Haiti is on my mind and I am very sad today.

I was in Port-au-Prince twice in 2009.

When I arrived the first time and walked through the streets, the people stared at me cold.  At first glance, it was an unwelcoming place.

My dear friend Jean-Marc de Matteis, whom I hope is alive and well tonight, smirked a bit and said, “The thing with Haitian people is that they’ve been through a lot.  It’s a hard life here and people wear it on their faces.  But that’s not the true nature of Haitian people.  Watch what happens if you make eye contact and simply say ‘bonjour’ to someone.”

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I did.  And I always got a smile.   Sometimes a quick flash of a smile and back to a glare, but the glare became an easier glare.  Sometimes they’d smile a massive smile and say “bonjour” back.   It’s an amazing feeling of getting a smile 100 times out of 100 attempts.   The country really was a welcoming place.

I don’t exaggerate when I tell you I said “bonjour” to almost everyone with whom I made eye contact.   And Port-au-Prince is a crowded place, which means a lot of people to greet.  My friend and interpreter, Alain Charles, who, as of this moment I cannot locate — and it’s taking me enormous restraint to not cry — took notice and would often laugh whenever I said “bonjour.”  To him it seemed like I was kind of insane.  Like I would if he tried it in L. A. or New York City.  But I loved doing it.

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Even then, before the earthquake, Port-au-Prince was an unbelievable mess.  Practically no infrastructure worth talking about.  There was no electricity in many (most?) parts of the city.  As night began to fall, whole swaths of the capital became deserted for lack of light and security.  Bonfires provided the only way to move about without getting lost.   Traveling as moths to flames.

One night, after a marketplace turned from lively to utterly apocalyptic, I decided to walk very far into the depths of the darkest, most dangerous part of town, deeper than Alain was comfortable going, and he had lived in the city all his life.   But I kept saying to him “one more bonfire, that one in the distance, then we’ll head back.”

In retrospect, it was an almost suicidal mission.   It’s hard to believe I made it in as far as I did and was able to return to safer quarters.  But it’s important to say that what kept me from being fearful was my continuing to make eye contact.   No one wanted to say hello and I didn’t speak either.   And even though I was conspicuous, carrying two cameras out in the open, no one bothered me.  I would look at them, they would look at me.  This happened maybe a hundred times over the course of the evening.  They were ghosts to me, and I was an apparition to them.  I passed through a nightmarish, spectral landscape unharmed; they allowed me to.

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I spent a lot of time in Cite Soleil, considered by most to be the worst slum in the Western Hemisphere.  The Wikipedia entry for Cite Soleil states, “Armed gangs roam the streets. Murder, rape, kidnapping, looting, and shootings are common as every few blocks is controlled by one of more than thirty armed factions.”

The conditions in Cite Soleil are unimaginable, almost like a village built on top of a huge garbage heap.  But one of the most striking features of this spot are the number of children.   It was impossible to move without being surrounded by kids.  Most didn’t have shoes, sharing the ground with pigs, waste and excrement.   But they were a happy bunch, considering it all.  Holding up half-melted robot toys or playing cards.  Smiling and playing around with laughter and curiosity.

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On the other hand, they were starving.  Some looked at me and ran a finger across their throats.  Hard to express the feeling you get when a child indicates they are going to die.  Keep that image in your head and you’ll see why I can barely contain my sadness.   These little ones had almost nothing going for them but for a sense of humor.  Barely a chance for literacy, let alone any kind of education.  An astoundingly high probability of falling ill and dying from bad water.  There was little hope there would be a job for them when they got older.  More likely a fate of  HIV/AIDS or human trafficking.

I can’t watch the news on television or listen to the radio.  I can’t look at websites.   I’ve been there and now I picture it in my head after a 7.0 earthquake.

They had nothing going for them and now the earthquake.   I am praying for the best for them.  They deserve it.

Please donate to both Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders generously.

I’ve left a number of photos from Haiti as a Flickr set to make things easily linkable.

I can be followed at www.twitter.com/jeffantebi.

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