Quake survivor finds a reason to sing again

By Mara Schiavocampo

LEARN HOW GINETTE SAINFORT SURVIVED THE EARTHQUAKE HERE

As they combed through a mountain of rubble almost a week after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, rescuers from Los Angeles doubted they would find anyone alive.

“It’s like a needle in a haystack,” says lead rescuer Terry DeJournett. Ginette Sainfort had last been seen at her bank but it now looked more like a mountain of debris. And there was no sign of Ginette.

But even as the days ticked away, her husband Roger never lost hope. “I never, never thought she was die,” he said. For six straight days, Roger stood vigil. He had spent every day of the last 15 years with his wife. He wasn’t about to leave her now.

“I called Ginette, Ginette, Ginette. She did no answer me,” he said. Or so he thought,. Under 30 feet of broken concrete, in total darkness, Ginette called out for Roger just as he did for her. “Everytime I hear his voice,” she said. “I said, I’m alive! I’m alive! Please help me, I’m alive!”

Though he couldn’t hear her please, Roger mobilized help, convincing an excavator to clear piles of rubble. Finally, after six days, they found her. Rescuers moved in, climbing into the hole where Ginette was trapped.

After working for hours, they finally managed to free Ginette’s pinned hands, and carry her out. That’s when the amazing happened – she started to sing. “It’s probably the most moving moment for any rescue that a rescuer will ever have,” said DeJournett.

Ginette is now back in Port au Prince, working at a different branch of the same bank. Despite her ordeal, and losing four fingers, she says she hasn’t had a single day of depression. “I’m alive,” she said. “I have no time for sadness.”

Just moments of happiness with her devoted husband.

source

Novelist Edwidge Danticat: “Haitians Are Very Resilient, But It Doesn’t Mean They Can Suffer More Than Other People” – Democracy Now

An insightful look at Haiti through the eyes of Fidel Castro.

The Lesson of Haiti By Fidel Castro Ruz

Fidel…
January 17, 2010 – Granma

TWO days ago, at almost six o’clock in the evening Cuban time and when, given its geographical location, night had already fallen in Haiti, television stations began to broadcast the news that a violent earthquake – measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale – had severely struck Port-au-Prince. The seismic phenomenon originated from a tectonic fault located in the sea just 15 kilometers from the Haitian capital, a city where 80% of the population inhabit fragile homes built of adobe and mud.

The news continued almost without interruption for hours. There was no footage, but it was confirmed that many public buildings, hospitals, schools and more solidly-constructed facilities were reported collapsed. I have read that an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.3 is equivalent to the energy released by an explosion of 400,000 tons of TNT.

Tragic descriptions were transmitted. Wounded people in the streets were crying out for medical help, surrounded by ruins under which their relatives were buried. No one, however, was able to broadcast a single image for several hours.

The news took all of us by surprise. Many of us have frequently heard about hurricanes and severe flooding in Haiti, but were not aware of the fact that this neighboring country ran the risk of a massive earthquake. It has come to light on this occasion that 200 years ago, a massive earthquake similarly affected this city, which would have been the home of just a few thousand inhabitants at that time.

At midnight, there was still no mention of an approximate figure in terms of victims. High-ranking United Nations officials and several heads of government discussed the moving events and announced that they would send emergency brigades to help. Given that MINUSTAH (United Stabilization Mission in Haiti) troops are deployed there – UN forces from various countries – some defense ministers were talking about possible casualties among their personnel.

It was only yesterday, Wednesday morning, when the sad news began to arrive of enormous human losses among the population, and even institutions such as the United Nations mentioned that some of their buildings in that country had collapsed, a word that does not say anything in itself but could mean a lot.

For hours, increasingly more traumatic news continued to arrive about the situation in this sister nation. Figures related to the number of fatal victims were discussed, which fluctuated, according to various versions, between 30,000 and 100,000. The images are devastating; it is evident that the catastrophic event has been given widespread coverage around the world, and many governments, sincerely moved by the disaster, are making efforts to cooperate according to their resources.

The tragedy has genuinely moved a significant number of people, particularly those in which that quality is innate. But perhaps very few of them have stopped to consider why Haiti is such a poor country. Why does almost 50% of its population depend on family remittances sent from abroad? Why not analyze the realities that led Haiti to its current situation and this enormous suffering as well?

The most curious aspect of this story is that no one has said a single word to recall the fact that Haiti was the first country in which 400,000 Africans, enslaved and trafficked by Europeans, rose up against 30,000 white slave masters on the sugar and coffee plantations, thus undertaking the first great social revolution in our hemisphere. Pages of insurmountable glory were written there. Napoleon’s most eminent general was defeated there. Haiti is the net product of colonialism and imperialism, of more than one century of the employment of its human resources in the toughest forms of work, of military interventions and the extraction of its natural resources.

This historic oversight would not be so serious if it were not for the real fact that Haiti constitutes the disgrace of our era, in a world where the exploitation and pillage of the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants prevails.

Billions of people in Latin American, Africa and Asia are suffering similar shortages although perhaps not to such a degree as in the case of Haiti.

Situations like that of that country should not exist in any part of the planet, where tens of thousands of cities and towns abound in similar or worse conditions, by virtue of an unjust international economic and political order imposed on the world. The world population is not only threatened by natural disasters such as that of Haiti, which is a just a pallid shadow of what could take place in the planet as a result of climate change, which really was the object of ridicule, derision, and deception in Copenhagen.

It is only just to say to all the countries and institutions that have lost citizens or personnel because of the natural disaster in Haiti: we do not doubt that in this case, the greatest effort will be made to save human lives and alleviate the pain of this long-suffering people. We cannot blame them for the natural phenomenon that has taken place there, even if we do not agree with the policy adopted with Haiti.

But I have to express the opinion that it is now time to look for real and lasting solutions for that sister nation.

In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba – despite being a poor and blockaded country – has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now work with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured.

Another significant number of young Haitians are currently studying medicine in Cuba.

We are also cooperating with the Haitian people in other areas within our reach. However, there can be no other form of cooperation worthy of being described as such than fighting in the field of ideas and political action in order to put an end to the limitless tragedy suffered by a large number of nations such as Haiti.

The head of our medical brigade reported: “The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives.” He made that statement in a succinct message hours after his arrival yesterday in Port-au-Prince with additional medical reinforcements.

Later that night, he reported that Cuban doctors and ELAM’s Haitian graduates were being deployed throughout the country. They had already seen more than 1,000 patients in Port-au-Prince, immediately establishing and putting into operation a hospital that had not collapsed and using field hospitals where necessary. They were preparing to swiftly set up other centers for emergency care.

We feel a wholesome pride for the cooperation that, in these tragic instances, Cuba doctors and young Haitian doctors who trained in Cuba are offering our brothers and sisters in Haiti!

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 14, 2009
8:25 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

As predicted by many the media has now abandoned the issue of Haiti as a news-maker. Coverage on what is going on is getting light. Again we don’t get the necessary updates to overstand the details of how much help and what type of help Haiti is in desperate need of. Please click the links below to get up to date information of how we can continue to help Haiti. Click picture for Updates on the situation in Ayiti.

http://www.africaspeaks.com/haiti/

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/haiti.quake/

Me Big Chief

By Bukka Rennie

Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere, paid reparations to France to the tune of 150 million in “gold francs”. Imagine paying reparations for having won your independence in one of the bloodiest episodes in modern history. The oppressed compensating the oppressor for their freedom.

That was a shock to many in the audience at the recently-held CLR James conference who may not have been so informed previously.

Haiti is what it is today because of the numerous compounded negative effects it faced, such as the deliberate political and economic non-recognition by all the then major nations of the world, coupled, of course, with the geometric effect of having to pay such severe reparations.

That is a historic fact. But why the surprise? The white planters in the English-speaking Caribbean were the ones compensated to the tune of some £200 million for the loss of slave labour. The ex-slaves got nothing. Similarly, the rice and cotton planters of the southern states of America were likewise compensated after slavery was abolished.

The Euro-centrics have always sought reparation and compensation for their “kith and kin” wherever they may be and whatever may have been the disaster suffered. Similarity of treatment to those of us who are not of their kith and kin has never been their agenda.

The First Peoples of the Americas, the so-called Red Indians, culturally were of an entirely different view of the world to that of the British and Europeans with whom they clashed. The First Peoples had no concept of private ownership of the physical and natural environment.

“How can you own the rivers and the trees and the animals around? Can you own the air we breathe and all these things so necessary for living?”

Questions to that effect were posed by Chief Seattle and Chief Crazy Horse. And they were not afraid to die for their cause. They lost eventually and paid the ultimate price. Genocide and disappearance of their civilisation.

Reparations in any form to the minority groups of them still existing have never been considered. What is fundamental though is that they exist in an environment today in which there are mechanisms for sustainable development.

The people of Haiti were also not afraid to die, they embraced the modern concepts of “liberty, fraternity and equality” and fought the French Europeans to establish these principles. They won and yet they were made to pay and are still paying in different ways as they work out the essential mechanisms.

The USA’s role in all of this is documented history even as she grew up and matured as a country projected as the bastion of freedom and democracy. But how could such a country at this time, in today’s world, have the audacity to walk out of the Durban Conference on the question of reparations for the descendants of slavery that existed on their shores for well over 300 years? The simple answer is that black people are not considered their “kith and kin”.

The point being made in the two previous columns is that America needs to review its foreign policies and its positions in relation to the rest of the world. And not only because of the events of October 11 when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked. The necessity existed all along.

Real enlightened, visionary leadership would have seen to that since the ’60s when for the first time every aspect and facet of world civilisation, Eastern as well as Western, was put to question by conscious youth and progressive working-class forces everywhere.

In many instances, it was the skewed tenets of American foreign policy that served, inadvertently or not, to prop up all kinds of crazy, backward regimes such as that of fundamentalist “mullahs” with their anachronistic feudal political structures reminiscent of the Middle Ages, or even that of modern brutal dictatorships as existed in Chile and Panama and the Philippines.

What is ironic is that some of these very backward regimes would in the long run turn against America and foster popular hostilities against her when it seemed to be in their narrow economic interests to do so, eg the Taliban and Iraqi regimes.

While all this is happening the masses of people therein are deliberately kept hungry and trapped in some twilight time zone mouthing and screaming emotional epithets, and at the same time their progressive strata are effectively isolated and quietly but brutally liquidated.

Look, we have been saying over and over that America has a particular responsibility. Precisely because she is now the only super-power and that power must be exercised and be wielded with a firm sense of morality. The “person” or “nation” placed for whatever reason on a pedestal has to bear the greatest moral burden before the rest of the world.

Borges, the Argentine writer, claims that America is a country that has assigned to herself the name of an entire continent. If such is the case, is she to look or to continue to look upon the rest of the continent as her personal “backyard”?

We said in the column “War of the flea”, that America “represents a benchmark in humanity’s long march and the point is that no one wants to be left out…” A “benchmark” is a stage that measures or denotes significant and fundamental accomplishment and achievement.

America is the country that has taken the present prevalent mode of production, distribution and consumption to its highest levels. She manages and controls the global market and she is the one that profits the most from globalisation. It is a mode that warrants all the basic freedoms, including the freedom of choice and the right to the pursuit of knowledge and happiness.

In relative terms it is the mode of production that has extended the democratic process the furthest. All the known modes of the past, eg tribalism, communalism, feudalism, slavery, early capitalism and all its degenerate totalitarian variants, ie state capitalism/socialism, fascism, etc, have to one extent or another been hindrances to the democratic processes and been major blots on humanity’s long march towards universal freedom.

America, just as she has assigned the name of a whole continent to herself, has likewise assigned to herself and her system, “Democracy” (with a capital “D”), as if to suggest that she is equivalent to the be-all and end-all of humanity’s quest for complete fulfilment.

Nothing is further from the truth. Yet she is today a benchmark of modernity and what is supposed to accompany that is a moral burden and a moral responsibility; mess that up and the hostility towards America will intensify. Just as happens when any big chief anywhere betrays the moral trust.

There is this standing joke in our favoured “watering hole” in Tunapuna: Put two airplanes on the tarmac in any underdeveloped country in the world and say that one is bound for “America” and the other to anywhere else and see which of the two airplanes would be filled to capacity.

No one wants, nor is it possible, to destroy this benchmark of humanity’s collective travail. All and sundry want to be part of it though on mutually beneficial terms and all wish to be respected for whatever unique particularity they may bring to the common agenda.