from Bill Quigley

Smoke and flames rose from the side­walk. A white man took pic­tures. Slow­ing down, my breath left me.  The fire was a corpse.  Leg bones stick­ing out of the flames.

Port Au prince police head­quar­ters is gone, already bull­dozed. A nearby col­lege is pan­caked. Gov­er­ment build­ings are destroyed. Stores fallen down.  Tens of thou­sands of build­ings destroyed. Hun­dreds of thou­sands homeless.

Giant piles of con­crete, rebar, metal pipes, plas­tic pipes, doors and wires.  Corpses are still inside many of the moun­tains of rub­ble.  No esti­mates of how many thou­sands of peo­ple are dead inside.

Elec­tri­cal poles bend over streets, held up by braids of thick black wires. On some side streets the wires are stll down in the street.

Build­ings take unimag­in­able shapes. Some are half up while the other side slopes to the ground. Some like col­lapsed cakes. Oth­ers smashed like children’s toys.

Every­where are sheet shel­ters. In parks, soc­cer fields, in the park­ing lot of a TV sta­tion, tens of thou­sands lit­er­ally in the streets and on sidewalks.

Thou­sands of peo­ple stand­ing in the hot sun wait­ing their turn.  Out­side the hos­pi­tal, clin­ics, money trans­fer com­pa­nies, immi­gra­tion offices, and the very few places offer­ing water or food.

Troops and heavy machin­ery are only seen in the cen­ter of the city.

After days in Port au Prince I have seen only one fight — two teens fight­ing on a street cor­ner over a young woman. No riots. No machetes.

Hope is found in the peo­ple of Haiti. Despite no elec­tric­ity, lit­tle shel­ter, min­i­mal food and no real gov­ern­ment or order, peo­ple are help­ing one another survive.

Men and boys are scav­eng­ing use­ful items from the mounds of fallen build­ings. Women are sell­ing man­goes and nuts on the street. Teens are play­ing with babies.

Beau­ti­ful hymns are lifted as choirs call­ing to God in every sheet camp every evening.  Peo­ple pray con­stantly.  The strik­ingly beau­ti­ful tap tap cabs trum­pet “In God We Trust” or “Merci Jesus” on bright colors.

Every­one needs tents and food and med­ical care and water.  But when you talk to them, most will lead you to the ail­ing great grandma or the mal­nour­ished child.

What should out­siders do, I asked Lavarice Gaudin?  Lavarice, who helps the St. Claires com­mu­nity feed thou­sands each day through their What If Foun­da­tion, said “help the most poor first. Some who labored their whole lives to make a one bed­room home will likely never have a home again. Haiti needs every­thing. But we need it with a plan. Pres­sure the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment, pres­sure USAID  to help the poorest.”

Inter­na­tional vol­un­teers who work hand in hand with Haitians are wel­comed. Oth­ers not so much

Lavarice saw the Asso­ci­ated Press story that reported only one penny of every US aid dol­lar will go directly in cash to needy Haitians. “I can under­stand that they dis­trust the gov­ern­ment but why not dis­trib­ute aid through the churches and good com­mu­nity organizations?”

“We hope this will help us develop strong lead­er­ship that lis­tens and responds to the people.”

“No mat­ter what, we will never give up. Haitians are strong hope­ful peo­ple. We will rebuild.”