Published On:Monday, January 18, 2010

NOELLE NICOLLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

nnicolls@tribunemedia.net

AS A last ditch effort to find his family, Prosper Bazard, a Haitian living in the Bahamas, is hitching a ride to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Uncertain about what he will find or where he will sleep, Mr Bazard said he has been anxious for days, wanting to jump on an airplane.

Since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti's capital on Tuesday he has been unable to contact his son, daughter, brothers, sisters and other extended family members.

"I feel hurt very bad. I even got sick. I can't sleep. I stay up almost the whole night on the television. I don't know what has happened to my family yet. I can't get any contact with any member of my family. I don't know who is alive, who is dead. I'll keep praying until I find what is going on," said Mr Bazard.

He planned to leave Sunday on a chartered plane sponsored by the Van Meurs Corporation. Van Meurs, an energy consulting firm, is mobilising its clients and international friends and partners to gather medical supplies, clothes and relief items to send to Haiti. Mr Bazard will assist in the distribution of these supplies as he assesses the situation with his family.

The Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince opened Wednesday for emergency aid flights, although it has been challenged by air traffic control issues. Some flights had to circle for hours before gaining clearance for landing, according to the Associated Press. Military flights received priority clearance. Commercial airlines are not flying.

"My son called me to tell me Happy New Year. That was the last time I spoke to him. He was asking me to think about him. This is something I always do," said Mr Bazard, who was planning to call his son this week to arrange sending a package. The last time he saw his daughter was June 2009 when he went to Haiti for his mother's funeral.

Mr Bazard is bracing himself for arrival in Haiti. Of all the natural disasters striking Haiti in the past few decades, primarily floods and hurricanes, he said this is the worst disaster he has ever seen.

"I have no idea how my heart is going to be, how I am going to feel when I get there. It is going to be completely different when I arrive in Haiti. Things are different looking on television than being on the ground.

"It is something that really hurts me, when I look at so much dead. All the houses, all the businesses, all the places like the (presidential) palace, the police department, everything is down," he said.

Mr Bazard came to the Bahamas as a visitors in 1986. This was the same year that a populist insurrection forced military dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier to flee the country.

Because of the political instability of the time and widespread killings, Mr Bazard said his father advised him not to return home. He was granted a work permit, originally to work as a tailor, and has maintained steady employment in the Bahamas ever since. In 2001 he applied for permanent residence, and is waiting on his application to be processed.

Mr Bazard said it devastated him to think how his country would be set back by the tragedy. According to United Nations reports, more than half of Haitians live on less than a dollar a day, unemployment is over 80 per cent, illiteracy is high and infrastructure is weak.

Despite the poverty and economic hardship that characterised Haiti prior to the earthquake, many Haitians and international observers believed the nation was on the path to recovery, with fledgling signs of growth. Haitian Ambassador Louis Harold Joseph said much of the news coming out of Haiti over the past few months was positive news about development gains.

"For the past six years, we have a lot of efforts going on in Haiti to rebuild the country to put everything on track. The government with the assistance of the international community was doing its best. It is like we are going two steps forward and then now five steps backward. It is a pity that all the time we have to deal with such situations," said Ambassador Joseph.

Construction on a series of international hotel brands was set to begin this month in Jacmel, Haiti, a seaside town known as Haiti's arts capital. The Miami Herald reported earlier this month that Choices Hotels International, owners of Comfort Inn, franchised its brand to two hotels in Jacmel. Best Western and Hilton hotels were also reported to be in negotiations with local hoteliers in Port-au-Prince.

According to Ambassador Joseph, Haiti recently constructed a new wharf at a cost of $50 million to facilitate the docking of the mega cruise ship, the Oasis of the Sea in Labadee, Haiti. That wharf was damaged in the earthquake.

Understanding the impact of the quake, for many Haitians a tempting sense of hopelessness lingers in the air. Ambassador Joseph said Haitians were nonetheless resilient, a condition rooted in a strong and proud history.

Haiti was once considered the Pearl of the Caribbean. It was the first black republic formed from free Africans, enslaved under French rule. This is a great source of national pride for Haitians and the African Diaspora.

"We got independence just like with our hands, fighting with our hands against the big French army who have big machine guns and material. We did not have anything we just fought them with our intelligence and our strength until we killed them," said Mr Bazard.

Over the past two centuries, Haiti survived a few dozen coups d'etats, many resulting in rule by brutal military dictators. Haiti survived several military interventions by the United States, including the 1915 US invasion. When US troops withdrew from Haiti just under 20 years later, they maintained fiscal control of the country until 1947. Rich in natural resources, Haiti was of great economic interests to foreign investors. For much of Haiti's history, the only stable institutions were military institutions.

With the latest tragedy to strike, the international community has rallied behind the Caribbean nation to assist with the recovery effort. Of Haiti, Puerto Rican writer and blogger Mayra Santos Febres wrote on Global Voices online: "I have an old debt with Haiti. We all have. Haiti is the first womb, the place where the Caribbean was born, it's the Africa from within, the unnamable pain, the scar.

"It was the first country in America where a black person dared think of himself as free, to think of himself as a leader of the people (Toussaint L'ouverture). Haiti has paid heavily for this impertinence. They are still paying... Haiti is falling again. And we are also falling. We cannot keep on walking. Not without Haiti. Without Haiti we all fall."