Lives in Transition: Haiti, A Léogâne Story
By Suchitra Vijayan
The 2010 Haiti earthquake was a magnitude of 7.0 Mw, with an epicenter near the town of Léogâne, west of Port-au-Prince. News headlines started trickling in and all major news channels landed in Port au Prince to cover the disaster. I heard cliches repeated as facts and saw media correspondents drop the microphone and jump into a frenzy to help the wounded. Everyone gathered in unison and pleaded for aid. Appeals, concerts and solidarity marches sprung everywhere. Photographs of wounded children, IDP camps and the makeshift graves started emerging. Somewhere amidst all the noise, I could feel the humanity drown. An estimated three million people were affected by the the earth quake. The Haitian Government reported that an estimated 230,000 people had died, 300,000 had been injured and 1,000,000 made homeless. What does it mean that an estimated three million people were affected by the earth quake? I cannot grasp numbers. How can I understand the horror of devastation if I cannot fathom the number of lives the earth quake affected? I didn’t. still don’t. Being is Haiti was not about number or the big picture. It was about a handful of individuals. I saw contradiction at every level. Things made every little sense. Nuances often got lost in translation. I wanted to find a semblance of sanity and hold on to it. I tried to find words to express the gravity of my emotions. I couldn’t. Instead I found solace in images. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But sometime a thousand words can be a little much. These images are a search for silence amongst the chaos of existence.
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