram bag of rice became an essential part
of relief efforts. The U.S. Army and Peruvian peacekeepers
working for MINUSTAH provided security for a World Food
Programme distribution, coordinated by the international
humanitarian aid organization GOAL, at the makeshift
camp in Place St. Pierre in Petionville.
A MINUSTAH memorial service for the military peacekeepers
who lost their lives in the earthquake.
are homeless directly in front of the palace where I
happened to be, so I ran over to try to get a shot of
everyone screaming through the fence at him. They
were chanting that Preval should leave, that he is
“kaka” and a thief and that they want Aristide back
… anyway, I got in the middle of a lot of people and
someone clipped it … xxxxoooo
1/28/10
Excerpt of message sent from Boston by Sophie’s
father, Jay, to friends and relatives
Recently, Sophie asked me to share her news. We
were very pleased to hear her voice. Her voice was
raspy from bronchial inflammation, a chronic health
issue for most in PAP, where the irritants from dust
and molecular debris continue to suffuse the air.
She is living in a tent at the entrance to the UN
compound located 60 yards from the runway of the
international airport, where planes and helicopters
rumble in and out around the clock. Even though she
arrived a few hours too late to get a cot or a pillow,
she spoke of how quickly you accept these shortcomings
when you spend your days among people who
are still starving, dehydrated, and homeless … most
of the original staff who survived are being relieved
because the various and frightening symptoms
of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are increasingly
evident — depression, spontaneous crying jags,
inability to concentrate, mania at work, and hostility
— hard to witness but especially difficult among
depleted colleagues and dear friends.
… she has hired a local Haitian with a motorcycle
to provide her daily transportation (US$35 a day,
cash). She said he is an expert if audacious driver
who has been instrumental in helping her file two
photo stories a day. They roam the city and occasionally
the countryside for developments, returning
at night to a workstation where she edits her shots
for a few hours and files them to the wire services
before the 10:00 p.m. deadline. Then up at dawn to
start the process over, seven days a week …
Last Thursday she and her driver left the city to
do a story on the mass graves and gravediggers 30
miles from PAP. The burial ground they discovered
had hundreds of corpses arriving by the hour as the
bulldozers cleared loam from a pit almost as large
as a football field. Only a short distance away was a
pristine beach, empty, with Caribbean water as clear
and blue as the opulent and manicured 5-star shores
of Campo Rojo in the Dominican Republic, not even
100 miles away. Far off, she could see a grey dust
cloud hovering over the damaged hills of PAP. She
said she swam, finally bathing for the first time…
2/2/10
Hi Dad – I’m losing it; Gaelle, my best friend here, is
on her way to pick me up now, we are going to go up
into the mountains to breathe some fresh air. Can’t
pick up my camera today. Tomorrow I will shoot the
WHO vaccination campaign and amputees who
have to be re-amputated as well as looters. Saw a
guy get shot on Saturday night, was shooting the
looters downtown and a US private security dude
killed him … I need a break. So I’m taking today off
and will be totally refreshed tomorrow. The UN
photog from Lebanon is arriving next Tuesday, when
he gets acclimated I will leave for 2 days to the DR for
a bed, food and hot shower. I think I’ve lost 20lbs?!
My pants are falling off of me. I’m working so much
and really only eat one meal a day, plus I have no appetite.
Please don’t be worried, I’m fine just in a bad
bad mood today and fed up …
Met Sean Penn last night! He just walked into logbase
and I ran right into him as I was chowing down
on a piece of chicken! I shared it with him. He’s been
here for 11 days living in an IDP [internally displaced
persons] camp. He’s a nice guy, totally normal! Oh,
and I had a respiratory infection, not sure if I mentioned
that, so am on cipro and vitamin C. Within
two days I started feeling MUCH better. LOVE YOU!
xoxoxo
2/5/10
CARMI!!!! … I really appreciate your sending all
of these emails and it makes me feel so good to
read all of them! … Angelina Jolie is coming next
week and only an Italian photographer and I are
allowed to shoot her, which will be interesting!
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXO
2/8/10
Hi Sus – I’m still in desperate need of a break. I think
you are absolutely right that we need to put ourselves
on a schedule of regular break days. Problem
is that all UN MINUSTAH staff have been evacuated
and they are being replaced by people from peacekeeping
missions all over the world. I have now
been here longer than any of the people who came
from NY or other missions … Everyone else who has
come are coming for 2 weeks only, it makes me feel
very much alone (except for the head of the mission,
Edmond Mulet, who I absolutely adore, he and I are
comrades, when we see each other we almost burst
into tears, including in front of Preval!).
Today my old roommates sent me a video they
made with the song “3 is the magic number” as the
music, and just seeing my house and them made me
cry. I’m happy to be here and realize that I’m resilient
(not as much as the Haitians of course); however, it is
so hard to hear the same stories over and over again
about people who lost all their children and a leg or
arm. And people are not happy about having their
photos taken lately.
…One of my colleagues who was evacuated is
returning next week with cash and a blackberry
from Alejandro. Alejandro has been amazing, I transferred
money into his account and he took it out in
cash, bought me a new blackberry etc and went to
my apartment and collected a bunch of things that
will make me happy to have here. So funny what
makes you happy, I want a specific tee shirt, a voice
recorder, a specific necklace and ring. I want mascara
and more socks and the book I was reading.
I’ve been giving my laundry to a woman who
cleans the bathrooms here at logbase, but it takes
4 days to get the laundry back, so I go 4 days in the
same clothes every 10 days. And the clothes smell
worse than they did when I gave them to her! I think
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