Don’t Forget Haiti…

Since the day after the earthquake, I have struggled with whether or not I could/should go to Haiti. As the images began to pour in, my overwhelming desire was to go and to go immediately. But then different stories started to trickle in, stories of people just showing up without purpose and I began to feel uneasy. I read of photographers stuck at the airport having no idea where to go. I heard of photographers taking photographs without any outlet. And it seems to me that without an outlet the photographs of suffering are just fodder for a portfolio…and that is an unjustified transaction. Two things happened in quick succession that really put my plans on hold. First, reports surfaced about severe water shortages and then the following morning, Damon Winter’s photograph of a few Haitians reaching for a stream of water coming from a bucket on the back of a relief truck ran on the front page of the New York Times. To me that was a perfect example of the power of well timed journalism. It was powerful, it was compelling, and it told the story of people desperate for the most basic of things… I know that I donated as a result of that one image. I decided then and there that I would not continue to try and go to Haiti. There were already people working hard with resources, experience, backing, and (mega) outlets ready to publish the images. The best thing to do was to stay out of the way.

Now as a media professional, I believe that this urge to see and to show is only natural. It’s how I make sense of the world and ultimately, I believe that my role is to help play a small part in creating the context through which others (who won’t be able to go) process these things… However, I feel like I know enough about how things work to know that you can’t force something like that. Also, I realized that I am not a breaking news kind of storyteller. I am more intrigued and inspired by the process stories, by the small stories, by the rebuilding… Those kind of stories take time and they take a different skill set than breaking news. So I donated, I waited, I watched.

Nearly 4 months later, I got a phone call from a friend who was travelling to Haiti with the purpose of telling stories of community development and rebuilding. He wanted to focus on the small organizations that weren’t large enough to capture national attention, but were doing really compelling, significant work…who are helping to rebuild a country brick by brick. I had the great privilege of traveling with Troy Livesay and Robbie Seay as well as photographer Steven Bush. Steven and I were tasked with covering a lot of moving pieces. We interviewed families while standing on the rubble of broken houses, we sat with new mothers standing on new (artificial) limbs. We watched wounds being dressed and heard stories of picking up the pieces. I am excited to share the stories that we came across. Stories of loss and pain and fear. Stories of hope and peace and love. Stories of the lost being found, stories of starting small. We will work to put them together as honestly as possible.

You know, I’ve heard it said that the best way to tell a big nuanced story is to tell a very, very tiny piece of it. The mystery seems to be that in the small things we see an emerging picture…not that each small piece is somehow representative of the whole, but rather each small piece hints at a larger framework. It can be counter intuitive, it can feel too simple, but ultimately we are creatures of small circles, of limited interactions and we just aren’t able to comprehend the gravity of large scale disaster.

In a way, large scale tragedy attracts the attention of media outlets across the globe because it makes for “good tv”, but the reason the media crews leave is because the tragedy (even at this scale) is really just made up of normal people trying to live normal lives. But I believe, paradoxically perhaps, that the NORMAL is what you and I end up connecting with…a dad who is trying to find work and food for his family. Not necessarily a flattened cathedral…

Don’t Forget Haiti: Tent City from Ryan Booth on Vimeo.

At one point, while standing on a hillside and surveying to my left and to my right, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t standing on a hillside. I was standing on ten stories of rubble, smashed and piled into an enormous mound. A mound that had claimed the lives of many, a mound that represented the permanently altered lives of a neighborhood, a town. This mound was seismic change, catastrophic change, and yet, as I looked back to my right, a young boy carrying a school bag strolled by weaving his way through the cut paths in the rubble. He was walking on the new “sidewalks” made from thousands of feet following the pair in front of them. He had a sno-cone in his hand and a book back slung over his shoulder. This was his new walk home from school. Catastrophe and normalcy pressed right up against each other. I followed the young man as he walked home, as he made his way through what was left of his neighborhood and I wondered what I was walking over, wondered how possible it would be to “move on.” Then he turned the corner, out of my view, and into his house…

Dont Forget Haiti: Sidewalks from Ryan Booth on Vimeo.

These stories will live on dontforgethaiti.com. Check there soon to meet more of these incredible Haitian people who are just like you and me…more people who are having to rebuild an entire city brick by brick. The hope is to connect you with these people and the organizations who are standing along side them.

Take for instance, the couple below. The man was working on his roof when the earthquake struck. It detached from his house and he somehow managed to ride it like a wildly pitching skateboard down the broadside of the hill his house stood on. It came to rest and he was largely unhurt. Problem was, his grandson had been inside the mound of concrete that moments before had been his house. He spent the next several hours digging his grandson out of the rubble. He had severe injuries, broken bones and deep lacerations. We met the boy at a clinic and sat with him as they changed his cast and cleaned his scars. We stood with the couple on the pile of concrete and rebar that was all that was left of their house as he told us about the other children that he lost that day. These are the stories we will work to tell. Why? Because, quite simply, if we live in a world in which my computer can come from China and my clothes can come from India and my apple can come from New Zealand…if my everyday life is impacted by all corners of the globe, then shouldn’t it follow that “neighbor” is an ever expanding definition? If we are global consumers, then can’t we also be global producers, investors, givers… 

(Photo by Steven Bush)

(Photos by my iPhone)

(Another image by Steven Bush)

Sometimes I wonder if “getting involved” really starts with just “getting to know someone.” Maybe the rest of it just flows from the “knowing.”

I’m not sure.

Either way, don’t forget Haiti.