"HELL WILL IT STILL DANCING UNDER OUR FEET?"
Life and Death
At least 170,000 Haitians have lost their lives following the earthquake on Jan. 12, but death has also totally changed the report to the lives of survivors. Evelyne Trouillot is the writer who made the observation:
"Since Tuesday, life here is defined primarily by the non-confirmation of the death of oneself, loved ones, relatives and friends . Since Tuesday, life has changed completely. It is measured by the joy of someone removing the rubble of despair at the approach of night without any news of a missing relative, the intense jubilation at the sight of a friend of a street at random. A friend who has survived a living friend. " [1]
Even shared emotion among Kettly March [2] :
" I lucky to still have electricity and access to the internet. Alleluia! When I open my PC and a new name appears in the list of my online contacts, I breathe blow. Ayibobo! [3] "
The body count
Evelyne Trouillot continues
"Since Tuesday, we are counting our dead. The nameless dead, names known to raise a collective reaction, figures which make us shudder. A woman lost seventeen members of his family, a man saw his wife and three children perished in the rubble and killed himself.
photo Julien tack
Since Tuesday, the horror has taken hitherto unknown faces. Tressautent children at the slightest sound of a door slamming or a truck passing. Teenagers have become acquainted with death, having learned that it can suddenly appear at once and destroy loved ones.
Mark Endy
writer for his part, spent a chronic daily from Port-au-Prince to the website of Le Point. The 8th day, he recounts the plight of one of his friends:
"You learn that such has lost a parent, a child. My friend Mark Endy. Member of the Workshop on Thursday night. When the house collapsed, he realized that the child was dead, he had to save his companion. He left the child in the rubble to bring his wife and he sought treatment. He spent the night with her. The next day he returned to the destroyed house. He took the body of his child and he burned it. Then he picked up the bones and put them in a box, until one day (who knows when?) It can be buried as was the custom here to bury people. Since the disaster, I have not seen a few of my friends. I have made art of storytelling, I am very afraid of those who await me. " [4]
Making the apocalyptic prophecy
And as horrible as this evidence may seem, his friend can consider that He was lucky in terms of all those who have not been able to bury their dead according to Christian rites, or those, voodoo, the dessounen, make their last respects, and to do their grief work. The health emergency imposed to act quickly: the bodies are gone Tens of thousands join anonymously in mass graves hastily. Struck by this tragedy, not weaken, the religious fervor of Haitians has increased. When on earth everything collapses around you, there is little more than the religion that allows you to hang you for something. The testimony of Danny Laferriere, delivered during a conference [5] given in Paris, could almost raise a smile if the circumstances were so dramatic:
"In this first night there was a guy in the neighborhood of Jealousy, a poor neighborhood, who preached hard on the street. A mother went out to ask him to pray more quietly. He said he did not pray, but he asked forgiveness. The mother replied that her children were sleeping and that he would welcome apologize silently. And the discussion continued. The only act of courage that I realized that night was to have turned off the radio. RFI was, I believe, who covered the quake. And then a show on the furniture. It was too hard. Until the corner where I find myself filled with a clamor. Thousands of euphoric voice, Jehovah's Witnesses who were singing their victory, the realization of their apocalyptic prophecy. Energy Witnesses woke everyone. We waited a long dawn, it was a night that did not end. "
Guilty
Kettly The author Mars describes it as the religious fervor, and focuses on the feeling of guilt that consumes those who are paradoxically, however, that the victims of a natural disaster: "We are hungry , thirst, and we suffer. And we pray all night. For the fifth consecutive night they prayed, his hands raised to heaven. Jesus! ... Jesus! The name on everyone's lips. We have too much sin is punished by God. Repent! Such a test can not be a punishment from God, we see fish fatigued. Difficult to remove it heads, it's hard not to believe in the curse. " [6]
The blood of Jesus Christ
Some will go crazy, like this woman that her daughter took her to the only psychiatric hospital that has Port-au-Prince. Journalist Jean-Paul Mari recounts his reaction during his visit to this center, "" They are there, they'll take me "shouts the young woman. She sees evil danger everywhere, is suffering from delusions of persecution . His daughter supports him caress his forehead. She calms down, then resumes: "blood ... all that blood! The blood of Jesus Christ!" " [7] .
This woman suffers from severe PTSD, but to varying degrees, we can say that all those who experienced the earthquake January 12 and are traumatized many replicas are not made for calm.
loss benchmarks
Beyond the irreparable loss of loved ones, we can understand by reading the testimony of Dany Laferrière, after such an event, benchmarks have been shattered, what everyone thought and strong protector was not worse the most mundane objects are now becoming a threat: "The most striking, in an earthquake of 7.3 is that you can almost run without falling. But the heavy concrete houses, they have yielded. There are over 30 years in Haiti, an orgy of concrete which was believed it would protect cyclones. They are also the objects that have killed many people in the rooms; televisions including flying in the apartments.
Prix Medicis 2009
is the force that killed him. And yet, I watched carefully the next day: not a flower garden of the hotel where I was has been broken. Not one. (...) [The day of the earthquake,] I counted 43 earthquakes in the night. I was sure I could never trust the earth. " [8]
"Hell Will still dance beneath our feet? "
March Kettly find words to share with us what it feels like Haitians today, following the trauma:
"The shaking until mid-day, four days later. I'm traumatized, but I realize I can not do everything just not holding my body when he panics. I think that about two million people suffer from the same trauma. We hear the ominous sound that comes with the shock and we feel the earth tremble beneath our feet, but we do not always know if the sensation is felt or imagined. The hell is he still dancing under our feet? I call it the shock syndrome.
I also suffer from the syndrome of the open door. When I'm in the house, I always have an open door in front. To run faster than death. An illusion, however. The survivors have survived because the houses in which they were not fallen. Other have not had time to leave. Within seconds it was over, two spasms of the bowels of the earth and our destiny was a head to tail. We still sleep under the stars. God, what nights are beautiful! " [9]
to follow ...
Frederick Gircour (chien.creole @ gmail.com)
[1] Evelyne Trouillot, "Since Tuesday we have our dead," appeared on the website Biblios Nouvel Observateur, January 21 2010 ( http://bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/20100119/17073/evelyne- Us-Trouillot writes dhaiti )
[2] Kettly Mars, "Staying alive and perpetuate life" appeared on the website MontrayKréyol January 22, 2010 (http://www.montraykreyol.org/spip. php? article3474)
[3] Ayibobo, voodoo term equivalent here of "hallelujah" mentioned above but also serves as a greeting between voodoo.
[4] Lyonel Trouillot, A Short History reactions to the horror of the earthquake, published on the website of the Point, January 27, 2010 (http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-monde/2010-01-27/carnet-de-bord-a-haiti -petite-histoire-des-reactions-al-horreur-du-seisme-par-lyonel/924/0/417529)
[5] Danny Laferrière, Do not be intimidated, published in Time, January 28, 2010, transcript Arnaud Robert ( http://www.letemps.ch/Facet/print/Uuid/3cc16e1a-0b10-11df-9ef2- c16ac67aac55/Ne_pas_se_laisser_intimider )
[6] Kettly Mars, "Staying alive and perpetuate life" appeared on the website MontrayKréyol January 22, 2010 (http://www.montraykreyol.org / spip.php? article3474)
[7] Jean-Paul Mari, "The" crazy "in Port-au-Prince. "Le Nouvel Observateur, 27 January 2010 (http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/speciales/seisme_en_haiti/20100126.OBS4847/les_fous_de_portauprince.html)
[8] Haiti, the overwhelming testimony of the writer Dany Laferrière, le Monde, January 16, 2010
[9] Kettly Mars, "Staying alive and perpetuate life" appeared on the website MontrayKréyol January 22, 2010 (http://www.montraykreyol.org/spip.php?article3474)
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