At first both were both jabbering in languages incomprehensible to one another until the translator Andre stepped in and explained that Venice had lost two children in the quake and was watching her grandchild who was "always hungry." All she really wanted was a dry tent. That would be bearable. Did we know how long she would have to live here?"
Andre snapped a photo of two women lying in a puddle, telling stories in languages that each did not understand, but said everything.
It was getting very late and time to leave. Venice wanted to know if she would see the writer again. It was arranged. So the writer went back to a dry bed in guarded compound while volunteers crowded the bar into the wee hours of the morning. The writer did not feel guilty about having a dry bed or guards at the gate, but fear began to creep around the edges of consciousness.
Where were the words to tell the story? Was it better to tell the story or investigate the government? How can one investigate a government that has no central location and no accountability to its people or to the international community? How do you explain to the international community that it is their aid that is killing these people? Too much food dumped on the markets and no follow-up for the program. Cheap donated tarps that rip in the first wind and are supposed to be free are sold in the marketplace with the logo of the donating organization plainly visible. Try to take a photo and the vender runs over and turns it over so it is obscured. Reality, too, is obscured in Haiti and truth is the casualty.
So, Grandma Venice is the touchstone from which we will try our best to tell the story of a country strangled and enslaved by foreign aid, real and imagined fears, hospitals with no tools to do properly heal the sick, and Potemkin Villages of newly constructed white Quonset tents that veil reality.
There is still a withered baby's arm waving to us from a sweltering critical care tent and when the words return we will look at why.
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