Port-au-Prince – Almost four months have passed since the earthquake, but the Haitian people can’t get the rubble out of sight. This keeps the disaster present every day in their lives, from their streets to the deepest part of their hearts; and the effects are getting worse. People feel like they are slowly losing the opportunity to rebuild their country like they hoped it would be, right after the disaster.

Here’s an example of an everyday downtown street filled with trash and rubble in Port-au-Prince – I wish cameras could capture odour so you could truly feel what it’s like to be near this in the heat:

The mouting tension came to a head on Monday with a serious demonstration ran by the “Fanmi Lavalas” members and their partisans. Their goal was to clearly demonstrate that they don’t want his Excellency, René Garcia Préval, as President any more. In addition, they seized the occasion to demand the return of the founder of their political party to Haiti: his Excellency Jean Bertrand Aristide.

It all started quietly around 9 o’clock in the morning at Bas Delmas, where a lot of people seemed to be waiting for an order to start the demonstration. Around a 9:45am, some rara bands showed up, followed by a pickup truck with a DJ, MC and political members, and the demonstration started. From Bas Delmas to Bel Air, the energy of the demonstrators grew so big that they began to run down the street.

Regardless of the brand or the colour of the car you were driving, if you got close to that demonstration, “aba Preval” would be sprayed on your car.

But there are no easy good and bad guys here: even inside each good and bad side of an issue in Haiti, you’ll find another good and bad side. While this demonstration was against the government, the reason is that Preval has been accused of trying to stay longer than the constitutional term allows, which would normally be against the law. These are soldiers keeping the demonstrators away from the destroyed Presidential Palace of Mr. Preval:

But will the demonstration contribute to change?

In the Bel air neighborhood several shots rang out in the afternoon. At the Champ-de-Mars, looting sessions caused more fights, which led to more shooting.

Many young people were accused of looting, and were beaten by other civilians before being taken to the police officers nearby, or caught by the officers themselves.

But many young people, including me, believe that this should be a time of reflection, not violence, in Haiti. Being against or for governments has never brought any global satisfaction to the population of this country. That’s one of the reasons why several grass roots organizations are now being formed, to see how this country’s youth can come up with solutions for the upcoming generation to help the country as a whole, not just a particular group with its own petty interests.

Here are some of the questions those youth are asking: can a government elected for five years make a change that will last for a lifetime? Can one man, the President, ever find solutions to satisfy more than 10 million people?

And if the answers to these questions are no, where do we go next?

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.

Port-au-Prince — Last week in Port-au-Prince, several walks were organized by different groups of people for a variety of reasons. Here is a story about two of them.

On the 28th of April, REVISE-12 (Reseaux des Victimes du Seisme-12 Janvier), an association made of young people from different blocks, walked from Delmas 33 to Champs-de-Mars for different social issues. Their goal was to catch the attention of the government and the international community.

They have been living in tents and are protesting being taken from their current tent city just to be dropped into another one. The group also would like to know what have been done with all the millions that Haiti has received since the earthquake. Where are the jobs that were promised? It doesn’t make sense that even university-educated young people can only find work picking up rubble, amongst other things. This sign says “Occupation Means Misery”:

And this one is a criticism of the United Nations:

As I were following the walk at Nazon I met Mr. Dérolus Jean Claude, who had just joined in. He said everybody should join that walk, and that he felt sorry he had not of known of this earlier; otherwise, he would have joined in earlier.At Nazon, a picture of the ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was passed around the crowd. The picture was entitled “TITID”, and the lower centered sentence means “We’re waiting for you”.

At Lalue things were a bit disorderly. Some young men took their spray paint out and started to graffiti “aba Preval” on anything they could find, from walls, private vehicles, buses and even on an international army truck.

The soldiers caught one of them with their hands in his bag, hopefully they only warned him not to do it again.

Finally the marchers arrived at Champs-de-Mars exactly at noon;they had to stop since they had started at 9:30am.

On the 29th of April, the next day, there were another walk organized by the artists and the Ministry of Culture. This group started walking from Cabane Choucoune at Petion-Ville to Canape-Vert and then to Champs-de-Mars. The artists were at the back of a truck under Voila umbrellas, while the rest of the followers were walked on foot under the hot sun.

The DJ kept on playing a Masters song entitled “on ti chans pou Ayiti” song which was recorded almost 14 years ago.

Once arriving at Champs-de-Mars they went directly to the Ministry of Culture’s location. Right after the artist got in; however, it seems like the security guards wanted to close the gates. The walkers pushed the gate causing a little situation and a struggle went on for several minutes.

A few minutes later everything settled down and was cool.

Then the artists gathered on the stage and Zagalo, the MC, took his place and started by greeting the public and introduced the Minister of Culture, Madame Marie-Laurence Jocelyn-Lassègue, followed by the artists. When Ritchie had the microphone, he asked everybody to join hands and to lift up a sign of unity, similar to Richie’s t-shirt saying: “ L’union fait la force”.

Several good speeches continued until Zagalo announced that the artists were finished speaking and “it is time for the little ones”. Dead Krazy, a hip hop artist, spoke next, after the special introduction, and made a few jokes for the crowd.

Next it was the turn of Don Carmelo, a “Master’s member”, and while he was speaking the DJ dropped the music on.

Don Carmelo said, if we had paid attention to the Master’s hit track, “on ti chans pou Ayiti” back in the days, we wouldn’t be in such mess nowadays. While I was taking his picture on the stage, I didn’t notice that he had lost his hands. As I interviewed him back stage he told me that he has lost both of his hands trying to get a kid out the rubble after the disaster. His injured hands had only been tended to eleven or twelve days after the quake due to the mass amount of people that needed to be healed.

Finally, it was three o’clock and everything was done; so I wanted to ask few questions to the Minister. One of her security guys told me it is not possible and my only option was to request a meeting. However, the secretary had already left even though the Minister herself was still there, right before my eyes!

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 last month.

Port-au-Prince – Depending on who you listen to, you can hear many defamatory descriptions of Haitian youth. Yes, it is true you’ll find some of them walking the streets all day long, playing cards or dominoes, basketball or football.

But these three brothers decided to show a different side of the youth. The oldest one is only 27 years old, done with classic study but can’t go to university. As a self-taught actor, he teaches the art to his younger brothers so they can make a living.

The brothers spent months performing in the city of Hinche, as well as in Port-au-Prince, because they were trying to save $45.000 Haitian dollars they needed to realize their dream: building this model helicopter:

For these brothers, creating this helicopter is the realization of a lifelong ambition. When they were kids, they were fascinated with the “ti totè”, a local slang for helicopters. The two started to think about making their project a reality when helicopters started to frequently fly over the Haitian soil in the past few decades.

So they have been searching about helicopters for years before they finally figured out the mechanics of what makes helicopters fly. Even once they understood the process, however, they still needed more support and knowledge before they could make it fly.

They began building the chopper in March 2007, and finished it in March 2008. The two participated in a local competition with their helicopter where they made it fly for several minutes, and won the first prize. They tell me that at the same time, a local company offered them $13 000 USD for their creation, but they turned them down.  They wanted to receive something more important than money, like training or continued education. They also wanted it to become a part of Haiti’s national heritage.

After the January 12th earthquake, they took their helicopter out to the airport arrivals area. Their hope was that the foreign people arriving in the country would admire their creation, and that one of them would help them achieve their goals. And by the way, they stuck an Obama picture on the front window next to their own photo, as well as both the American and Canadian flags.

On the top they put the Haitian flag so everybody can easily identify the country in which this helicopter was created.

They also placed their helicopter there as a welcome to all nations coming in their country, especially the U.S Army.

Starting from scratch to create a helicopter, with no experience in the area is not an easy realization and to succeed is quite amazing. These two give Haitian youth a good name – there is no other way to describe these three young men except as “strong minded”!

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.

Port-au-Prince - As I was going downtown the other day, I came across a highly organized food distribution by the NGO Catholic Relief Services, or CRS.

The CRS had hired a bunch of young people to distribute their aid in an organized manner, with backup from U.S. soldiers. The soldiers had cut all access to the street, Rue Magny, where the aid was being distributed.

Many people couldn’t get access to the street even though they weren’t looking for aid. You couldn’t pass the barriers unless you were media, an employee, or have a pre-distributed card; everyone else just heard that simple sentence, “Stay behind the line please!”, over and over.

Some of those people became angry, because they only wanted to go to their job at the “Ministère à la condition feminine” or go to the Digicel customer care office (Digicel is one of our local cell phone providers).

As food began to be distributed, many people left satisfied, while others were still complaining about not having enough for their family, or the lack of access cards.

Yolande Pierre is a 56 –year-old blind woman who was being guided by a ten year-old girl. I met her around the distribution point, sitting on a corner with two heavy sacks of food, plus a bucket and gallon of vegetable oil. She told me she was waiting on her three younger kids to come and help her with the loads.

But they had a problem: her family didn’t really have any real shelter since the earthquake collapsed their house in Christ-roi. She told me that she walks the street every day, hoping to find aid distributions, usually with no luck.
Today she was just passing by Rue Magny when she heard about the distribution.

The two rules of aid distributions are usually 1) you have to have a card to receive aid, and 2) you need to be a woman. Since she didn’t have a card from the previous assessments, she counted on being a woman to get her access, and used her blindness as a source of compassion.

She told me that the Haitians working for CRS didn’t care about the fact she was blind; they were following the rules of their job and told her: “no card, no food: that’s the rule”. Fortunately, she found some kind young people that helped her explain her case to the soldiers; they eventually took pity on her and granted her access to the line. Afterwards, they allowed her to stay in a safe spot right behind them to wait for her kids to come by and help her with her goods.

The rules of aid distribution are important, but sometimes making exceptions is the right thing to do.

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.

I tried in vain to interview some of the merchants today. Some of them pretended to be too busy to be interviewed, while others complained about being interviewed too many times without ever seeing any changes from it. Because nobody wanted to be interviewed, but would permit me to photograph, I took some pictures in the morning, hoping they would tell some of the story for me.

When I came back in the afternoon to try the interviews again, my eye was caught by a little boy on the street. He had bare feet, dirty clothes on, and was begging along the street where fast cars were passing by. At first I thought he was crazy, or homeless and orphaned from the earthquake.

I followed this boy for a little bit, because I couldn’t understand what was going on. It’s not that there aren’t lot of kids in the streets, but they’re usually in squads. As I kept on following him, I realized he was really all by himself.

I decided to talk to him, even though I doubted he could provide any information. The first thing he said to me was “Gimmie some money, I’m very hungry, I’ve been walking and begging for hours and nobody gave me a thing”.

I gave him ten Haitian dollars, and asked his name; he told me “Ti Je” (”Little Eyes”). I asked him where he was going to, and he said “home”. Since I wanted to tell his story, I decided to follow him to his home nearby, a place called “Place Boyer”.

Once we arrived at his tent he earlier had called “home”, I met the woman who is in charge of him when his mother is selling goods at the market.

Knowing that she had neglected her responsibility, she did not want to be photographed with him (she told me he was a “wanderer”). But she allowed me to take pictures of him and answered all my questions.

This woman told me she was the family’s neighbor, which is why she had to keep an eye on him. She said that people call him “ti je” due to the deformation of his eyes, and that before the earthquake, he and his family were living in a slum village not too far from Petion-ville, but away from the city centre.

Because now it is possible for anybody to build a cottage in the street, or in any public place, the mother moved the family to Place Boyer; Ti je’s father disappeared during the earthquake.

Before I left, Ti je bought some plain rice and pea soup with the money I gave him in the camp and started eating.

I had to ask myself: in the years to come, what’s going to keep Ti je from all the downfalls of the streets: drugs, theft, prostitution, and all the lessons that come with them?

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

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

Sainte-Marie, Port-au-Prince - After last night’s rain drenched Haiti’s camps in mud, this morning people had to play hopscotch to get in and out of their tents safely. The camps were were so muddy that people were afraid they would be swallowed up in it.

Making it through the night was a real mental struggle for me. I went to my friend’s house to get away from the drizzling weather. The house is cracked; no expert has visited it yet to tell us if it is secure to stay there. But risky or not, inside and sheltered from the rain is the best place to sleep.

But sleep didn’t come; I spent the whole night with my eyes wide open, so I could easily get away from the building if necessary. It was still dark out in the morning when I left to seek stories for my first blog for Inside Disaster.

My first thought was to to go to the camps in Champs de Mars, where I guessed that the rain would have a disastrous effect, creating another source of panic and disturbance.

But on my way there, an alley off the main road caught my attention. I ventured down the alley, risking that there might not be any story to be told at the end. I had no idea of what I would find in there, but my instincts urged me on.

After walking around for ten minutes, I was surprised to find a big camp flooded in mud, three or four kilometers away from the main street near Canape-vert. I had never heard of this place, called Sainte-Marie. There are lots of fissured houses, stacked between the rubble of the ones that weren’t able to resist the January 12th earthquake.

Further along, I saw both the young and old trying to clean their tents with primitive tools to start another day in the flooded camp. There was an entire community living here, even though the entrance looked like the way to a residential area where there would be no natural disaster victims surviving.

Seeing me with my camera, they automatically assumed I was a journalist. Everybody wanted to be photographed, filmed, to tell their story about that night and ask that always-common question: how are we gonna help them get out of this mess? It shows that Haitians not only expect help from the government and from God, but from anyone with the will and ability to lend a hand.

I sympathize with them. Trying to sleep through the rain can feel like a bad dream – you wake up feeling like you’re drowning and are relieved when you realize you’re not. But when you open your eyes and discover that you’re soaking wet for real, you see it’s not just a nightmare, but part of real life.

I met a young mother who told me she had just spent a sleepless night under pieces of used cloth, supported by wood tied up with home-made ropes. She was trying to cover her two boys so they wouldn’t get wet or catch flu and all other diseases the rain can bring to her kids, who are not old enough to understand what’s going on around them.

I also met this 56-year-old woman, named “Joseph Supreme”. She told me that she had been waiting six hours for the sun to come out, so she could mop up around her shelter.

Joseph toldme she had been sitting on a block all night, thinking of the life she had before the earthquake. The way she lives now, she told me, “is not even a way that I would treat my pigs. What should I do?” She is not the only one asking this question.

Within six hours of the rain stopping, the people in Sainte-Marie had begun to form a line to collect the aid water distributed by UNICEF.

And this was after it had rained for two hours! There is not even a mechanism to collect the rainwater – which is free to all, and hasn’t been branded nor transported in by trucks!

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

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

It feels like many months have passed since we last crossed the border into Haiti, and a lifetime worth of emotions is beginning to hit my brain.

Our crew met for the last time at the Red Cross camp:

And packed up our gear for the trip across the border:

As our crew of four silently stares outside the minivan windows, we can see the landscape change from the Port au Prince region’s dry, treeless horizons to the green and lush paradise of the Dominican Republic.

We never had much time to think while running these long days of work over the past month in Port-au-Prince (P.O.P). We all feel like it is too early to leave our friends behind in the dusty chaos of Haiti’s capital.

Don’t worry Haitian friends, we have enough images in our psychological luggage to knead our brains for weeks to come; we won’t forget your plight as we settle back into our comfortable Toronto lifestyles.

The aid agencies have much work ahead of them, and there are still many more stories that need to be told by the media before Haiti can slip out of international attention.

Our crew will be back in Haiti within six months to document the progress of the country’s reconstruction. Knowing we’ll return helps me with the guilt of “jumping ship” so soon.

As we drive through a barren valley not 20km from P.O.P, Stefan breaks the silence in the van: “Why couldn’t the quake have happened just a few kilometers east? Why did it have to happen right near the most populated city, in the poorest country of the region?” It’s true, when you think about it, what are the odds?

The explanation is easy for religious extremists: “God wanted to punish the sinners of Haiti”. But after spending weeks amongst this country’s “sinners”, I can tell you that the Devil himself would blush in shame for having anything to do with destruction on such a scale.

In a way, we all need an explanation. We want someone, something to blame it on. But unlike wars, there is no one to blame. No corporation, government or organization sold any weapons responsible for this. No one financed revolutionaries to do the killing on their behalf.

From watching the rescue teams competing for the limelight, military public relations officers courting the press into reporting every good deed, I can understand why the international community and politicians are so drawn to natural disasters. They are a great opportunity to do good in the public eye, an a-political PR opportunity for those in power.

A natural disaster is a ‘clean’ calamity. It allows us to forget about the shady trade agreements and economic stands by the international financial institutions that contributed to the poverty of Haiti before the 12th. (I love to read Le Monde Diplomatique for an alternative view on world events).

To me, a natural disaster can be attributed to fate, but not the impoverishment of a population prior to it.

As we drive closer to Santo Domingo and leave Haiti behind, I’m stunned by the difference in wealth and landscapes between these two countries, made up of the same people, living on the same island. What happened to the strong and independent Haiti?

One thing that really struck me from the beginning was the near absence of anger amongst the victims of the earthquake. I talked to Haitians who were angry at the aid coming in too slowly, angry for being forgotten in their camps, and frustrated from hunger and thirst.

But overall, it was as if many of them had accepted the fatality of the earthquake. I would hear phrases like, “This is how it is, this is life”, or “there is nothing to do about it, we must move on”.

Will it be possible to build a better Haiti, with the country now starting from scratch? I believe the Haitians have what it takes. But will the international community really give them a chance once the show is over? Will they cancel the debt?

Toronto: what was that dream I just awoke from? Can you repeat the question?

PTV Productions gave me a very broad mandate as “Web Producer” for the Inside Disaster website. My role was to create portraits of the daily lives of earthquake survivors, rather than focusing on the news stories of the hour.

My goal was to give a voice to the common people of Haiti, to get the public to know them as human beings. I tried to do this with the utmost respect and love, to find dignity when the food lines and desperation would mask it.

Veteran journalists told me the first week after the earthquake was more difficult than anything they had experienced in twenty years on the job. Others talked about photographing “Holocaust images” of the kind the world hasn’t seen for sixty years.

Yet despite the hardships of the situation, one thing in particular was very different from my previous experiences abroad. The media had unlimited access to virtually everything in post-earthquake Haiti. The aid organizations, the citizens and the military understood the importance of getting the stories out to the world in order to bring in as much help as possible. Last year, working in the Amazon forest, I would have guns drawn on me just for taking out my camera, but in P.O.P., no one would ask me any questions as I wandered into any hospital, or into any situation.

In the streets and the camps, people wanted to tell their stories to the world. I spent a good part of my days simply listening to people. The challenge wasn’t to find a story, but rather to stick to only one and not get sidetracked — especially since I had to meet my deadline of uploading a story every night.

Upon my return to Toronto, I’ve been asked in interviews and conversations what it was like for me personally, what marked me, what was the hardest part, and so on.

While I was there, I wished I was a doctor so I could save lives. I wished I was a pilot flying in food to feed people in the camps. I wished I was a Red Cross logistics manager so I could give people tents, or a chemist capable of purifying water.

But I was only a media guy with a camera. I had to play my role by telling stories rather than saving lives. And that was difficult when I was visiting places that hadn’t seen any help yet, and I had no help to offer them.

I hope my work helped to put a human face on survivors, to share the urgency for help. Journalists probably convinced many potential donors with their stories. I took as many pictures as I could and told as many relevant stories as I could.

But as you try to focus on one thing, as you try not to spread yourself too thin, you end up ignoring other stories, ignoring people you could have helped. These memories haunt me now that I have time to replay all the events in my head.

It was Friday the 15th, just a few days after the earthquake. The city was still in shock and the street looked like a scene from the Second World War. Buildings in rubble, people were walking aimlessly in the streets, looking for loved ones within the destruction.

I was in front of the Hopital General, where people had been carrying in the wounded for days. The place was very quiet, and the hospital wasn’t fully operational yet. The only noise covering the silent agony came from the engines of trucks dumping bodies in front of the morgue, right beside the hospital.

On the sidewalk in front of me, less than twenty meters away from the growing pile of corpses rotting in the sun, were a handful of hospital beds holding the wounded. Many more of the injured and dying lay right on the ground around the beds, waiting for care one hoped may come.

I was just getting my first glimpse of the size of the catastrophe. I had barely slept in the last three nights, and like a robot, all I could do was take pictures of this unreal sight. I remember the deafening silence weighing on my shoulders, the sun beating down on my head so hard that my right ear would buzz as I tried to breathe through my mask. This was a completely hypnotizing nightmare, something humans were not built to see. Like a machine, I would trigger my camera, not really looking at what I was capturing.

My lens led me to two wounded girls lying alive right there in the thick of the smell of death.

Someone had dropped them on a blowup mattress right there on the sidewalk. They were waiting for a doctor, without a blanket or clothes to cover them. While submerged in the darkest surroundings I have ever known, it’s the young girl’s naked breast that stood out, that caught my eye.

Surrounded by death, despair and destruction, in this moment, there was nothing more beautiful and precious than the sight of this flowering young woman, nothing more fragile, nothing more innocent, she was hope itself, she was future motherhood.

The image of this girl shook me out my stupor, and woke me from the nightmare around me. (to find beauty everywhere would be key to enduring the next weeks in P.O.P).

My friend and colleague Stanley was standing in the middle of it, all completely traumatized. His own family was missing since the earthquake, and being surrounded by the dead and dying outside the hospital had overwhelmed him: he told me he wanted to go to Carrefour to find them now, immediately. And so we ran…

Days later, I saw the snapshot of the girls on my hard drive. I could have helped these girls, talked to them, gotten to know them. I could have slipped a 50 dollar bill in a guards pocket to make sure they would be taken care of. I could have moved them to a better spot, jut have given them water.

Now, I’ll never know if they made it. There were among the hundreds of thousands of people that needed help that day. But these two had somehow called out for me, and I had run away.

It was a great privilege to be able to tell the stories of the Haitian people, and also a great responsibility. The beauty and strength of my fellow humans never stopped to amaze me throughout my travels, something I surely expected to see much of in a disaster zone.

How can I explain that the horrors I have witnessed would soon be replaced by triumphant humanity? What I carry on my way back to Canada is a rather refreshing feeling of humility, a growing love and faith in what we are capable of as a human society.

I was not alone this past month. I want to thank Emmanuel Midi and Johnny Pierrot for relentlessly and courageously supporting and accompanying me to all the crazy places we went to visit. Back in Toronto, Katie McKenna, Yshia Wallace and the PTV team were working endless days editing, posting, and promoting the blogs.

Nadine, thank you for taking me along on this life changing experience and for allowing me to be part of this project.

Stefan, Simon, Paul, Tony, I feel fortunate to have witnessed first-hand what the cream of Canadian documentary filmmaking is capable of.

And dear readers, thank you for all of your pertinent and encouraging comments that gave me energy and inspiration throughout these challenging weeks.

I can’t wait to go back to Haiti.

Port-au-Prince – Since the day I met Emmanuel and Johnny in front of the Embassy, we have continued working together. They are the students you can see in the blog from January the 24th, “There isn’t much of a future for us”.

I’ve been paying them for their work as “fixers”. I thought they would carefully save the money for their very uncertain future, or perhaps spend it on basics to improve their comfort in the camp, like getting their own tent and so on.

But no, the students spent all their money on this organization which they started back in 2005. It is called FAD (Fonds D’Actions pour le Développement). The goal is to help the underprivileged kids around Cité Soleil and Bas Delmas. Before the quake, every Saturday, they would greet between 100 to 200 kids in the school of Bas Delmas, feed them and have creative activities.

Addressing poverty is not only providing food, clothing and shelter, but it is also providing intellectual stimulation, love, fun, creative energies, some more love, psychological counseling, laughter, group dynamics, skill development and so much more. The 50 members of FAD have been doing a great job at this since 2005. And they have been doing it on their own, even if in 2007 FAD was officially registered with the Haitian government. They would collect funds amongst themselves and buy as much food as they could. Most of the time it would just be plain rice, but occasionally there would be candies.

Since the earthquake, the FAD members have been victims as well, and it took a while for them to find each other, gather some money and start again. But they did it, and I was invited to attend the first “Hebdo-FAD” event after the disaster.

In the crowded class room, there is no bible and no God with any agenda or judging anyone’s sins, only a universal tolerant God sitting outside of all religions is present. There is a mix of kids from every faith, background, social class and age.

For the first hour, the kids sing fun songs, songs they have written themselves. They dance and clap their hands. The counsellors take turns doing different activities. In one of the activities, they talk about the earthquake, explain what it is, how it has happened before in other countries, and the fact that it is a natural phenomenon (not God punishing them for their sins). They talk about remembering the ones who didn’t make it, what it means to move on and keep growing and learning, rebuilding the country etc…

There are many foreign NGOs working in Haiti. There is a desperate need for help in hospitals, in the camps and in the orphanages, and it is important to send money to the main organizations like the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontiere so they can work on the ‘bigger jobs’.

But an organization like FAD is built by victims and young intellectuals who know the  local culture and can play an important role in Haiti’s recovery as well, especially in the long run. Jose-Hancy Lamy (President of FAD) told me how they would like to take in more children, have the means to have more skill development activities, have their own building equipped with a kitchen among many other projects.

Since the FAD organization is officially registered with the government (No.STC-05902, 16 March, 2007), I am able to wire funds every week to help them continue.

If you want to help them as well, you can easily send funds to this Paypal account: fad@theplaceonearth.com. If you don’t have a Paypal account, you can open one at www.paypal.com.

Emmanuel will upload pictures and reports every week so we can follow their progress.

Johnny était en classe lorsque la terre a commencé à trembler. La secousse était si forte que les jeunes ne pouvaient pas se rendre jusqu’à la porte. Johnny a eu le réflexe de grimper sur une chaise et de sauter par la fenêtre. D’autres élèves ont fait comme lui, mais plupart n’ont pas eu la chance de s’échapper.

Son cousin Emmanuel était juste à l’extérieur du bâtiment, il avait été chercher de quoi manger. Les deux se sont retrouvés vraiment sous le choc. Ils ne comprenaient pas ce qui venait de se passer. À travers le chaos, les cris, et la poussière, ils partirent à la recherche de leurs familles.

Ils ne les ont toujours pas trouvés d’ailleurs.

Aujourd’hui, je les ai raccompagnés au “Bâtiment B” de l’Université des Hautes-Études pour voir ce qu’il en restait. C’était très émouvant et ça les a fait réfléchir sur leur avenir, leurs études et leurs buts dans la vie.

Alors que nous fouillons dans les décombres, Emmanuel a été surpris, voire sous le choc de trouver une carte parmi les briques brisées : “c’était l’anniversaire de quelqu’un».

C’était un poème :

Hier est passé
Demain est un mystère
Aujourd’hui est un cadeau
C’est pourquoi nous l’appelons le présent
Le plus beau jour de ta vie est aujourd’hui
Ton avenir est basé sur le jour présent
Profites de la vie aujourd’hui
Du succès et du bonheur

Que le maître et l’architecte de l’univers
Te montre le chemin à suivre
Joyeux anniversaire

C’était une note d’un étudiant au directeur de l’école.

Nous nous sommes assis sur le côté de l’immeuble et avons parlé pendant quelque temps.

«La vie était déjà difficile en Haïti avant le séisme, mais nous pouvions étudier et avoir espoir d’un meilleur avenir. Si nous ne pouvons pas finir nos études, il n’ya pas beaucoup d’avenir pour nous. Nous ne pouvons pas quitter le pays, nous n’avons pas d’argent ni de famille. ”

Johnny et Emmanuel ont espoir qu’un État étranger aidera Haïti en leur fournissant des visas étudiants. Ils me disent qu’ils veulent terminer leur formation, allez de l’avant et faire quelque chose de cette vie”.

Avec l’ampleur de la destruction, ils ne voient pas comment le bâtiment pourra être reconstruit. Ça prendra des années pour reconstruire les écoles.

Ils veulent terminer leurs études maintenant pendant qu’ils sont encore jeunes. Emmanuel avait économisé pendant des années pour pouvoir aller à l’université – et maintenant tous ces efforts sont perdus. Leurs parents ont fait beaucoup sacrifices pour pouvoir les envoyer à l’école, et c’est pourquoi ils ne veulent pas abandonner.

Emmanuel veut aller à l’étranger, terminer ses études et est prêt à travailler très dur. Il veut revenir ici et retrouver ses parents en vie, afin qu’il puisse les remercier en aidant à la reconstruction du pays.

Mais tous ses certificats et bulletins d’école sont perdus : Johnny n’a aucun moyen ou preuve pour attester de la véracité de ses trois années qu’il a complété sur quatre dans son programme d’économie.

Johnny veut aller étudier à l’étranger, et revenir pour son pays : «J’aime Haïti, le soleil y est magnifique, dit-il. «Je veux que mon pays puisse un jour respirer un air d’espoir et de liberté. Je veux être ici quand cela arrivera ».

Il veut faire partie des personnes qui feront une différence pour Haïti. Il veut revenir riche et investir dans son pays et son peuple.

«Tout est à reconstruire à partir de zéro. Peut-être arriverons-nous à rebâtir un pays meilleur qu’avant, mais combien de temps ça va prendra ? Nous voulons terminer nos études, afin de pouvoir être en mesure d’aider notre pays. ”

Vidéo : Nico rencontre Emmanuel devant l’ambassade du Canada

Pouvez-vous aider Emmanuel et Johnny ? Partager cet article avec de la Gouverneure générale Michaëlle Jean ou aidez-nous à passer le mot dans votre communauté en partageant ce poste avec vos amis et votre famille.

School’s out.

Johnny was in class when the earth started trembling. The shaking was so strong that they couldn’t walk out the door. Johnny had the instinct to climb on a chair and jump out of a window; a few other students followed him. Most didn’t get a chance to escape.

His cousin Emmanuel was just outside the building; he’d been getting some food. The two met in shock, not understanding what had happened. Amongst the chaos, the cries, and the dust they ran to find their families.

They haven’t found their folks – yet.

Today I accompanied them back to the “Batiment B” of the Université Hautes-Etudes to see what was left of it. It was very emotional and got them thinking about their future, their studies, their goals in life.

As we sort through the rubble, Emmanuel is stunned to find a card amongst the broken bricks: “it was someone’s birthday”.

It’s a poem, in French:

Yesterday has passed
Tomorrow is mystery
Today is a gift
This is why we call it present
The biggest day of your life is today
You future is based on today
enjoy your gift of today
for success and flawless joy
may the master and architect of the universe
show you the path to follow
Happy birthday

It was from a fellow student, to the principal of the school.

We sit down on the side of the building and talk for awhile.

“Haiti was already very difficult before the earthquake, but we could study and hope for a future. If we can’t finish our studies, there isn’t much of a future for us. We can’t leave the country; we have no money, no family.”

Emmanuel and Johnny hope a foreign state will help Haiti by providing them with student visas. They tell me they want to “finish [our] education, to move forward, to make something of this life”.

With the amount of destruction, they don’t see how the building can be fixed; it will take years to rebuild the schools.

They want to finish their education now, as young men. Emmanuel had saved up for years to be able to go to university – and now it is all gone. Both of their parents sacrificed a lot to help them through school, and that’s why they don’t want to let go of it.

Emmanuel wants to go abroad, finish his studies, work hard. He wants to come back here and find his parents alive, so he can repay them and help rebuild the country.

But all the school’s papers are lost: Johnny has no certificate to show for his the three years he’s spent on a four-year economics program.

Johnny wants to go abroad to study, and come back for his country: “I love Haiti, it has a beautiful sun,” he says. “I want my country to one day breathe an air of hope and freedom. I want to be here when this happens”.

He wants to be part of the people who will make a difference for Haiti. He wants to come back rich, to invest in his country and people.

“Everything has to be rebuilt from scratch. Maybe we can rebuild a better country than before, but how long will it take? We want to finish our education, so we can be in a position to help our country.”

Related video: Nico meets Emmanuel outside the Canadian Embassy

Can you help Emmanuel and Johnny? Share this story with Canadian Governor-General Michaëlle Jean or help us spread the word in your community by sharing this post with friends and family.