Toronto – Ten months after the January 12th earthquake, the rubble is beginning to be cleared out of Port-au-Prince.

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a story by Deborah Sontag about the American “disaster entrepreneurs” who are leading the cleanup in Haiti, which is expected to cost $1.2 billion USD.

Many of the business owners are veterans of post-hurricane cleanups in the U.S.; Randal Perkins’ Haiti Recovery Group has been in Haiti since a few days after the quake.  The company “partnered with a Haitian conglomerate, imported a dozen shiploads of heavy equipment and set up a state-of-the-art base camp here — but then, nothing”.

Now, the wait appears to be over as the first substantial rubble removal contracts are meted out, focusing mostly on downtown Port-au-Prince.

One interesting takeaway from the story: the Haitian government is paying $32.50 to $58 a cubic yard for debris removal via no-bid contracts, “considerably more than the American government paid contractors after Hurricane Katrina.”  At the same time, Haitian workers on the projects are paid approximately $1000 USD per month, while their American counterparts make $400-$500 USD per day.

Perkins told the New York Times, “People always say you make money off other people’s misery.  But, listen, somebody’s got to do the work.”

Port-au-Prince – It has been said that the earthquake has affected everybody. The earthquake’s strike was so huge that even today big companies, businessmen, and even Catholic churches still can’t rise from it.

Catholicism is well known all around the globe as a big religion with billions of believers. At first when people saw the many damaged Catholic churches, they thought they would quickly be rebuilt. But no, five months after the earthquake, the churches are still piles of rubble.

Ste Therese is one the best-known and oldest Catholic churches of Port-au-Prince, located in Petion-Ville. This church has been a parish since 1987 and was under the control of a vicar named Edmond Jean Pierre. This meant that the building existed for years before it became a parish in 1987. On the 12th January, 2010 it collapsed due to the earthquake.

Many experts visited and eventually concluded that the standing walls of the church needed to be demolished, which meant that the church had to be rebuilt completely. When the Priest, Barthélus Charles Peters, contacted the demolition company CNE, for the demolition, he thought there would be no charge, or if there was one it would not be high. When the company arrived, they informed the Priest that the demolition would cost $2000 per day.

According to Priest Barthélus Charles Peters, the church still hosts all of its weekday activities in a school playground located at the back of the church. On Sunday they have to move to a bigger school playground located a few miles away. Neither of the playgrounds can handle all the believers, but most of them come anyways, even though there’s not enough chairs in the tent for everyone to be comfortable.

The Priest, church members, choir’s members and the youth association called “Jeunes en recherche”, are all willing to receive help from anyone, no matter their religious beliefs. They are hoping for people to at least help them find some chairs, benches or even a tent, so the church can continue it’s holy duty.

I questioned the Priest, asking how Rome is involve in this situation.

He answered by saying that hierarchically speaking, Rome is concerned a great deal, but on the other hand it comes down to the economy. When considering the rate of Catholic churches that have been affected, Rome can’t rebuild all of them on its own since nobody knew this was going to happen. Instead, every member and believer must come in and show support in order to show recognition to their devotion.

Port-au-Prince student, fixer and researcher Emmanuel Midi blogs weekly for Inside Disaster from Haiti. You can learn more about him in these blog posts, connect with him on Facebook or through his business, Haiti Fixers.

Emmanuel volunteers with the youth organization Fonds D’Actions pour le Développement (FAD), profiled by Nicolas Jolliet last month.

Emmanuel Midi

Port-au-Prince - This week when I went out looking for stories, I found myself in an area called Nazon, located between Route de Delmas and Bourdon in Port-au-Prince.

I was taking pictures of a massive excavation scene when a young man named Dejean Medinard came and asked for my identification. After I showed it to him Dejean welcomed me and was happy to answer my questions:

Dejean is in charge of this huge excavation project in Nazon; there’s work going on in the city, just not a great deal of it.

On this project, there is no looting; it’s free for anyone to come by with sledgehammers, break up the concrete, and take any spoils.

The only rule is: you must demolish if you want to take anything from the rubble. The benefit for the owner of the property is having people working for free, to demolish and take away his rubble.

But while these men are crushing the concrete blocks to pull out the iron within them, they are also crushing the human remains trapped in the rubble. According to Dejean Medinard, the workers have retrieved some bones, because some organizations will pay for them. But workers don’t really pay care and attention to the excavation of the bones, the way they do for the iron which is more valuable.

Looking at the bones, hair and dry blood of what used to be a young girl, I felt the weight of responsibility of my country getting heavier on my shoulders.

Before the earthquake, this pile of rubble was a school.

Dejean Medinard told me this was “College Frère Alexandre”, and that he was there when the six-storey building collapsed. He was one of the volunteers who helped take 70 students, both wounded and dead, from the building after the earthquake. This was all they were able to do for a school where there were more than two thousand students plus a family living in the building. Until now they still haven’t received a visit of from the government or any NGO.

Today in Nazon, all there is are workers spread out everywhere with pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows, making piles by the driveway even there’s no truck to transport the rubble outside of town.

I can’t help but think: how are we going to get back to school when we know that some of our friends, our family members are still trapped under these rubbles? The worst part is that even though we know where they are, we won’t be able to identify them because they are only bones and dry blood, mixed with the rubble.

We are on March now, and the government is promising to re-open schools in the next few weeks. Students are already preparing a walk to show that they disagree with that decision. They say that they are not mentally prepared to go back to school in these conditions.

I’m going to do my research and get these pictures for the next week’s report.

Port-au-Prince student, fixer and researcher Emmanuel Midi is blogs weekly for Inside Disaster from Haiti. You can learn more about him in these blog posts, connect with him on Facebook or through his business, Haiti Fixers.

Emmanuel volunteers with the youth organization Fonds D’Actions pour le Développement (FAD), profiled by Nicolas Jolliet earlier this month.