Stigmat Photo

A violent earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, taking hundreds of thousands of lives and plunging the country – already ravaged by more than its fair share of catastrophes – into unimaginable chaos. At 4:53pm the earth shook: a 7.3-magnitude quake. 250 000 to 300 000 people lost their lives, 300 000 others were injured, and 1.2 million were left homeless. The island and its people will never be the same.

The most horrifying thing? Not the omnipresent death, with its persistent odor, nor the devastation of torn-up streets, nor the buildings hanging by a thread, hastily abandoned in fear of the aftershock that could topple them. The dead are dead. The survivors, the ones who were spared, will be left to deal with the trauma, the loss, and the suffering that will only worsen with each passing day. The images that stay with you after spending time in Port-au-Prince are those of the survivors: traumatized, injured, and clearly in a state of shock. Those whose families have been devastated. Those who are living in fear. Those who are suffering, whose injuries are getting worse by the day, who are going hungry and thirsty. But also those who are helping each other: the stories of compassion, of human beings coming together in the most basic human way: as a community.

48 hours after the earthquake: quiet. Panic has given way to silence; the streets of Porte-au-Prince are an unreal world where destruction meets with grief. The days go by. The international media starts to arrive, the world starts to realize the full extent of the drama and luckily indifference has not gotten the better of common human feeling. A week later, finally, international aid has been organized and mobilized. The NGOs that have come to Port-au-Prince, the rescue crews have arrived from the four corners of the world. Before even beginning to think about reconstruction, everyone must dig, search for survivors, pull bodies out of the wreckage, give first aid, find food and water.

Yet in Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere in the country, there is a long to go before returning to anything approaching the way things were before. We will have to go back to bear witness to the drama, but also to see what we find looking deeply into people’s eyes. There is life, and there is strength. Something that nothing can ever take away. Something that looks like hope.